A Creative Hub
for the Immersive Era

Technology and creativity have never been more intertwined than they are today. At the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles, members of the faculty and the Sony Group Creative Center convened to discuss this complementary relationship and the evolution of immersive storytelling.

A hallmark of Sony's Creative Center Research Team is its thirst for exploring signals of the future and emerging creative trends. To examine the future of creativity, the Creative Center has designers and researchers conduct trend research every year from their unique perspectives. As part of this initiative, the research members visited CalArts with the goal of witnessing its cutting-edge efforts and energy firsthand.

Seeking to build on its 2024 trend research report on Transmedia Entertainment, the team conducted a campus tour and explored CalArts' D.R.E.A.M.S. initiative, made possible with a gift from Tom Dolan and the Dolan Family Foundation. Unveiled in 2025, it integrates artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR), location-based entertainment (LBE), film, gaming, music and animation. With his history of experimenting to create new forms of art, and aided by corporate partnerships and innovative configurable performance spaces such as the Modular Theater, the institution aims to shape the future of LBE as a creative and technological incubator.

In this article we draw on informal but wide-ranging conversations with CalArts president Ravi Rajan, Travis Cloyd, head of the D.R.E.A.M.S. program, and other faculty members to provide a view of how the landscape of creative education and intellectual property (IP) development is progressing for the next generation.

Industry-collaborative education:
How CalArts is integrating real-world partnerships
into artistic training

CalArts, formed by combining the Chouinard Art Institute and the Conservatory of Music, was built on a practical dream: that of Walt and Roy O. Disney, who wanted to create an arts center that merged disciplines. Its job is to train storytellers who will invent tomorrow's mythologies, with students combining design, performance, music and animation. One of the Institute’s goals is to identify "in-between spaces" that can give rise to new art forms while integrating R&D, computing, technology and storytelling so they evolve simultaneously and redefine the art tech ecosystem.

To enable vital innovation and experimentation in artistic training, partnerships are key. CalArts is currently working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech on storytelling for scientific exploration. Pairing the human narrative with advanced physics has proven to be a great success.

Students also collaborate directly with venues, producers and creative companies, where they are exposed to professional scales of work early on. Joining these teams opens students' eyes to the full process, from design and pre-visualization to installation. Work often begins digitally, with students using game engines and pre-visualization with tools such as Unreal, or Apple Vision Pro. This approach enables students to test space, interactivity and narrative flow virtually and at minimal cost before progressing to physical builds. The city of Los Angeles then provides the ideal environment for the realization of immersive art and design projects.

Physical-virtual fusion: Blending tangible creativity
with digital expression and innovation

CalArts' 50-year-old Modular Theater is a unique asset: a performance venue in which every wall and floor panel can be reconfigured to allow for infinite experimentation. One can think of it as a model of analog immersive storytelling. There is the potential to merge storytelling, technology and human experience with the introduction of digital counterparts to already innovative facilities such as this. A potential partnership could see Sony's tools used to incorporate projection, motion and spatial computing with the scope to prototype entirely new storytelling languages. Additionally CalArts is finalizing partnerships that will secure additional spaces across Los Angeles to expand available LBE laboratory space.

Transmedia and interdisciplinary education:
Nurturing creators who can move seamlessly
across artistic domains

CalArts intentionally trains artists to work across media by making interdisciplinarity the baseline of its curriculum. Animation students may collaborate with performers, musicians work with designers, and filmmakers prototype in game engines. Facilities like the Modular Theater and flexible, small-scale venues give students frequent chances to move between analog performance, digital projection, sound, and spatial design, so crossing disciplines goes beyond theory to become practical and even routine.

Teaching emphasizes "emotion before tool" and prototyping: creators learn to design for feeling, then choose media and tech to realize it, which produces versatile creators comfortable inventing new forms rather than replicating old ones.

Exploring LBE: How CalArts redefines
immersive experiences and spatial storytelling

CalArts treats LBE as a distinct narrative form, one in which space, atmosphere and sensory design carry as much storytelling weight as character or plot. Rather than adapting existing screen-based stories into physical experiences, the school encourages students to author narratives that originate in space itself. This means thinking about a story as something audiences move through, where architecture, light, sound and motion become active components of the narrative arc.

The campus provides a laboratory for this kind of exploration. Flexible venues allow students to rethink how audiences inhabit a story: stages shift, walls and floors reconfigure, and environments transform around the viewer. This culture of spatial experimentation helps students understand how emotional impact can be engineered through proximity, rhythm, scale and sensory cues, which are the foundations of compelling LBE.

CalArts also views spatial storytelling as part of a larger cultural shift. As technologies like AR glasses, wearable optics and spatial interfaces become mainstream, immersive experiences will not be limited to dedicated venues. Vehicles, museums, hotels and public spaces will all become narrative environments. CalArts is preparing students for this future by training them to design for feeling first and technology second, ensuring they can craft immersive stories that resonate across any environment, whether physical, digital or somewhere in between.

Transmedia storytelling and world building:
From multiplatform narratives to new forms of creative IP

CalArts sees the potential to rethink IP creation, with students designing stories natively for immersive mediums. Existing classics such as Blade Runner, for instance, could expand into spatial storylines, with students building parallel narratives inside those worlds to explore the meaning of "cinema" beyond the screen.

This requires a fresh mindset that treats stories not as fixed works, but as expandable worlds that can live across multiple platforms. "World building" is a core creative discipline: students imagine narrative universes with their own logic, aesthetics and emotional tone, and then explore how those worlds might unfold through animation, performance, interactive media, sound or spatial experiences. This approach helps generate IP that is adaptable rather than format-bound—an increasingly valuable quality in a landscape where stories circulate fluidly between digital and physical touchpoints.

Instead of starting with a script, students often begin with a mood, environment or thematic idea, and then allow different media to reveal different dimensions of the world. A story might emerge as a short animation, an architectural installation, a game-like interactive vignette or a sensory-driven performance. Each expression adds to the overall mythology rather than duplicating it. This method mirrors how audiences now encounter stories: in fragments, across devices, environments and formats. It trains creators to design narrative ecosystems rather than singular works.

For companies like Sony that are exploring ways to generate new IP beyond established franchises, this mindset aligns closely with emerging industry needs. CalArts’ approach supports the development of story worlds that can be activated through products, performances, interactive installations or future spatial interfaces. The school's emphasis on imagination-led, medium-agnostic creation makes it a natural incubator for the next generation of narrative IP: worlds designed to evolve, migrate and take new forms as technology and audience behavior continue to shift.

What comes next: A peek at the future of
creative education and entertainment technology

Sony and CalArts' dialogue points to a future where creative education and entertainment technology advance together, shaped by the convergence of spatial interfaces, intelligent sensing and emotion-driven design. As well as becoming more personalized, LBE is likely to extend beyond designated entertainment venues to the world of travel, with autonomous cars and trains becoming storytelling environments.

A train from Tokyo to Nara, for example, could immerse passengers in history through visuals and sound, turning the humdrum act of linear travel into a cultural experience. As well as transportation, hotels, museums and classrooms are likely to become narrative spaces, each capable of delivering personalized layers of experience tailored to individual interests and emotional states.

For education, this shift means cultivating creators who can design for dynamic, adaptive media. CalArts is preparing for this by deepening the integration of research, computation and artistic practice, a trajectory encapsulated in its vision for the future. Facilities such as a prototype lab for spatial and immersive experimentation, would give students and partners a shared environment to test new forms of multi-sensory storytelling, interface design and interactive world building.

For industry, the opportunity lies in developing new frameworks and standards for these emerging forms of entertainment. As companies like Sony pursue cross-divisional collaboration and explore new categories of IP, partnerships with institutions like CalArts become critical. The small experiments and hybrid practices developed in such environments often foreshadow broader cultural and technological shifts.

The conversations suggest a future defined by porous boundaries: between art and engineering, digital and physical, audience and environment—and by a generation of creators trained to navigate and shape this fluid landscape.

In our conversation at CalArts, what resonated most was the school's commitment to embracing the "in-between", the fluid space where art, technology and experimentation meet.

The faculty members described a future in which creators are no longer tethered to formats, allowing stories to originate from space, emotion and world-building rather than fixed mediums.

They emphasised the importance of reconfiguring not only theaters, but ways of thinking: moving beyond linear, screen-based habits to imagine narratives that flow seamlessly across physical and digital environments.

This shift requires openness, collaboration and a willingness to prototype the unfamiliar.

This is what CalArts calls "inventing the in-between".

The future of creativity at CalArts symbolises a radical shift from the traditional model of a fixed-screen narrative to the concept of expandable worlds and adaptable Intellectual Property (IP). Creators are moving beyond the confines of a singular script, instead engaging in world building where they design narrative universes with their own logic and emotional tone and manner.

The philosophy of 'emotion before tool' is a process where storytellers design for a desired sensory reaction and human connection in the audience, and only then choose the media and technology needed to realise it. This approach ensures the narrative remains fluid and valuable across the rapidly evolving landscape of physical and digital 'In-between spaces'.

About D.R.E.A.M.S.

D.R.E.A.M.S. (Digital Research Entertainment Arts Media Storytelling) is an industry-connected initiative by California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) designed to prepare students for careers in location-based entertainment and immersive media. Supported by the Dolan Family Foundation, it combines paid internships, a student venture fund and targeted micro-credentials with hands-on collaboration with leading companies and practitioners. Based in the Patty Disney Center for Life and Work, D.R.E.A.M.S. serves as a hub for real-world projects at the intersection of art, technology and storytelling, reinforcing CalArts’ longstanding commitment to experimentation, innovation and creative partnerships.