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Redefining Storytelling Through Immersive Experiences
Imagine stepping into a world where the story isn’t just told—it’s felt. Where lights shift with your emotions, sounds evolve with your movements, and the narrative responds to your choices in real time. This is not science fiction; it’s the future of storytelling, and Lois He is at the forefront of shaping it.
Lois has always been drawn to unconventional creative paths. Her journey began in Beijing, where she quickly rose from film school graduate to a prominent creative leader. After earning her degree in Cinematography and Film Production from the Beijing Film Academy, she co-founded The Deep Ocean Image Cultural Media Co., Ltd., a company dedicated to visual storytelling across various formats.
During this time, she directed and edited a wide range of projects, including narrative shorts and branded content for high-profile clients such as Tencent, GQ China, and the CAFA Art Museum. These projects were more than just assignments—they were part of a larger exploration of how stories can be experienced.
In addition to her work with the company, Lois developed her own body of work as a writer and director. Her short films gained recognition at prestigious festivals, including the Cannes Industry Rendez-vous, the European Independent Film Festival, and the Beijing International Short Film Festival. She received awards such as the First-Class Prize from the Agnès Varda Award for experimental cinema and the Gold Medal at the 13th Cinerent Filmmaking Competition.
Despite her success, Lois felt her relationship with storytelling evolving. A pivotal moment came when she experienced an immersive virtual reality piece called Goliath at an XR showcase in Beijing. For the first time, she wasn’t just watching a story—she was inside it. This experience reshaped her creative direction and led her to New York, where she embarked on a new phase of her career focused on immersive and interactive storytelling.
Building Interactive Experiences That Connect Technology and Emotion
Based in New York, Lois co-leads Hyz Studio LLC, a creative practice centered on immersive and interactive media. As both creative director and creative technologist, she works across formats, from virtual reality to physical installations. Her goal is clear: to create emotional responses through interactive design.
Her process involves cutting-edge tools like generative AI, motion capture, physical computing, sensor-based interaction, spatial sound, and real-time rendering software such as Unreal Engine and TouchDesigner. While the technology is advanced, her focus remains on the emotional core of the story.
Lois’s interactive art has been showcased at notable events and venues, including the SIGGRAPH 2025 Immersive Pavilion in Vancouver, the GEN-AI Summit in San Francisco, ARTECHOUSE NYC, La MaMa Gallery in New York, The Holy Art Gallery in London and Athens, and the CICA Museum in Korea.
One of her standout projects involved collaboration with the Buzsáki Neuroscience Lab at NYU. Together, they created an interactive installation based on brainwave data, using light and sound to reflect real-time neural activity. The project was exhibited at the New York Academy of Sciences and is now traveling to festivals around the world.
At Hyz Studio, Lois manages both the creative and technical aspects of production while overseeing international partnerships in Japan and Europe. Her role blends artistic development with cross-cultural collaboration and long-term strategy.
Exploring AI in Storytelling with Intention
Lois also delves into the intersection of artificial intelligence and storytelling. Her AI-generated film was selected for the China AI Gala in 2024, broadcast to over 37 million viewers. It was nominated for the Creative Usage of AI Award at MIT’s AI for Filmmaking and featured in Re–Fest 2024, a global festival showcasing over 200 artists from more than 90 countries.
She approaches AI with curiosity but also caution, focusing on its impact on authorship, tone, and meaning rather than the novelty of the tool itself. “AI is trained on our collective past,” she says. “It reflects what we’ve already said and done. The question is, what do we bring forward?”
At Hyz Studio, she explores AI-driven storytelling systems while keeping the creative process intentional. She combines AI-generated elements with hand-designed structures, ensuring space for unpredictability while maintaining emotional clarity.
What’s Next for Lois He
In addition to her leadership at Hyz Studio, Lois recently graduated from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). Her research and studio work focus on how interactive systems can support emotional storytelling through design, sound, space, and audience participation.
She is developing hybrid narrative systems that merge story structure with responsive environments. These projects aim to create experiences that shift in real time based on how people move, feel, and engage. Her current areas of focus include international collaboration in immersive media, emotional interactivity through spatial and sensory design, and adapting AI tools to support small creative teams.
“I want to stay close to the work,” she says. “The goal isn’t to chase every new tool. It’s to shape the process in ways that still feel personal.”
Lois believes that as storytelling evolves—from text to theater, to film, to games, and now to virtual reality and AI—the boundary between story and reality is becoming increasingly blurred. Stories have moved from the page to the screen, and now aim to transform audiences into participants.
Currently, she is building a cross-platform storytelling world—one that can exist simultaneously as a game, a live performance, and a piece of video art. She is creating an original fictional universe, beginning with a digital world developed for desktop, while experimenting with real-time motion capture performances. Looking ahead, she plans to expand the project into an interactive live experience where audiences can engage directly with characters in real time, with a VR version also in development.
To her, a digital world should not be confined to a single format; it should be a cross-media space where creation and exchange can happen fluidly across different forms.
