The Body is Along for the Ride: constructing extended reality stories.

Nonny de la Peña, PhD, will discuss some of the key considerations about the experience of the body in constructing extended reality stories – those that draw on virtual, augmented or mixed reality platforms - including the embodied edit, duality of presence and spatial narratives. Looking back at her early career as a journalist, she will discuss how journalism’s best practices informed her thinking throughout her now decade-long virtual and augmented reality career. She will also discuss work using new technologies including 3D and 4D gaussian splatting for both headset and Web XR deployments. "Drawing on captures made in the wake of the devastating LA Fires, she will ask if the power and considerations of embodiment might break the frame permanently and usher in an era when the impact of representing our world in 3D offers new dimensions of understanding to critical stories.

Bio:

Peabody winner Nonny de la Peña is director of Arizona State University’s Narrative and Emerging Media program based in Los Angeles, where she leads a best-in-class graduate school, research center and event space focused on using new technologies for the arts, culture and nonfiction. She comes to the Los Angeles-based center -- a joint undertaking by The Sidney Poitier New American Film School, in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication – with more than 20 years of experience as an award-winning writer, director and producer in virtual, augmented and extended reality, film, print and television. Her company Emblematic Group has earned multiple accolades for using cutting-edge technologies to tell stories which create intense, empathic engagement on the part of viewers. Recently named a fellow of the Royal College of Art, she has also been inducted into the SXSW Hall of fame. She is a WSJ Technology Innovator of the Year, one of CNET’s 20 Most Influential Latinos in Tech, a Wired Magazine #MakeTechHuman Agent of Change, and is widely credited with pioneering the use of new technologies to create immersive journalism. A former correspondent for Newsweek, she has more than 20 years of award-winning experience in print, film and TV and her virtual-reality work has been featured by the BBC, Mashable, Vice, Wired and others. She has also led the development of Emblematic's WebXR platform REACH.Love, a no-code toolset that creates scalable distribution in the medium, democratizes content authorship and empowers new voices to share their stories.

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