Immersive Acts: Information for attendees

Abstract

Many digital immersive experiences aim to become an important playgrund to recreate and aestheticize nature. This presentation examines digital virtual nature including immersive VR environments, video games, sound-based simulations, and multisensory interfaces, as an emerging habitat and cultural assemblage that reconfigures human–nature relations.

Drawing on ecofeminist theory, environmental aesthetics, and critical game and media studies, the I will investigate whether digital nature can function not merely as representation or spectacle, but as a site of care, connection, and ethical engagement.

Building on concepts such as technobiophilia (Thomas 2013) assemblage theory (Fitch 2025), and ecofeminist critiques of capitalist patriarchy, I’ll argue that digital environments reproduce many of the same extractive logics found in physical environments: nature is often treated as background, resource, or consumable aesthetic, while care and relationality remain marginal (see Chang 2019). At the same time, empirical findings from virtual nature projects suggest that digitally mediated encounters with natural soundscapes and environments can measurably reduce stress, anxiety, and emotional fatigue, indicating that digital nature possesses affective and restorative capacities traditionally associated with physical ecosystems (e.g. see Mostajeran et al. 2023, Bakk et al. 2023.)
In the presentation I’ll situate these tensions within ecofeminist frameworks that link the exploitation of nature with the systemic devaluation of care, interdependence, and embodied knowledge. From this perspective, digital nature becomes a contested space: it can either reinforce normative ideals of controllable, optimized, and commodified environments, or enable alternative practices grounded in maintenance, reciprocity, and situated ecological knowledge. By applying cognitive and non-cognitive models of environmental aesthetics, the study highlights the importance of regional specificity, interactivity, and evidence-based design in fostering meaningful digital ecological experiences. Ultimately, I’ll propose digital ecofeminism as a speculative yet necessary framework for rethinking how digital technologies might support new forms of ecological responsibility and relational ethics. Rather than replacing physical nature, digital environments should act as tools for reimagining human–nature assemblages in ways that resist extraction and emphasize care. This leads to the central question of my research: can digital virtual nature become a genuine ecofeminist practice of care and ecological solidarity within (and/or against) the structures of digital capitalism?

Biography

Ágnes Karolina Bakk, Ph.D. is the Head and Lead Researcher of the Future Care Lab at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest. With a background in narrative design, her work centers around immersive theatrical formats, storytelling, and the science of magic.

Her current research explores romantic relationships in metaverse-like environments, as well as psychological restoration and life quality enhancement through virtual reality (VR). For this groundbreaking work, she was recently awarded a Hu-rizon multiyear research grant for a clinical research trial with VR. Dr. Bakk is the founder of Zip-Scene, and the co-founder of Random Error Studio and the Vektor VR section. She is also a proud member of ARDIN. An internationally recognized speaker and educator, she has shared her expertise around the globe. She is the co-editor of Designing Immersive Environments – Enchanting Spaces, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2025.

Seed, Sand, Snow. Excluded Thirds and the Environing Image

Abstract

My presentation, titled 'Immersive Subversive', will go over my current immersive work-in-progress, titled 'East British Company'. 'East British Company' is a satirical Augmented Reality project responding to the recent anti-immigration march in London (with 100,000+ people participating). The title is a play on the 'East India Company' that began its activities in India in the 1600s under the guise of trade before dissolving into the British Empire. My project will digitally render the far-right's worst fears by 'showing' that us immigrants are trying to do exactly that to the UK. I will also go over my 2022 AR commission for b-side festival, titled 'Requital.', and funded through the British Council International Collaboration Grant.

Biography

Babar Suleman is an artist and writer, and holds a practice-led Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Art from the University of Oxford. A Fulbright scholar, they graduated with an MFA from Parsons School of Design (New York). Recent commissions and grants include The Elephant Trust, British Council’s International Collaboration Grant awarded via b-side festival, Platform Art Projects, Art Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice, and Compton Verney Art Gallery’s Inclusive Histories Research Fellowship. They have been invited to speak at various institutions including The Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge. Suleman is a Senior Lecturer in Filmmaking at the Manchester School of Art.

Abstract

The Spaces of Belonging project engages with the cultural in betweenness experienced by migrants: the feeling of not being fully immersed in the culture of the host country whilst having left behind your homeland. This becomes more acute when one has children, and they must navigate this in-betweenness as mother or caregiver. Finding spaces/places of belonging in the host country is essential when migrant mothers try to build a life for them and for their children.

Providing such spaces ensures the strength, the cohesion and the wellbeing of our communities.

Spaces of belonging explores the perception of migrant mothers in terms of spaces/places of belonging within the local community by drawing on memories of homeland as well as everyday experiences. Migrant mothers define in their own terms what these spaces of belonging are and give us the opportunity to engage with their experience through immersive scenes. The immersive scenes created by the migrant mothers using arts-based methods and creative technology enhance our understanding of the importance of such places of belonging within the community.
The project team was selected to give evidence on inclusive cultural spaces in the Citizens Assembly for Culture consultative policymaking process for the West of England Combined Authority September 2025.
Dana Lungu is an academic, community and public engagement specialist, focusing on accessibility, inclusion and equity as well as early modern French tragedy, Adaptation and Staging. She is honorary Lecturer in French the School of Modern Languages at Cardiff University, honorary Research Associate in the School of Modern Languages and Research Associate in the Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security at the University of Bristol. She uses arts-based methods and community engagement to explore what it means to be a migrant mother today in the Spaces of Belonging project in particular. She works and is interested in projects which engage with marginalised voices in order to tackle barriers to access to culture, make policies or programs more inclusive and reflective of community needs. Her accessibility and inclusion work expands into the field of privacy and cyber security with a view to promoting media literacy and supporting diverse users to make informed choices online.

Biography

Dr. Harry Robert Wilson is an artist-researcher and Lecturer in Digital Theatre and Performance-Making in the School of Arts at the University of Bristol. Harry’s research and practice focus on interdisciplinary explorations of live art, performance, digital art and creative technologies through critical theory and artistic research. He was Digital Thinker in Residence at National Theatre of Scotland (2018-19) and a Research Associate on the AHRC funded Walking Publics/Walking Arts project at the University of Glasgow (2021-22) (walkcreate.org). Harry currently teaches on the MA Immersive Arts co-taught in Theatre and Computer Science at Bristol. As an artist-researcher Harry has been exploring the possibilities of using 3D scanning technologies, locative AR and creative participatory methods to explore place-making and belonging. You can read more about a locative AR walk Harry made with his daughter Poppy in his article ‘Walking with a 6-year-old and a smartphone’ in Research in Drama Education.

Abstract

This research examines the tension between immersive media and environmental crisis. Coastal erosion, accelerated by climate change, is causing the loss of heritage sites like the medieval 'Lost City' of Dunwich, Suffolk. While virtual heritage offers critical preservation, the Extended Reality (XR) sector is entangled in its own unsustainability, with high-carbon tools and a rapid cycle of obsolescence. This research confronts the need to decarbonise immersive practice while addressing crises of climate and social justice.

I propose ReXR (Recycled Extended Reality) as a methodological framework for low-carbon, equitable virtual heritage development. ReXR repurposes abandoned or obsolete hardware and software, leveraging concepts like "Zombie Media" and experimental media archaeology to create accessible experiences. The practice-led XR case study, The Dunwich Rose, a nighttime site specific ghost story, uses an open-source workflow and homebrew tools, embodying a do-it-with-others (DIWO) approach to anti-extractive production.

Crucially, the research draws on critical fabulation (Hartman, 2008) to augment historical archives. By bringing the missing human and more-than-human voices of Dunwich to the surface, this work dismantles the colonial grip on historical archives, reclaiming space for voices long erased and forcing their presence into the digital future through radical acts of rematerialisation.

The findings argue for a guiding charter of principles to hold XR developers accountable, ensuring transparency and advancing environmental and social justice. By breathing new life into abandoned media, ReXR offers a concrete, scalable example of a low-carbon pathway for the XR sector. Sharing stories should not cost the earth. If creative technologists cannot tell stories sustainably then virtual heritage needs to change. There is no reason why we cannot collectively tinker and hack our way to a circular and sustainable immersive storytelling sector.

Biography

Emily works as an Academic, Artist and Creative Technologist in the space of immersive storytelling and social justice. They are the founder and director of Virtually There Studio CIC, set up to support humans with digital literacy and creativity, via events, exhibitions and educational opportunities. They have exhibited works around the UK and beyond, at galleries including but not limited to Somerset House, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Spike Island and Firstsite.

They are Course Director and Senior Lecturer for the Digital Media Production Course at Anglia Ruskin University where they teach across a range of modules, including Immersive Storytelling.

Currently Emily is undertaking a PhD titled: The Dunwich Rose: Exploring Sustainable Approaches to Developing Virtual Heritage with StoryLab. One of their practice-research case studies, The Dunwich Rose, a night-time site-specific XR ghost story for the PhD won the Jury Prize at the Innovate UK Immersive Tech Awards 2025.

Abstract

This paper examines UK arts practitioners' critical navigation of narrow AI automation amid Big Tech's extractive data practices, drawing on thematic analysis of fourteen interviews and focus groups with independent artists, curators, and an arts organiser. The purpose of this ‘Patterns in Practice’ AI study was to understand the interplay of values, beliefs, and emotions on the cultural dynamics of narrow AI use by arts practitioners.

Three themes emerged from this qualitative study: (1) a critical perspective on tech-driven artistic automation including scepticism toward tech-hype and complete automation of the arts, with arts practitioners prioritising human creativity and authenticity over efficiency; (2) advocacy for ethical human-machine collaboration using tactics of resistance, such as small, personal datasets and open-source tools to mitigate against discrimination, high energy usage and e-waste which largely impacts the Global Majority; (3) resolving emotional tensions (‘where the magic happens’) that arise from personal values, beliefs and emotional responses to narrow AI, often balancing joy in innovative outputs with anxiety over societal and ecological disruption.

In this study, arts practitioners often experimented to subvert narrow AI tools for critical reflection on AI design, use and adoption. As immersive technologies become increasingly entangled with AI-driven creative processes, this study therefore plants the seeds for reimagining the role that immersive practices might play in confronting Big Tech digital colonialism - ie social and environmental extraction - including the discriminatory loss of cultural sovereignty and the environmental costs of data centres. A few artists mentioned that they would like to use less energy-intensive technologies and are experimenting with this, but it is not always possible.

At a time of polycrisis - rising inequality, climate crisis and ecological collapse - this is a crucial intervention that is value-aligned with low-power immersive arts practices that use repairable technologies, reusable local materials and centre accessibility, care, and slow, attentive engagement with existing architectures and more-than-human environments.

We therefore position independent AI arts practice as a counterbalance to the slow violence of surveillance and platform capitalism, where practitioners’ values, beliefs, and emotions reorient narrow AI use away from the profit-driven extractivism of Big Tech towards justice.

Patterns in Practice was funded by UKRI-AHRC.

Biography

Erinma Ochu is Watershed's inaugural Researcher in Residence: storyteller & queer biologist experimenting with how collective consciousness materialises through participatory practices and creative technologies as a form of earthmaking. Erinma is Associate Professor, Immersive Media in the School of Arts, UWE Bristol and Factory International Fellowship alumni.

Abstract

Dr Julia Scott-Stevenson will discuss her creative practice research prototype, Future Echoes - a collaborative, interactive mixed-reality documentary experience imagining resilient climate futures. Employing mixed-reality glasses, participants encounter life-size volumetric recordings of diverse Australian women as they share their visions for living through and beyond the climate crisis. These futures unfold around the women via 3D landscapes and images, inviting participants to move, explore, and walk “through” the volumetric recordings and point clouds. The prototype was tested with public audiences at the Vivid Festival in Sydney in June 2025, and a second iteration is currently in development.
The project asks: What does it feel like to encounter a virtual, holographic human sharing her climate story? And how might the material experience of inhabiting augmented space support a sense of connection to desirable futures? Future Echoes sits within Julia’s broader research on how immersive media can help audiences engage with the climate crisis, and contributes to discussions of collective experience, layered realities and expanded documentary.

Biography

Dr Julia Scott-Stevenson is a researcher and maker of interactive and immersive media. She is a Chancellor’s Research Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney, where she explores how XR/VR/AR can address the climate crisis. Julia is also a lead researcher on the MIT Open Documentary Lab’s partnership with the IDFA DocLab R&D Network. She authored the 2024 report on embodiment, AI, and the perception of the real, and continues as lead researcher on the current investigation into XR distribution, which has expanded into the establishment of the Independent XR Distribution Coalition.

Abstract

Virtual Reality has been heralded as the “ultimate empathy machine”—a technology capable of generating presence so visceral it compels compassion. But what if this promise is fundamentally flawed? This presentation argues that for social justice VR, total immersion becomes the apathy machine: experiences so hermetically closed they paralyze rather than activate.

Visceral Reality, directed by me and created for Brazilian NGO Rede Justiça Criminal, achieved 23+ million views by deliberately fracturing VR’s embodiment paradigm. Addressing prison overcrowding where incarceration exceeds capacity by 171%, the project combined VR film with live performance, but critically used the same individual who appeared as “criminal” in the experience later appearing as presenter and advocate, shattering the closed loop of stereotyping.

This rupture is methodological, not accidental. When VR seals viewers inside suffering with hyperreal presence, it offers no exit strategy, no pathway from witnessing to action. The result: emotional overwhelm followed by withdrawal. By intentionally breaking presence and introducing the mediated body back into physical space, revealing the constructed nature of the experience, Visceral Reality created “thinking distance”, the necessary gap where critical reflection and civic agency emerge.
The presentation documents how this fracture operated across three levels: technological (360° social video vs. isolated headsets, prioritizing shareable virality), narrative (the criminal-turned-advocate disrupting viewer expectations), and spatial (live stunts collapsing virtual/physical boundaries). Impact data demonstrates that broken immersion, not seamless presence, correlates with user engagement and sustained advocacy.

I propose “critical immersion” as counter-methodology: strategic incompleteness as design principle. For resource-constrained contexts addressing urgent injustice, the question isn’t “how immersive?” but “where should immersion break?” This reframes VR’s technical limitations as epistemic opportunities, and positions fracture, not fidelity, as the engine of transformation."

Biography

Luiz Evandro is a multimedia director from Vision Lab, which is a new narratives production company based in São Paulo, Brazil. Luiz has worked for 12 years as a copywriter in some of Brazil’s main creative ad agencies, until moving to LA to study graphic design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. As a motion designer, Luiz worked at FOX MGM in California and, back in Brazil, he created and directed opens for Globo TV Network and cable channels. Since then, Luiz became a multimedia director and started a new hybrid model of production house+creative bureau in Brazil. In the last 15 Luiz Evandro has conceived and directed many innovation pieces that encompass creativity, XR, entertainment and technology for Brazil’s main brands which have garnered many industry awards worldwide.

Maria Economou is Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Glasgow, jointly appointed in Information Studies and The Hunterian. She holds a British Academy/Wolfson Research Professorship (2022–26) exploring emotional engagement with museum collections through digital storytelling and participation. Her career spans academic and museum roles across the UK and Greece, including Manchester, Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, and the University of the Aegean. She co-directs the Digital Cultural Heritage Arts Lab and is a former Vice-President of UNIVERSEUM. Her research focuses on immersive heritage technologies, visitor experience, and digital curation, leading major international projects including Innovate UK Museums in the Metaverse and Horizon 2020 initiatives.

Abstract

In this contribution Dr Maria Oshodi tracks erasure and invisibilism within interdisciplinary teams, led by disabled artists evolving the form of immersive theatre in the UK. This is through the work of Britains leading professional theatre company of visually impaired artists, Extant. Frictions receive an in-depth analysis through two Extant ‘art, science and technology’ (AST) R and D productions, The Question (2010) and Flatland (2015), termed ‘HapPerformance’ projects. Both featured bespoke Extant haptic hand-held prototype devices (Lotus and Animotus), to assist journeying audiences to navigate dark dramatic installations, and interact with tactile sets and intricate soundscapes. While The Question exhibited PresenceIng, its successor, Flatland, demonstrated active invisibilism in the form of erasure and a colonising practice by the project’s nondisabled evaluation partner. In identifying their published works (Wiseman et al., 2017), a discounting of the disability-led, full artistic intention and broader immersive theatre context is evidenced, while a lack of socio-political awareness (Terret and Selwyn, 2018), and unconscious enactment (Nuetzel, 2000) are sourced as possible reasons. Despite this, Flatland transformed immersive practice by challenging ocularcentrism in the field through utilising the dark to minimise visual objectification, replacing this with a visually impaired PresenceIng of tactile and novel wayfinding navigation, that shifted politics through universalising of audience experience. This together with disclosing the team dynamics for the first time in this study, reasserted a PresenceIng of disability leadership that had absurdly become invisibilised from within its own project.

Biography

Dr. Maria Oshodi is a writer, arts consultant, disability/performance researcher, and the Artistic Director of Extant. Maria Oshodi’s first play, The S Bend, was produced as part of the Royal Court Theatre’s young Writers Festival in 1984 and later by the Cockpit Theatre in 1985. She went on to write four more plays including, Blood, Sweat and Fears, From Choices to Chocolate, and Here Comes a Candle, that all toured nationally and were published by Longmans, Metheuen and John Murray. In 1992 she graduated from Middlesex University with a 1st BA honors in Drama and English. Since then she has worked in arts development,, for BBC drama production and in 1997 she founded Extant, the award winning, leading performing arts company of visually impaired artists in the UK.