New Interactive Exhibition Showcases How Technology Is Transforming Storytelling

The British Library's new exhibition Digital Storytelling explores how evolving online technologies have changed how writers write, and readers read.

A range of digital stories are on display together for the first time, including four-time BAFTA nominated 80 Days, an interactive adaptation of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, and the exclusive public preview of Windrush Tales, the world’s first interactive narrative game based on the experiences of Caribbean immigrants in post-World War II Britain

Also on display will be interactive media providing insights into the lived stories behind historical events, from the 2011 Egyptian uprising in A Dictionary of the Revolution which charts the evolution of political language in Egypt during the uprising in 2011 to a moving account of the loss of a relative in the 2017 Manchester Arena Bombing in c ya laterrrr, an intimate autobiographical hypertext account of the loss of author Dan Hett’s brother

The narratives featured in the exhibition will prompt visitors to consider what new possibilities emerge when they are invited as readers to become a part of the story themselves. The exhibition reveals how technology can be used to enhance their reading experience, from Zombies, Run!, the widely popular audio fiction fitness app, to Breathe, a ghost story that “follows the reader around”, reacting to users’ real-time location data.

The exhibition also premieres a new edition of This is a Picture of Wind, with a new sequence of poems inspired by Derek Jarman’s writing about his garden. This is a Picture of Wind was originally written in response to severe storms in the South West of England in 2014.