Students, faculty showcase immersive media projects at spring 2026 MIXibition
Guests dance in the Enhanced Immersion Studio during Kara Keene’s Forgetful Little Seedlings project. Photo by Yi Hua.
Arizona State University’s Media and Immersive eXperience, or MIX, Center in downtown Mesa welcomed a packed house for MIXibition Spring 2026 — a dynamic, building-wide showcase of immersive storytelling, design and emerging technology created by students, faculty and staff at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and other ASU collaborators working at the MIX Center.
Spanning all three floors of the MIX Center and extending outdoors, the event transformed the building into a series of interactive environments where visitors could move freely between installations, performances and screenings.
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A bird’s-eye view of Design and Prototyping 360 Immersive Spaces in the Enhanced Immersion Studio.
Photo by Yi Hua
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Renée Cheng, ASU senior vice provost and Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts dean, welcomes guests and kicks off MIXibition Spring 2026.
Photo by Yi Hua
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Guests admire a project from the Immersive Experience Design class showcased during MIXibition.
Photo by Jialong Xu
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Michael Shaughnessy shows off his project "Gravastar" from Professor Weidi Zhang’s Programming Fundamentals for Immersive Experience Design class.
Photo by Yi Hua
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Attendees take a selfie during MIXibition.
Photo by Yi Hua
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Students (from left) Anish Powar, Isaac Trigueros, Yumeng Jia and Sukhada Pande strike a pose in the XR and Robotics Lab.
Photo by Jialong Xu
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Sparrow Dineen leads the "Shrine of the GLITCH" parade.
Photo by Yi Hua
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Students show off their projects from Professor Weidi Zhang’s Programming Fundamentals for Immersive Experience Design class.
Photo by Jialong Xu
At the center of the evening in the Enhanced Immersion Studio, audiences stepped into fully realized narrative worlds combining projection, spatial audio and environmental design. These 360-degree immersive experiences were led by Sven Ortel, professor of practices in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre and in The GAME School. Performances by graduate students anchored the night’s programming.
Across the building, projects in The Volume showcased interactive and real-time media developed through immersive programming courses, while the Environmental XR and Robotics Lab highlighted applied research at the intersection of spatial media, robotics and design.
On the upper floors, Dreamscape Learn’s educational and free-roam pods offered immersive hands-on experiences, and the Capstone Film Showcase in the screening theater featured student work from The Sidney Poitier New American Film School.
Additional installations invited guests to actively participate.
Lilliana Lopez, a graduate student in the experience design program in The Design School, showcased “Bloomers,” which transformed the building into a scavenger hunt and sent visitors in search of “pollen” while introducing themes of environmental fragility. Nearby, Kara Keene’s “Swatches” created space for spontaneous creativity, and Ed Finn, associate professor in The GAME School and in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, invited audiences to consider a speculative future shaped by environmental and civic systems through his “Water Election Day” project.
“Shrine of the GLITCH,” created by theatre (interdisciplinary digital media) graduate student Sparrow Dineen, unfolded as a living installation throughout the evening. The piece culminated in a masked procession that moved from the second floor to the outdoors, ending with a live performance on the lawn alongside visuals on the MIX Center’s outdoor DAK screen.
MIXibition Spring 2026 demonstrated the MIX Center’s role as a space where creative exploration and emerging technology come together in real time, offering the community a glimpse into the future of media and experience design.