We’ve already seen how musicians are embracing interactive mediums to add depth to their art (TCF and LA Priest are just two examples); now it would seem documentary filmmakers are following suit.  

French filmmaker Antoine Viviani’s latest work, In Limbo, combines the viewer’s personal data (from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), along with their geolocation and webcam information, to create one of the most experimental documentaries to date.

At the centre of the film is an exploration of memory and data, yet intertwined within that is an on-screen manifestation of the viewer's digital self that enhances and builds upon all sequences of the work.

Incorporating themes of privacy and online communication, Viviani features people such as Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle and Director of Engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil. All the interviews are personalised in response to the viewer's data, while the speakers themselves are captured through a Kinect camera, digitized and converted into lines of code. It’s Viviani’s way of playing with the relationship between web and reality.

Like Viviani’s previous work (he’s done documentaries on REM and Arcade Fire), In Limbo takes the medium of the documentary beyond the purely informative and into the conceptual, artistic, and innovative. In Limbo is showing how documentary and film can both work with, and be enhanced by, digital culture.