10 · 24 · 17

Project DERIVA.MX, a participatory screening of the 15th FICM

Gustavo R. Gallardo

The DERIVA.MX project, a transmedia proposal for the observation of violence in Mexico, was presented at the 15th Morelia International Film Festival at the José Rubén Romero Theater.

"Participative screening" is another way of defining the proposal of the filmmakers Analía Goethals, Nicolás Gutiérrez and Santiago Mohar, and the interactive designer Pablo Somonte Ruano, who created software capable of deriving the answers that the audience answered in a survey, in a selection of images which were later edited as a documentary.

"The Morelia drift we chose was about migration. We did it twelve hours before this presentation," revealed Somonte.

The video, with a marked geometry in the images, narrates in many ways the structural violence of migration in Mexico. "The images are randomly chosen by hashtags, although there are also beautiful accidents," he added. "We analyze the audience's responses and correct the color of the images. The most voted answer determines the order of the whole film."

Analía Goethals, referring to the music, commented that they wanted it to be visual rather than thematic.

The project contains hundreds of hours of recordings in more than 15 states. A different video is generated with each survey.

Pablo Somonte reflected on the future the application of a system like this, in which the machine seems to learn. "Every time we delegate more to the machine and I do not know how far we will get with that."

Relive the live broadcast of the presentation DERIVA.MX, the transmedia project that seeks to chart new ways that help to observe violence in Mexico from different perspectives.