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Virginia Tech

Phenomenal Things

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

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.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Fine Arts
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Creative Technologies
Department dc:contributor.department
Art and Art History
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2022

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Schoenborn, Eric Cade
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Santos Lages, Wallace
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Blanchard, Samuel Paul
  • Weaver, Rachel L.

Subjects

dc:subject × 3

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:33612
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/107811

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Schoenborn, Eric Cade. Phenomenal Things. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2022. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/107811