May Newsletter
This edition of the Columbia DSL newsletter looks ahead to a summer of prototyping for Last Human, the Lab’s latest open prototype. Beginning on May 18th, the project will continue to evolve throughout the summer through collective experiments, playtests, research sessions, and open design sprints, building toward a 10,000-square-foot installation at MAD Arts this fall. The project is open to anyone who wants to collaborate, the Last Human Collective invites artists, storytellers, designers, technologists, students, researchers, and curious participants to help shape the project as it develops. Over the summer, the Collective will serve as a shared space to experiment, learn, and build together, exploring emerging technologies, participatory storytelling, immersive design, games, spatial audio, and new ways of connecting audiences across physical and digital spaces.
Agentic Horror: a Haunted House of Machines - May 18th 7pm - 9:30pm
Columbia DSL, in collaboration with Study Hall, invites you to an evening exploring agentic horror - where systems begin to act and respond in ominous ways. The session opens with a short talk tracing how horror has evolved alongside technology, from machines that mirror us to systems that behave like living organisms to networks that blur individual and collective control. As these systems grow more autonomous, authorship slips, intent becomes unclear, and the boundary between user and system begins to erode.
This kicks off our summer of prototyping. Come join us for an evening of learning and doing.
RSVP via Partiful or via Meetup.
Breakthroughs in Storytelling 2026 - see the winners
The Breakthroughs in Storytelling Awards recognize the year’s most innovative narratives - signal achievements across the broad spectrum of media that rely on digital technologies, including film, video, journalism, advertising, games, art, theater, virtual reality, augmented reality, and experimental narratives.
Launched in 2016 to spur creativity and further the Lab’s educational mission, the awards celebrate twelve narrative projects from around the world. Out of these, the Breakthrough Prize goes to the project in any field that best exemplifies the spirit of inventiveness at work today, while the Special Jury Prize, consisting of a workshop at the Lab, is given at the discretion of the awards committee.
Winners are chosen by an interdisciplinary jury of Lab members and university faculty and announced each spring.
In citing these accomplishments, the Digital Storytelling Lab hopes to encourage creativity and innovation while furthering digital media’s potential to break free of rigid, industrial-age classifications and evolve in ways that analog media could not. All twelve projects are archived every year in the Lab’s online gallery.
See the 2026 winners and explore the archive of 132 projects.
Columbia DSL has a new website
DSL Tools - Prototype With Us
DSL.Tools is built on the belief that tools are stories, and that prototyping is a form of learning. We’re inviting a small group of testers to help shape the first public prototype of DSL Field Notes, a social prototyping journal for collecting, annotating, connecting, and reflecting across media.
Field Notes will be actively used in DSL courses this spring and refined through lived practice. By joining the test, you’re not just giving feedback, you’re participating in a shared experiment in how creative tools can support thinking, teaching, and making in public.
LINKS
MoMA’s Gabriela Lancellotti wants museums to become the new ‘third space’
“As cultural consumption shifts online, MoMA is expanding beyond its walls with campaigns and experiences designed to make modern art part of everyday life. At a time when marketers everywhere are obsessing over digital disruption, fandoms and the battle for attention, The Museum of Modern Art is asking a deceptively simple question: what if a museum wasn’t just somewhere you visited, but somewhere you belonged?.”
IDFA DocLab Immersive Think Tank Report 2026
“What’s next for immersive, AI, and interactive art? This report brings together cross-sector insights and critical reflections on where the field is heading. Written by Kent Bye and produced with support from Agog. …This year’s report focuses on XR Distribution Trends at a moment of profound transition, as a community-driven, indie XR distribution network begins to emerge and the foundations of a new phase for immersive culture are evolving in real time. In this chaotic moment, where boundaries between art, technology, exhibition, and community are dissolving, artists are helping name the realities of the present and offering vital insight into how we move forward.”
REPORT: Imaginative Intelligences - Hollywood & AI
The report underscores a simple truth: AI is being built faster than many of us can make sense of—and too often without the input of the people whose livelihoods it threatens. The report distills the insights of the Hollywood creative industries into key statistics and stories highlighting both risks and opportunities as AI reshapes the future of culture. It also proposes 8 Rules as a call to action for building technology that strengthens, rather than erodes, human creativity. Key themes that emerged from the research process included.
Columbia DSL Newsletter
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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