Deep Media

Columbia's first annual Digital Dozen: Breakthroughs in Storytelling awards

NOTE: This is the final post in the Deep Media blog. What began in 2009 as an experimental testing ground for The Art of Immersion—then a work in progress—gradually evolved into something more like journalism. By that point, with the awards program and my Strategic Storytelling seminar at Columbia taking up more and more time, it made sense to focus my journalistic efforts on my work for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other publications. —⁠Frank Rose

From the moment I published The Art of Immersion—what, five years ago?—I've been focused on the idea that digital means blurring boundaries. The in­dustrial age was all about categorization, in media as elsewhere: You had news­papers, magazines, movies, radio, television, each with its own dis­tinctive format and delivery mechanism. To see a movie you went to a movie theater; to listen to radio you turned on the radio; to watch television you turned on the TV set; to read a newspaper you had to pick it up from the driveway. But now, except for the movie theater (sometimes), that's all rapidly becoming history.

So why do digital me­dia—books, video, video games, advertising, art, journal­ism—still exist for the most part in their own separate universes? Not that they'd ever be the same thing, but you might expect more crossover. That was one of the questions I had in mind when I helped launch the Colum­bia Digital Storytelling Lab's "Digital Dozen: Break­throughs in Story­telling" awards. 

The immersive world of fashion's Thom Browne

A year ago I wrote about the newly re-imagined Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian's design museum in New York, for my friend Betsy Pochoda, editor of The Magazine Antiques. Cooper Hewitt set out to reinvent itself as a center for highly participatory and deeply immersive experiences, not the musty storehouse of old stuff that design museums generally seem in danger of becoming. It even has an "immersion room" where visitors can use a digital projector to see what its wallpaper samples would look like on the walls. Now it's about to mount a show called "Thom Browne Selects," an "immersive environment" guest-curated by the fashion designer best known for gray flannel suits that stop well above the ankle. So when The New York Times asked me to interview him over the holidays for a piece on the show, I jumped at the chance.

Danny Ghitis for The New York Times

Thom Browne at his favorite lunch spot: The Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan.