Discover Digital #1: May Fest 2026

Niall Austin is Curator of Imaginations at PURE & Second Screen Entertainment, specialising in AR Interactive Gaming, Text to Video AI, and Creating Extraordinary & Immersive Live Experiences.

Niall will open up the digital world through the lens of storytelling first, technology second. Drawing on his interactive productions at The Civic Theatre, including 7 Deadly Sins, BaDaBoom! and Unveiled, he will demonstrate how games, AI, live performance and audience choice can combine to create shared narrative experiences. Rather than presenting digital work as something distant or purely technical, Niall will show audiences that at the core of every immersive or interactive experience is a simple but powerful question: what is the story, and how do we invite the audience inside it? 

Through live talk-demos, he will break down how hybrid eGaming and storytelling works in practice - how audience decisions influence outcomes, how AI can assist improvisation, and how digital characters are designed with emotional depth. By referencing projects like PL-AI and Deep Fake, he can demystify artificial intelligence, explaining it not as a mysterious force but as a creative tool shaped by human input, ethics, and imagination. Audiences will gain insight into how code, design, sound and narrative collaborate behind the scenes - and how failure, experimentation and iteration are essential parts of building digital work. 

Importantly, Niall will also speak about his broader journey: from music collaborations to international recognition, including the UNESCO World Summit Award for Innovation in e-Entertainment. This reinforces an empowering message - that careers in the digital arts are not linear and do not belong only to programmers or engineers. They belong to writers, musicians, gamers, designers, performers and thinkers. By inviting questions about both the “how” and the “why” of his projects, Niall’s session can help audiences see the digital world as a space for creative agency - where they are not passive consumers of technology, but potential creators of the next story, game or interactive universe. 

About Niall Austin 

Niall Austin is an award-winning, Dublin-based Writer, Technologist and Game Designer, whose work is steeped in a distinct, narrative-driven art of storytelling. 

Each of his projects is a tapestry woven with threads of innovative technology and creative writing. From AI-assisted improvisation performances like ‘PL-AI’ and ‘Deep Fake’, to hybrid eGaming / Storytelling experiences like ‘7 Deadly Sins’ and ‘BadaBoom!’, each work is a celebration of this synthesis, offering audiences not just a show but an adventure, where the lines between performer and spectator blur into a shared experience. 

Niall’s journey in music, coloured by partnerships with legends such as Ronnie Drew and Moya Brennan, echoes an eclectic approach to the arts. Since taking to the stage with ‘Brian’, the band he co-founded with Ken Sweeney, to the creation of interactive experiences for notable brands and artists including Yoko Ono and the Olympic Movement, Niall’s work always circles back to the story at its heart, whether it’s told through a melody, poem, installation or a digital character’s journey. 

He won the UNESCO ‘World Summit’ international award for ‘Innovation in e-Entertainment’, while his award-winning film for 7 Deadly Sins has been screened at Festivals around the globe. His latest project, Aurora, will premier in China in May.