New Media Storytelling

What is New Media_OpenLab?

New Media_OpenLab is a space for creating concepts and developing projects on new media storytelling. It is a lab for both theoretical exploration and practice-led research on new forms and platforms of storytelling in new media.

In NM_OpenLab, we aim to bring theory and practice together to produce open knowledge of new media storytelling. Hence, we make seminars and organize workshops.

NM_OpenLab is also a collaborative space for practice-led research. Therefore, we develop, design, and produce new media storytelling projects, in which we question and re-establish theoretical elaboration and deepen our research. These projects may come out in various forms and formats such as new media documentary, database filmmaking, digital storytelling, data visualization, docu-game, etc. Here, we aim to understand different political, social, cultural, and artistic facades of new media within a critical perspective.

NM_OpenLab is a space of encounter between and among storytellers (filmmakers, artists), scholars, researchers, programmers (aka coders), designers, etc. Today, new forms of storytelling in new media require interdisciplinary teams. People from different disciplines collaborate to develop the language of new media, which shows a convergence in the cultural realm.

Coextensive to the convergence in new media storytelling, people from different disciplines should also come together and collaborate to analyze, explore, understand, and develop new forms of storytelling within the new media logic and language.

 

How does New Media_OpenLab work?

In NM_OpenLab, we work on practice-led research projects. While we are writing down our story within new media (with new media tools, platforms, software, gadgets, etc), our intention is both to understand and invent new forms of new media storytelling. Therefore, our main activity is to create concepts within the process of practice-led research.

Here, we dive into the joint stream of theory and practice, which reshape and transform each other and our experiences, perceptions, and understanding.

The NM_OpenLab procedure can be formulated as follows:

Step 1:

We establish working groups on selected topics and issues. Each working group develops a new media storytelling idea. (This idea may also be on the storytelling itself.) This idea is structured simultaneously as a new media story idea and a research idea on new media storytelling.

Step 2:

According to the idea, the working group develops a new media storytelling project or a research project on new media storytelling.

Step 3:

• (If necessary) We look for funding.
• (If necessary) We look for collaborators.
• We plan the project process and start working.