Client story Christopher Newport University Pioneers Immersive AI for Arts

The vision: A creative lab, not a gadget room

From the outset, CNU refused to build “a room full of headsets.” The university’s leadership wanted a living laboratory where:

• Faculty and students in arts and humanities could experiment with immersive storytelling without needing to code.
• Technology would be powerful but invisible — a backbone for creativity, not the star of the show.
• The lab plugs into NEXTWave Network, a national network built by Ruscella Immersive, of similar labs and studios, which share ideas and talent the way eSports leagues share teams and tournaments.
• The workflows they developed would be VR/AI-ready, so that as AI tools for editing, tagging, simulation, and personalization mature, CNU’s community is already fluent in the medium.

CNU leaned on Apple’s ecosystem for its combination of performance, reliability, and accessibility to realize that vision.

High-performance Apple Mac Studio systems with Apple silicon power a tech-agnostic environment where faculty can work with 360° video, spatial audio, and emerging immersive platforms. Apple Vision Pro headsets and iPad^®/iPhone devices allow faculty and students to capture, create, and experience content on a single stack.

Managed Apple device enrollment and AppleCare keep IT overhead low so the focus stays on teaching and learning. Meta Horizon headsets and digital signage round out a flexible, multi-platform space.

But the true innovation is more cultural than technical.

Redefining faculty development: “Failing forward”

CNU and their partners were encouraged by Ri to adopt a simple mindset shift: Faculty aren’t being trained. They’re entering a lab to learn again.

Instead of asking professors to master complex tools before they could “do it right,” Ruscella Immersive introduced agile, iterative practices more common in software development and a “fail forward” way of developing immersive learning projects.

They began with 360° video, a format that feels familiar — it’s still video — but shifts the camera from voyeur to participant. Faculty learned:

• How to frame experiences when the viewer can look anywhere
• Where to place the camera so students feel present, not like observers
• How to separate narration from visuals to gain more creative control
• How to think about spatial audio and sound design as part of storytelling

The lab exists for experimentation, not polished marketing pieces. It’s a “fail forward” attitude that’s transformative in an academic culture that often equates failure with risk.

Real people, real stories

The lab's success is defined by individual journeys at CNU, allowing creators across the technical spectrum — from novices to experts — to immediately start capturing and developing powerful, immersive narratives.

• Phil, a historian, set out to tell the story of Revolutionary War hero Henry Knox, who moved artillery across brutal winter terrain to save the American cause. Armed with a 360° camera, Phil visited key locations, learned to “get out of the shot,” and focused on presence — letting students stand where Knox stood while he narrated what happened and why it matters.
• Mary, an English professor, began with the idea of filming a poet’s house. On a trip to Louisiana, inspiration struck: she instead captured the streets, restaurants, and bars of Bourbon Street — creating a visceral 360° experience of place, culture, and narrative voice that her literature students can later analyze and build on. She started with “zero comfort with the technology” and now passionately iterates on her own experiences.
• Max, a music composer, treats the lab as a playground for spatial audio and mood. He experiments with putting cameras — and microphones — in unusual spaces, then crafting soundscapes that provoke reflection and emotion. Instead of a traditional “lesson,” students inhabit a thoughtfully designed audio-visual environment that invites interpretation and collaboration.
• David, a classicist and world traveler, had already been recording study-abroad experiences in 360° “like a YouTuber” — walking with a selfie stick through Rome and Pompeii. Working with the lab team, he’s started reshaping that content into intentional, personal moments: the sort of immersive field trips that make ancient history feel immediate.

The lab’s early results prove a critical point: With the right support and mindset, subject-matter expertise, not technical expertise, is the real engine of immersive learning.

From consumption to creation

Much of the current mixed-reality market treats headsets as devices for consuming experiences created elsewhere. CNU deliberately flips that model.

In the Apple Immersive Lab, Apple Vision Pro is treated as a capture–create–deploy device:

1. Capture: Faculty and students use 360° cameras and Apple devices to capture performances, field locations, and experimental scenes.
2. Create & Edit: On Mac Studio systems, they stitch, trim, annotate, and layer in spatial audio and narration. Increasingly, they experiment with AI-adjacent tools — automatic transcript generation, smart scene tagging, and other features that will only grow more powerful as AI matures.
3. Deploy & Experience: Finished experiences are delivered back to Vision Pro and other headsets, where students can explore, reflect, and critique — not just as consumers, but as co-creators who will extend the work.

This end-to-end workflow is exactly what sets CNU’s approach apart as a forward-looking AI use case in higher ed:

• It builds foundational literacy in immersive media, so future AI tools for automatic editing, scene generation, or adaptive storytelling can be adopted quickly.
• It situates AI as a partner to human creativity, not a replacement — freeing faculty and students to focus on narrative, ethics, and meaning.
• It creates a pipeline of students who understand immersive storytelling well enough to step into emerging AI-media jobs in government, industry, and the creative sector.

A national network and workforce play

CNU is not meant to be an island. Their use case is a flagship for NEXTWave Network that will:

• Connect universities the way esports connects teams — through shared challenges, showcases, and “star players.”
• Offer 24/7 online tech support for labs and studios
• Create a knowledge-sharing community where faculty and students help each other advance more quickly.
• Serve as a workforce development engine, bringing industry, academia, and government into closer dialogue about the skills needed for an AI-immersive future.

Why this matters for higher education

Most conversations about AI in universities focus on plagiarism, policy, or STEM. CNU’s Apple Immersive Lab offers a different narrative:

• Arts and humanities are not bystanders in the AI era; they’re crucial to shaping how immersive and intelligent systems tell stories, represent cultures, and influence society.
• Faculty can model lifelong learning by stepping into new technologies with humility, curiosity, and courage.
• Students gain agency — both learning about AI and immersive media, as well as learning with them, as creators.
• Vendors and institutions can collaborate in ways that honor academic mission first and technology second.

What’s next?

With the lab open and early projects underway, CNU and their partners are looking ahead to:

• Deeper integration of AI-assisted workflows — from automatic media organization to intelligent feedback on student experiences.
• Expanded student creator roles, including work-study positions where students help faculty build and scale immersive curricula.
• Potential live 3D capture of campus events and athletics using advanced camera systems, giving remote audiences a true sense of presence.
• Continued growth of the national immersive lab network, turning isolated experiments into a connected ecosystem.

A human-centered vision for the AI era

Christopher Newport University is reimagining what a liberal arts education looks like in an AI and immersive world, and doing it in a way that’s collaborative, experimental, and deeply human.

Supported by Insight Public Sector, Apple technology and Ruscella Immersive, CNU’s Apple Immersive Lab demonstrates that when you empower artists, historians, linguists, and sound designers with cutting-edge tools, you don’t just keep up with the future.

You help invent it.