The Fusion of Transmedia Storytelling and Performing Arts

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How do we create a participatory experience? How can you foresee participation and design for it?

Drawing from Belén’s extensive experience in creating immersive and participatory experiences, she will discuss the key insights and learnings she has acquired through her work, including the importance of collaboration, the role of technology in enhancing the experience, and the value of placing the audience at the center of the creative process.

By showcasing some of her most innovative projects, Belén will focus on the use of different formats, technologies, and narrative structures to create immersive and participatory experiences that blur the boundaries between the real and the fictional. Participants will learn some useful dos and don’ts while designing for participation and also gain a deeper understanding of how to engage audiences and invite them to become active agents of the story.

Belén Santa-Olalla is the creative director of Stroke114, a performing arts and narrative design company based between Malaga and Madrid, specializing in interactive, transmedia, and experiential theatre. Her most recent project is The Black Stage (2022), a new immersive format where the participant becomes the protagonist of a first-person video game, combining augmented reality glasses, actors, IoT sensors, and immersive scenery. Her career highlights include projects such as The Trial, a transmedia adaptation of Kafka’s novel, Retrotopia or How to Die Again a piece that emerged from the application of design thinking to stage creation with the integration of binaural sound, MACHO, a devised theatre work on the construction of male identity, Lecciones de vuelo, a site-specific performance at the Bóvedas de Conde Duque Madrid created from the imagination of 5 to 10-year-old children, and Post_Panoptikon, an online transmedia dramaturgy premiered at the 38th edition of the Autumn Festival. Belén is also the Chief Creative Officer at Conducttr.com

Website: belensantaolalla.es/

metaLAB is partnering with the Mahindra Humanities Center to sponsor the Transmedia Arts Seminar, co-chaired by metaLAB Principal Researcher, Magda Romanska, and metaLAB Affiliate, Ramona Mosse.