This class addresses the new design practice and culture in narrative media production through the concept of world-building.

By the completion of the class, the student will be able to:

• design environments, spaces, worlds in relation with narrative elements;
• explore how diverse forms of artistic practices (theatre, literature, cinema, video games) are affected by the world-building creative paradigm;
• use differentially several forms of media involved in world-building (screen based media, interactive and non-interactive media, theatrical scene, architecture, cityscape);
• have an understanding of some basics in the philosophy of new media studies that are required to have a good grasp of the contemporary evolution of diverse creative practices in relation with digital tools aimed at creative practices;
• understand how the concept of world-building affects the development of the contemporary cultural industries;
• understand the possibilities as well as the ideologies embedded in world-building practices;
• assess the use of different media in the design of worlds;
• explore what creativity means when narrative design is considered from the perspective of world-building;
• assess how world-building reconfigure the notion of authorship and spectatorship.

This is not a course focused on the narrative approaches in interactive media, but on the practice of world-building in digital media (transmedial approach, transgaming, etc.) and how it gives way to new (multi)narrative design strategies. A special emphasis will be put on video games because this media heralds the most explicit forms of open-ended world-building (as a set of situated techno-cultural procedures). This class aims more generally to give a theoretical and practical understanding and an historical perspective of the practice of world-building at the crossing of artistic practices and production methods gaining ground in cultural industries.