Bridging Realities: Artists Reimagine the Hybrid Future of Art

As digital tools become more accessible, artists are evolving the language of storytelling - layering visual, emotional, and interactive elements that bridge analog and virtual worlds. The hybrid form is not about abandoning tradition; it’s about expanding it, making space for new perspectives, especially from underrepresented communities.

Gaurav Singh, a theater-maker and designer at Kaivalya Plays in India, uses generative AI, projection mapping, and real-time video to enhance theatrical performances while remaining grounded in human experience. In Mining Hate, for instance, misinformation becomes a character itself, shaped by live audience input and AI-generated content, reflecting how false narratives spread and take root online.

He also experiments with digital intimacy through Lifeline 99 99, a one-on-one live performance conducted entirely over a phone call during the COVID-19 pandemic. The experience connects a single audience member with a mysterious caller anywhere in the world, challenging their perceptions of trust, presence, and vulnerability.

“Technology can mediate connection in ways we haven’t fully explored. It’s not always about spectacle, it can be quiet, human, and profound,” Gaurav reflected.

Similarly, Luvenia Kalia, Arts & Culture Producer at Maitree House, Malaysia, works at the intersection of extended reality, animation, and community practice. Through participatory environments, such as a project where a dancer with Down syndrome embodied a cheetah avatar, she opened digital space for identity play and emotional exploration. “Sometimes we felt stuck in what we looked like,” she shared. “Digital embodiment let us reimagine who we could be.” Her workshops encouraged people to turn their fears into mythic creatures, unlocking stories they hadn’t known they had.

“The tools were playful, not intimidating. That was where real storytelling began,” she explained.

As hybrid practices expand, so do questions of access, authorship, and ethics. In this evolving space, artists are exploring how they can claim agency, technically and emotionally, in their relationships with emerging technologies.

For Gaurav, AI offers practical and creative potential, from supporting script development to building multilingual access through real-time translation and captioning. “It’s like working with the perfect actor,” he says. “You give it direction, and it delivers. But it’s still our job to give it emotional weight.” He’s cautious about where to draw the line, noting that “while AI can replicate Shakespearean verse, it can’t elevate a scene’s stakes like a human performer.”

Luvenia shares this careful optimism. She uses AI for administrative tasks, drafts, budgets, and templates, but resists outsourcing the creative process. “The mind is a muscle. If we don’t engage with the blank page, we lose our voice.” She also emphasizes the ethics of transparency: 

“If something is created by AI, we should cite it. Otherwise, we risk misleading audiences, and that weakens trust.”

Their work also addresses a deeper question: Who has access to shape these tools? Luvenia creates mentorship programs to introduce underrepresented artists to XR technologies, often financially or culturally out of reach. “It’s not about pushing the tech,” she says, “but offering space to try it out, to decide whether or not it’s a fit.” 

Gaurav echoes this sentiment, noting that inclusive design and accessibility aren’t just technical add-ons; they are fundamental to hybrid storytelling. Through innovations in digital tools, artists in the Global South are challenging the stereotypes and colonial narratives in art and also challenging the biases the tools have for a better future.

Technology doesn’t just offer new tools, it opens up ways to revisit old ones. For artists like Gaurav and Luvenia, hybrid storytelling is also about reimagining cultural memory, translating tradition into contemporary relevance while respecting its emotional core.

Luvenia draws on her background in dance anthropology to explore how rituals evolve every time they’re performed. 

“Memory is fragmented,” she reflected, “We’re constantly reconstructing tradition, so why not use today’s tools to make that process meaningful?” 

Whether it’s recreating myth in XR spaces or animating folk archetypes with young artists, her work encourages audiences to feel, not just remember.

Similarly, Gaurav’s performances often weave together personal memory, live interaction, and digital media. Through projection design and generative soundscapes, he reconstructs fragments of experience in ways that resonate across cultural boundaries. We’re building emotional infrastructure,” he says, “not just technical architecture.”

Both artists agree: digital spaces can never replace the human connection at the heart of storytelling. But they can amplify its reach and deepen its impact, allowing people to engage with history, identity, and each other in ways that are both new and profoundly familiar.

Hybrid storytelling becomes a space of possibility where physical presence and digital imagination intersect to unlock deeper meaning, radical empathy, and collective truth. In the hands of artists like Gaurav Singh and Luvenia Kalia, this evolving narrative landscape isn’t just a response to the times; it’s a redefinition of what storytelling can be in a world already deeply digital.