Video sponsored by Aquent.com

Filmed at the SOLD OUT FITC Toronto 2010 Design Festival
Presentation Title: Terraforming Narrative
Presenter: Alex McDowell
More Info at FITC.ca

As interplanetary scientists hypothesize the deliberate modifying of planets to make them habitable, so the immersive designer takes on the task of building narrative worlds that will immerse their audience through story, environment, immersive technology and poetic sensibility. This discussion will suggest a radical and transformative approach to design that takes story as its clay and embeds it into the fabric of environment to create new immersive experience across all narrative media.

“It is impossible to accede to a fundamentally new environment without experiencing the inner terrors of a metamorphosis.” - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

About Alex McDowell
Alex McDowell RDI is one of the most innovative production designers working in the film industry, with the impact of his ideas extending far beyond cinema. McDowell advocates an immersive design process that acknowledges the world-building role of design in narrative media. His work on Watchmen, Minority Report, Fight Club, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has set new standards for the integration of digital technology and traditional design.

As the co-creator and the driving force behind 5D: The Future of Immersive Design, which launched the first ever international conference on immersive story-based design and world-building across all narrative media and continues to explore and implement the future of immersive design, Alex has gathered a formidable army of high-level, cross platform, virtual and reality-based collaborators. This illustrious group of connected, recognized, awarded thinkers and do-ers bring unique perspectives and solutions to all facets of design in the narrative disciplines - in film, animation, theater, architecture, experience design, interactive media, visual arts, information architecture, web, and transmedia - for both professional and academic audiences.

Alex is a Visiting Artist at MIT Media Lab where he is currently designing a robotic opera Death and the Powers; he is also an adjunct professor in the USC School of Cinematic Arts where he teaches a prototype course in Immersive Moviemaking with scientist John Underkoffler.

For more information on FITC Toronto 2010, please visit fitc.ca/events/about/?event=102