Sensing Stories

The vision of virtual reality aims to create digital realms indistinguishable from our physical world, propelled by innovations aiming at complex environments and multisensory designs. Immersive Technologies are evolving to include touch, smell, and kinesthetic senses into digital experiences. Early attempts at integrating secondary senses into narratives, such as Hans E. Laube's Odorated Talking Pictures in 1940 and the fictional multisensory cinema in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, highlight a shift from traditional sensory narratives. This publication seeks to delve into the underexplored area of multisensory storytelling, inspired by Morton Heilig's The Cinema of the Future, exploring how narratives can engage multiple senses to create immersive experiences. It calls for a theoretical exploration of sensory stimuli's narrative potential and their integration, alongside the materiality of media. A methodological approach involving the archaeology of past media, current innovations,and future visions aims to challenge the audiovisual narrative paradigm, advocating for a multisensory storytelling evolution. Contributions are invited on topics including historical and current non-technical sensual narratives, technical media advancements, utopias of multisensory narration, and theoretical frameworks for multisensory storytelling, encouraging a comprehensive exploration of multisensory narrative possibilities.