Gaming is one of the world’s most robust storytelling mediums in terms of revenue and consumption. Technology now allows users to literally embody the characters in the storyworlds, and the discipline has achieved integrity as an artistic medium. While game design has led the creation of best practices and a common language for interactive and participatory storytelling, it is not yet accepted as a medium that effectively conveys complex and cathartic stories, nuanced and fully evolved characters, and provokes empathy.

The New Frontier Program invites two exciting game projects to the Story Lab in order to help them respond to these questions by pushing the medium to greater depth in terms of story, emotion and empathy: 1979 REVOLUTION by Vassiliki Khonsari and Navid Khonsari and WALDEN, A GAME by Tracy Fullerton and Lucas Peterson.

NEW FRONTIER AT SFF14

A "net-native" generation of storytellers has emerged. While working with wildly different stories and styles, and using various net tools such as augmented reality, mobile apps, interactive films, social media, and customized websites that subvert the internet itself, these artists operate fluidly in a world where story, art, media, social communities, global connectivity, mobility, and technology occupy a single space.

As part of the New Frontier exhibition at the Festival, Yung Jake exhibits DATAMOSH E.M-BEDD.DE/D, and perfroms a truly 21st Century live rap show. Mayer and Leyva receive accolades for #POSTMODEM. In the fall, the pair attends the New Frontier Story Lab to build out the story into a transmedia universe, playing out on multiple platforms and spaces.

A new kind of filmmaker fully emerges – one whose survival depends not only on the originality and distinction of their story, but also on their ability to integrate technology-driven marketing and distribution elements into the work itself.

New Frontier curator Shari Frilot visits Nonny de la Pena’s research lab at USC, and experiences virtual reality for the first time. De la Pena’s HUNGER IN LOS ANGELES brings viewers directly into an eyewitness account of an incident on a food bank line at the First Unitarian Church in L.A. Impressed by its emotional resonance, Frilot invites de la Pena to present the piece at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The invitation prompts de la Pena’s intern Palmer Luckey to create a mobile version of USC’s VR headset, which becomes an early manifestation of Oculus Rift. This marks the beginning of the multi-billion dollar “gold rush” among the technology, gaming, and film industries to bring viable virtual reality to the masses.

VIRTUAL REALITY: BIRTH OF A MEDIUM

As the digital revolution continues, film and television audiences begin turning towards internet-enabled platforms and devices. With the accessibility of in-home streaming, mobile viewing, and interactive experiences that integrate content with social media, Festival audiences begin to see New Frontier as offering a glimpse of what the future may hold.

The New Frontier line up includes Joseph Gordon Levitt’s HitRECord, a social and digital platform that invites its members to create work ranging from poems to films in a collaborative environment. As individual users purchase the work, creators share in the profits, and HitRecord becomes among the first platforms to establish a creative digital community and a business model that connects creators directly to consumers.

New Frontier starts as a showcase for work emerging from the intersection of cinematic storytelling, the art of high-concept visualization, and new technologies marking the reinvention of our media architecture. The inaugural exhibition features MOBIOPERA by Shu Lea Cheang, CLUSTER by Lincoln Schatz, and Ricardo Rivera & klip//collective.