Vuslat Foundation Fellowship for Generous Listening

MIT Transmedia Storytelling Initiative

Transmedia Storytelling Initiative (TSI), launched by MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, build on art education, research, production, and innovation in media-based storytelling, from film through augmented reality. With a particular interest in the new spatialized forms that storytelling takes, TSI aims to create an influential hub for pedagogy and research in time-based media under the direction of Professor Caroline A. Jones, an art historian, critic, and curator in the History, Theory, Criticism section of SA+P’s Department of Architecture and with the collaboration of Çağrı Zaman, director of MIT Virtual Experience Design Lab.

As the Transmedia Storytelling Initiative seeks to pair future technologies with critical understanding to change how we tell stories, Vuslat Foundation aims to explore how we leverage technology to expand the reach of and constructive engagement with compelling stories in ways that yield greater connectedness and positive societal impact. Through themes of spaces of listening, novel ways of listening, transformation through listening, listening to the non-human and listening to each other themes, Vuslat Foundation Fellowship for Generous Listening intends to put out ideas of listening as part of storytelling in transmedia forms.

Why transmedia storytelling? Driven by the transformational rise of digital technologies and the proliferation of data, transmedia stories have new urgency. As the transmedia stories have new urgency due to the rise of digital technologies and the proliferation of data, through the Fellowship, Vuslat Foundation wants to elevate the act of listening which challenges and expands our very understanding of narrative.