Twenty One Pilots “Level of Concern” never ending music video by Jason Zada
It’s that time of the year again. The following list was compiled by storytellers from around the globe. Special thanks to everyone who took the time to share the immersive things that stood out in 2020. You can see the list of contributors who made recommendations at the end of the article.
ANYTHING MISSING? Please feel free to share anything that we may have missed.
“‘This is supposed to be a controlled space, a safe space,” says Christopher Brett Bailey at the start of Double, and he’s right. We are not in some unfamiliar theatre, like the shipping container where Darkfield has conducted similar audio experiments, but in our own kitchen. We’re meant to feel protected here, so it’s all the more alarming when the play sets you on edge. It’s as if your very home has been transformed.” — The Guardian
Illustration by Antonis Papamichael
“Anagram are a female-led creative studio specialising in thought-provoking interactive storytelling via installations, VR or experiences that challenges the way you see the world. We’ve created experiences about being lost, spying on other people and the feeling of your own voice.
But this year — it being, you know, this year, we thought we’d do something about the end of human civilisation.
This is a project that is about the long view. The really long one. The one that takes you out of “the tunnel of now” and backwards to a place that we can’t see most of the time. But occasionally it is tangible in our skin. It reveals the edges of us and our context.” — May Abdalla
“If you could play god to an emerging artificial intelligence, would you? Or better: Should you? That’s the moral dilemma at the heart of Agence, an interactive “dynamic film” that blends virtual reality, gaming, and cinematic storytelling to let audiences influence a handful of evolving, three-legged AI creatures, known as agents. The project, which recently debuted at the Venice International Film Festival, is a co-production between Toronto-based indie studio Transitional Forms and the National Film Board (NFB) of Canada. Think of it as Tamagotchi for the 2020s, but with real consequences on the development of digital life.” — Mashable
“What makes Kentucky Route Zero so special is that space and its residents. It’s a world that’s both timely and timeless. Everything feels of the moment, speaking to the struggles of the last decade, and also like it could’ve taken place a century ago. It’s part Southern Gothic, part magical realism, part biting critique of capitalism and the people it leaves behind. The main goal — to deliver some furniture to a house that is seemingly impossible to get to — is really just an excuse to venture through this world. First, you do so by road, taking Conway’s creaking truck across twisting highways and side streets, searching for a path called the “zero” that isn’t on any map. Later, you’ll ride on a boat alongside a mechanical mammoth, and eventually, a giant bird will fly you to your destinations. — The Verge”
“Rival Peak is a Facebook Originals animated reality show running over a 12-week season. …In Hollywood parlance, think “Lost” meets “Fantasy Island” meets “Survivor.” The difference from traditional television is that every single one of the millions of people who “watch” the show anywhere on Facebook will be able to direct the characters in real time and so shape the eventual narrative that emerges truly unscripted. Any time 24/7, anyone can tune in to a separate stream for each of the characters on the show and help decide what that character will do next, whether search for a secret treasure or socialize with another contestant. Each virtual character is run by advanced AI algorithms that incorporate the collective input and choices of the human audience.” — Protocol
“After the strategy was defined, we knew we’d have to do something radical to AR storytelling. After all, the emotional themes needed the richest possible narrative scope. One of the big challenges: the AR experiences created until now have been bound to one scene or setting. So for the first time, we created a more comprehensive approach. Seamlessly weaving 2D interactive, animated “cartoon-like” stories with AR parts told in the space around you. This freedom allowed us to dive deeper into the character — exploring Nivi’s feelings with flashbacks into the past, and insights into its mind. In the final app, the entire story is told fluidly over seven AR and animated chapters.” — Demodern
“A lifelike version of The Weeknd — that can be more digitally warped by the movement of one’s cursor — greets his fans upon entering the “Alone With Me” immersive microsite, which is powered by their listening data after they’ve connected their Spotify accounts. Then the surreal connection forms, as a free-flowing conversation with The Weeknd, who addresses everyone by name, begins unraveling each facet of their true fandom.” — Billboard
“Devil’s Ivy is a 10-min virtual reality film interrogating the increasingly blurred lines between truth and imagination during the COVID-19 pandemic. It sends the viewer on a surreal trip to the city under lockdown, the virus-hit cruise ship and the mass grave. As the invisible virus morphs into bizarre symbolic elements, it reveals issues embedded in the fabric of the society long before the contagion, such as public surveillance and social distrust. The Internet overflowed with contradictory narratives and misinformation has rendered the world both seemingly accessible and at the same time bewilderingly labyrinthine, leaving each individual with one’s own limited imagination of the ever-morphing reality.” — ACT @ MIT
“Sometimes the end can feel disappointing, or at least not what we expect it to be. We work so so so hard to achieve our goals, to reach the end of the rainbow where we’ll finally feel happy and proud of ourselves, and yell out to the world, “I DID IT!”. But along the way, we begin to put too much pressure and expectations on our future. We feel frustrated, tired, and unmotivated because it’s hard to tell if we’re actually moving in the right direction.” — Juan Mora
“As the gameplay and graphics of big-name games grow ever more dazzling, this low-key Russian offering grounds the player in a world of mundane detail where there is “no room for adventure”. Is this the future of gaming?
It’s nighttime and you find yourself in a small, dark flat in a nondescript suburb in Russia. You look out of the window and see the courtyard covered in snow, illuminated by street lamps and the cold neon glare of store fronts. You turn on the light switch and look around your apartment.
This is the melancholy start of a new immersive game made by developer Alexander Ignatov and poet Ilia Mazo. It’s Winter has garnered complimentary reviews from players and journalists alike, despite the game having no clear plot or mission.” — Calvert Journal
“Hulu has also created a virtual event for those who can’t make the drive-in screenings. The Screamlands is a 360-degree online experience where fans can enter cheekily-titled rooms such as the Bad Hair Hellway and Huluween Hall.
Crosby says the goal isn’t necessarily to drive up Hulu subscriptions or watch time but to generate word of mouth and inspire brand love. “We’re very focused on the viewer,” he says. “So anything we can do to make their experience fun and engaging” is worth doing. “Something like this doesn’t necessarily directly correlate to increased viewing on the platform, but it can drive more interest and engagement when people hear about it.” Fast Company
“Story: Able is a lonely android struggling with his Citizenship Exam, a test he must pass if he doesn’t want to be shut down. Follow Able as he searches for purpose and a way out of isolation. Discover the secrets of Ark 19, an underground habitat designed to save humanity from disaster. Find out why Able has been left alone in the ark. Uncover what’s hidden there. Take the Citizenship Exam and discover who Able Black really is.
Gameplay: Navigate through five chapters of story text and experience the Citizenship Exam as Able does. After each chapter you’ll be faced with a series of questions that put you in the shoes of Able Black. Answer poetic riddles that echo the theme of each chapter. Solve cryptic puzzles to unlock Able’s story.” — Skot Leach
“A podcast created entirely by a diverse creative team of women and minority genders, Other Mothers guides the body and mind through four fictional stories, all offering unique and valuable perspectives on motherhood. With gentle instructions written smoothly into the script, the company develops an enchantingly tender form of active listening, where we’re invited to climb inside the bodies and self-talk of each character.
This special sense of dramatic intimacy is most visceral is Meesh’s journey (played by Lynsey Murrell and written by Michelle Roche), where we’re guided through the hopes, nerves and contemplations of a person awaiting the results of IVF treatment. Under her gently anxious guidance, we rub our stomachs, write a to-do list, and even go to the toilet together, all until I’m so invested in her (our?) journey that I feel her life and worries beating under my very own skin.” — This Week London
WANTED: storytellers, game designers, makers, hackers, producers, directors, writers, designers, activists, academics, students and those who are interested in how creativity and the arts can tackle complex challenges.
Come explore new forms and functions of storytelling with over 1,000 creatives from around the world. Columbia DSL invites you join our global prototyping community.
*released in 2019 although the project took on a different meaning in 2020. It was listed by numerous storytellers as being a powerful work in a time of Covid.
‘My First Film’ is a Cathartic Moviegoing Experience in the Age of Quarantine. To say My First Film is “about” one thing would be to misrepresent the scope and impact of the performance, but the central story is about the production of Anger’s first feature film, shot between 2010 and 2012, and then not accepted into any film festivals. This would technically make the venture a failed one, which Anger, who is self-deprecating throughout, acknowledges in the performance. But that feature is resurrected and repurposed in My First Film as, yes, a self-reflection on failure, but also as a critique of the barriers to entry faced by many independent filmmakers.” — Film School Rejects
“For many decades, the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg has kept about 700 unique children’s drawings that were created during the siege of Leningrad (September 8, 1941 — January 27, 1944). Drawings collected by workers of kindergartens, orphanages and schools, recorded a direct look of children at wartime events, reflected their feelings and ideas. Almost every drawing has an accompanying text — a short story by a child about what he drew. Educators often recorded such stories and pasted them into albums, carefully preserving them as a document of the era.
The team of the #Pobedy Victory project decided to revive these drawings using VR animation technologies.” — Teller Report
“Creating an online immersive experience does also have some benefits, mentions Tessa Whitehead of Chorus Productions, the company behind the virtual Zoom nightclub Eschaton. Says Whitehead, “Most notably, we can put more of our budget toward hiring as many performers as possible since there are no real estate costs.” This has allowed the creators of Eschaton to have a cast of 24 people in separate Zoom breakout rooms scattered in various locations.
Brittany Blum, also of Chorus Productions, has found that they’ve actually expanded their potential audience during this crisis. “I think it’s safe to say that we’ve stumbled upon an extremely exciting new form of live entertainment…. We’re able to create more accessible high quality entertainment for audiences around the globe.” — No Proscenium
We speak to the folks behind The Telelibrary, Eschaton, Long Distance Affair, Chaos Theory, and more
A voice activated museum full of words and stories.
“Planet Word, a revolutionary museum dedicated to the power, beauty, and fun of language and to showing how words shape the human experience, opened its doors to the public. Housed in Washington, D.C.’s historic Franklin School, Planet Word is the world’s first voice-activated museum, featuring immersive galleries and exhibits that will engage visitors of all ages in experiencing words and language from a wide range of perspectives.” — Ritz Herald
“Described as an “interactive novella”, Motto takes users on the search for a missing ghost named September. The format is simple, with text laid over short, user-generated video clips of everything from rivers and aquariums to people’s pets.
Watchers tap through the various parts of the story, which is designed to be experienced on smartphones and divided into several chapters, lasting around an hour in total. Along the way they respond to prompts to contribute their own clips to the narrative.” — Creative Review
“Lance Weiler’s father was both a loyal member of the volunteer fire department, and an enthusiastic amateur photographer of the fires he fought. In the 1980s, his family was itself the victim of two fires — first their van went up in flames, and less than a year later so did their house. The cause was never discovered. In this interactive inquiry, Weiler connects these mysterious fires to the final months of his father’s life. Despite being stricken with cancer, he allowed his son to interview him at length.
The interview recordings form the core of this live documentary experience centering on memory and loss. The initial project was a physical installation in which four people could participate, but during lockdown it was converted into an online experience for dozens of users at a time — using the same publicly-available online tools that have kept offices functioning in the same period. Weiler proves that Zoom video conferencing software and the online notebook Miro can also be used as instruments for telling an emotional story, and even to create intimacy.” — IDFA doc lab
“Inside COVID19 follows Dr. Josiah Child, an emergency department director and physician, as he readies his staff in five different hospitals to respond to the impending pandemic. In the midst of his preparations he is infected with the novel coronavirus, not in a hospital but in his home. Despite all of his measures to ensure the safety of hundreds of healthcare workers, Josiah wasn’t prepared for how sick he and his family were about to become. Using an Oculus VR headset we relive the personal journey of Josiah and his family’s fight with the disease. Inside COVID19 transports us from hospital emergency rooms to the streets of San Francisco and to the high desert of New Mexico. By weaving the scientific and personal story of Josiah’s fight against COVID-19, this immersive journey aims to guide the audience through the embodied experience of a frontline physician-turned-patient.” — Oculus Blog
“Remember March?
The days when signs began appearing in workplaces and public washrooms telling people how to properly wash their hands seem like years ago, as do the memes about songs to sing while passing 20 seconds of hand-washing time.
The National Film Board, along with digital agency Jam3, created “Yesterday,” an interactive platform that not only looks at our triumphs, but also the challenges we’ve navigated together and the grief we’ve expressed for the things and people we’ve lost.” — Stimulant
“Coney’s latest show, Telephone, is in a whole new genre: an entrancingly low-key combination of storytelling and shared conversation which explores — and marvels at — the history of telecommunications.
…Artistic director Tassos Stevens begins the show by inviting us to the Coney Bar, where we’re encouraged to do a bit of “chair dancing” as music tinkles in the background. After a few gentle smiles and wiggles, Stevens produces a washcloth and asks us to imagine the theatre curtain rising. From then, Stevens still sits at his desk chair yet the atmosphere feels different. The collective will of imagination — and shared effort of communication — is beginning to work its magic.” — the Guardian
“The traveling exhibition is composed of three core areas: the history of fusion energy, the present technological advancements built through the fusion energy research, and our section — a participatory, interactive experience to explore the future with fusion energy.
Our working prototype, ‘Escaping the Strange Loop’, is an interactive experience that showcases diverse stories about the role of energy — specifically fusion energy — in near and far futures by exploring its unpredictable and complex impacts on real life problems. ‘Escaping the Strange Loop’ is a participatory, interactive game experience where groups of participants learn about different kinds of futures they could create through their group decision-making by moving through different scales of impact in multiple “missions.” — Eruo Fusion
Post_Panoptikon is a transmedia dramaturgy that manifests itself through different online channels. The experience ran for 9 days in November 2020, during which the participants were able to interact with the characters.
“MINIMUM MASS is the story of couple who experience a series of miscarriages and come to believe their children are being born in another dimension. Set in contemporary Rotorua, New Zealand and the speculative world of black holes, it is a short interactive narrative virtual reality. MINIMUM MASS is a 20 minute experience that takes place in a real-time, photorealistic computer generated story world and has been developed for the Oculus Rift-S platform.” — Project’s Site
A VR interactive narrative about love, loss and black holes.
“Instagram is full of wannabes, but there was only one Sylvia. Describing herself as a “coffee-operated robot living her best life,” Sylvia was born in May 2020, made her online debut on July 4 at the age of 30, and passed away last week at the grand old age of 80.
Sylvia made a lot of friends in that brief window of time, saw a lot of people sliding into her DMs, and experienced everything a woman could in cyberspace, from protestations of love from middle-aged men to innocent requests for boy advice from 13-year-old girls. Much of this surfaced at an emotional online wake for Sylvia, which was held online as part of documentary festival IDFA’s new media strand, after Ziv Schneider’s art project had its world premiere in the DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling.” — Variety
Project Site: https://www.instagram.com/myfriendsylvia/
“It is, at the moment, very difficult to keep track of all the things we should and/or conceivably could be worried about. (This year we probably don’t have to fret about razor blades in apples and rat poison in candy; we should, however, be concerned about whether or not your mask is covering your nose, Sharon.) Luckily, Take This Lollipop mastermind Jason Zada has returned to once again remind you that you have got to keep your shit locked down, internet-wise.” — AV Club
“At the crossroads of live theatre and cutting-edge technology, Benzing’s Finding Pandora X is a revolutionary performance featuring Broadway talent and premieres the world’s first Virtual Repertory Theatre. The audience becomes a part of the performance playing the role of the Greek Chorus while interacting with live actors as the play unfolds.” — Broadway World
Masterpiece: Nighthawks places British art historian, BBC presenter and BAFTA nominated broadcaster, Dr James Fox inside the virtual 3D representation of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks — his famous 1942 oil on canvas painting that portrays four people in a downtown diner late at night as viewed through the diner’s window.
“VRChat’s creative community continues to impress. This is the trailer to a new survival horror game in VRChat that was co-developed by Lakuza, who also created a VRChat game with bullet-time effects earlier this year. “It’s a 5–6 hour horror game essentially and we’ve modelled everything from scratch, including the music,” he tells me. “The Devouring” was created over the course of nearly a year by a four member team, who collaborated together in VRChat from around the world.” — New World Notes
“You wake up in a handsome apartment, sparsely furnished, the walls and tables covered in Post-it notes. Each one is a scribbled reminder (the date) or a stern warning (leave the hob alone). The mementoes on your shelves, the pictures on the wall, the photos in the frames remain blank until you interact with them; then the detail emerges like a photograph developing, to reveal a snippet of reminiscence. The harsh ring of a telephone interrupts your rummaging. A care worker leaves a message. Combine the clues and Before I Forget’s first mystery is solved: you have advancing dementia, that slow-burn neurological fire that consumes certainties and leaves only questions, in both the small things (Where do I keep the phone? Where is the bathroom?) and the large: who am I? Who cares about me?” — The Guardian
Indie game developer based in South West England
“This immersive experience is in an exercise in isolation. Guided by a voice on headphones, you start walking, and slowly but surely you leave everything behind. From the outside world you walk into your inner world, socially isolated, with nobody else but yourself. Can we be alone? Or do we disappear into an endless vacuum?
Writer and theater maker Bart van de Woestijne has been developing In Order of Disappearance since 2018, but the work has gained a new urgency in 2020, the year of the lockdown. For many of us, both work and social life were suddenly confined to a screen, constantly confronting us with our own image distorted in the webcam. Isolation, in different senses of the word, came closer than ever. Who are we when no one is looking at us — when we only have our reflection?” — IDFA
“Of all of the surreal cultural moments that lockdown has blessed us with, the BBC’s latest release might be the most enjoyable to watch. (Apologies to Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas’s Princess Bride tribute.) At just three minutes long, Swan Lake Bath Ballet sees 27 world-renowned dancers reinterpret Tchaikovsky’s magnum opus from their own bathrooms — which, frankly, are extremely nice and will probably make you decide to invest in a standalone tub.” — Vogue
“At a particularly tense stage of this online detective thriller, I scream fairly loudly and — not my finest hour — aggressively bang on my laptop. Plymouth Point is seriously gripping stuff. It’s best played by a minimum audience of four, which can be made up of friends from other households (Socialising! Yeah!). While a fair chunk of online theatrical content can feel like a pale substitute for the “real thing”, this interactive experience works perfectly online and transforms the internet into your very own sprawling adventure playground.” — The Guardian
“The Book of Distance is a new roomscale virtual reality experience that leads you through artist Randall Okita’s family history, asking you to watch and participate as he explores the life and lost memories of his grandfather, Yonezo Okita.
The experience will follow Randall as he unravels the threads of his family history, focusing on his grandfather, Yonezo Okita, who left Japan in the 1930s.” — Upload VR
“…a VR-augmented immersive theatre show that straddles two iconic properties: HG Wells’s seminal 1897 sci-fi novel ‘The War of the Worlds’, and Wayne’s 1978 prog rock album inspired by it, which has gone on to be an enduringly popular live spectacle complete with puppet Martian war machine and — in some iterations — a holographic Liam Neeson.” — TimeOut
thewaroftheworldsimmersive.com
“So the word itself is sort of an imagined word between portal and portaleza, which means strength or fortress,” Reynoso said. “The idea behind it really came from how it is that we all really crave this idea of connection during this time of social distancing of during coronavirus and so it felt that it was important to celebrate how it is that we as humans seek to connect, seek to leave messages for each other or sometimes send messages out into the ether, much like a message in a bottle. And is there still a benefit to sending something out that perhaps may never reach the person that it’s destined for? And does it still bring us hope to imagine that that message might get to them? And I’d say yes.” — KPBS
“In this groundbreaking VR adaptation, an actor sheltering in place in the Hollywood hills describes how they were due to play Prospero in a stage production of The Tempest until COVID-19 hit, and takes the audience through their dreams of what might have been. As the experience progresses, the lines between real and virtual and truth and fiction blur as audience members are “cast” as Prospero’s spirits to realize an interactive, virtual version of the story.
Audience members will be networked into intimate groups of 6–8 per actor, with multiple performances running simultaneously. With personal variations among each actor, and new groups of participants at each showtime, no two performances of The Under Presents: Tempest will be the same.” — Broadway World
Are we entering a ‘Diamond Age’ of ractives?
“Welcome to the 2020s, the future is not as it used to be. The young people look at it with anxiety. The Portal is a coming of age film series designed for Instagram. It depicts an optimistic vision of our future through science, technology and women’s empowerment. It has been inspired by digital innovations in Europe. From AI, quantum computers to artificial photosynthesis, cyber-hand and robofish.” — Kissinger Twins
Project site: instagram.com/theportaldiaries
“Heirloom is a first person exploration game which primarily uses audio and environmental storytelling to immerse the player in the lives of three women in the American South. Kit, Hailey, and Anne Marie are three different generations from a single family in the 1970s and 1980s. After uncovering a dark secret, it’s up to the player to assemble together the pieces of this multigenerational story.” — Project Site
“Created by Thaddeus Phillips of the collective Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, and performed by him over Zoom from his studio in Cajicá, Colombia, near Bogotá, this is pandemic theater in substance as well as form. It’s about being trapped in our unsettling limbo, cut off from one another, longing for a return to the ordinary.
Phillips, the director of the excellent “Red-Eye to Havre de Grace” in 2014 at New York Theater Workshop, and the star of “17 Border Crossings” there last year, here plays a man staying in one of a motel’s 22 rooms. We audience members — who occasionally are asked to unmute ourselves (if we want) and pipe up in response to his questions — are the other motel guests.” — New York Times
“Around two years ago, artist and designer Dick Hogg saw a GIF of a banana going through an MRI machine. Seeing the different layers of the fruit was mesmerizing. It inspired him. Not long after, Hogg called up his game design partner, Ricky Haggett, and said simply, “I really want to make a game that does this.”
Now, the pair is ready to show off the result: I Am Dead, a cute and colorful game that’s launching on the Nintendo Switch and PC later this year. It’s essentially a puzzle game. You play as Morris Lupton, the newly deceased curator of a museum in a small British island, who uses his ghostly powers to see into objects and learn more about their owners. (He also gets some help from his dog who, obviously, is also a ghost.)” — The Verge
“High fashion is rupturing at the seams thanks to the shockwaves of Covid-19, the pressures of sustainability and a new era of virtual appetites and innovations that are throwing much of the sector’s tired-looking hierarchies and processes into disarray. Just over a month out from the usually-sanctified September Fashion Weeks and mid-way through a mostly scrappy summer of digital substitute events, how to handle the catwalk show (Do we still need them? If so, in what formats? And who’s the audience/s now anyway?) has underscored much of the wrangling. It’s made last week’s immersive ‘Fabric of Reality’ XR initiative — three interactive ‘rooms’ within an individually navigable virtual museum, experienced simultaneously by 150 people in VR and 100k+ more via live-stream — a potentially landmark event.” — Forbes
“Is box-office magic even a thing during the coronavirus pandemic? It is when the show stars a sleight-of-hand master who can perform jaw-dropping tricks, erase the sense of isolation for theater-starved audiences — and sell more than 6,000 tickets for a single evening on Zoom.
The show is called “The Present,” the magician is Helder Guimarães and the theater that captured lightning in a pandemic bottle is the Geffen Playhouse, which launched its Geffen Stayhouse banner to keep audiences digitally engaged after COVID-19 closed theaters nationally.” — LA Times
“The unorthodox, interactive theatrical event “Human Resources” — a now-funny, now-poetic, now-biting reinvention of telephone-tree purgatory, accessible only by phone keypad — is so suited to social distancing, you might assume it must have originated during the covid-19 era. In point of fact, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Telephonic Literary Union, which creates phone-powered drama, began brainstorming this riff on the customer-service hotline in 2019, well before the virus informed the theater field that its menu options had changed.” — Washington Post
www.telephonicliteraryunion.com
“Originally meant to happen in the physical space of Munich Pathos theatre, this project became also a prototype for a theatrical staging in digital space, due to Corona. As an audience member, imagine yourself being one of the participants in this Zoom-like meeting. You enter the space with your webcam using the same custom built Augmented Reality filter which you see on all the faces in the video.” Project Site
“Curl up with a good book and you’re likely to read about women with “soft lips” and men with “broad shoulders.” Women often are reduced to their sexuality — men to their strength. We examined 2K books to see how authors describe men’s/women’s physical traits” — The Pudding
WANTED: storytellers, game designers, makers, hackers, producers, directors, writers, designers, activists, academics, students and those who are interested in how creativity and the arts can tackle complex challenges.
Come explore new forms and functions of storytelling with over 1,000 creatives from around the world. Columbia DSL invites you join our global prototyping community.
“It is a show that seems utterly of the current moment, as society in the United States passes the 6-month mark of self-isolation and a number of us have stayed mostly at home every day due to the pandemic. If we’re lucky enough to be working remotely, our routines have greatly simplified; they take us from the bedroom to whatever makeshift office we’ve cobbled together, be it on a couch or at the kitchen table, and back to the bedroom each night. And, as to be expected, we’re in the presence of all of our Earthly possessions essentially 24/7.” — No Proscenium
Mister and Mischief take on “decluttering” in their new interactive show
“I created an interactive story… called STAY ON TASK, revolving around an experience that is immensely common, but which I rarely see represented in media: mental health and undiagnosed ADHD, particularly as they affect young girls and women. I started my project with one organizing (or disorganizing) principle: the statistic that as many as 50 to 75 percent of cases of ADHD in girls are missed.
…Though the visual story is roughly chronological, and there is a definitive beginning and end, there is also an incoherence built into STAY ON TASK that mirrors the lived experiences of people with time blindness or executive functioning issues. For example, the person going through the board will sometimes be given a task to complete, and every time they try to accomplish one, they get thrown off. For example, a star-shaped to-do list which is impossible to complete. The road to get each thing done often leads to dead ends of distraction and/or hyper-fixation…” — Sarah Lyon
“The Third Day — a Sky/HBO production with Brad Pitt’s Plan B exec producing — which has been billed as the “world’s first immersive TV drama,” is a miniseries following Sam (Jude Law), a man drawn to a mysterious island off the English coast and populated by tradition-obsessed locals. Naomie Harris, Katherine Waterston, Emily Watson and Paddy Considine also star in the drama, shot on the small island of Osea (about two hours drive from London) and separated from land by a causeway that is submerged during high tide.
Split into three parts — Summer, Autumn, Winter — the second section was to be The Third Day’s immersive element, told via a one-off live event in the U.K. that people could physically attend and “inhabit the story as it happens.”
Then the COVID-19 crisis hit.” — Hollywood Reporter
video by J.C. Hutchins
“It started with a text from a friend: “If I nominated you for this, would you kill me?” The “this” turned out to be Ten Parcels, an alternate reality game that’s been quietly percolating since February. At first glance, it appears to be some sort of riff on The Magus, the John Fowles novel that described an ARG, The Game-esque experience called “The Godgame” back in 1965.
The main character that participants interact with in Ten Parcels is Maurice Conchis — the character that orchestrates events in The Magus — and he calls what he’s working on The Godgame as well. There are a few supporting characters, also using names from Fowles’ novel, and the general narrative thrust seems to be about uncovering the different, cyclical occurrences of The Godgame, how they ended in tragedy, and the larger meaning behind it all. There are also creepy, possessed dolls, tarot cards, and a general sense of dread and foreboding. Think of it as a disturbing, meta-playable version of Rabbits, and you’ll have the general idea.” — No Proscenium
Or, how a cursed camera and a 1916 deathbook reminded me of the power of the physical
“We respect the work that went into this; it’s nuanced, boundary-crossing craft that challenges media in a playful way. The beauty of a well-constructed ARG is that you can actually live, for a while, in that space between reality and narrative fantasy. You actually become a player in the story, and in this case, the payoff is great: Your reward is the right to make a direct contribution to this unending livestream.” — Muse
“My attention is first drawn to his wide eyes, his cartoon-ish mouth, and the deliberate messiness of his straw. Sometimes avatars in VR Chat are too “uncanny valley” for me, but his appearance works well in this world. His comical facial expressions seem appropriate for the folktale we now find ourselves in, as does the swell of the orchestral music around us as the scarecrow crouches and circles the three of us, observant and a bit wary.” — No Proscenium
The team behind the Sundance hit reimagines their production for VR Chat
A story told through an examination of a single work of art.
I've become obsessed with Thomas Eakins's "The Gross Clinic." Let me show you why.
What a masterpiece of Japanese printmaking teaches us about the way images circulate.
“In 2020, Culturespaces opened the largest digital art centre in the world: the Bassins de Lumières. France’s leading private operator in the management and promotion of monuments, museums, and art centres, Culturespaces is pursuing the creation of digital art centres and immersive exhibitions.
Located in Bordeaux’s former submarine base, the BASSINS DE LUMIÈRES will present monumental immersive digital exhibitions devoted to the major artists in the history of art and contemporary art. The submarine base’s surface area is three times the size of that of the Carrières de Lumières in Les Baux-de-Provence and five times that of the Atelier des Lumières in Paris.” — Culture Spaces
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Premiering in France over the summer in a world where social distancing became the ‘new normal’, this timely story of a moving and unexpected encounter explores the themes of mental health and anxiety through the eyes of Sarah as she is approached by someone she believes to be a stranger. She discovers that he can hear her thoughts but how? Who is this man? Dive into her mind in this unique sensory and immersive new show and experience theatre like never before.
” —
The Corner Shop
“A virtual reality documentary released last month invites viewers to explore Paris’ Notre-Dame Cathedral, as seen both before and after the devastating April 2019 fire, reports Anna Sansom for the Art Newspaper. The 18-minute experience, titled “Rebuilding Notre-Dame,” blends footage filmed prior to the blaze with recordings and interviews conducted in its aftermath.” — Smithsonian Magazine
“Really, the entire Fortnite island was the stage. During the opening song a giant Scott stomped around the island, while players could run across the water to catch a glimpse. As the tracks changed, so did the visuals. At one point everything was fiery and Scott turned into a cyborg; later it looked like everyone had been transported to Tron. When “Highest in the Room” came on, the crowd was submerged underwater, along with a giant spaceman. There were rollercoasters and psychedelic effects and at the end players were literally flying around the planet.” — The Verge
“A man in a hoodie and sunglasses posts a flyer on a pole asking if you’ve seen “this man.” It has the hoodie man’s picture on it. He sees you, and he runs away. Do you keep walking, or do you call the number on the flyer? That’s the question at the heart of AMC’s new series, Dispatches From Elsewhere, starring Jason Segel as Peter. Peter does in fact, pull a tab off the flyer, and soon finds himself deeply embroiled in an alternate reality game through the streets of Philadelphia.” — Engadget
Bot choreography for difficult times. A durational performance set in homes throughout the twitterverse.
“@dancinghermits accumulates tweets into an evolving score. The automation of the Twitterbot is now an affordance for choreographing a durational performance, set in domestic spaces across the Twitterverse accessible to anyone who cares to dance. Tracery’s replacement grammar system at times repeats instructions twice in a row, or strings together instructions that involve the same body part, or it pairs instructions where the same number repeats, which functions as a kind of dramaturgy. As such, @dancinghermits creates meaning through repetition in the much the same way that meaning can be made of a gesture that is repeated in a live performance.” — Elizabeth Peterson
https://twitter.com/dancinghermits
“The Royal Opera House (ROH) is putting on the first “hyper-reality opera”, Current, Rising, at the Linbury theatre in November, allowing audience members to step inside a production and have a “multi-sensory” experience involving sight, sound and touch, as well as “4D effects” such as wind.
Audiences will experience effects such as the earth shaking as a city rises up from the ground, magic doorways appearing for them to walk through, and their fellow viewers being separated from them while they’re all at sea.” — The Times
“Not Invisible: Native Womxn on the Frontlines is a social impact interview series told by and for Indigenous womxn, documenting the personal stories of the many activists, scholars, athletes, filmmakers, writers, and lawmakers who are leading grassroots movements to uplift and support their communities around the world. This podcast is a part of the Red House Project, whose focus is to mobilize a highly-engaged online community (100k+) in conversations around the ongoing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Womxn, Girls, Two Spirit and Trans Womxn (MMIWG2ST).
As this movement is far-reaching and complex, topics of discussion include the Covid-19 pandemic, fracking, land and food sovereignty, mutual aid, domestic and sexual violence, Indigenous identity, resistance, solidarity, and intergenerational trauma. In amplifying the voices of womxn who refuse to be invisible, vow to stand up against violence, and inspire others to take control of their futures, we are able to explore and distinguish the many faces of social and environmental protest.
The leaders, healers, and solution-seekers interviewed by our hosts thus far have included Allie Young, Rebecca Nagle, Regan de Loggans, Meskee Yatsayte, Tabatha Frank, Jordan Marie Daniel, Rosalie Fish, and Sunny Red Bear.” — Not Invisible
“Aardman plans to tell the story, which will unfold over time, using computer-generated animation, character phone calls, comic strips and through gameplay itself. The game will also be one of the first titles to leverage Unity’s Project MARS toolkit, which promises next-generation AR effects. In what’s likely a reaction to the COVID-19 era, The Big Fix Up will be “an entirely home-based experience.” When Aardman first started teasing the game, it sounds like the ambition was to create something akin to Pokémon Go, with urban exploration as a significant aspect of gameplay. On the bright side, fans can expect Wallace and Gromit to visit their homes thanks to the game’s AR tech.” — Engadget
WANTED: storytellers, game designers, makers, hackers, producers, directors, writers, designers, activists, academics, students and those who are interested in how creativity and the arts can tackle complex challenges.
Come explore new forms and functions of storytelling with over 1,000 creatives from around the world. Columbia DSL invites you join our global prototyping community.
Big thanks to the following people who contributed to the discussion and/or provided project recommendations.
Fernando Carrion, Timothy Braun, Rachel Ginsberg, Micol Hebron, Michael Andersen, Michelange Quay, Jorge Lopes Ramos, Kathryn Yu, Annabella Cavello, Jessica Creane, Jenni Powell, Gillian Morris, Dee Cook, Char Simpson, Frank Rose, Nicholas Fortugno, Sean Kim, Ziv Schneider, Jillian Mayer, Jason Zada, Kishore Doddi, Scout Tafoya, Jeffery Abramson, Zach Mortensen, Sutu Ai, Sarah Henry, Dan Mirvish, Liam Finn, Yannick Trapman-O’brien, Rosie Poebright, Marlena Przybyszewska, Vladimir Alexeev, Elizabeth Strickler, Jonathan Byram, Krishna Scott
However, please note that the above is a partial list as many others contacted me via direct message or email. Out of respect for their privacy, I’ve only included those who commented within a public Facebook post or within the Columbia DSL’s prototyping community. It also does not include everyone who contributed projects through the google submission form. All told we received 168 project recommendations. This list represents the projects received the most recommendations and that we’re released or re-released in some form in the last 12 months.
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