Village Park at Point Park University. (ETHAN STONER/POINT PARK UNIVERSITY)

By Mitra Nourbakhsh, Pittsburgh Business Times

With the power of artificial intelligence and ever-advancing technology, no longer must storytelling happen on a two-dimensional plane. A new Point Park University center aims to explore that technology and find ways to change how we experience entertainment and narration.

The Center for Experiential Narrative Technologies’ (CENT) founding director is Don Marinelli, who co-founded the world-renowned Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University in 1999. Now, ETC offers a two-year Master’s of Entertainment Technology degree where students learn how to merge design, art and technology.

In a webinar announcing CENT at Point Park, Marinelli presented it as 2024 version of ETC, and spoke excitedly about the potential to experience life within and between virtual and real environments. Point Park Vice President of Enrollment Marlin Collingwood called it a “creative mecca for everything related to technology and entertainment.”

Marinelli painted a vision of using technology to experience memories and stories more fully than just a picture or video, or make new versions of electronic sports that allow users to feel, smell, touch, hear and see the game. It may sound revolutionary, but he points out that we already live in the virtual environment more than we realize, experiencing so much through social media.

This fall, Marinelli will teach a class at Point Park as a kind of “bootcamp” for students interested in getting involved. The center will also have a physical lab space. Provost Michael Soto said the ultimate goal is to make Experiential Narrative Technologies into a major offered by the university. 

CENT comes as Point Park set out on a mission last year to increase enrollment and raise its profile. This position on the cutting edge of a field in the making fits into that broader plan.

“I’ve watched Point Park evolve to the point it reminds me of Carnegie Mellon back in ’87,” Marinelli said in the webinar. “It is poised for greatness.”

Mitra Nourbakhsh is a student at Northwestern University and one of 10 Pittsburgh Media Partnership summer interns. Mitra is interning with the Pittsburgh Business Times.

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