The Tribeca Film Festival has once again hit New York City, with a recent addition to the annual fest quickly becoming a must-see attraction: Storyscapes. A collection of “transmedia” projects, Storyscapes is basically a look at where interactive movie-making and entertainment could be headed in the future.

An image from the interactive documentary “Clouds”

Voight-Kampff

Of course, with any such endeavor, the artists, designers, and technicians involved run the “World of Tomorrow” risk (we’re all still waiting for our flying cars, aren’t we?). But there’s no denying that the projects on display this year are at least touching on an aspect of where things are going. Part art installation, part carnival ride, part high-tech tease, Storyscapes is nothing if not intriguing.A theme here is not surprisingly immersion, with the presence of Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets being perhaps the most tangible -- and viable in terms of future use -- example. While this was my first go at the headset ( read more about the Oculus Rift tech here ), I’ve heard plenty about it. And still, I was wowed.In my first go with the headset, I experienced a still image from a short film called “Rise.” It all felt pretty artsy and experimental and essentially consisted of a man, a robot, and a bomb appearing and disappearing at various points in an old warehouse… a warehouse that I felt I was in as well. While a voiceover played during the experience, I wasn’t really picking up on the details of it as I was too taken by the VR environment I had found myself in. Look up, look down, look to the left, to the right… even look around the freaking pole in front of you, and you can see behind it! It’s like theEsper photo analysis machine from Blade Runner finally makes sense! And indeed, the idea here is that eventually an entire film -- rather than just a moment from a film -- could be experienced in a VR environment. Though would it still be a film at that point, one wonders?Another film, of a kind, on display was the interactive “Clouds,” which the viewer/user could check out via Oculus Rift or a Kinect version. 3D-scanned interviews with “artists and hackers” offer a non-linear documentary experience that is sort of Max Headroom without the blipverts. And then there was “Use of Force,” which exhibited how this tech can be used for more serious matters as well. Specifically, this installation uses VR to put the user into a real-life setting where a man named Anastasio Hernandez Rojas was killed by the border patrol in 2010. Utilizing witness accounts and cell phone footage, “Use of Force” puts you in to an actual, tragic moment in time. Creator Nonny de la Peña calls it “immersive journalism.”On a lighter note, “Circa 1948” is clearly the Star Trek geek’s wish come true. Essentially a proto-holodeck (in its Tribeca incarnation anyway), the installation consists of a small room with projections on the walls -- a computer-generated recreation of two areas from post-war Vancouver. Utilizing Kinect sensors to track the user’s movements in the room, one can “explore” this world, which is described as “two vibrant communities struggling through a time of unforgiving change.” Of course, you can’t actually touch anything in this nascent holodeck, and you’re constrained by what has been built into the software (so no Dixon Hill holo-novels, I’m afraid), but still… the potential here is amazing. “Circa 1948” is also available as a mobile app , which is a cool open-world experience in and of itself… if not quite a holodeck. (Or even a proto-holodeck.)“Choose Your Own Documentary” is, yes, based on the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, mixing a stand-up performance from Nathan Penlington with film and interaction from the audience, who choose the outcome of the story. But perhaps the most fun exhibit at Storyscapes was “On a Human Scale,” which features walls of video screens, each sporting a pre-recorded New Yorker’s face. The screens are connected to a keyboard, and each key that you play on the keyboard triggers one of those people to sing a note. When put together to an actual song, or even just a mishmash of piano tomfoolery, the result creates something kind of wonderful: a community of singing voices, a merged creation that you are a part of.

So of course I tried to play the Star Trek the me. Because, you know, the future!

Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at, on IGN atand on