Theme: Authentic Interactions: Interactive Digital Narratives, AI, and the Question of Authenticity

What does it mean to be authentic in an age when our expressions can be generated, our emotions simulated, and our stories co-authored by machines? Authenticity, as research on social media platforms shows, is a negotiated tension between the desire for raw, unfiltered expression and the need to present oneself in ways that feel genuinely representative of one's inner state (Li et al., 2025). It lives in the act of expression itself, shaped by hesitation, imperfection, and the friction of not knowing what comes next. The "Romantic dogma" (Depczynski, 2025) long held that authentic art flows from the artist's inner world, guided by intuition and feeling. But as Sofian Audry puts it, contemporary art may be less about self-expression and more about estrangement: "I came to understand that contemporary art was not so much about solving problems as it was about creating problems for the viewers by bringing them into an experience, allowing the revelation of otherwise unfathomable truths about the world through its estrangement." That disruption of the familiar is precisely the point. Interactive digital narratives (IDN) have always worked in this tension. Drawing on Janet Murray, Koenitz argues that IDN uniquely affords the representation of competing perspectives and enables the exploration of different viewpoints across multiple traversals. Less a mirror, more a kaleidoscope (Koenitz, 2023).

At its heart, this is a question about human connection. IDN has from its beginnings been concerned with what happens between author, system, and interactor. Janet Murray's concept of dramatic agency describes the pleasure of feeling that one's choices genuinely matter within a story world (Murray, 2005). Later she observes that "enacted events have a transformative power that exceeds narrated and conventionally dramatized events because we assimilate them as personal experiences. The emotional impact of enactment within an immersive environment is so strong that virtual reality installations have been found to be effective for psychotherapy" (Murray, 1997). This raises a harder question: can authenticity be measured on a scale, understood as a force with short or long-lasting effects on the person who encounters it?

This year the conference is organized in cooperation with ART*VR festival, the biggest curated art XR showcase in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. The carefully curated programme aims to present the best in the field of artistic VR creation and immerse the audience in unique, immersive virtual worlds. The programme will showcase the latest projects presented at major festivals such as the Venice Film Biennale, Annecy, Tribeca and SXSW in the USA, and IDFA in Amsterdam. The event also aims to present several projects in international or world premieres.

Organised by Zip-Scene, Art*VR Festival and ARDIN – Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narratives