A.I. Meets Fatherhood in an Artist’s New Work
Ian Cheng’s latest: a narrative animation powered by a game engine and partly inspired by his daughter.

August 29, 2021
Ten years ago, Frank Rose published The Art of Immersion, a landmark book on technology and the evolution of narrative. Now he teaches global business executives as faculty director of Columbia University’s executive education seminar Strategic Storytelling and heads the Digital Dozen awards program at Columbia’s pioneering Digital Storytelling Lab. His latest book, The Sea We Swim In: How Stories Work in a Data-Driven World, explains the concept of narrative thinking — and why it matters all the more in a world defined by data.
BUILDING ON INSIGHTS from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, ‘The Sea We Swim In’ shows us how to see the world in narrative terms, not as a thesis to be argued or a pitch to be made but as a story to be told. This is the essence of narrative thinking.
NOT LONG AGO WE WERE SPECTATORS, passive consumers of mass media. Now we approach television shows, movies, even advertising as invitations to participate — as experiences to immerse ourselves in at will. What we’re witnessing is the emergence of a new form of narrative that is native to the Internet.
Ian Cheng’s latest: a narrative animation powered by a game engine and partly inspired by his daughter.
August 29, 2021
In turning a product into a platform, AMC transformed a TV show into a cultural phenomenon that invited fans to interact and co-create. Excerpted from “The Sea We Swim In.”
July 26, 2021
With JR, James Turrell, teamLab and more, a new venture hopes to reinvent how artists’ works are shown.
August 4, 2020
Tech companies have shown themselves to be increasingly cavalier with our personal data. Are we handing over too much information? “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” by Shoshana Zuboff.
January 14, 2019