Free Event! Live Prototyping Experience. Presented by Lance Weiler, Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab.

It was an innocuous challenge, issued by Lord Byron 200 years ago, that sparked Mary Shelley’s imagination to bring Frankenstein to life. Join Columbia University School of the Arts’ Digital Storytelling Lab as they bring this spark to NYFF Convergence with a special lab session mixing story, play, design, and AI. Working with lab facilitators, participants will prototype an immersive dinner party, where guests will interact with a custom-made “Frankenstein” AI through voice and text. The AI will engage in conversation, surfacing audience fears and hopes through personal stories. Those same fears and hopes will become the “body parts” that the AI will use to craft its own ghost story, questioning the act of creation and reminding us all what it means to be human.