Telling Stories 2023: Faculty of Creative Industries Festival Held at HSE University

© HSE University

On May 27 and 28, the Telling Stories festival was held at HSE University on Pokrovsky Bulvar. The event, launched six years ago at HSE University’s Faculty of Creative Industries, consistently attracts leading experts from the fields of new media, digital industry, cinema, marketing and communications, art, design and fashion. This year’s programme included lectures, interviews, performances, workshops, screenings, and discussions on topics relevant to the creative community.

Creativity and Artificial Intelligence

‘The world is changing, and the things that are happening are not entirely clear. On the one hand, creativity is an innate human quality. On the other hand, there are very few truly creative people out there. The proverbial “artificial intelligence”, or what is meant by it, is a controversial and curious thing. The vast majority of students are their own artificial intelligence. What they do is a compilation of knowledge and nothing else. But if you take the Impressionists, for example, then after Claude Monet and a few others, all the rest are also imitators. Creativity is a unique thing, and it cannot be achieved by sorting through and adding up what is happening,’ said Andrey Bystritskiy, Dean of HSE University’s Faculty of Creative Industries, in his opening remarks at the first session of the event.

The atrium of the venue hosted exhibition projects by students from various departments of the Faculty of Creative Industries. The space was divided between the ‘Design Futures. Synesthesi’ collection and jewellery design exhibits by graduates of the HSE Art and Design School, works of the Poster Lab featuring AI-generated slogans, and projects by the winners of the all-Russia creative competition ‘Advertisement Constructor’ organised by HSE University’s School of Communication.

Visual Arts

Guests of the festival could also watch the performance YaMif, prepared by mentors and students of the ‘Event Design. Theatre. Performance’ programme of the HSE Art and Design School with the support of Art Masters (a national open championship of creative competencies) and the Red Square media group. The first day ended with a fashion show titled ‘The Ark Show’, a grandiose collaboration between third-year students of the HSE Art and Design School. The theme of this year’s show was ‘The Ark’, and about a hundred people worked for a month and a half to bring it to life. ‘The students worked on it for several months. They took the topic very seriously, came up with the slogan “We’re all in the same boat”, made their own collections based on this topic, collected images, came up with the idea of ​​the show, conducted casting sessions, etc. I think everything turned out very well,’ said Ekaterina Pavelko, Head of the Bachelor’s in Fashion at the HSE Art and Design School.

Personal Brands in the Modern World

The large hall of the HSE Cultural Centre also hosted a range of events. The second day of the festival began with the double interview ‘Personal Brands: A PR Specialist’s View vs a Marketer’s View’, which was attended by Brand Media Centre Director Andrey Lavrov and Influence You agency founder Ekaterina Minkevich. Together with the moderator, HSE University Director of Marketing Communications Anna Podpryatova, the speakers talked about what personal brands are, what they consist of, how to build and rebuild them, and—most importantly—who needs them and why.

The Future of Music and Humanity

In the atrium of the Pokrovka building, musicians, producers, and sound engineers talked about the future of music, while writers, futurologists, and philosophers talked about the future of humanity and the gradual progression towards metaverses. Students of the HSE University Film Institute put on a reflective performance titled Form. 90.180.360. It examined how the rigid, geometrically verified form of the surrounding space and the living flexible body of a person are combined.

The Cultural Centre also hosted the ‘Telling Stories.Career’ platform, which gave students an opportunity to communicate directly with HR specialists from leading companies such as MIA Rossiya Segodnya, Russia Today, MIR TV and Radio Company, GPM KIT Group of Companies, JAMI Social & Digital Agency, KION, and HH.ru. Students could also undergo interviews and discuss their resumes. The MIR TV Company, which acted as the festival’s information sponsor, set up a mobile TV studio where guests could step into the shoes of a TV presenter. Visitors gained a unique experience of working in television and, most importantly, made contacts for future practice and work.

The event also featured presentations from architects, playwrights, directors, screenwriters and other experts in the creative industries who have been working with AI for a long time. They talked about the upcoming revolution in digital advertising, sound spaces for brands, creating brands of the future and virtual worlds. The festival ended with a screening of animated films made by students of the HSE Art and Design School and a lecture by art critic Alexandra Danilova about graffiti as a Big Data phenomenon.