The Power of Interactive World-Building to Illuminate Reality

David Sarno, The Power of Interactive World-Building to Illuminate Reality. Over the last 40 years, the videogame industry has gone from Pong -- two dots and a line sliding across a screen -- to huge, beautiful, living worlds that can manifest just about any fantasy. But now we can takes these powerful storytelling tools and aim them at reality: allowing the user to explore the inside of a human cell, great events in history, or the underground workings of an oil tanker. Interactive 3D visualizations -- whether they have game-like elements or not -- can take us to frontiers of reality that cameras can't reach, and that words can't describe. Our world is a magical place with plenty to explore -- who needs aliens and dragons?



David Sarno is the founder and president of Lighthaus Inc., creating digital storytelling using three-dimensional graphics. A recent project for Stanford Children’s Health displays an interactive heart surgery animation on their website, allowing users to mimic restoring a normal connection between the heart and lungs. Formerly a technology journalist for the Los Angeles Times, David has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa and a B.A. in Computer Science from Yale University. In 2012 he was awarded the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, focusing on 3D graphics in storytelling.