VIR (Virtual Immersive Rhyme): A New Genre of Digital Poetry Through Letter-by-Letter Visualization

We introduce VIR (Virtual Immersive Rhyme), a novel genre of digital poetry that transforms traditional textual poetry into multisensory, interactive, and spatial experiences through comprehensive letter-by-letter visualization techniques. Unlike existing digital poetry forms that primarily focus on hypertext structures or multimedia integration, VIR implements complete transformation of all poetic elements—letters, words, and meanings—into three-dimensional visual environments with interactive components and biological feedback systems. This paper presents the theoretical foundations of VIR as a distinct digital literary genre, analyzes its technical implementation through various visualization techniques (macro-visualization, mental visualization, implicit visualization, and others), and examines its practical applications in education, art therapy, neuroscience research, and cross-cultural dialogue. We demonstrate VIR’s effectiveness through the case study of VIR.SHI project, developed within the Cross-Cultural Year of Russia-China with support from the Presidential Fund of Cultural Initiatives, which received international recognition including BRICS Tech Awards. Our research establishes VIR as a significant advancement in electronic literature, offering new possibilities for poetry preservation, education, and therapeutic applications while addressing contemporary challenges in literary engagement and cultural transmission.