Graham Sack

Graham Sack is an award-winning writer, director, and academic whose intellectual and creative work explores the intersection of emerging technologies and narrative. Graham is the founder of Chronotope Films.

He wrote and directed Lincoln in the Bardo, a virtual reality experience for New York Times VR based on the acclaimed novel by author George Saunders that was shortlisted for an Emmy for Innovation in Interactive Programming. He wrote and directed The Interpretation of Dreams, a four-part episodic series for Samsung’s VR Pilot Season that explores immersive dreamscapes based on Freud’s case studies of the unconscious; he co-created “objects in mirror AR closer than they appear,” an immersive theater and augmented reality installation at Tribeca Storyscapes 2018 that transferred to Next Door at New York Theater Workshop; and he produced “Hamlet 360: Thy Father’s Spirit” with Google, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, and WGBH.

He is currently developing an original XR episodic series with Felix and Paul Studios. Graham previously wrote and directed Don’t Look Away, an interactive cinematic VR experience about aging, time, and the scarcity of attention and subject:object, a VR experience for New York Theatre Workshop about the private life of objects. He served as creative director on Power in Hand, a VR documentary about solar power for the Rockefeller Foundation and Matter Unlimited, and he is a former member of New Inc, the New Museum’s art and technology incubator. In the area of film, his most recent screenplay, Septillion to One, made the Hollywood Blacklist and sold in one of the most competitive spec sales of the year with Mark Romanek attached to direct.

Graham began his career as a professional actor on Broadway and is a member of the Writers Guild of America, Writers Guild of Canada, Screen Actors Guild, and Actors Equity Association. In addition, Graham is doctoral candidate in the area of Digital Humanities at Columbia University, where his research focuses on computational approaches to narrative and culture. He holds an MA and MPhil from Columbia University, an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, and a BA in Physics from Harvard College.

His academic research has been published in Complexity and the Human Experience, Digital Humanities for Literary Studies, The Journal of Mathematical Sociology, Sprache und Datenvarberung, and the proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence for Interactive Digital Entertainment. He has presented research at the Santa Fe Institute, University of Michigan Center for the Study of Complex Systems, the American Comparative Literature Association, the International Conference on Narrative, Intelligent Narrative Technologies, Computational Models of Narrative, the Stanford Literary Lab, and the American Philosophical Association, amongst other institutions. He created and taught the first course on Digital Humanities Methodology offered by Columbia University and has guest-taught on topics ranging from network analysis and complex systems to directing for virtual and augmented reality at the University of Michigan, NYU, Julliard, Northeastern, and Nanyang Technological University.