2024 list of 50+ Immersive Things that mix storytelling, performance, play, design & code
The Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab (DSL) proudly presents the 7th edition of its annual “Immersive Things” list, celebrating groundbreaking projects at the intersection of storytelling, technology, design and code. This year’s selections highlight how creators are leveraging emerging technologies — such as artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and generative systems — to craft experiences that challenge traditional narratives and redefine audience engagement.
The featured projects explore a wide spectrum of themes, from the impact of machine consciousness and AI-driven disinformation to immersive explorations of cultural identity and environmental urgency. Whether through adaptive films with countless narrative pathways, multisensory environments that integrate audience participation, or experimental uses of gaming platforms to reimagine classic works, these creations exemplify the power of technology to transform storytelling. By turning tools like deepfakes, data visualization, and interactive systems into mediums of artistic expression, these works provoke reflection and foster a deeper connection between audiences and narratives.
This annual list underscores Columbia DSL’s dedication to pushing the boundaries of narrative innovation, inspiring critical engagement with the rapidly evolving landscape of immersive technologies and their role in shaping our collective future.
Special thanks to the practitioners around the world who took the time to share the immersive works that stood out in 2024.
Something missing? Please feel free to share anything we may have overlooked.
The following is no particular order.
Eno — Gary Hustwit
“Every time it plays, it’s a different movie,” Hustwit told an audience in May at the film’s New York premiere. “I’m surprised every time I see it.”His collaborator, the digital artist and programmer Brendan Dawes, explained that because of the variables, including 30 hours of interviews with Eno and 500 hours of film from his personal archive, there are 52 quintillion possible versions of the movie. (A quintillion is a billion billion.) “That’s going to be a really big box set,” Dawes quipped at the premiere.
Movie theaters are still guided by “a 130-year-old technical constraint,” Hustwit said over lunch the next day at a Chelsea restaurant. “We can use technology as a structural tool to do interesting things with the narrative. This idea that a film has to be set in stone and always linear is obsolete, I think. There’s another possible path here for filmmaking going forward.”- New York Times
Sweet Dreams — Marshmallow Laser Feast
“Experiential art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) sit at the edge of reality, specialising in immersive experiences that experiment with augmented, virtual and mixed technologies. Their latest project Sweet Dreams at Manchester’s Aviva Studios is centred around a hypothetical fast-food chain called the Real Good Chicken Company and the adventures of its mascot Chicky Ricky. Across six rooms, we see the fictional brand’s history — from golden era to its eventual collapse — across a multi-sensory exploration of appetite, desire and the food industry.” — HERO magazine
Chromakopia — Tyler the Creator
“Tyler season came in 2024 after all. This spring, before he headlined Coachella, Tyler, the Creator riled up fans by saying he wouldn’t drop new music this year. Maybe that was a fake out or maybe his plans changed, but it’s clear that the fall is going to bring us a musical harvest after all. Tyler started teasing his seventh album, Chromakopia, earlier in October, and it’s high-concept even by his standards. So far, Tyler has released the opening track “St. Chroma” and the single “Noid,” and introduced us to a masked protagonist in a grayscale world. Even the vinyl and tour promos are part of the world-building! Now that the album’s out, here’s what we’ve pieced together about Chromakopia so far — including who’s featured (and who may not be).” — Vulture
AM I? — Kevin Abosch
“According to the artist, Am I? is a musical embedded in a documentary wrapped in a sci-fi film. Abosch describes the film as a relentless, fast-paced experience that explores machine consciousness, weaponised AI and transhumanism. “Am I? is a look at how we risk losing our humanity as individuals and collectively as a society while under the influence of machines, from the perspective of a machine”, says Abosch.” — Helsinki Festival
Grand Theft Hamlet — Pinny Grylls, Sam Crane & Mark Oosterveen
“A brilliant idea, brilliantly executed; hilarious, surreal and, yes, in its weird way, genuinely exciting. This could be a Marat/Sade for the 21st century. During the lockdown, two out-of-work actors called Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen were (remotely from each other) playing Grand Theft Auto (GTA) online — and this entire film is shown as in-game GTA action. As their avatars were avoiding getting shot, mutilated or beaten up in the normal GTA way, running through the vast and intricately detailed urban landscape of Los Santos, the quasi-LA in which the action happens, they chanced upon the deserted Vinewood Bowl amphitheater. They wondered if it might be possible to stage an in-game production of Hamlet there, recruiting other gamers to play the parts, in their various bizarre outfits and handles and personae, moving around the virtual reality space in that weightless, almost-real way, speaking the lines into their mics while the avatars’ lips move in approximate sync.” — Guardian
The Dream Machine — Nona Hendryx
“In a V.R. headset, she deftly manipulated controllers and offered design directives for “The Dream Machine Experience,” her hugely ambitious multimedia project. A commission by Lincoln Center that will take over its campus from June 12 to 30, it encompasses A.I., augmented and virtual reality; a digitally collaged garden by the painter Mickalene Thomas; and performances — real and virtual — by artists including Hendryx, Anderson and George Clinton.
Her hope is it will liberate the concert from the stage — “to bring that liveliness, interactiveness, immediacy, wherever I want to be,” she said. Walking through her “forest of ancestors,” a family tree of her influences, is like musical time travel.” — New York Times
Coddess Variations — Opera National de Paris, Hermine Bourdin
“The Paris Opera continues its commitment to digital artistic creation and launches, from Octobre 20, 2024, a new digital art collection gathering dance, sculpture and visual creation. Born from a dance performance — which will be presented to the audiences at the Foyer de la danse inside the Palais Garnier on Octobre 20 during Paris+ Art Basel — the Coddess Variations collection brings together unique physical and digital works.” — Paris Opera
Cat Royale — Blast Theory
Toured throughout 2024 & Recently won a prestigious Best Paper Award at the annual Computer-Human Interaction Conference
“The installation centered around a robot arm offering activities to make the cats happier, these included dragging a ‘mouse’ toy along the floor, raising a feather ‘bird’ into the air, and even offering them treats to eat.
The team then trained an AI to learn what games the cats liked best so that it could personalize their experiences.
“At first glance, the project is about designing a robot to enrich the lives of a family of cats by playing with them,” Professor Benford said.
“Under the surface, however, it explores the question of what it takes to trust a robot to look after our loved ones and potentially ourselves.” — SCI NEWS
The Eagle and The Tortoise — Sister Sylvester
Please note this is an older work but toured in 2024 with a revised version
“The Eagle and the Tortoise invites the audience into a live sound and video installation where they collectively read a hand-made book. The book tells the story of a young student from Turkey who became an icon of leftist resistance, an armed militant, a political prisoner, and finally, a proxy soldier in an American war. This visual essay traces the history of the aerial view — in art, mythology, journalism, and warfare — to make the case for other ways of looking.” — Williams College
REPETAE — Sasha Stiles
“For Sasha Stiles, artificial intelligence is more of a song: an enchanting lure as opposed to a call and response. The Kalmyk American poet is a leading figure in the realm of generative literature and blockchain poetry, which fuses human writing and artificial intelligence to create new works of poetry and art. As legislation continues to emerge in the United States, for example, a bill in California that may require AI detection tools and greater AI transparency, machine learning remains a hotly debated topic. Yet, the Harvard and Oxford graduate remains fascinated by the evolving coalescence between human and mechanism.” — Flaunt
IMPULSE: PLAYING WITH REALITY — Anagram
“The project draws from more than 100 hours of interviews with individuals on the severe end of the ADHD spectrum, using the mixed reality format to give viewers a sense of what it feels like to live with the condition.
Impulse is the second installment in the “Playing With Reality” series from U.K. producer Anagram, co-produced by Floréal & France Télévisions, which aims to shed light on mental health conditions through immersive storytelling.” — Hollywood Reporter
The Tent — Rory Mitchell, Martha Marion
“One of the highlights for me was a project called The Tent, a mixed reality cinematic tabletop narrative and experiment in traditional film and theater narrative, told through the emerging medium of Spatial Immersive Entertainment.
This USA/UK co-production of Mercantile (USA), L D Presents (UK), and Doye Mosse Productions (UK) tells the story of a woman who discovers a mysterious tent that has appeared in her front yard. This startling discovery causes her to begin to question the meaning of activism and our shared humanity.
A modern fairy-tale set in Los Angeles, The Tent interrogates the nature of activism and asks the viewer, “What does it take to live a life according to your deepest held values? Why is it so complicated to be a good person?” — Morbidly Beautiful
Democracy in Flux — Columbia DSL, Robotics by Josh Corn & Double Take Labs
“Step into a world where art and life intertwine “Democracy in Flux,” is an immersive event inspired by the Fluxus art movement of the 1960s. Just as Fluxus artists blurred the lines between creator and audience, we’re inviting you to become an active participant in reimagining our democratic systems.
In an era where technology and bureaucracy make democracy feel cold and distant, this event transforms those frustrations into playful, absurd rituals. You’ll engage in interactive scenarios that mimic and caricature the inhumane qualities of modern governance — highlighting how arbitrary decisions and power structures can create endless loops of frustration. We’ll be prototyping FluxKits — portable collections of artistic experiments — you’ll delve into the heart of these systemic issues. This hands-on experience encourages critical reflection and turns frustration into a catalyst for change.” — Columbia University
Ancestors — Smart Phone Orchestra, Seteye Hallema
“Ancestors is a unique journey six generations into the future, where you’ll explore how today’s choices shape tomorrow’s world.
Using AI and guided by your smartphone, you’ll connect with others in unexpected ways to discover possible futures and face big questions around climate, technology, and society.” — Project Site
Danger Season — Annie Saunders, Climate Power, Mssng Peces
“Produced by m ss ng p eces and brought to life by the creative direction of Annie Saunders, Climate Power unveiled an immersive installation highlighting the apocalyptic-level destruction caused by Big Oil’s corruption and the widespread impacts of extreme weather events. The production team worked on the project for over two months and took five days to set up the installation.
Steps from the 2024 Republican National Convention, the striking dioramas comprised six storefront windows transformed into expressive scenes illustrating the fallout from deadly heat, flooding, and landslides. Underscoring the urgent threats posed, the scenes were bolstered by live performers and utilized eye-catching movement and changing lighting. The project’s main goal was to confront convention attendees with scenes inspired by the real-life consequences of Republican policies.” — Adland
The United States of Abortion Mazes — The Pudding
“I’m a big fan of The Pudding, which has produced some pretty incredible interactive data journalism over the last few years. But the publisher’s most recent project might be the most visceral one yet: a series of “abortion mazes” that challenge you to navigate the labyrinthine patchwork systems of abortion care from state-to-state after the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
The highlight of the piece is six real-life stories which depict six individual abortion journeys across six different US states. These stories illustrate the heartbreak and brutal pain that can often accompany a person’s choice to pursue an abortion — like in the case of Courtney in Tennessee, who was already a mother of three when she discovered that she had an ectopic pregnancy, despite being on birth control.” — Boing Boing
Urban Mining & Regenerative E-Waste Ecosystems — Georine Pierre
“As we navigate the digital age and witness the rapid obsolescence of electronics, a new frontier emerges: urban mining. E-waste, often overlooked, holds immense value — where a tonne of circuit boards from our discarded electronics contains ten times more precious metals than a tonne of traditional ore.
As a recipient of the Council for the Arts at MIT grant, the exhibition displays the thesis research of Georine Pierre (MAS ’24) in the City Science Group. This exhibition delves into the stories of Old Fadama in Accra, Ghana, home to one of the world’s largest e-waste destinations and a population of over 100,000 residents. In this context, informal workers have generated complex ecosystems that tap into the potential of urban mining and its circular economy. Through immersive film, crowd-sourced data visualizations, interviews, and audio-reactive mediums projection-mapped onto repurposed electronics, the exhibition explores the geo-, socio-, and bio-political impacts of global e-waste disposal.” — MIT Media Lab
The Golden Key — Marc Da Costa, Matthew Niederhauser, Aaron Santiago
“Imagining a future world that has suffered the worst ravages of climate change, THE GOLDEN KEY invites participants to try to reconstruct a lost mythic past by responding to prompts at computer terminals on the exhibition floor. As the installation unfolds, an open-ended progression of narrative, sight and sound is generated while the work embarks on a process of recombinant storytelling, incorporating the audience’s words with an AI that has been trained on tens of thousands of folk tales from around the world, a dataset of narrative fragments that echo our most basic stories and concerns.” — Project Website
Animal Well — Billy Basso
“Sometimes, it feels like we can get a little too caught up on using genre as the end-all-be-all for describing games. At first glance, Animal Well, a game from solo dev Billy Basso, seems to fit into the same bucket as other Metroid-inspired romps: it’s a retro-tinged 2D platformer with a large overworld where you find items that encourage you to backtrack through areas you’d previously traversed. This overview is technically accurate but neglects to mention that thanks to its layers of well-considered mystery, this experience has more in common with the cryptic and rewarding puzzle-solving of Fez or Tunic than the action-packed adventures of Samus Aran.” — Paste Magazine
Baby Invasion — Harmony Korine, EDGLRD
“After Aggro Dr1ft last year, Harmony Korine has once again made the most galaxy-brained movie of the Venice International Film Festival, Baby Invasion. A work that takes the form of a messed up livestream, the filmmaker’s new video game-inspired nightmare is wildly, oppressively hypnotic, even though it eventually runs out of places to go.
The edgelords at Korine’s vowel-less EDGLRD production house feel less like traditional filmmakers, more like a collective of media enthusiasts running wackadoodle experiments. Observe them from afar and you might find pretentious faux-intellectualism on the future of cinema; Korine claims that this is what movies will soon be like. It’s a hard notion to take seriously.” — Mashable
Homicipher — Yatsunagi
“Developer Yatsunagi describes Homicipher as a “female-targeted” language deciphering visual novel. As such, you play as a self-described “cute” girl that is trapped in the liminal space inhabited by various dangerous monsters and half-scary, half-handsome men. The concept of the game is very simple. You interact with the inhabitants of the otherworld in order to learn their language and request their assistance in returning home safely. I find the hook brilliantly simple and attractive, as someone with a fascination for this particular brand of Japanese horror taken from popular urban legends.” — Siliconera
Shadows of Doubt — Fireshine Games
“Shadows Of Doubt is not only a simulation of a fully working, sleeping, and murdering city, but also a simulation of the paperwork and footwork required to solve those murders. It generates a whole city and sends its countless citizens around on their day-to-day routines: work, home, the bar, a diner, the local arms dealer in a grotty basement. You know, normal stuff. As a result, it is complex, ambitious, sometimes broken, often funny, and limited by its own lofty goals. I’m very smitten with it.” — Rock Paper Shotgun
Church of the Smoking Chicken Fish Meme Coin — Pastor Kelby
“The founder of Solana-based meme coin Church of the Smoking Chicken Fish has officially registered the project as nonprofit and plans to build a physical church in Texas. This comes after the token skyrocketed to a $130 million market cap, less than two weeks after being launched on Pump.fun.
“We’re going to try to build a church in Marfa, Texas,” church founder Pastor Kelby told Decrypt on the latest episode of “What’s the Meta?” “We’ve already found potential property and [our] whales have already donated over [$130,000] towards the purchase of that property.”- Decrypt
Trump + Biden friends — Ari Kuschnir
“Donald Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden met at the White House for lunch Wednesday where the President formally welcomed the President-elect. The meeting of two bitter political rivals, who battled it out first in the 2020 US elections, and then for the greater part of the 2024 elections, resulted in a lot of memes and funny commentary. Recently, an AI-generated video went viral showing Biden and Trump skipping the ‘boring’ White House lunch and going on a wild adventure.” — MSN
Escape From Godot — Mister & Mischief
“A few minutes after the play begins, the actors stop, empty their pockets and repeat their last few lines. And then they do it again. And again. And again. This live approximation of a vinyl record that catches on loop goes on for a few more minutes, the actors getting slightly louder and a tinge more testy as they continue the repetition.
They can’t move, they say, as they are “waiting for Godot.” But they are actually waiting for us, the audience, to get out of our seats, walk onstage and start to piece together a puzzle out of the fragmented pieces of paper they‘ve dropped.” — LA Times
Harold Halibut — Slow Bros
“Harold Halibut is not your usual video game. While Triple-A devs push for graphical supremacy using Unreal Engine 5, German indie studio Slow Bros. turned to stop motion animation and an ‘artist first’ workflow that celebrates the creative process as much as it strives to find a new way to deliver interaction.” — Creative Blog
A&I — Orange Grove Dance
“After leaving the theater and returning home a few blocks away, I found myself sitting on my couch in the dark, trying to comprehend what it was I had just seen. What had I experienced? I felt torn. Whatever it was, it was equal parts captivating and disquieting. Spellbinding yet unnerving. Like a drug trip, the experience was at times aesthetically pleasing; at others, anxiety-producing…
…A&I, which launched on Friday, April 19th at The Voxel in Baltimore, integrated experimental dance, an ambient soundscape, minimalist stage design, and innovative lighting techniques with a high-tech concept. As its title suggests, the performance, though executed by human dancers, was performed with Artificial Intelligence (AI).” — BmoreArt
From Dust — Michel van der Aa
“During this 24-minute journey, each audience-of-one will take part in a personalized story. Through interacting with their surroundings, the audience will meet the protagonist and her five alter egos, performed by the six members of vocal ensemble Sjaella. The audiences themselves are the ones who create new worlds by walking through and touching the installation, bringing the various alter egos to life.
This multi-sensory experience will be tailored for each audience member with generative AI. As a co-creator, you are the counterpart of the main character. You do not just passively watch but actively shape your own story. (All personal data and images are destroyed on completion of the experience.)”- deDoelen
Embodied Simulation — Memo Akten, Katie Peyton Hofstadter
“‘Embodied Simulation’ is a multiscreen video and sound installation that aims to provoke and nurture strong connections to the global ecosystems of which we are a part. The work combines artificial intelligence with dance and research from neuroscience to create an immersive, embodied experience, extending the viewer’s bodily perception beyond the skin, and into the environment. The cognitive phenomenon of embodied simulation (an evolved and refined version of ‘mirror neurons’ theory) refers to the way we feel and embody the movement of others, as if they are happening in our own bodies.” — High Hike
SEEDS -Korina Emmerich, Barrie Adleberg, Stina Hamlin, Liana Shewey, and Taylor Uchytil
“SEEDS is an interactive experience reflecting the relationship between nature and culture. Built with up-cycled materials, the EMME Studio collection and immersive exhibit opens a conversation about the lifecycle of fashion, presenting new opportunities to cultivate sustainable practices for our future.” — Project site
Drinking Brecht: An automated laboratory performance — Sister Sylvester
“The title of this interactive installation of course refers to the famous Marxist playwright, whose dream was to create a “scientific” theater that would demonstrate for his audience the evils of capitalism, and incite them to revolution.
In Drinking Brecht: An Automated Laboratory Performance, Sister Sylvester explores the politics and potential of this scientific theater in relation to contemporary microbiology, through a hat stolen from the costume collection of Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble. Sylvester traces the possible wearers of the hat using forensic and archival methods, and the audience learns about the first-ever biohacker experiment, creating a documentary in a drink.” — IDFA DocLab
Ceci Est Mon Cœur — Stéphane Hueber-Blies, Nicolas Blies
“An inclusion from the immersive competition roster, “Ceci Est Mon Cœur” is a mesmerizing blend of physical installation (featuring a connected garment enhanced with luminous embroidery that aligns with the unfolding narrative) and visual projection, all of which is set to an enveloping soundtrack. Over the course of 35 minutes, the sensory experience probes our distorted relationship to our bodies through the tale of a child reconciling with his own. The work was produced by a_BAHN and co-produced by Lucid Realities and PHI Studio.” — Cool Hunting
Women’s Memorial Tree / Is This the World? — ReVerse Butcher & Sharp Candy
“Driven by this rise of endemic violence against women and girls, the collaborators both felt a strong commitment to create an artwork that not only presented the stark facts, but also honored the memory of Australian women killed by gender-based violence in a respectful and empathetic manner. “We’ve all experienced gender violence in some form, and that’s a powerful driver to develop something that is creative and has a strong message,” Kylie Art/Sharp Candy.” — ReVerse Butcher
Culture Exchange Rate — Tania El Khoury
Please note this is an older work but toured in 2024 with a revised version
“The lights have been dimmed. On the ground floor of the Invisible Dog, benches, a coat rack, a table, a chandelier and stacked lockers arranged in an L-shape have been tightly organized and greet us in an otherwise large space that fades into darkness. The chandelier contrasts with the industrial make of the Boerum Hill building, exuding an uncanniness that echoes throughout the performance’s theme. This is the New York City premiere set of Tania El Khoury’s “Cultural Exchange Rate,” which engages with identity, belonging and exile.” — Observer
The Great Endeavour — Liam Young
“To focus on reducing future emissions is no longer enough. In order to survive, we need to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it underground on a massive scale. To tackle this daunting task, Liam Young has produced The Great Endeavour. Working alongside a group of scientists and technologists, the film showcases the ambitious vision of constructing such gigantic infrastructure. In this interview, we talked about the biggest machines ever imagined, the urge of thinking in planetary terms and the benefit of understanding that the current climate crisis is no longer a technological one.” — koozArch
A Realistic Day In My Life Living in NYC — Maya Man
“Maya Man’s A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City builds on one of the most popular formats for short-form content on the Internet, the “day in my life” video, to explore online self-representation. The artist excerpted text mentioning specific hours of the day — for example 8 am, 11 pm — from thousands of publicly posted TikTok videos, stripping them of all visual elements to highlight the “day in my life” genre’s method of storytelling. At the top of every hour, a quote from a “day in my life in New York City” video referencing the specific hour appears in large font size on whitney.org” — Whitney Museum of Art
Auriea Harvey: My Veins Are the Wires, My Body Is Your Keyboard — MoMi, curator Regina Harsanyi
“Installed on vintage hardware at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, laid out chronologically, the first career survey of the innovative Net artist Auriea Harvey tells a story about mortality, and survival.
In Harvey’s jewel-box worlds, there aren’t heroes or villains, just people, losing and loving, enmeshed in the slipstream of tech.
Harvey, born in 1971 in Indianapolis, helped expand the vistas of digital art — utopias, games, crashes and all. In the 1990s, she created boundary-bending imagery with GIFs, Shockwave animations, and the HTML and Java programming languages. Her sumptuous personal website, Entropy8.com, restored for the show, won Webby Awards in 1997 and ’98.” — New York Times
Me, a depiction — Lisa Schamlé
“In an intimate space it can feel slightly uncomfortable, voyeuristic even, to watch Lisa Schamlé draped as a living part of her own performance/installation on a mirrored object. In the mirror, Schamlé looks not only at herself, but also back at you, seeking contact with her audience in order to involve it actively in the process taking place.
In this third and final part of her trilogy on sexuality, Schamlé reclaims the autonomy of her body from where it has been lost: in the public domain, that abstract area where the female body is always exposed to the objectifying and normative gaze of the other. A gaze that has an absurd degree of power over the way women see themselves, and through which they often judge themselves, and each other, mercilessly.” — IDFA DocLab
Electric Dreams — Tate Modern
“There is a work in this enthralling show to make you blink and look twice. It’s by the madcap Belgian Pol Bury. On the wall is a large wooden oval sprouting hundreds of fine bristles (think of an enormous hairbrush). Your eyes move over its surface, thoughts perhaps pressing forwards, given the many rooms to go. All of a sudden there is a fractional twitch, somewhere among the thicket, imperceptible as a synaptic leap. It’s as if the sculpture had a mind of its own.
3069 White Dots on an Oval Background — deadpan title — fulfils Bury’s 60s dream of finding the midpoint between motion and non-motion with little more than imagination and a primitive motor. It is one of so many works in this teeming, beeping, flickering, pulsating exhibition of art (dating from roughly 1950 to the 90s) that just cannot keep still. Wonderful contraptions, often involving no more than tin cans and electricity, wobble and vibrate. Screens shudder with static. Black-and-white op art paintings revolve like the spiralling credits to Hitchcock’s Vertigo.” — The Guardian
The Manikins — Jack Aldisert
“Manifesting influences of television’s Hannibal and Severance, the themes of separation from reality and deviating loops are the foundation upon which The Manikins stands. You attend, but is it you who experiences?
Performed for an audience of one, at first glance the set design is disarmingly small; suitable for its self-appointed moniker of “a work in progress”. And while the production makes excellent dramatic use of the occasional blindfold & ASMR-inducing earphones, it is creator/actor Jack Aldisert’s curated practice of physical and eye contact throughout which is one of the critical tentpoles of the show, the sustained nature of the personal attention which sets The Manikins apart.” — No Proscenium
8 Miljard Ikken — Spinvis
“8 BILLION SELVES is an experimental VR film by Nemo Vos. Created around the question of what it means to be a human now, the VR experience seeks to find a new poetry. What you see, what you experience, is something that only you can perceive in this unique way. Only you. Amidst 8 billion others.” — SeeNL
SÕM SÄPTÄLAHN — ITCHY-O
“Reflecting on this truly one-of-a-kind event, Itchy-O continues to fascinate and amuse me with music-centric events that somehow manage to completely circumvent the traditional idea of going to see live music. Would you like to go to a concert that’s not a concert, by a band that’s not a band? Then step right up and grab yourself an Itchy-O ticket to whatever comes next from this 50+ member collective’s strange little corner of the universe. You won’t be disappointed.” — No Proscenium
Y3K: Countdown to Shutdown — NOVA, WGBH
“Building Stuff with NOVA’s Twitch stream features a four-night series, Y3K: Countdown to Shutdown from October 27–30, 2024. The interactive episodes feature an interactive escape room showcasing Science, Engineering, Technology and Math (STEM) content.
Y3K: Countdown to Shutdown explores the world of engineering through gameplay, interactive expert interviews and virtual field trips. Former NASA engineer Dr. Nehemiah Mabry, also known as Dr. Nee, hosts the series, which focuses on a challenge to save the world from a catastrophic Y3K meltdown.” — Forbes
Wonderhole — Rhett & Link
YouTube stars Rhett & Link are expanding their content in the comedy space.
The duo, who host Good Mythical Morning and own Mythical Entertainment, will launch a new comedy series on their Rhett & Link YouTube channel in August. The new series, Wonderhole, “combines docu-comedy, sketch comedy, original music, visual FX, celebrity cameos, and outright bonkers attitude,” per Mythical Entertainment.
The pair will “get out from behind their iconic Good Mythical Morning desk and head into the real world for wonderous explorations both silly and profound, grandiose and dumb, and uniquely Rhett & Link,” per the logline. — Hollywood Reporter
Life And Trust — Emursive
“That’s the ticket price for “Life and Trust,” the new show from Emursive, the producers of “Sleep No More,” and arguably an even more ambitious undertaking. A version of the Faust legend (well, several braided versions of the Faust legend), “Life and Trust,” which opens Aug. 1, occupies 100,000 square feet over six floors of a financial district skyscraper in New York that was once the home of the City Bank-Farmers Trust Company.
In a brief introduction, which is set on the eve of the 1929 stock market crash, a financier makes a deal with the devil: damnation in exchange for the chance to relive his youth. The show then ushers audiences back to 1894, plunging them into a Gilded Age delirium.”- New York Times
Kerosine Chronicles. Fungus — Natalia Grekhova, Olga Inozemtseva, Alexey Korzukhin
A revised version of this generative installation toured in 2024
“The kerosene fungus is a tech-savvy organism that lives in fuel tanks. It uses the consequences of the Anthropocene to its evolutionary advantage. In the course of its metabolism, the fungus changes the smell of the fuel in which it has settled. This is the starting point for modeling chemical communication between bio- and cyberorganisms. Kerosene robots use smells to find each other and build relationships based on data about the well-being of the kerosene fungus inside them (pH meter, gas analysis, kerosene level). If two robots with matching strategies meet (e.g. one is willing to give altruistically or submit and the other is willing to receive kerosene), one robot can connect with the other to pass kerosene on. The possibility of strategically coordinating or not makes communication within the group difficult and unpredictable, making the processes of the fungus-machine system seem like a kind of social interaction.” — ARS Electronica
The Dopeameme Institute for Pleasure Research — Superplastic
“Designer toy brand Superplastic has unveiled its new attraction for Area15 in Las Vegas — the Dopeameme Institute for Pleasure Research (D.I.P.R.).
Opening this autumn, Dopeameme is a cutting-edge experiential project by Superplastic, which creates vinyl art toys and digital experiences using its original characters.
The brand is known for its high-profile collaborations with the likes of Mercedes-Benz, Gucci, Fortnite, Tommy Hilfiger, The Weeknd, Post Malone and more.
Superplastic’s first-ever physical location offers an immersive, story-driven experience. Guests will be active participants as they explore mind-bending rooms, each designed to trigger a dopamine rush.” — Blooloop
ChromaCorp — ChromaCorp Team
“In Chromacorp, players are placed in a “dream job” at ChromaCorp, the leading authority in the color industry. But all is not as it seems. Players soon find themselves balancing mundane desk work with acts of rebellion as they discover the company’s questionable methods for harvesting color. As they extract colors to meet their daily quotas, they gradually unveil ChromaCorp’s dark secrets and are faced with the challenging choice: will they continue their tasks or join with other employees to quietly resist the company’s influence?” — Pasadena Now
Keep Driving — YCJY Games
“Keep Driving is a road trip simulator that incorporates a turn-based combat system and an atmospheric story narrated by the environment and casual conversations with the hitchhickers you pick from the road. All while listening to a curated playlist featuring local artist from Sweden.
The game participated in the Steam Next Fest in October, I was instantly attracted by the concept and the amazing pixel art and wanted to give it a try. The demo is still available so be sure to check it out.” — Turn Based Lovers
The Game of Whispers — Parag K. Mital
“…the project is an interactive and generative video game that draws parallels between the political intrigue of the Mughal Empire in India during Shah Jahan’s reign and the role of AI-driven disinformation in today’s world. Set within a rendition of Delhi’s historic Red Fort, the piece explores how rumors, manipulation, and shifting power dynamics mirror the way modern technology, particularly AI, shapes narratives and distorts truth.
At the heart of the work are non-playable characters (NPCs) — game characters not controlled by players but by AI — and are modeled after figures from Mughal-era miniature paintings in LACMA’s collection. These NPCs are driven by advanced large language models, like those that power ChatGPT, allowing them to engage in lifelike conversations that create new layers of intrigue and deepen the cycle of disinformation. As the characters spread rumors and react to the actions of others, viewers witness how a single falsehood can ripple through the palace, influencing decisions and relationships.” — LACMA
Lennox Mutual — Candle House Collective
“I don’t even know where to begin about my three phone call experiences with “Lennox Mutual,” the latest remote immersive theatre experience from Candle House Collective. According to Candle House Collective’s website, Lennox Mutual is “an alternate reality experience by phone.” Very true. The alternate reality was such that I found myself believing it was real. Which, for a theatrical experience that took place in my office and on my cell phone, is pretty impressive. And creative. As well as the most intriguing and unique theatrical experience I’ve had in a while.” — Theater Mirror
Submerged — Edward Berger
“Watching an immersive film inside the Vision Pro is an odd thing. On the one hand, it’s hard to forget you’re in a headset. But, unlike a regular film, I have a ghostly sort of agency inside the narrative. The action can be happening with the main characters, but I’m not obligated to watch them. You can instead focus on the extras in the background. I can — and did — occasionally choose to turn my head to stare at the rivets in the submarine’s metal walls or beads of condensation in a torpedo tube (also, rudely, a roach skittering across the floor). Sometimes, I’d turn around to see if this Submerged world had 360 degrees like the real one. Spoiler: it doesn’t. This fictional world spans 180 degrees, and once you reach the border, it fades to black.” — The Verge
Particle Ink House of The Shattered Prisms — LightPoets
This is a new version of the experience
“The inward-looking fantasy is set in multiple black-box rooms with minimalist furnishings — a communal, ritualistic hub, a library, a bathroom, a bedroom and a mini forest among them. The dancing is rigorous, with performers often seeming to be wrestling with themselves as they do battle with sometimes hidden (and sometimes not) existential demons. Fast-moving digital artwork comes alive on walls, much of it drawn via a wand, by a nameless artist, portrayed by Ekenah Claudin, who serves as the show’s protagonist.” — LA Times
MAYA: The Birth of a Superhero - Poulomi Basu
New elements of the project we’re released in 2024
“VR animated film MAYA: The Birth of a Superhero has already garnered praise for digital artist and filmmaker Poulomi Basu, with a nomination at Festival de Cannes Compétition Immersive 2024 as well as earning a Winner Special Jury Mention Prize 2023 Tribeca Festival. Released for the best VR headsets, MAYA: The Birth of a Superhero is boundary-pushing art as much as it is a ‘game’. — Creative Blog
I M U — Juul van der Laan
Ongoing prototype — released version 2.0 in 2024
“I M U is an interactive essay film installation in which I manipulate the viewer’s image through deepfake. It’s a personal confrontation with the technology and a meditative intervention on what the self and your self image really are. Featuring philosopher Mogobe Ramose” — Project Site
Master of Light — Coven
“The story in Masters of Light centers around star-like beings known as the Sisters of Light. The Sisters lived peacefully in their galaxy until a black hole suddenly appeared and disrupted their peace by releasing darkness. The darkness spread and trapped the Sisters in cages. It is up to you, the wanderer that was foretold to save the ethereal beings from their entombment by using your light based powers, to overcome the dark forces from the black hole. The story here is definitely intriguing and serves its purpose as a driving force to keep playing. In some levels, you can branch off into secret areas where you can uncover more lore about the Sisters and their practices. While it is interesting to watch story threads unfold, overall, the plot sort of gets lost with how typical and safe it plays out. The levels and gameplay quickly become the main focus the more you get into the game.” — Impuse Gamer
Bonus — Research
Genie 2: A large-scale foundation world model
Jack Parker-Holder, Philip Ball, Jake Bruce, Vibhavari Dasagi, Kristian Holsheimer, Christos Kaplanis, Alexandre Moufarek, Guy Scully, Jeremy Shar, Jimmy Shi, Stephen Spencer, Jessica Yung, Michael Dennis, Sultan Kenjeyev, Shangbang Long, Vlad Mnih, Harris Chan, Maxime Gazeau, Bonnie Li, Fabio Pardo, Luyu Wang, Lei Zhang, Frederic Besse, Tim Harley, Anna Mitenkova, Jane Wang, Jeff Clune, Demis Hassabis, Raia Hadsell, Adrian Bolton, Satinder Singh, Tim Rocktäschel
“Generating unlimited diverse training environments for future general agents
Today we introduce Genie 2, a foundation world model capable of generating an endless variety of action-controllable, playable 3D environments for training and evaluating embodied agents. Based on a single prompt image, it can be played by a human or AI agent using keyboard and mouse inputs.” — Read More
Models All the Way Down — Christo Buschek & Jer Thorp
“If you want to make a really big AI model — the kind that can generate images or do your homework, or build this website, or fake a moon landing — you start by finding a really big training set.
Images and words, harvested by the billions from the internet, material to build the world that your AI model will reflect back to you.
What this training set contains is extremely important. More than any other thing, it will influence what your model can do and how well it does it.
Yet few people in the world have spent the time to look at what these sets that feed their models contain.” — Read More
