Digital Realities: An Introduction to Immersive Storytelling

Catalog description

Immersive media now plays a visible role in museums, festivals, games, performance, journalism, and cultural institutions. As these technologies expand, creators are exploring spatial, embodied, and interactive storytelling that moves beyond screen-based media, bringing together theatre, projection, game design, filmmaking, and installation art. This course introduces the core principles of immersive storytelling across virtual, augmented, and mixed realities, emphasizing narrative and experiential affordances rather than specific tools. Students examine how artists and cultural creators use space, embodiment, interaction, and perspective to shape audience experience. Through analysis of contemporary festival and independent projects, we consider how immersive storytelling differs from film, theatre, and traditional digital media. The course centers on concept development and design thinking. Students define immersive storyworlds and audiences, structure spatial narratives and interaction, and explore questions of presence, perspective, and cultural context. Rather than building technically complex environments, students develop a professional immersive storytelling proposal. This may include a written treatment, visual research, spatial diagrams, interaction maps, storyboards, an animatic, or a pitch deck. Emphasis is placed on clarity of vision, experiential logic, and narrative intent. Class sessions combine discussion, case studies, workshops, and studio time for project development, with guided critique and iterative feedback. No prior experience in coding or 3D production is required. The course serves as a gateway within the Immersive Technologies minor, providing a conceptual foundation for more technically focused courses