COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY’S DIGITAL STORYTELLING LAB ANNOUNCES
FIRST ANNUAL “DIGITAL DOZEN,”
HONORING GROUNDBREAKING STORYTELLERS NEW YORK, NY, Jan. 27, 2016—Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Lab (DSL) has announced the first annual “Digital Dozen: Breakthroughs in Storytelling,” its list of the most creaTve approaches to narraTve from the past year. The works honored for 2015 include an ad campaign; a video game; an art installaTon; an experimental opera; an online community whose leaders have been targeted by murderous fundamentalists; and two journalism reports, one employing nonlinear narraTve and the other virtual reality. Together they show the extraordinary range of narraTve technologies in use today, from simple blogging pla\orms to virtual reality to face-‐subsTtuTon so^ware. Chosen by members and associates of the Digital Storytelling Lab, a project of Columbia University School of the Arts Film Program, the 12 examples do not conform to any one idea about what the future of storytelling will be. They include highly structured narraTves as well as those that let the user determine the outcome. Some take place enTrely online; others use digital technology to create or enhance real-‐world experiences. Some celebrate technology; others use it to warn of a dystopian future. What unites them all is a narraTve approach that would not have been possible 25 years ago. The Digital Dozen were selected by Professors Hilary Brougher and Ira Deutchman and Senior Fellows Frank Rose and Paul Woolmington of the School of the Arts; David K. Park, Columbia University’s Dean of Strategic IniTaTves; Lance Weiler, Director of the Digital Storytelling Lab and Director of ExperienTal Learning at Columbia; and Dennis Tenen of the Department of English and ComparaTve Literature. The iniTaTve, led by 1
Lab member Frank Rose, author of The Art of Immersion, with the support of Lab co-‐ founder Lance Weiler and other members, is intended to encourage innovaTon, creaTvity, and an awareness that digital is changing the way we tell stories as much as it’s challenging the business models of companies that tell them. The Columbia 2015 Digital Dozen (in alphabeXcal order) are: •
Absolut Silverpoint, an app-‐based adverTsing campaign for Absolut Vodka that for two weeks in London combined game, story, immersive theater, and (for some) a free drink.
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The Deeper They Bury Me: A Call from Herman Wallace, an online documentary in the form of a phone call from a man who spent 40 years in solitary confinement.
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The Displaced, a virtual reality experience that introduced readers of The New York Times Magazine to three of the 30,000 children who are among the world’s refugees.
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Door into the Dark, a physically immersive experience that uses digital technology to encourage people to think about what it means to be lost.
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Freedom, an art installaTon that employs video and life-‐sized Teletubby statues in SWAT team gear to provide a causTc commentary on police violence, personal data, and poliTcal dysfuncTon.
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The Hopscotch Opera, an opera performed in private limousines and in iconic locaTons in and around downtown Los Angeles, with scenes presented seemingly at random.
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Karen, an app from a “life coach” who starts off professionally enough but quickly veers into inappropriate territory.
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Life Is Strange, a video game about a high-‐school girl who discovers she can rewind Tme—a useful gi^ that at a certain point turns unexpectedly problemaTc.
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Mukto-‐Mona, an online community for Bengali free-‐thinkers and secularists that lost its founder, its founder’s book publisher, and two of its bloggers to machete-‐ wielding Islamic fundamentalists in Bangladesh last year.
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Network Effect: Human Life on the Internet, an online video experience that portrays Internet existence as freneTc and obsessive and suggests we periodically disconnect.
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The Pickle Index, a comic novel told in three forms: a paperback book, a lavishly illustrated two-‐volume hardcover, and a mobile app that thrusts the reader into the world of the story.
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This Is the Story of One Block in Bed-‐Stuy, Brooklyn, a New York magazine cover story about urban gentrificaTon that appears online in its true form—as a nonlinear series of linked narraTves and data visualizaTons.
For details on the 12 winners, please visit the Digital Storytelling Lab website. About the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab A mulTdisciplinary project spearheaded by Columbia University School of the Arts Film Program, the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab was set up to design stories for the 21st century. Headed by co-‐founder Lance Weiler, Columbia’s Director of ExperienTal Learning and Applied CreaTvity, the lab builds on pracTces originaTng in the arts, humaniTes, and technology. Its leading contribuTon to date is “Sherlock Holmes and the Internet of Things,” a global storytelling experiment led by Weiler and award-‐winning game designer and lab associate Nick Fortugno that uses an ever-‐evolving detecTve narraTve to examine the policy and ethical issues surrounding the Internet of Things. About Columbia University School of the Arts Columbia University School of the Arts awards the Master of Fine Arts degree in Film, Theatre, Visual Arts and WriTng and the Master of Arts degree in Film Studies; it also offers an interdisciplinary program in Sound Arts. The School is a thriving, diverse community of arTsts from around the world with talent, vision and commitment. The faculty is comprised of acclaimed and internaTonally renowned arTsts, film and theatre directors, writers of poetry, ficTon and nonficTon, playwrights, producers, criTcs and scholars. Every year the School of the Arts presents exciTng and innovaTve programs for
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the public including performances, exhibiTons, screenings, symposia, a film fesTval, and numerous lectures, readings, panel discussions and talks with arTsts, writers, criTcs and scholars. This year, the School marks the 50th Anniversary of its founding. For more informaTon, visit arts.columbia.edu. # # # Press Contact: Rich Dikeman Director of CommunicaTons Columbia University School of the Arts
[email protected] (212) 854-‐7884 cell: (201) 772-‐4843
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