Transitional Threads is a virtual reality (VR) experience where viewers interact with words and an environment. The artists extracted the words from the text they wrote about their feelings and experiences leaving their home country and coming to live in the U.S. The viewers move throughout the environment while the written narrative and soundscape transform. The viewers can create new meaning by manipulating the words through movement, decay, and disruption. The movement of the words and the user symbolizes the transitional space between leaving and arriving, like a limbo lasting any duration.

Amanda is a media artist who investigates how innovations in communication technologies affect perceptions of identity, agency, and visibility, emphasizing concepts of embodiment and the “historically constituted body” within a networked-society. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in renowned venues such as the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Ars Electronica, Linz, and the New Museum (online exhibition). Her work has been featured in publications like Artillery magazine, The New York Times, and The Associated Press. She earned her MFA from UCLA and currently serves as an assistant professor of digital media at Monmouth University.

Linh Dao is an interaction designer and educator whose creative and scholarly work explores the intersection between identity discourses and the development and implementation of creative and emerging technology. Her research interests focus on emigration, immigration, and migration, minority equality and accessibility. Among her design awards are the Indigo Design Award, the Graphic Design USA Award, and the Creative Quarterly Design Category Award. She has worked with clients such as the American Cancer Society, Nonprofit New York, Rutgers’s National Institute for Early Education Research, the New York Historic District Council, and the GLBT+ Historical Society Museum in San Francisco. Her work has been shown at the AIGA Design Conference, AIGA DEC Symposium, the Institute for Art and Innovation in Berlin, Germany, the University of Texas at Tyler, and the Imperial Centre for the Arts and Sciences.