Stories of Herbs

Stories of Herbs is a visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory VR experience around the theme of herbs. Our goal is to advance the understanding of how smell can be used actively in our interactions within VR. Specifically, we use physical objects – a mortar and pestle - with which participants actively create smell as part of their action in a corresponding world within VR. In the current experiment participants crush mint leaves, and corresponding virtual leaves guide their attention to an animated story about mint. We examined how enjoyment, recollection of the story, the experienced connection between physical and virtual, and the perceived role of smell were influenced by crushing real mint leaves or odorless paper ‘leaves’. Initial findings from an exploratory study with 15 participants show that the smell was a positive element in the experience, that participants in both the odor and odorless groups experienced a strong connection between the physical and digital elements, and that while some participants felt that smell helped them remember the story, the smell may have contributed to a sensory load that took attention away from the story.