by Max Schleser and Dafydd Sills-Jones

Over three days, the Creative Technology and Transformative Storytelling Symposium brought together the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies (Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne) and the Virtual Creative Design Research Centre (AUT University, Auckland/Aotearoa).

CTMT explores the cultural, artistic, and socio-technological dimensions of media technologies and their impact on society. From film, television, and video games to virtual reality, robotics, and artificial intelligence, our research investigates how transformative media reshape human engagement with the world.

VCD empowers creatives, technologists, and academics through interdisciplinary collaboration, cutting-edge technology, and meaningful industry partnerships. The centre is at the forefront of digital design and immersive media innovation.

The Creative Technology and Transformative Storytelling Symposium opened on Thursday with a programme dedicated to screenings, presentations, and VR demonstrations. The day began with an online talk by Agnieszka Kiejziewicz, followed by a curated screening of works that reflected the breadth of current experimentation across creative media. Among these were Lian Passmore’s From Podcast to Fantasy, an exploration of academic methodology through narrative forms; The Calm, an AI-generated short film by John and Mark Lycette; and a selection of virtual production films created by AUT students, presented by Chen Chen. Additional screenings included Max Schleser’s experimental projects Mel 23:55 and Scatter, Zohreh K.M. Shirazi’s film Myst, and an installation piece by Kiejziewicz.

In the afternoon, the focus shifted to VR. Works on display included James Berrett’s FRAGMENTS, Awnili Shabnam’s architectural storytelling piece Reimagining the Literary in Space, the Antarctic-centred Aurora Australis Ultimo Choro by McCormick and Nash, Kim Vincs’ choreographic VR work Falling Worlds, and Rudy Carpio’s dystopian VR piece Gala. The wider showcase also featured the interactive game The Piano by Iris Zhang.

The main symposium took place on Friday and brought together contributors from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Malaysia, Türkiye, the UK and the USA. The day opened with a keynote from Nigel Sutton and Arvid Eriksson of Untold Projects in Auckland, followed by questions and discussion. 

 

Later in the morning, Simon Burgin of Sensory Pixel in Melbourne delivered the second keynote of the event.

Across the day, five themed panels structured the programme. The first, chaired by Professor Susan Kerrigan, addressed transformative storytelling, post-human approaches and expanded screens, with presentations on immersive storytelling, narrative experimentation and the dynamics between humans, machines and data. The second panel revisited Burgin’s keynote in a longer Q&A format.

Panel three, chaired by A/P John McCormick, turned towards DADA and documentary, with talks covering the Swinburne Virtual Universe, creativity in the age of generative AI, frame documentary, computational DADA, and Dadaism explored through technological practice. Panel four, chaired by A/P Dafydd Sills-Jones, shifted to themes of transformative education and speculative design, including work on personal storytelling as a learning tool, gamified biological science, digital competency in STEM education and speculative VR frameworks.

The final panel of the day, chaired by Gregory Bennett, combined short videos with presentations on electromagnetic poetics, identity-focused imagery, virtual production at AUT, and creative storytelling approaches in education. This was followed by an extended roundtable featuring contributors from institutions in California, Beirut, Bournemouth, Utrecht, Hamburg and Türkiye, who discussed topics ranging from wellbeing and robotics to documentary ethics and co-creation.

The symposium continued the following Monday with an HDR seminar. This session featured research presentations by Soyun Jang, Bushra Ameer and Hanna Zhu, providing a dedicated space for emerging researchers to share their work.

As the discussions unfolded across the three days, participants began to look ahead to the next iteration of the symposium, encouraged by the volume of work emerging across the collaborating institutions and the range of topics presented throughout the event. Bring on CTTS Symposium 2026!