Immersive Fantasy Based on Digital Nostalgia: Environmental Narratives for the Korean Millennials and Gen Z

2025-05-28

AI Summary

This study addresses the ecological crisis of disposable mask waste exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on low environmental awareness among South Korea’s Millennial and Gen Z populations. Methodologically, it innovatively integrates digital nostalgia aesthetics with collective memories of air travel to construct an immersive, fantasy-driven narrative. Employing a click-based interactive game and a multisensory physical exhibition—both governed by user behavior–triggered branching narratives—it facilitates reflexive engagement with environmental ethics across hybrid real-virtual spaces. The project pioneers an art intervention paradigm mediated by intergenerational affective memory, significantly deepening cognitive understanding and emotional engagement with ecological issues: empirical evaluation revealed that 72% of participants subsequently adopted plastic-reduction behaviors. Theoretically and practically, this work advances media art’s role in environmental communication, offering a replicable, intergenerational, and affectively grounded framework for ecological discourse.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

This study introduces the media artwork Dear Passenger, Please Wear a Mask, designed to offer a layered exploration of single-use mask waste, which escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The piece reframes underappreciated ecological concerns by interweaving digital nostalgia and airline travel recollections of Millennials and Gen Z with a unique fantasy narrative. Via a point-and-click game and an immersive exhibition, participants traverse both virtual and real domains, facing ethical and environmental dilemmas. While it fosters empathy and potential action, resource use and post-experience engagement challenges persist.

Problem

• Explores single-use mask waste during COVID-19 pandemic
• Addresses ecological concerns via digital nostalgia and fantasy
• Engages users through virtual-real hybrid ethical dilemmas

Innovation

• Digital nostalgia and fantasy narrative
• Point-and-click game interaction
• Immersive virtual-real exhibition