Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Overview
What are the expressive affordances of immersive media that enable new voices and stories to be told?
Spatializing Narrative 8 explores art, technology, and storytelling as tools for reimagining our world. Our presenters will demonstrate, through their practice, the transformative potential of immersion, participation, and collaboration in creating meaningful experiences. At the intersection of physical and virtual spaces, sensory engagement, and situated embodiment, their work illuminates how the expressive affordances of immersive media enable new voices and stories to be told.
Spatializing Narrative 8 is hosted by the Center for Transformative Media, with support from the College of Art, Media and Design, co-organized by David Tamés and Celia Pearce, and produced by Evelyn O’Donoghue and Claire Ogden.
Schedule*
*Please note: exact times are subject to change.
1:35 PM — Welcome and Opening Remarks
1:55 PM — Bernard Francois and Kimberly Hieftje, PhD, “Year of the Cicadas: Spatial Narrative Through Co-Creation and Iteration“
2:20 PM — Break / Chat open for discussion (10 minutes)
2:30 PM — Terry Pettigrew-Rolapp and Tommy Wallach, “Integrating Narrative Media into Immersive Spaces“
2:55 PM — Break / Chat open for discussion (10 minutes)
3:05 PM — Mathieu Pradat, “Encounters: Narrative, Rhetoric, and Embodiment“
3:30 PM — Break / Chat open for discussion (10 minutes)
3:40 PM — SPEAKER FOUR (TBA)
4:05 PM — Break / Chat open for discussion (10 minutes)
4:15 PM — Roundtable Discussion / Reflections
4:50 PM — Closing remarks
5:00 PM — Event ends, chat closes
Speaker Biographies & Abstracts
Bio: Bernard Francois is the founder of PreviewLabs, specializing in rapid prototyping with game technology and operating across Connecticut, Belgium, and Canada. He has overseen the development of prototypes for more than 300 concepts, working with clients ranging from startups to academic teams, as well as Google R&D, Yale University, NIH, CDC, and NASA. His team’s work covers a wide variety of explorations, including games, simulations, data visualization, and playable ads. PreviewLabs focuses on helping clients translate early ideas into interactive prototypes that support their decision-making and fundraising efforts.
Bio: Kimberly Hieftje is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and co-director/co-founder of XRPeds at Yale and the new Yale Center for Immersive Technologies in Pediatrics. For the past 16 years, her research has focused on the development, evaluation, and implementation of health and clinical interventions for youth that utilize XR and game technology. Dr. Hieftje is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Games for Health Journal, the premier journal in the field of serious games for health and clinical applications.
Abstract: Year of the Cicadas is a jointly created immersive experience that tells the story of how grief evolves over time following the loss of a child. The seventeen-year lifecycle of the brood X cicadas serves as a bookend to the narrative, providing a poetic frame. In this talk, we describe how the piece took shape through an iterative, collaborative process that brought together writing, personal history, input from family members, and a rapid prototyping approach.
Bio: Hatch Escapes is the brainchild of childhood friends Terry Pettigrew-Rolapp (right) and Tommy Wallach (left). In 2017, they opened their first escape room, Lab Rat, which was ranked TERP’s 8th best room in the world the year it came out. Their second room, The Ladder, won a 2025 THEA and various other accolades. In 2021, they released a tabletop narrative game, Mother of Frankenstein, which has been lauded by such luminaries as Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood. Terry and Tommy have both written extensively for the theater, and Tommy is a bestselling novelist and produced screenwriter.
Abstract: Our games Lab Rat and The Ladder make use of filmed sequences that are integrated diegetically into the game space by way of short-throw projectors and a whole lot of TVs and monitors. Our goal with both games is to present the media in such a way that you never feel you’re watching a screen, but actively interacting with characters in the story.
Bio: Mathieu Pradat is a director working in the field of virtual reality and cinema. His creations such as Encounters, The Roaming, Proxima, have been selected in festivals worldwide. Mathieu Pradat teaches writing and immersive staging at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 and before at the Ecole Nationale d’Architecture de Versailles, the Universities of Savoie and Bordeaux-Montaigne. He is a laureate of the Villa Albertine and alumni of the MIT Open Documentary Lab. Mathieu Pradat cofounded La prairie productions. He lives in Marseille, is married and has one child.
Abstract: Spatialized narration is distinguishing experiences from their content, and the notion of simulacra from that of simulation. I analyze the territory as a qualified immersive space and show how the spectator is placed in tension between affordance and agentivity, becoming, with his body as interface (as exchange pivot or motor-transistor), the engine of a dynamic that establishes the link between real/virtual actions and the malleable virtual territory. The spectator provides the context for the simulation and is the driving force behind its ongoing development (or unfolding).
Organizers
Celia Pearce is a game designer, artist, curator, author, and Professor of Games at Northeastern University. Her books include Playframes (2024), IndieCade: A History—The interdependence of independents (2020), and Communities of Play: Emergent cultures in multiplayer games and virtual worlds (2009). Before entering academia, she worked in the theme park industry, where she learned the craft of spatial storytelling. Her recent creative and scholarly work applies her knowledge of theme parks and online games to playable theatre.
David Tamés is a media maker whose creative practice focuses on media co-creation and immersive media. David is the co-author of Mediated Presence: Immersive Experience Design Workbook for UX Designers, Filmmakers, Artists, and Content Creators with Peter (Zak) Zakrzewski, published by Focal Press in 2025. He is a teaching professor in the Department of Art + Design at Northeastern University with a joint appointment in Communication Studies. David serves on the board of directors of Filmmaker’s Collaborative and the advisory board of MedVR.