Exploring the Design Space for Immersive Embodiment in Dance

There are decades of work investigating how to support users in inhabiting avatars’ bodies in immersive experiences, however we are still learning about how Virtual Reality (VR) can support people in more deeply inhabiting their own bodies. Over the course of five action research workshops, we explored the design space for how VR can support feeling embodied and generating movement within a dance context. We explored design factors and participants’ experiences within: games intended to stimulate physical movement, single player and multiplayer 3D painting, 360 live video, and custom real-time audio and visual feedback based on motion capture. We found that participants spontaneously explored collaboration including synchronous, asynchronous, remote and collocated. Where there were mismatches between visual and kinesthetic perceptions, participants explored how to recalibrate, alternate between, and integrate perceptions. Participants were compelled to explore their control of real-time effects, which led to rich movement generation as we iterated through the effects’ parameters. We present a design space that encapsulates the insights of our action research, with axes for control, collaboration, auditory and visual feedback. We discuss implications for the support of immersive embodiment in dance.