A composite of work from panelists on FITC talk "Storytelling: Absorbed, Obsessed And Immersed."

FITC's Toronto event, held April 24-27, hosted a panel moderated by Apologue founder Tali Krakowsky called "Storytelling: Absorbed, Obsessed And Immersed", exploring the role of design in film, interactive, experiential, architecture and gaming in creating new narrative possibilities. 

Discussing the future of storytelling, the all-star panel included United Visual Artists' Ben Kreukniet, film production designer Alex McDowell, digital artist Jeremy Thorp and Oblong Industries interface designer John Underkoffler.

Examining the data that we create in our everyday lives, Thorp compared the role of artists and designers to that of anthropologists, deciphering and creating stories from data, most notably in data visualization. Recent applications in the commercial realm have included IBM's latest campaign from James Frost and Aaron Koblin's San Jose airport installation.

Underkoffler then went on to discuss the role of gestural interfaces that are revolutionising the way we interact with computers and the role of design within that. A technical consultant on Minority Report, he revealed that the interface dreamt up for the film, G-Speak, is now a reality beginning to be used by businesses. He compared the next phase of interaction to be far more sophisticated that the mouse - more like a conductor's physical and spatial gestures leading an orchestra.

In the realm of experiential, Kreukniet discussed the way in which UVA (which has worked with Nokia, Virgin Media, Y-3 and bands including Massive Attack and Battles) creates installations that let users discover stories, rather than telling them. The collective's work, he said, was about eliciting involvement and emotion by getting users to get aware of themselves in spaces and how they affect their environment.

In an unusually thoughtful question and answer session that touched on a number of issues relating to the ad world, the panel were asked about the ethical implications of using the data that we create everyday and how to negotiate the issue of privacy. Quizzed on the role of interactivity in education, Thorp called the current education system bankrupt, and argued for creating a more democratic, two-way dialogue rather a broadcast model. One attendee then asked the role of the auteur in interactivity - if the audience is controlling the action, what is the role of the director/creator? Underkoffler argued that interactivity was not the end of authorship, but that shifted it to creating a series of tools and logic for users to explore a world.

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