Columbia DSL - June Newsletter
As the Columbia DSL marks a decade of boundary - pushing experimentation, we continue to explore how stories can shape more humane, just, and imaginative futures. From breakthrough innovations in immersive media to bold experiments in decentralized creativity, our community is building the tools, and narratives of tomorrow. In this edition, we reflect on recent milestones and invite you to help prototype what comes next.
10 Years of Breakthroughs in Storytelling
On April 13th, Columbia DSL marked a major milestone -10 years of storytelling innovation - with a special edition of the Breakthroughs in Storytelling Awards. The evening celebrated a decade of prototyping new forms of narrative, honoring artists, technologists, and cultural changemakers whose work redefines how we tell and experience stories.
We gathered virtually and in person to spotlight an eclectic mix of projects—from AI-generated rituals to immersive grief performances, decentralized publishing experiments, and speculative public art.
Decentralized Futures: Events June 23 & 25
As part of our ongoing exploration of collaborative, open-source creativity, DSL is proud to present Decentralized Futures - an experimental initiative that asks:
How might artists, technologists, and communities co-create the cultural infrastructure of tomorrow?
We’re building tools, rituals, and speculative prototypes for a world where participation is permissionless and stories are co-authored by many.
Decentralized Futures is a collaboration between Columbia DSL and the Solana Foundation.
Upcoming Events
Decentralized Futures
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Film at Lincoln Center
Monday, June 23rd
6:30pm to 9:00pm
In person + virtual via zoom
Join us for Decentralized Futures—an evening at the intersection of emerging technology and artistic inquiry. Hosted by Columbia DSL in collaboration with the Solana Foundation, this IRL/virtual event explores how decentralized systems like blockchain and generative AI are reshaping authorship, creativity, and collective imagination. Featuring conversations and provocations from Kelani Nichole (TRANSFER Gallery), Nikhil Kumar (5x5 Studio), Lucas Rizzotto (IRL Mad Scientist), Poof and Alaska Hoffman (DX Terminal), Shar Simpson (Narrative Designer,), Nick Fortugno (Director of the Digital Game Development program at CUNY), and Lance Weiler (Columbia DSL). Decentralized Futures is a new series of dinners, hackathons, and speculative sessions exploring the future of co-created, ever-evolving cultural practice. Streaming link available 24 hours before the event.
Decentralized Conversation
Solana Foundation
Wednesday, June 25th
4:00pm - 7:00pm
In person (location details on RSVP)
We're hosting a decentralized conversation and open design session to collaboratively reimagine the future of art on-chain—how it’s made, shared, and valued. This gathering invites artists, technologists, and builders to engage in open dialogue and hands-on experimentation as we prototype new, artist-led models of authorship, ownership, and creative infrastructure. Co-hosted by Robbie Shilstone (founder of Publique) and Lance Weiler (Professor at Columbia University & director of Columbia DSL), the event is a call to build transparent, participatory systems for the next era of cultural production.
PROTOTYING IN PUBLIC on Metalabel
LAST HUMAN is a participatory storytelling experience that descends into the eerie terrain of the “dead internet”—a haunting world of synthetic identities, AI hallucinations, and collapsing realities. Emerging from Columbia DSL’s Test/Break initiative at Lincoln Center, the project is actively prototyped in public, unfolding across a 10,000 sq ft installation and a constellation of virtual platforms. Part narrative, part collaborative experiment, LAST HUMAN invites participants to become co-creators in a story that evolves through gameplay, performance, and interaction. Each phase of the project is documented through a zine series—a living archive that captures the mess, magic, and mechanics of worldbuilding in real time. As both a work of fiction and a radical process experiment, LAST HUMAN challenges how immersive experiences are conceived, shared, and collectively rewritten.
LAST HUMAN is currently available on Metalabel, a collaborative publishing platform. LAST HUMAN is a Columbia DSL prototype initiated by DSL members Lance Weiler, Nick Fortugno, Shar Simpson and Josh Corn.
LINKS
We Need to Rewild the Internet
Farrell and Berjon argue that today’s internet has become a fragile, extractive monoculture—dominated by a handful of tech giants, choked by consolidation, and stripped of the messy complexity that once made it generative. Drawing parallels with ecological collapse, they propose rewilding as a new framework: restoring diversity, decentralization, and resilience through open standards, shared governance, and collective imagination. It’s a powerful call to design digital ecosystems that thrive like forests—not factory farms.
Investing in Creativity as Social Infrastructure
What if local creative practice is not a luxury—but vital social infrastructure. Amid rising isolation, polarization, and economic inequity, it calls for a reimagining of arts support: one that prioritizes direct support to artists, everyday creativity, and community-anchored cultural spaces. From artist-led rural-urban solidarity projects to repurposed car lots turned community hubs, the vision presented shows how creative expression can rebuild trust, strengthen local economies, and foster civic imagination.
Models All the Way Down
“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.”
Columbia DSL Newsletter
Get Involved
Join over 1,500 practitioners from around the world working with story, design and code. The Columbia DSL’s prototyping community is place to learn and network. Gain access to resources, working groups, open source code and much more.
Volunteers Wanted
We’re looking for volunteers to help with a new research project focused on bridging physical and virtual experiences. If you’re interested please email us at hello@digitalstorytellinglab.com