The findings will be fully documented and shared with the international digital arts community. This project will provide fodder for theorists and academics to continue and expand the discourse in this area as it relates to art and performance, while critiquing these technological developments in society at large.
Beneficiaries include: VR/AR/MR/ER media researchers, interaction and game designers, live/participatoryperformance and theatre artists, wearable technology and haptic specialists, disability and assistive technologists, and textile designers. The project will demonstrate innovation for the games and VR industry, as well for wearables designersfor entertainment, art, design, and performance use.We will adapt and develop a hardware/software system to measure physiological data and responses to external stimulifrom participants. This system and supporting individual measurement wearable tools, such as the HTC Vive, EEG, ECG,Udoo, and biometric sensors will inform the actual final performance. Parts of this if not everything will be shared with the Open Source community.
Impact Summary
The project engages its audiences to become part of the narrative environment that stimulates their other senses otherthan sight and sound, using haptic, tactile and physiological senses, triggering the emotional, empathic and survivalresponses, instigating a sense of social responsibility and facilitating or demonstrating methods of personal action. This project moves VR and mixed reality performance beyond the domains of art versus science towards an informed, boldculture of creative action, ideally activating its audiences to action in their own lives and communities. More thaneducational but motivational.
Artists
The aim for this project is to give performers more exposure to new immersive experience performance  techniques usingVR/ mixed reality and haptic sensing technologies, to empower them to create their own VR/ mixed reality/ hapticperformance work. Embolden them to become creators of their own similar immersive narrative/interactive systems andtechniques, while exploring new performance approaches developed during the project. Performers themselves will benefitfrom both the workshops themselves and the conclusions drawn from them for their own work.
Researchers
Performance research and VR/Mixed Reality/Games researchers will benefit from both the workshops, the performances,the bespoke wearables designed for the project. and the conclusions drawn from the research. Those situated in thecomputer sciences will benefit from a different approach to VR/Mixed Reality and haptic/ wearable technology development and our audience 'user testing', to further their own research and development.
Industry
The various stakeholders - including interaction designers, tech developers, computer games designers, wearable & hapticinteraction developers - will benefit, even if indirectly, from having new developments in the arena to further the designapproaches to VR/Mixed Reality/Games, providing a different perspective from critical and artistic voices and research tothe field.
The haptic and wearable technology stakeholders will also benefit from the performance dimension, in terms of sensing ofthe body in full immersion and the different types of body expression that can be witnessed using the bespoke hapticdevices, as well from the a different perspective on VR & wearable tech development and research,  garnered from theworkshops and participatory performances, again adding more critical voices to the mix.
VR/Mixed Reality/Games Manufacturers will benefit from this research by seeing novel methods used to develop narrativeand immersive interaction, through performance techniques for a widening user/consumer base.
Wider Audience/Public
This project aims to connect with the general public and to hard to reach audiences by presenting the workshops andperformances in public venues and outdoor locations.
Online dissemination of the full documentation (including videos, images, texts, etc) and updated information about theproject progress will be more available via the project website.
A showcase of the workshops and performances will also be available via social media, such as Facebook, Twitter,Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Vimeo, and Youtube.A broad promotional strategy to ensure publicity via targeted mainstream media, such as, Wired, BBC Arts andEntertainment, BBC Click, BBC World Service, or Sky Arts will also be considered.
Pathways to Impact
As the outcomes of this immersive experience project is of great value to other VR/Mixed Reality artist and designers, game companies, and various disciplines, further dissemination will be done through a range of festivals, conferences and publications.
● Live performances
● Workshops
● Media arts festivals and conferences
● Academic journals
● Online
Live Events
A key part of this work is the performative aspects. Live events are therefore important in the methodology. The contextual development and locating of the work amongst other artists in the field will be done in the first phase of the project and then again in the performances and workshops themselves. Further live events include workshops run by artists trialing the performance framework with audiences. These will be aimed at those in creative-­industries who have an interest in VR & full body haptic experiences, and will be based in international locations, such as Scotland, Vanuatu, Europe, Asia.
Workshops
The workshops will include an outdoor 360 film / VR for participants to experience ... It is for groups of people and involves 360 video in headsets but also and inviting people to sense the land itself through storytelling. The 360 video and kit are sent out in a box and memory stick and forms a do-­it-­ yourself practice in advance of the workshops They then come together with the workshop leaders and be lead through the experience. They will use their phones as part of it, but mainly explore the mixed reality participatory performance on the land as one of the “calls to action”. The participant audiences in the workshops will be a good source of “critical friends” to help refine the project as we develop it for the final performances with a greater number of scenarios.
Documentary
A documentary film of the development, and the above mentioned final 360 film for the VR/Mixed Reality/ haptic experience, will be made available at media art and film festivals and the trailer will be available online as a promotional tool.
Media Art Festivals & Conferences
Arts and technology festivals and conferences, such as Abandon Normal Devices, FutureEverything in the UK and potentially Transmediale in Berlin and Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, will be targeted as well as others as they present themselves.
Academic Publications
There are several performance and media journals that would be appropriate for this work, such as Taylor & Francis International Journal for Performance and Digital Media, Taylor & Francis Performance Research Journal, Taylor & Francis Digital Creativity, MIT Press Leonardo Journal, Media, Intellect Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, Intellect Ubiquity, Intellect Journal of Pervasive Media, Journal Digital Media Arts and Practice, Brunel’s Body, Space, Technology, Neural IT magazine.
Online Audiences
This work will be presented through a project website that will include videos, photos, reports and other information that is explored through the immersive project. It will be a site for the documentation and allow the public to view the project progression and the final outcomes of the work. The PI and the Independent Researcher will update their progress and project development through a blog available on this site. Further updates and PR for events will be made available through social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and other relevant platforms. These online platforms will also serve as a legacy for the project when the timeline for the project has past.
Outputs