Imaginary Architectures of Belonging, Knowledge and Care
All of the spaces that captured my attention, I translated into images by fantasizing about them, integrating my thoughts into their walls and surfaces. I remember those spaces now as unseen realities, that I have indeed seen once. I wondered if, by creating this photograph, I gave these lonely spaces a feeling of inner immensity. I only wasn’t sure whether I had been, at that moment inside the building, or in front of it? It doesn’t really matter. What I am certain: is that I will remember this image, every time again, in a different way.
©Tina Bikic, Unseen Realities, 2016.
Contemporary society is marked by the dictates of digital innovation, which affect not only the process of creativity, but also the authorial role of the artist and the value of creativity itself. This work bridges the gap by exploring Poetical Digital Storytelling (PDS) as an artistic-research practice of belonging, knowledge, and care. It proposes a strong authorial approach with co-creation, expanding artistic research into an embodied, emotionally resonant process. Grounded in an artistic methodology, this research develops a body of artistic works that test and demonstrate the framework’s possibilities and aims to position PDS as a creative resistance within contemporary paradigms.
Imaginary Architectures of Belonging, Knowledge, and Care: Poetical Digital Storytelling as a Practice of Imaginative Poetics
PDS AS AN ARTISTIC RESEARCH
2025. In progress - Project at Pre-Admission Stage for a Doctoral Program in Artistic Practice
This visual model illustrates the core research aims of this doctoral project and outlines four key dimensions: identity, knowledge, memory, and value, through which PDS aim to generate transformational impact across artistic and scientific domains, contributing to rethinking artistic identity, screenwriting practice, artistic research and audience experience.
Figure A1. Visual Framework: Research Aims of PDS. (Click the image to enlarge.)
Q1. What is Poetical Digital Storytelling (PDS), and what are its unique characteristics (narrative methods, artistic choices, aesthetic decisions) that redefine traditional screenwriting by integrating writing, filming, narration, and editing into an expanded screenwriting model?
Q2. How is the expanded screenwriting blueprint developed, and how does it reposition the screenwriter as a storyteller-architect who uses poetic narration and spatial composition to treat real and imagined spaces as active narrative agents?
Q3. How does the solo authorship process, as the main property of PDS, shape artistic identity, and enables a sense of belonging within the creative act in a contemporary context where AI challenges the human role in creative authorship?
Q4. How do audiences emotionally engage with PDS films, and to what extent can we measure audience introspection, empathy, emotional resonance and self-reflection?
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
VISUAL FRAMEWORK: RESEARCH AIMS OF PDS
This is a short introduction to the portfolio of my artistic and philosophical ideas from the period between 2015 and 2025. Conceived in different formats, surroundings, and media, these works are the synergy of imagination, theory, and artistic practice. They explore how spaces, lived, imagined, reimagined become a playground for memory, and how film and digital storytelling can serve both artist/researcher and viewer/reader.
The following statement traces the philosophical, spatial, and methodological foundations of my artistic voice, showing how this project has grown organically across media, disciplines, and roles.
KEY EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA
2015-2025