Expanding social realities through embodied immersive experience

The future is immersive, and virtual, mixed, and augmented reality are sure to shape our bodies and social connections more and more every day. Immersive technologies have the potential to expand social realities in entirely new ways, but we need artistic practice and thorough investigation to expand imaginations and go far beyond realistic, deterministic simulations of reality. My artistic practice explores how immersive technology can expand social realities through open-ended experiences of touch and abstract embodiment that encourage self-expression and social connection. This thesis begins with the groundwork required to create and investigate expanded social reality including recognizing the importance of transcending disciplinarity and embracing multiplicity by oscillating between different perspectives. I contribute theories on the relationship between reality and virtuality and what it means to be embodied in virtual reality. I propose a post-pragmatic, embodied, and holistic research approach that combines practice-based research with quantitative and qualitative approaches in the wild and in the lab to confront assumptions and explore unexpected territories. This thesis then spreads out in several different directions, presenting the creation, exhibition, and investigation of immersive artworks that connect people through breath, touch, performance, pseudohaptics, and as galaxies. Each chapter contributes to knowledge across a diverse range of perspectives, from the phenomenology of social touch in immersive art exhibitions, to quantitative analyses of how touch affects presence, and the creative practices involved. I uncover a rich multiplicity of experiences that arise from these immersive artworks. Rather than restrict that multiplicity, I seek ways to embrace it across art, design, and research. This journey meanders across disciplinary boundaries and stretches out in many directions leading to over twenty publications and fifty exhibitions. My explorations are extensively disseminated across conference presentations, journal publications, and public exhibitions to inspire rich reflection and discourse among academics and the general public alike. Through my broad contributions, I actively build a better future for immersive technology co-constructed through a broadened imagination of what expanding social realities might look like.