It's interesting that Cannes has decided to interrogate the relationship between authors and audiences in their 60th year. Part of this interest lies in the much-talked of user-generated content UGC sites like Youtube and Myspace and the valuation of these sites in the marketplace. Certainly, in the entertainment industry we need to start asking ourselves how such UGC is positioned alongside more expensive and expansive forms such as traditional cinema. At CFC Media Lab, where I have been Director since its inception in 1997, we focus not only on audiences creating their own content but on the broader concept of audience participation in general.

We know that in the future, culture will increasingly be created through the intersection of elements currently in their nascent states – technologies being dreamed up in our labs; stories not yet told; and a type of “active audience” who may not yet know what they want to consume, express, or create. The latter group — active audiences — will play a role unlike any other role that audiences for more passive media have played in the past.

We need to understand what this role of audience will be in the cinematic medium and in the new forms of cinema -- interactive, live, performative, and expanded cinema. Unlike most interactive media projects, where audiences typically get cast as “users,” and their roles defined merely in the testing and delivery phases, the CFC Media Lab has been investigating how audiences get implicated in the entire process from idea-development to delivery of interactive cinematic experiences. The central question surrounding this idea of audience development thus becomes, “how should narrative/cinematic experiences be designed when the audience is also the medium.”