Abstract

The VR projectFulfilment,is a multi-year research project developed at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) in collaboration with the Anthropology Department at the University of Chicago. The project was enabled through a unique collaboration between anthropologists, designers, and other social scientists from several research institutions spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia with support from the National Science Foundation. This proposal is for a public exhibition of Fulfilment project in the CAVE2 VR Environment as part of the Demos and Exhibitions track during the for ACM Hypertext 2025 Conference.

ProjectFulfilmentbrings VR technology to the forefront of anthropological research to engage participants in guided first-hand observation of the hidden aspects of logistics and the behind-the-scenes effects of supply chain capitalism on ecology, labor and socio-economic wellbeing. This immersive experience unfolds the increasingly pervasive yet often obscured ways in which the infrastructural and operative dimensions of commercial logistics are reshaping the way we work, live and relate to each other and to our environments.

Participants enter a virtual narrative environment by initially selecting an object of “fulfillment” from a 3D user interface of everyday consumer items—such as a teddy bear, stationery, or a healthcare product. The selection of the item serves as an entry point into a deeper exploration of the hidden costs and consequences of commercial logistics. Using a button-equipped wand in the immersive CAVE2 VR system, participants navigate through ten interconnected scenes—including a cityscape, data center, warehouse zones, modern cemetery, prairieland, and military ruins—each revealing layers of ecological, social, historical, and economic entanglements that shape global supply chains.

Interactive objects embedded within each scene act like hyperlinks: when activated, they visually tear open the environment to expose new narratives and landscapes connected to the selected item, inviting participants to reflect on the often-invisible infrastructures and labor that sustain contemporary consumer worlds. This immersive system transforms data-driven insights from fieldwork and archival research into ethnographic spatial storytelling, giving multisensorial form to complex systems and fostering critical reflection on the ethics and impacts of global commerce.

Through this project, we seek to illuminate the hidden dimensions of global supply chains and their entanglements with labor, consumption, and ecological systems. By leveraging the immersive power of virtual reality, Fulfilment expands the methodological toolkit of anthropological fieldwork and deepens public engagement with complex, often obscured, socio-technical infrastructures. The project also invites reflection on hypertext as a conceptual and navigational framework—encouraging viewers to explore how non-linear storytelling and associative connections can reshape the way we experience, interpret, and share immersive ethnographic knowledge. In doing so, it catalyzes interdisciplinary collaboration across anthropology, design, and science, while fostering multimodal pathways for educating scholars and engaging wider publics.

Introduction

Fulfilmentinvites participants to explore the hidden infrastructures of supply chain capitalism currently shaping urban centers of consumption and their extended networks of warehousing, transportation, dataveillance, waste, and wilderness management. Inspired by Amazon's logistical empire and the promise of “seamless” delivery in a globalized on-demand economy, the project reveals the obscured buffer zones, glitches, and uncanny spaces that make consumer fulfillment appear effortless. Through a 360-degree immersive VR experience, participants adopt the viewpoint of a computational system navigating logistical flows between exurban distribution centers and urban 'last mile' zones.

Drawing from collaborative ethnographic research and multimodal experimentation across key logistical “hotspots,”Fulfilmentoffers critical insights into the environmental, labor, and more-than-human impacts of contemporary supply chains. It highlights how the once-niche military science of logistics has become central to the organization of global capital, influencing how we work, live, and relate to each other and to our environments. The project, set to launch in the CAVE2 [1] in August 2025, challenges audiences to confront the overlooked but increasingly pervasive role of logistics in shaping economic, technological, and social life in the age of supply chain capitalism.

Inspired by Amazon's expanding logistical empire, this project examines how algorithmic models of circulation between urban consumer centers and exurban warehouse corridors overlay older landscapes shaped by settler-colonial and military-industrial systems. These layered histories became visible through collaborative research and ethnographic visits to intermodal hubs across Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky—sites often built atop decommissioned military bases, which themselves sat on settler trade routes like rivers and canals [2]. Many of these logistical zones also rest on the ancestral lands of Indigenous nations, including the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. Our project pays tribute to these displaced yet enduring cultures by weaving Native motifs—like sweetgrass and woven baskets—into the VR scenes and typography. These gestures honor the Council of the Three Fires, the long-standing alliance of the Anishinaabeg, founded around 796 CE at Michilimackinac [3]. By integrating plants like sweetgrass and dandelions, the project highlights Indigenous ecological knowledge and persistence. These elements resist erasure and reflect how Native practices continue to flourish—even within landscapes reshaped by settler capitalism and extractive infrastructures.

Cityscape VR scene.

Cityscape VR scene.

Moreover, the project draws inspiration from computer games and media art installations that examine the logistical management of participant's agency as they navigate moral and economic dilemmas such as the bureaucratic pressures of border control in Lucas Pope'sPapers, Please[4], or the overflow of consumer-driven container shipping in Joelle Dietrick'sThe Speed of Thinking[5]. Among sport simulation games,Out of the Park Baseball[6] andFootball Manager[7] stand out for their real-time data structures, scalable agency, enriched user experience and user-centered interface design – all of which simulate the logics of sports management in ways that resonate with the real-time metrics that quantify and measure each actor's decisions in the world of commercial logistics. These games offer our project key design models for how logistics can be “playable” as interactive experiences.

The remainder of this paper will (1) explain the practical demonstration of the project in the CAVE2 VR environment, (2) describe novel theoretical concepts that guide the research and development of the VR project and (3) outline the methods of our interdisciplinary collaboration.

Interdisciplinary Research/Design

Fulfilment draws from research insights accrued over the past five years through a collaborative interdisciplinary project entitled “Logistics in the Making of Mobile Worlds.” This project has brought together a global network of scholars and practitioners to engage in experimental on-site investigations in several intermodal logistical hubs across the American Midwest, Paris, Seoul and the Korean DMZ. Beyond the co-authors of this paper who represent the fields of anthropology and media design, contributors to the conceptualization of this project include other social scientists and experts in mathematics, engineering and design from several research institutions spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia. For the team, the project opened new avenues of collaboration between anthropology, design, science, and engineering. It also opened various opportunities for design, computer science and anthropology students and emerging scholars to contribute to the advancement of anthropological research through the use of multimedia technologies.

Fulfilment is being developed using the Unity game development platform based on C# scripting language. 3D modeling packages Autodesk Maya and Blender used to create new and modify royalty-free 3D objects, spaces, textures and animated them using advanced Unity techniques to create a more realistic and engaging scene. User interaction is being scripted using the Omicron input abstraction library for virtual reality systems developed by EVL [8]. CAVE2 Unity Template developed by EVL was used to export project to the CAVE2 using the getReal3D plugin for Unity developed by Mechdyne Corporation [9].

The VR project will premiere as a public exhibition in the CAVE2 environment, presented in conjunction with the Hypertext 2025 Conference in Chicago. Audiences will explore the Fulfilment project in guided sessions, moving through the CAVE2 in groups of 25 or more, led by researchers and designers. We hypothesize that the exhibition will spark discussions about how VR can address the cultural, social, and environmental challenges of commercial logistics—and open up possibilities for a more sustainable future. In addition, the project invites reflection on hypertext as a conceptual and navigational framework, prompting viewers to consider how non-linear storytelling and associative connections might reshape the way we experience and understand immersive digital environments.

Interaction in the CAVE2

Over six decades, virtual reality (VR) has advanced participant engagement through interaction and collaboration. Projects like Jeffrey Shaw's Legible City let users explore virtual cities as 3D text while riding stationary bikes [10]. Today, immersive platforms like CAVE2 enhance storytelling and motivation through hybrid reality, high-resolution displays, and interactive simulation [11,12,15]. Research highlights VR's potential for teaching complex concepts through experiential learning [12]. VR also influences how information is emotionally absorbed. As Kathleen Stewart's “ordinary affect” suggests, it becomes a “mode of attending to the possible” [16], creating experiences that resonate and endure. CAVE2 shifts solitary viewing into shared, real-time participation—deepening engagement through presence and immersion.

Participants discover a narrative environment that begins with a choice of ordinary products typical for consumer consumption — a teddy bear toy, stationery supplies, or a healthcare item — and are prompted to 'Choose Your Fulfillment' by selecting on one of the items displayed for possible “purchase” in an online graphic shopping interface. Once an item is selected, the participants will be transported along the product's path to experience the hidden landscapes and behind-the-scenes operations enabling the “fulfillment” of product delivery along the supply chain of commercial logistics. Participants explore various virtual environments of order processing, materials handling, and their related socioeconomic and environmental fallout using a wand to interact with the VR experience within the CAVE2 system. Each scene dynamically adjusts in real time based on the navigator's head orientation and position, tracked via head and arm sensors, ensuring the 3D visuals align precisely with their point of view.

CAVE2 is approximately 24 feet in diameter and 8 feet tall. It consists of 88 near-seamless passive stereo, off-axis-optimized 3D LCD panels, a 20-speaker surround audio system, and a 14-camera optical tracking system, creating a 360-degree panoramic environment. This setup allows participants to explore three-dimensional spaces at a resolution matching human visual acuity and to hear spatial audio similar to real-life perception [1]. The immersion of the CAVE offers a reflective storytelling co-location that invites critical engagement with the sedimented histories and reverberating effects of commercial logistics that are otherwise hard to capture in traditional forms of journalistic and academic representations.

Moving through and exploring immersion into 10 interconnected VR scenes; cityscape, data center, warehouse exterior parking lot, modern cemetery, prairieland, wasteland, army ruins, warehouse inbound handling, warehouse outbound handling, and warehouse picking mod— the experience unfolds as a dynamic journey interconnected through contrasting hyperlinked artifacts serving as teleporting recollection triggers, each offering unique narratives. The participant navigates and interacts with the VR environment and 3D objects across these scenes and from the perspective of a data-tracked user or “algorithmic” subject. Each scene is conceptually and interactively connected to other scenes and unveils various behind-the-scenes workings of product processing and delivery. Each scene also represents various ecological, socioeconomic, and historic entanglements shaping the logistics of fulfillment.

Gathering items for online orders for packaging in the Warehouse VR scene.

Gathering items for online orders for packaging in the Warehouse VR scene.

Toxic Wasteland VR scene.

Toxic Wasteland VR scene.

Using a button-equipped wand, the participant activates different objects—such as a product shelf, a WWII poster, or a bicycle. When triggered, each object causes the surface of the environment to tear away, unveiling a narrative scene that illustrates specific actions and consequences connected to the selected item. These objects function like hyperlinks, guiding viewers from one scene to the next. As viewers navigate through logistical environments—ranging from warehouses to data centers to the brick-and-mortar retail storefronts of commercial logistics—they are prompted to reflect on the historical weight embedded in each object as it traverses these landscapes. The project brings to light and makes accessible unsettling narratives uncovered through the research data.

Participants navigate the multiscale spacetime of logistics through interactive VR scenes that reveal the hidden labor, infrastructure, and waste behind consumer fulfillment. Beginning with historical layers in Prairieland and Army Ruins, they teleport to hyper-functional zones like the Warehouse Exterior and Data Center Interior—spaces that link material logistics to digital flows. At the heart is the Warehouse, where players undertake gamified, algorithm-driven tasks such as Picking Mod and Outbound Handling, facing escalating performance benchmarks that mirror the real-world pressures of temp-driven, high-speed warehouse labor. Failure leads to the Wasteland—a desolate site of logistical fallout—where players interact with discarded goods, choosing to either add to or sort through the debris, imagining paths of ecological repair. Together, these scenes invite critical reflection on the logics of acceleration, extraction, and potential renewal within contemporary fulfillment systems.

Discussion

This project explores how interactive digital media can expand the sensory and methodological possibilities for conveying ethnographic knowledge, moving beyond traditional platforms like websites, mobile and social media [13]. By immersing participants in the material and embodied realities of e-commerce-driven consumption, mobility, labor, and environmental transformation,Fulfilmentexamines logistics as both an industry and a social form that shapes how we relate to others—through algorithmic models of supply and fulfillment, data profiling, and on-demand global flows of goods, people, and information [14].

The virtual tour brings together previously siloed research on digital, military-industrial, and settler-colonial infrastructures into a more integrative field of understanding, allowing participants to interact with the hidden architectures and coordinating agencies of logistical systems [15]. In doing so, it engages with growing scholarly conversations on the potential of multimedia technologies to represent complex, multiscalar phenomena in more creative, comparative, and sensorially rich ways.

The immersive capabilities of the CAVE2 VR system offer a distinct way to emotionally and intellectually engage with the hidden infrastructures of commercial logistics. Rather than focusing solely on surface-level data visualization, the VR environment plunges participants into the visual and auditory textures of supply chains, warehouse operations, and distribution flows—areas often overlooked yet central to global commerce. Through spatial storytelling and metaphor-rich environments, the work reimagines how we understand the movement of goods and the human labor that sustains it. It opens up space for reflection on the ethical, social, and historical dimensions of these logistical systems, using virtual immersion not just to inform, but to provoke discussion about the real-world consequences of behind-the-scenes practices in global trade and consumerism.

References

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