The Future of Storytelling is on Display at The Museum of the Moving Image in NYC

My love for technology very nearly matches my love for film, so any time these two passions coalesce into something new and innovative, I’m instantly on board. This week, I had the opportunity to check out a new exhibit titled Sensory Stories, opening this week at the Museum of Moving Image in New York, which showcases some very unique ways to tell a story that goes beyond simply sitting in a chair watching a screen.

Opening April 18th and organized by the Future of Storytelling (FoST), the exhibit features 17 unique narrative pieces that use different forms of technology to enhance the overall sensory experience. Whether it is allowing the visitor to experience virtual reality with Oculus Rift headsets to actually smell what’s happening in a story with a device called an oPhone, the exhibit provides a variety of ways in which the attendees can interact with the story.

Right when  you enter the lobby, the first exhibition piece, Birdly, is present, enticing you to strap into a machine that transforms you into a bird, soaring above the crowded streets of New York, weaving in and out of skyscrapers with reckless abandon. Created by Max Rheiner and the Zurich University of the Arts in Switzerland, this full-body simulation brings you the closest you could ever be to flying without even stepping foot outside.

You wear an Oculus Rift device, which transports you above the city and allows you to have a full range of view as you fly, and you lay down on a contraption with arm straps that allow you to control your velocity and altitude, functioning exactly how you might expect wings to work. To top things off, there’s a giant fan fixed to the mount that simulates the wind rushing past you as you fly. This particular exhibit is something that will assuredly gather a long line, but is totally worth experiencing.

The second exhibition piece, located just past the lobby, is Hidden Stories by Red Paper Heart. In this storytelling, experience visitors are encouraged to take the white cone sitting nearby and place it along the wall, where various objects drawn. That picture senses the cone, and with each object comes a different piece of the story. A projector mounted on the opposite wall then highlights where the cone was placed, allowing visitors to listen to each story in the order they choose. What’s interesting about this piece is that the volume emitting from the cone is just loud enough for each individual to hear it, giving everyone a more intimate story. There’s also a recording device that will allow visitors to record their own short story, which will be compiled and made available at a later date.

Upstairs is where the bulk of the exhibition resides, beginning with six different stories delivered via Oculus Rift VR headsets. I’ve used the Oculus Rift before to play games, but this was my first time using it for a story-driven experience. I was taken aback with these as well, just as I was when strapping one on to play a game. Each of these six stories has a different creator, and each has a wildly different style. One plops you into the center of a herd of grazing Yaks in Mongolia, and another has you control a little black and white cartoon figure as he runs through a lush forest. Each one of them is worth checking out, which has me wondering how the folks at MoMI are going to handle these exhibition pieces with large crowds.

There are a number of interactive stories that use iPads, the highlight for me being one called Pry from developer Tender Claws. This is actually available now for iPhone and iPad on the app store for $2.99 and is a very cleverly crafted book that incorporates video and gestures, making it feel more like a game. It’s a story that allows you to quite literally read between the lines, and I found that to be incredibly intriguing.

Certainly, one of the most popular entries at the exhibit is the oBook, which uses a device called an oPhone to integrate smell into iPad apps. In this demo, the team was showing off Goldilocks and the Three Bears: The Smelly Version, which is your basic children’s story on an iPad with one big twist: there is a device under the iPad that allows you to smell specific scents as the story progresses. For example, at one point, Goldilocks drinks some tea with honey, and you can actually smell the honey. Think of this as a complex, 21st-century version of smell-o-vision. The book on display contained about 20 different smells, but the oPhone itself is capable of hundreds, even thousands more with changeable cartridges.

 

One of the more interesting exhibition pieces is from none other than tech giant Google. The tech for Google Cube is already available within your Chrome browser, but how it’s used here is slightly more interesting than just a music playing cube in your browser. Housed in a big, empty white room is a tiny, white cube sitting on a tiny, white podium.

On the wall there is a giant projected cube playing a short film on each side. Visitors can pick up the smaller cube from the podium, and, as they turn it, the giant cube on the wall turns as well, seamlessly transitioning from one film to the next. Although the films were very odd and I couldn’t tell you anything about what’s going on in them, the presentation and how it all fit together was very interesting and something I could see being used for many more film projects in the future.

As our relationship with technology continues to rapidly advance, it seems only fitting that these new innovations lend themselves to new storytelling methods. While some will certainly scoff at the idea of anything being presented in a way other than a flat screen in front of your face, all the stories shown at this exhibit successfully use new tech to give us a narrative experience that proves to be much more rewarding than just a screen alone. Besides, why would you just read about delicious smelling food when you could actually smell it?

Here are a few more snaps I took at the Sensory Stories exhibit, which opens April 18th at the Museum of Moving Image in New York. For ticket information head over to their website here.