CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: ZIP-SCENE (JULY 1 2026)
ZIP-Scene Conference on Immersive Storytelling
Venue: DOX Centre for Contemporary Art
Poupětova 1
170 00 Praha 7-Holešovice
Prague, Czech Republic
ART*VR Festival activities also extend to Prague Planetarium.
Dates: 12–14 November 2026
Admission: Registration fee: 100 EUR for physical attendance. A reduced registration fee is available upon request. The fee includes entry to ART*VR Festival events taking place at the same venues. Travel and accommodation costs are not covered by the organizers. Invitation letters are available upon request.
Submission deadline: 1 July 2026, AOE. Apply here
Application: Applicants should upload an abstract and bio through the official submission form and send a headshot image by email to bakk [at] mome [dot] hu. After submitting the abstract, applicants are also asked to email the organizers so the application can be double-checked.
ZIP-Scene Conference on Immersive Storytelling returns to Prague for its eighth edition from 12–14 November 2026, hosted at DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in partnership with ART*VR Festival. This year’s theme, Authentic Interactions: Interactive Digital Narratives, AI, and the Question of Authenticity, asks a timely question for artists, researchers, designers, game makers, and theorists: what remains of authenticity when stories are procedural, emotions are simulated, characters are generated, and communication itself is increasingly mediated by artificial intelligence?
The call is particularly relevant to game studies, XR art, interactive performance, and game-based moving image practices because it treats authenticity not as a nostalgic return to unmediated expression, but as a problem of interaction. In interactive digital narrative, meaning is not simply authored and received; it is negotiated through systems, interfaces, bodies, choices, scripts, prompts, avatars, and environments. The conference therefore places AI within a longer history of interactive storytelling, from dramatic agency and player choice to VR embodiment, participatory museums, narrative design, interactive archives, applied storytelling, and the mental-health implications of immersive formats.
The 2026 edition invites proposals from researchers, artists, designers, programmers, game professionals, interactive storytellers, experience designers, narrative designers, VR practitioners, philosophers, scholars of performance and game studies, and others working across interactive digital culture. Submissions may address interactive storytelling methods and authoring; video games; VR experiences and movies; augmented reality; interactive performing arts; museums and archives; immersive environments from media-archaeological or phenomenological perspectives; participatory storytelling in education, health care, and other applied contexts; and the effects of interactive storytelling formats on mental health.
Two special tracks frame the call. Performing the self: authenticity, AI, and self-presentation in interactive narrative focuses on the ways artificial intelligence reshapes voice, agency, sincerity, persona, and self-representation. The authentic body: embodiment, presence, and human connection in immersive experience turns to the body as a site of presence, identification, transformation, and possible estrangement. Both tracks point to a shared concern: authenticity in immersive media may no longer be reducible to origin, authorship, or human intention alone. It may instead emerge through the friction between body and system, character and user, expression and automation.
The conference is organized in collaboration with ART*VR Festival, the largest curated art XR showcase in Central and Eastern Europe. The festival presents artistic VR projects, including works previously seen at major international festivals such as Venice, Annecy, Tribeca, SXSW, and IDFA, as well as international and world premieres. Its program includes competitive and non-competitive sections, VR projects set within physical art installations, an industry program for film professionals, lectures, accompanying events, and a morning program for primary and secondary schools. Events will take place at DOX Centre for Contemporary Art and Prague Planetarium.