Phenomenal Things is a comical look into the daily lives of Internet of Things (IoT) artifacts and their experiences as social beings in cyberspace. This Augmented Reality (AR) experience presents a storyworld set in the digital realm where the digital personas of IoT artifacts are engaged in activities normally invisible to humans such as information extraction, learning, talking to each other and communicating with other "things" online. By wearing a head- worn display (HWD), users will encounter anthropomorphized IoT artifacts going about their daily lives and come to understand these characters as digital beings with social lives. Placed inside of cyberspace, participants will find themselves within a circle of anthropomorphized IoT devices in dialogue with one another, as they welcome a new light bulb to their network. As participants move about the AR actors, proximity to each character will cause the participant to "friend" that character. "Friending" in this case means to get close to and influence the version of the story being told by changing the social network of the character. With this work I intend to create a mesmerizing yet subtly-interactive experience using proxemics to create an interactive narrative where participants can create emotional bonds with the AR actors in this immersive theater experiment. / Master of Fine Arts / What is everyday life like for the billions of interconnected sensors and devices that make up the network known as the Internet of Things (IoT)? Many people struggle to accurately describe what the IoT is, so it is likely most of us are unaware what specifically these "smart" devices are doing while continuously completing their digital chores. Beyond collecting information and serving their own unique functions, these devices now autonomously connect to social networks and interact with one another in ways meant to replicate human social networking. Phenomenal Things is a comical look at the social lives of these devices, from inside the Internet of Things. Told with the aid of an Augmented Reality Head Worn Display, the story stars anthropomorphized devices of a smart home network and is centered around the idea of these devices welcoming a new smart bulb to their network. The AR actors engage in dialogue to explain the network to the new bulb, what they are all doing there and how to communicate with other beings online. Participants can directly impact the version of the story being told by "friending" the various devices and thus influencing their point of view as so often happens with the social network experiences of humans.

Immersive and interactive storytelling in virtual reality (VR) is an emerging creative practice that has been thriving in recent years. Educational applications using immersive VR storytelling to explain complex science concepts have very promising pedagogical benefits because on the one hand, storytelling breaks down the complexity of science concepts by bridging them to people's everyday experiences and familiar cognitive models, and on the other hand, the learning process is further reinforced through rich interactivity afforded by the VR experiences. However, it is unclear how different amounts of storytelling and interactivity in an interactive VR storytelling experience may affect learning outcomes due to a paucity of literature on educational VR storytelling research. This dissertation aims to add to the literature through an exploration of interactivity and essential storytelling elements in educational VR storytelling experiences and their impact on learning. We designed a working prototype of interactive and immersive VR storytelling experience, Immunology VR, that focuses on the learning of specific immunology concepts: neutrophil transmigration and killing mechanisms. Based on the initial prototype, we further developed six variations that allowed us to conduct two major experiments below. Our first experiment explored designs of three different levels of interactivity, low, medium, and high, in the VR storytelling experiences and their effects on immunology learning. We found subjective evidence to support our research hypothesis that increased level of interactivity will lead to increased engagement in VR learning. Our finding suggests that interactivity is a key design element in VR learning design for effective learning and should be considered in all VR learning applications. Our second experiment focused on the designs of the level of storytelling richness and their effects on learning. Specifically, we designed three storytelling conditions, minimal storytelling, basic storytelling, and advanced storytelling, and investigated how each of them affected immunology learning. Subjective evidence from our user interview data suggested that participants from higher levels of storytelling conditions were more likely to perceive storytelling elements as the most useful features in the VR experience that helped with their learning. It is also suggested that higher levels of richness in essential storytelling elements may trigger certain emotions and empathy in more users and positively affect their learning. / Doctor of Philosophy / Immersive and interactive storytelling in virtual reality (VR) is an emerging creative practice that has been thriving in recent years. Educational applications using immersive VR storytelling to explain complex science concepts have very promising pedagogical benefits because on the one hand, storytelling breaks down the complexity of science concepts by bridging them to people's everyday experiences and familiar cognitive models, and on the other hand, the learning process is further reinforced through rich interactivity provided by the VR experiences. However, it is unclear how different amounts of storytelling and interactivity setup in an interactive VR storytelling experience may affect learning outcomes due to a paucity of literature on educational VR storytelling research. In this dissertation, we explored interactivity and essential storytelling elements in educational VR storytelling experiences and their impact on learning.

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As one of the earliest attempts to apply immersive technology in environmental communication, this design research project tries to answer the following research question: how do we communicate the connections between food-related behaviors and environmental impacts through immersive storytelling? During the project, an immersive story called "Trik’s' Party" for dome shows and a journey map of an immersive visitor experience are created. These design outcomes and this paper are built on the knowledge of scientific findings, communication methods, content creations, and service design. To support the creation process, new sketching, storyboarding and prototyping methods were developed for dome content creations. The core message of this paper is that effective environmental communication is not just about informing the public about facts and data from scientific studies. It is also about giving individuals and communities the knowledge, tools and spaces to develop a vision of their own future. Immersive storytelling is one of the methods for creating these spaces. It has a large potential to raise public empathy with other people and their future-self when the long-term and abstract impacts of the environmental problems become more visible and comprehensible in an imaginary space.

Stories of the Wind is an audiovisual performance exploring various media to tell a story, integrating media at the intersection of visual arts and music, leveraged by technology. Different materials and technologies coexist as pieces of an audiovisual performance, with images, sound objects and interactive works. The production of this work was informed by artistic-scholarship, which involved the combination of aesthetic education and aesthetic experience with research and analysis in the process of artistic and academic creation. This project was meant to be exhibited in the Cube, at the Moss Arts Center, at Virginia Tech. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was not possible to present the project in the space that it was created for, so a video adaptation was made to be submitted for the thesis defense. The video submitted as the thesis project pandemic adaptation can be seen through the following link: https://youtu.be/dH8ce9KO41w / M.F.A. / Stories of the Wind is an audiovisual performance telling a story using visual arts and music. It was created to be performed in the Cube, at the Moss Arts Center, at Virginia Tech. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was not possible to perform the project. A video adaptation was made instead, which can be seen through the following link: https://youtu.be/dH8ce9KO41w