Dubois-Heys, T., 2027.

Multisensory Storytelling: Immersive Worldbuilding through Converged Media

Originality: Routledge monograph Multisensory Storytelling (MS) proposes that multisensory immersive experiences create new narrative possibilities by challenging familiar modes of sensory engagement. Interviewing a dozen prominent international collaborations such as Anagram, Punchdrunk, Rimini Protokoll and Blast Theory, MS develops novel modes of comparative analysis by focusing on each through a different sensory lens; each pertinent to an immersive experience produced by one of the creative technology collectives. MS hypothesises that multisensory engagement affords deeper immersion into storyworlds which in turn, allows for more demanding, provocative and experimental narratives to be orchestrated within them. MS breaks new ground by revealing how collective working encourages immersive thinking/practice through the shedding of individual authorship and subsequent pursuit of cumulative effort. It argues that collectives are ideally positioned to produce complex and challenging modes of immersion given their distributed composition of personnel, experience and skillsets.

Significance: MS will become a pivotal text for creative producers/artists (Aviva Studios and Marshmallow Lazer Feast), industry technicians (gaming companies such as Cloud Imperium and SmashMouth) and educational practitioners/theorists (Columbia University's Digital Storytelling Lab) who are advancing multisensory culture/experiences. Given its pioneering sensory analysis MS will also become crucial for policy-based (RNIB/RNID), cultural and support-based organisations such as Level Centre (Rowsley) involved in creating adaptive environments for sensorially challenged individuals and their carers.

Rigour: MS' rigorous methodological approach involves interviewing, analysing and speculating on worldbuilding strategies across twelve cross-media collaborative organisations and twelve sensory modalities. The book builds on seminal works such as Franks Rose's The Art of Immersion (2012) and David Howes' Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader (2004) by extending the range of sensory foci examined. It positions these texts as springboards to further understand how the senses shape immersion and how emergent technologies such as AI, blockchain and games engines help modulate experiences within elaborate immersive environments.