As Founder and Creative Director of DIME, Doddz creates story-led digital experiences that connect physical art with augmented reality. His work has reached global audiences, and DIME has delivered projects for Disney, Nike, Sony, Amazon, Dior, and The Beatles. He has also served as an Ambassador for Meta and Snapchat.
Before founding DIME in 2019, Doddz built his profile as the street artist Professor Pigment and later worked at SocialChain, where he became Creative Manager during the company's rapid growth. His career has moved across public art, digital marketing, brand storytelling, and immersive technology.
In this exclusive interview with Champions Speakers Agency, Doddz discusses how storytelling changes across physical, digital, and mixed-reality spaces, where emotion belongs in a world shaped by AI, and why artists and brands must use new tools without losing the human feeling behind the work.
Question 1: How does storytelling change when creating across physical, digital, and mixed-reality spaces?
Doddz: “There's a couple of advantages I see personally. I love the ability to have a physical piece of art or object that helps ground this wider story in reality, in realism, but then being able to overlay a digital experience and have that object or artwork do something that is impossible, but it's happening before your very eyes.
A lot of the stories that I try to tell are about wonder and a moment of awe. These are really good ways, because a lot of people haven't experienced stories like this. To use these technologies really allows you to get those moments.
In terms of storytelling, having an interactive experience also allows a story to not be like a linear set path, something that you observe. It then changes to become a story that you can be involved in, feel more immersed in, and actually dictate how that story pans out.
So the emotional connection you start getting between audience, story and me as an artist, or with a brand, just raises quite a lot, as you can imagine.”
Question 2: Where does emotion fit in a world increasingly shaped by AI, data, and intelligent tools?
Doddz: “I think everything that I try to do is rooted in emotion. As I said, the tech allows you to tell stories or evoke emotions in new and interesting ways, but I like to see AI and tech in general as a paintbrush. It's a tool.
You have to apply it creatively. You have to have the imagination to apply this technology in new and interesting ways, just in the way that you can't use a paintbrush and just evoke emotion. You have to have that idea, that concept.
So I think even though we're surrounded by technology and specifically AI, emotion is all any audience actually cares about. Even if you had a terrible piece of art or experience, if they'd somehow captured an emotion, it would still resonate and you would still remember it more than just the most beautiful piece of AI-generated work.
So, I like to think of these tools, tech, as tools and making sure that really what should happen is that the tech dissolves into the background and all the audience is focusing on is the emotion.”
Question 3: How is AI redefining what creativity means to both people and businesses?
Doddz: “It feels like we're in a period of a fundamental shift in how to think as a creative. It lowers the barrier of entry for the speed of experimentation and also the creative output. And there's bad, that's good and bad.
It's bad in the fact that there's a lot of low-quality work now just pouring out more content and experiences than ever before, for better or for worse. But if you can sort of harness that tech, even as an independent artist, you're now having the ability to create some pretty amazing things.
And it kind of feels like, as a creative, you have to go back to first principles. All of the creative decision-making, or things that you think you know about being creative, are all based in a reality that was pre-AI, and now you have to start thinking, well, actually, why am I doing it like this? Is there a different way of doing it? Is there a different application or interactive experience from this?
I have this example of an artwork called The House, and it's a painting of a couple buying their first home. You hold your phone up to it and you can see inside the house, and their lives live out in real time, so you grow old with them. AI generates new textures for different clothing and assets within that 3D experience.
So that's coming from a point of: what does an artwork look like and feel like in a world in AI? You're going to go back to what a painting is as you typically would experience it, but now there's a whole new world that you can come up with, a new way to experience a painting.
So I like to use that as an example because I feel like it's a painting for the modern age.”
Question 4: Why do people fear technology will strip creativity of its soul, and how can artists and brands avoid that?
Doddz: “Specifically, AI is presented as a tool for efficiency. So, there's an understandable moment of angst if you're a VFX artist, a photographer or a drone pilot, or something like that, that you think your job is going to get replaced.
But it kind of feels, as I was saying earlier, about a fundamental shift in the way that painters were scared of the camera when that came around, and then the motion picture frightened photographers. These aren't tools that are going to decimate the landscape and no one will ever hire another human again. That's not going to happen.
But it is going to carve out a whole new way of working that will upset some of those industries, as it has done throughout history and will continue to do so.
But in terms of avoiding that fear, the train's already left the station really. So, you have to embrace it. You have to have this almost natural curiosity. It's not saying that you have to be at the forefront trying every single new tool because there's a hundred thousand a week, it feels like, but just having one eye on that and really, if it doesn't interest you, that's fine.
But finding an avenue in which you can use it to apply it in, if you're thinking about AI, there's automation or image generation, but there are different ways to use these tools that might fit your interests or creativity. But really, it's a difficult question to answer because if you're not involved, then you're going to feel like you're quite far behind in these.
I think from the brand side, great brands are great storytellers. The marketing shouldn't feel like selling the features of whatever it is that your product is. It should inspire.”
