Storytelling Reimagined Within the 2025 Tribeca Festival’s Immersive Program

The 24th edition of the Tribeca Festival—known as the Tribeca Film Festival from 2002 until 2020—is upon us and with it a milestone immersive exhibition that highlights storytelling explored through creative technologies. Unified by the theme “In Search of Us,” a sentiment designed to stand in opposition to “them versus us,” the programming defies genres and often categorization as it invokes A.I., virtual reality, and mixed-media installation.

Hosted at WSA, in partnership with Onassis ONX and Agog: The Immersive Media Institute, Tribeca Immersive turns viewers into participants. If all of this sounds obtuse, individual projects can provide insight through their marriage of storytelling, perspective, and medium. Take, for instance, AI & Me: The Confessional and AI Ego, which makes its U.S. premiere at Tribeca. This humorous, confrontational installation uses publicly available machine learning models to allow A.I. to observe participants and then insult them.

“At first, we just wanted to see how close machine opinions were to human ones,” mots, the artist duo Daniela Nedovescu and Octavian Mot, shared in a statement. “We weren’t sure if people would go for it—being examined by an unknown A.I. felt like it might be too much. But after the first exhibitions, we realized that people are deeply curious about how they’re seen, even by a machine.”

Physical installation is often a counterpoint to virtual pieces. “We wanted to produce installations that do justice to the incredibly talented storytellers and world-builders behind these artworks, and offer audiences multiple points of entry and engagement,” Jazia Hammoudi, co-curator of “In Search of Us” and Program Director of Onassis ONX, tells Surface. This is seen through The Matrix-like seating for the haptic VR experience In the Current of Being, as well as There Goes Nikki, a poetic augmented reality cosmic excursion with verdant set design. Other works are physically pared back but equally compelling. This includes Alan Kwan’s game Scent, where a participant, playing in the form of a dog, guides souls toward reincarnation. It exist on a screen manipulated by a mouse and two keys.

“Tribeca Immersive is constantly evolving to showcase the stories, artists, and technology that capture where we are today and what our future might hold,” Casey Baltes, Vice President at Tribeca Games & Immersive, also a co-curator of “In Search of Us,” tells Surface. “These artists are sharing perspective on who we were, are, and aspire to become as humans in a rapidly changing world.” All 11 projects represent significant advancements in storytelling, and warrant a visit now through June 29.