The Expanded Storytelling Lab (XSL)investigates the use of a range of emerging media platforms, technologies, and formats to create non-traditional, immersive and/or multi-dimensional narrative experiences.
Still image from ‘Inside Earthship Freo’ (dir. Kath Dooley 2020)
The Expanded Storytelling Lab investigates the use of a range of emerging media platforms, technologies, and formats to create non-traditional, immersive and/or multi-dimensional narrative experiences. This includes the study of Extended Reality (XR) work and other innovative storytelling formats. By studying emerging modes of storytelling as well as industrial practices in Australia and beyond, the researchers generate important insights into future trends for this quickly evolving field. They also contribute knowledge that gives rise to a diverse and sustainable creative community.
News
Screenwriting for Virtual Reality: Story, Space and Experience
Released in May 2024, this anthology, edited by A/Prof Kath Dooley and A/Prof Alex Munt (University of Technology Sydney), is the latest instalment in the Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting series. The book presents conceptual and practically orientated approaches for creating fictional and documentary media VR stories, evaluates existing screenwriting models and practices for immersive storytelling, and grapples with the future of storytelling in the era of sophisticated computer visualisation.
Projects
Moving Murals project
The Moving Murals project looks to capitalise on the growth in regional art tourism trails by exploring digital art installations. The project focuses on the communities ‘West of the Peesey’ starting in Warooka (the gateway to the Southern Yorke Peninsula in South Australia) and extending to the bottom of the peninsula at Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park. The Moving Murals project will facilitate a collaboration between UniSA Creative’s Expanded Storytelling Lab and the Warooka Progress Association’s Arts Development sub-committee members.
The project partners will co-design and create a series of augmented reality installations in the local area. The XSL will offer workshops, guidance, and support to participating artists in both augmented and virtual realities and will assist with the curation of their experiences.
Moving Murals will utilise many locations (walls, sheds, signs, roads and stobie poles) that can function as accessible canvases for AR artists. The content of these murals will be informed by local knowledge, SYP flora and fauna and young people’s involvement.
This project is a valuable opportunity to learn about new ways of capturing and sharing stories and information and working together in a digitally enriched environment. This is where Moving Murals can be an important cultural addition to the area.
The project will focus on long term outcomes that will strengthen the capacity and expertise of local people and networks. It will enable the community to share skills, stories, and knowledge as they create a range of innovative artworks.
Botanic Garden Collaboration
Telling diverse, inclusive and interactive stories using Extended Reality (XR) immersive technologies is a project course for 3rd year students of UniSA Creative Industries. In 2023, the students collaborated with Adelaide Botanic Gardens to produce AR and VR projects that highlighted some of the little known stories of the plants and people of the Botanic Gardens. The work was exhibited as part of the Nature Festival at the Museum of Economic Botany.
Secrets of the West End
In 2024, the students are using AR to interrogate questions of power around selected historical, contested and mysterious sites in Adelaide’s West End. These stories will form part of a walking tour for the History Festival In May 2024, Dr Kim Munro and Dr Ben Stubbs collaborated with UniSA’s Creative Ventures students to design Secrets of the West End, an augmented reality walking tour of Adelaide’s West End, featuring a guided tour as part of South Australia's History Festival. The project showcased some of the little-known stories behind the West End’s buildings, signage, and art through augmented reality stories — from North Terrace to West Terrace, with the aid of a mobile phone.
Virtual Reality Narratives
Kath Dooley’s forthcoming monograph Virtual Reality Narratives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) will provide an in-depth exploration of recent evolutions in virtual reality storytelling, specifically looking at works created since 2020. Through the analysis of a range of entertainment-based case studies, this exploration will evidence the increasing diversity and sophistication nature of narrative-based projects that have been created and exhibited around the world since this time. A number of innovative and affective works that combine documentary-based or fictional storytelling with game design, live theatre and other elements will be profiled in this book, demonstrating a maturity regarding their use of 360-degree space and interactive devices. Dooley will argue that, moving beyond the initial hype associated with the latest wave of VR, these interdisciplinary works, which move beyond the individual practices of older media have much to tell us about the future of VR storytelling.
Practices of Listening in Expanded Documentary
Kim Munro’s forthcoming monograph (Palgrave Macmillan) explores the intersection between emerging technologies, exhibition spaces and social and environmental issues. The case studies include a range of contemporary interactive, immersive, audio, installation and site-specific works that invite the audience to engage in new forms of listening and action.
Exploring XR Project Development
This project, conducted in collaboration with Melbourne-based Frame Documentary, seeks to explore the challenges and opportunities for emerging XR practitioners in Australia, with a particular focus on labs as development tools. For more information, contact Kath Dooley. For more information on Frame Doc Labs see: https://www.frame.org.au/labs
South Australian Museum Augmented Reality projects
In these projects Dr Ben Stubbs is working with the South Australian Museum to develop new ways of incorporating AR storytelling into their existing exhibits. This is currently being developed with two distinct approaches: the first is around the megafauna exhibit in the museum and the desire to engage a younger audience through the creation of a ‘treasure hunt’ throughout the space utilising AR in collaboration with their paleontology team. The second part of this project involves the creation of the Immerse AR authoring app to be utilised within the Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery and the Fire Exhibit.
Research team
Associate Professor Kath Dooley
Dr Kim Munro
Dr Ben Stubbs
Dr James Calvert
Partners
Publications
Dooley, K. (2023). Conceptualizing and developing narrative-based virtual reality experiences: A review of disciplinary frameworks and approaches to research. Journal of Screenwriting, 14(3), 229-249.
Dooley, 
K., 2021. Cinematic virtual reality: A critical study of 21st century approaches and practices. Springer Nature, Cham. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-72147-3
Dooley, K., 2021. Crafting immersive experiences: A case study of the development of three short narrative cinematic virtual reality (CVR) projects. In Taylor, S & Batty, C (Eds). The Palgrave Handbook of Script Development, Springer Nature, Cham.pp.503-515.
Dooley, K. and Emery, S., 2022. Creating screen stories with game engines: challenges and opportunities for students and researchers working collaboratively across disciplines. Media Practice and Education, 24:1, 21-34, DOI: 10.1080/25741136.2022.2153002
Munro, K. 2023. 'Live documentary performance in the time of COVID-19: Ephemeral forms for precarious times' in Sills-Jones, D., Kääpä, P. Documentary in the Age of COVID. Oxford, United Kingdom: Peter Lang Verlag. pp. 85-107.
Munro, K and Morrison, K., 2022 Bodies in space: XR documentary in Australia. Studies in Documentary Film, pp. 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2022.2135166
Stubbs, B 2018, ‘Virtual reality journalism: ethics, grammar and the state of play’, Australian Journalism Review, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 81–90.
