The augmented-reality experience "Colored (Noire)" places viewers inside a powerful civil-rights moment. It just won a new global prize for immersive storytelling.

Novaya

A 30-minute augmented-reality experience that transports participants back to 1950s Montgomery, Alabama, to witness one girl’s act of defiance against segregation has won the inaugural Annwn Prize, a new global award for immersive storytelling.

Colored (Noire) places viewers inside a pivotal moment in civil rights history: when, on the afternoon of March 2, 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. The incident occurred nine months before civil rights activist Rosa Parks famously did the same.

Immersive storytelling is an evolving creative technique that uses technology to turn passive viewers into active participants in a narrative world. The discipline encompasses everything from interactive environments with reactive video and lights to augmented, virtual, mixed and extended reality and soundscapes, scents or other sensory tools that place the audience in different places, times and realities.

As immersive storytelling increasingly moves from smaller spaces like festivals into museums and other larger public venues, it’s uniquely positioned to counter the distancing effect of screen-based viewing, said Graeme Farrow, chief creative and content officer at Wales Millennium Centre, a performing-arts hub in Cardiff Bay, Wales that’s a co-producer of the Annwn Prize. The winning and shortlisted works will be on display at the center through June 26.

“We are living through a major shift in the way we experience stories,” Farrow said in an interview. “We’re scrolling through them, streaming them, binging them. But most of the time we’re at arm’s length, barely engaged in them.”

Stories, of course, must be compelling to hold attention, no matter the delivery method. But steeping audiences in a story can heighten the immediacy, personal connection and emotional impact. In selecting the Annwn Prize winner, judges focused on work that uses technology not only to make audiences feel like they’re part of the narrative, but to give them a sense of agency.

Colored (Noire), for example, allows viewers to choose their proximity and perspective, prompting them to consider how they might have reacted had they been present to witness Colvin’s resistance and subsequent arrest. (The teen later pleaded not guilty to her alleged crime and sued the city.)

Created by Novaya, a Paris-based company that specializes in producing immersive experiences, Colored (Noire) previously showed at the Tribeca and Cannes film festivals. As recipient of the Annwn Prize, Novaya received £20,000 (about $26,500) and a residency to develop new work.

“This is a deeply moving work, a masterclass in empathy that places you inside the story,” said Welsh singer-songwriter and actor Charlotte Church, one of the judges for the prize, which is co-sponsored by Crossover Labs, a team of creators and curators. Other judges included Arifa Akbar, chief theater critic for The Guardian.

The team behind the award hopes the competition will help place immersive storytelling at the forefront of conversations about how technology can spark deeper engagement.

“The prize was created to move immersive storytelling beyond the language of novelty, gimmick or spectacle, to make it more accessible and to recognize it as one of the defining cultural forms of our time,” Farrow said.

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The day before the panel named the winner from four shortlisted projects nominated by international curators and commentators, David Hockney died at 88. Farrow said the panel thought of the celebrated contemporary artist and his legacy of experimentation as they considered the nominees.

“He was always moving with a deep curiosity across mediums and forms to explore different ways of seeing, and of course he famously fractured perspective,” he said. “Avant-garde artists did not change content or story, they changed form and how they were presented.”