Between the physical and the virtual: The present tense of virtual space

This article explores a way of thinking about virtual environments and how they might be used to create new spaces, not as an alternate reality, but as an integrated part of reality – regardless of this reality being physical and/or digital. Virtual environments can be seen as an extension of reality – the physical and the virtual sitting side by side with one, more often than not, bleeding into the other. The virtual is not separable from the physical and vice versa. This position will be formed by directly referring to traditions that stem from processes and ideas around materiality, poetics and philosophy rather than centring on technical or hardware specifics. At the centre of this exploration is an ongoing investigation into the role of memory and imagination in narrative spaces in immersive virtual environments, stemming from the author’s background in interactive Installation art and designing for virtual environments. The article’s subtitle refers to Robert Morris’s 1978 article, ‘The present tense of space’, which informs the article’s overall position.

Translating performative mediated art into virtual reality: A case study

Park benches are distinctive public spaces that invite a temporary pause for thought and time out from everyday activities and worldly preoccupations. Park Bench Sojourn is a multimodal arts project that explores the uniqueness and universality of these spaces and the kinds of experiences they foster. It asks what it means to be human; surrounded, as we are, by computer technologies and digital media, living lives that are perpetually ‘connected’ and dispersed through the cloud. It reflects on how our technologically determined lives and lifestyles conspire against us to find opportunities to stop, reflect and be witnesses to lived experience. It is a conceptually playful creative work that shares concerns for health and well-being arising from the contemporary mindfulness movement and the traditional practices and worldviews upon which mindfulness draws. The project is based around a range of experiential sojourns, which require participants to find a bench to sit on and then take a sojourn, or a number of sojourns from the project’s website, which may include audio, video, spoken word, or just listening. Other iterations of the project have included a multimedia gallery installation juxtaposing content from a variety of sojourns. Regardless of the format, context or specific content, the project explores ways in which we ‘perform’ ourselves and mediate experience via digital technologies. In this article, we describe the process of translating this mediated and performative artwork into a VR prototype and directions for future work.

Unmasking the Mah Meri mask: A digitization journey for AR and VR

The Mah Meri is an indigenous tribe in Malaysia, specifically located in the central region of the peninsular. As part of an ongoing research project to digitize their way of life, this article focuses on the aspects of documenting their wooden masks and statues that are carved by hand. They use these masks and statues in their animistic rituals, and each of these artefacts represents a folklore story in the Mah Meri culture and heritage. For a long time, these masks and statues have become a source of income for the Mah Meri carvers, as they get requests from collectors and enthusiasts. However, these days the craft not only faces the issue of dwindling number of carvers, but also the source of wood they use for carving the masks and statues. Thus, as part of the research in digitizing the masks and statues, we also collected the folklore stories of each artefact. Additionally, we used photogrammetry techniques to digitize the masks and statues formation process. The main idea is to create an experience that not only preserves and represents the art of the Mah Meri people, but also enables the users to interact with the carving process of the exact mask or statute. This is highly unlikely in the real world in an immersive form. In this project, we refer to this as ‘Digitization of States’, i.e. three-dimensional (3D) capturing of specific stages of the carving process before they are gone. The 3D-captured materials, combined with other forms of audio-visual data are used in creation of procedural and informative AR/VR experiences. To achieve this, a cross collaboration between the carvers and the researchers took place. More information about the entire process is provided in the article.

On country: Identity, place and digital place

Place is central to the identity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The Narrabeen Camp Project explores the use of immersive technologies to offer opportunities to engage with Indigenous histories, Storytelling and cultural heritage in ways that privilege place. While nothing can replace being ‘on Country’, the XR technologies of AR and VR support different modalities of engagement with real, and virtual, place. The project documents the Stories, Language and Lore associated with the Gai-mariagal clan and, in particular, with the Aboriginal Camp that existed on the north-western shore of Narrabeen Lakes from the end of the last ice age to 1959 when it was demolished to make way for the Sydney Academy of Sports and Recreation. The project will investigate evolving Aboriginal Storytelling dynamics when using immersive digital media to teach culture and to document a historically important site that existed for thousands of years prior to its demolition in the mid-twentieth century. It expects to generate new knowledge about Aboriginal Storytelling and about the history of urban Aboriginals. Expected outcomes include a schema connecting Aboriginal Storytelling with immersive digital technologies, and truth-telling that advances understanding of modern Australia and urban Aboriginal people. The research should promote better mental, social and emotional health and wellbeing for Indigenous Australians and benefit all Australians culturally, socially and economically.

Virtual nature, inner forest: Prospects for immersive virtual nature art and well-being

Over a number of decades, studies have revealed compelling relationships between experiences of the natural environment and positive health outcomes in adult communities. These psychosocial health benefits have typically been described via key theoretical frameworks in the health sciences, such as the biophilia hypothesis. Despite the body of evidence for nature design and well-being, propositions for immersive virtual nature experiences are still emerging across the fields of creativity and health. In this article, we identify the potential for immersive virtual nature art as a creative well-being intervention, articulated through a discussion of background literature and concepts leading to the development of our artwork, Inner Forest (2020–21). This article incorporates a transdisciplinary suite of perspectives across three key parts; in the first section, we review key health and design research around beneficial nature experiences, with particular emphasis on designing technological nature. Secondly, we propose considerations for immersive virtual nature experiences, as distinct from prior iterations of technological nature; these considerations are framed through discussion of our artistic and well-being rationale for designing the collaborative artwork Inner Forest. This extended reality (XR) project was developed in response to well-being challenges such as social isolation and restricted nature access- of particular valence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The artwork incorporates multisensory, aesthetic elements drawn from biophilic design guidelineswhich support creative, evidence-based approaches to designed nature and societal health. To conclude this article, we report on prospects for further scaling of the Inner Forest artwork, with ongoing scope to contribute to both nature-health design and immersive virtual nature art practices.

Transdisciplinarity in extended reality (XR) research design: Technological transformation and social good (co-creation session at XR + Creativity Symposium, University of Newcastle, 2020)

This article collates and synthesizes the discussion results of a collaborative research exercise, known as a ‘co-creation session’, formed of a multi-disciplinary group of extended reality (XR) researchers and practitioners. The session sought to develop and theorize the concept of ‘transformative technologies for good’ in creative, applied and clinical contexts. Notions of ‘cutting-edge’ practice were visited from a critical standpoint; participants established that innovation, when measured in terms of social good, challenges technological and economic paradigms of progress. Conversation between participants centred on four key areas: skills and knowledge for effective XR research, appropriate methods and sites for diffusion of XR research, the future of the field, and the possible contributions of XR and associated research to problems arising from COVID-19. The session offered further insights into research design related to composition of participant groups in terms of disciplinary knowledge, activity design, and remote digital interfaces.

Evoke, don’t show: Narration in cinematic virtual reality and the making of Entangled

Over the past three years, cinematic virtual reality (CVR) has emerged as a form of media storytelling that takes advantage of the immersive properties of VR technology. However, as a practice it poses a number of challenges for the writer–director used to controlling the frame through which the viewer experiences the narrative. This research outlines the making of Entangled (a live-action, stereoscopic, VR experience incorporating ambisonic audio) and reflects on concept development and production decision-making with reference to the emerging body of academic knowledge about cinematic VR, in particular ideas about the position of the viewer and the nature of narration. The research addresses some of the gaps in knowledge in these areas, reconciling theoretical positions with a deep understanding of the realities of production processes.

Heritage preservation in the post-digital era: How much information is enough?

Digital media have revolutionized the practice of scholarship from archives to the creation of content. Continuing into the next decades, the application of digital technologies will remain a pivotal component to cultural heritage research-creation projects. Heritage preservation by means of virtual heritage or digital heritage broadly refers to the use and application of computational tools and methods to humanist fields of study. It embraces a transdisciplinary approach to inspire new research initiatives, while at the same time employing digital media technologies for content creation and sharing across the public space. This article provides an overview of the information design process applied to the digital preservation and re-presentation of cultural heritage. It employs principles of digital heritage to create a matrix of cultural heritage content within the themes of legacy, transmission and transformation. The intangible nature of world heritage is of increasing concern. How that can be preserved and how it becomes sampled and preserved in digital archives for the future are key questions, originating from the inquiry – How much information is enough? This article endeavours to illuminate that question though an exemplar research-creation project, showcasing the materiality of the digital, its embodiment, agency and the resulting impact on the audiences it seeks to inform.

First Contact – Take 2: Using XR technology as a bridge between Māori, Pākehā and people from other cultures in Aotearoa, New Zealand

The art installation common/room explores human–digital–human encounter across cultural differences. It comprises a suite of extended reality (XR) experiences that use technology as a bridge to help support human connections with a view to overcoming intercultural discomfort (racism). The installations are exhibited as an informal dining room, where each table hosts a distinct experience designed to bring people together in a playful yet meaningful way. Each experience uses different technologies, including 360° 3D virtual reality (VR) in a headset (common/place), 180° 3D projection (Common Sense) and augmented reality (AR) (Come to the Table! and First Contact – Take 2). This article focuses on the latter, First Contact – Take 2, in which visitors are invited to sit at a dining table, wear an AR head-mounted display and encounter a recorded volumetric representation of an Indigenous Māori woman seated opposite them. She speaks directly to the visitor out of a culture that has refined collective endeavour and relational psychology over millennia. The contextual and methodological framework for this research is international commons scholarship and practice that sits within a set of relationships outlined by the Mātike Mai Report on constitutional transformation for Aotearoa, New Zealand. The goal is to practise and build new relationships between Māori and Tauiwi, including Pākehā.