FoST Festival 2017 — InvitedNYC

Oct 16

Oct 16 FoST Festival 2017

During the first weekend of October, The Future of StoryTelling (FoST) Festival gave New Yorkers the chance to engage with some of most cutting-edge trends in storytelling technology. Situated in Snug Harbor on Staten Island, the festival was hosted by the Future of StoryTelling University, an age-old institution that teaches and promotes the art of storytelling.

The storytelling tradition has ancient roots, but the FoST festival was the definition of modern. Guests wandered through an idyllic campus of gardens and greenery and explored exhibits, participated in activities, and watched performances featuring the latest in virtual reality technologies, artificial intelligence, interactive media and more.

Among the hundreds of exhibits featured during the festival were demos like “Free the Night,” a virtual reality experience that uses the latest Acer headset to allow users to release stars into the night sky (presented by Microsoft and Jaunt), and “The Last Goodbye,” a VR experience where users are taken along to Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter’s final visit to Majdanek Concentration Camp (presented by Gabo Arora and Ari Palitz in association with USC Shoah Foundation, MPC & Here Be Dragons).

The festival highlighted how the modern age of technology is bringing people from all walks of life into contact and broadening perspectives on what life is like in other corners of the world. VR technologies give users more authentic encounters with the lives of others and foster a greater sense of understanding and empathy.

Guests at the festival were able to take in the experiences of people like Ramadevi, a survivor of child trafficking, whose story, “Notes to my Father,” is told using a mix of verbatim theater and documentary storytelling techniques in the world’s first live-capture VR experience about sex trafficking (presented by Jayisha Patel).

The technologies highlighted by the FoST festival are reshaping the way we take in pop culture, and even reshaping the culture itself. “On Stage: Major Lazer” is a virtual reality music docuseries from Hulu and Live Nation that transports users into the creative process of Major Lazer. “The Johnny Cash Project” is “a crowdsourced homage to the Man in Black”, where people from around the world draw individual frames from the “Ain’t No Grave” music video to create a cohesive work of totally unique artistic styles (presented by Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin).

Artificial intelligence technologies are being put to good use with new creations like “Project Blossom,” a robotic social companion for kids on the autism spectrum. This “smart companion” can help children learn about social engagement by exhibiting realistic empathetic responses to videos (presented by Miguel de Andres with Google and Guy Hoffman with Cornell).

The technologies exhibited at the FoST Festival were innovative, often surprising, and very promising. For both people immersed in VR and tech culture and people simply interested in checking out what the modern world has to offer, the Future of StoryTelling is an excellent resource. For more information about the festival and the FoST community, click here.