Stretching embodiment: Excursions in multi-modal extended realities.
VR, AR, and immersive site-specific and interactive art experiences engage bodies with lived and virtual spaces in particular ways. They hold the potential to extend embodied, somatic experiences and connect people with multiple and simultaneous ‘spacetimes’ (Manning 2011).
From June 2024 to September 2025, five researchers (movement artists and practitioner-researchers) working with AR and VR, digital somatic experiences, site-specific dance research, film, photography, and interactive art have been working together to develop an AHRC Curiosity Award funding bid supported by The Studio.
Questions regarding how these movement practices employ, include (and exclude) particular constructions of live and virtual bodies, and the methods through which they extend visceral and somatic sensations shaped the workshop exchanges and dialogue.
The initiative was initially funded by an NCACE (the National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange) micro-commission award and was further supported by Bath Spa University’s KE Dialogues funding.
The knowledge exchange funding provided an invaluable opportunity to carve out time and space for collective discussion and collaborative ideation to emerge, for ideas to float and for embodied thinking to take flight.
Through shared interests in the nature and experience of embodiment, the researchers came together to explore how visceral and embodied and somatic practices are applied in the development of live/hybrid performance and AR and VR movement work.
The aim of this research is to better understand:
- The shifting nature of digital embodiment in spatial computing
- The role of embodied/somatic practitioner knowledge in future digital spaces
- How this this research could impact wider industries that are moving into more immersive and interactive spaces incorporating the body
- How this praxis expands and ‘stretches’ contemporary notions and understandings of embodiment in a digital age.
The long-term aim of this research is to build collaborative relationships between academia and artists from the creative cultural sector to explore shared points of interest, articulate practices, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives.
The project team includes:
- Rebecca Evans, Artistic Director and Choreographer of Pell Ensemble and Resident at The Studio
- Lisa May Thomas, independent dance artist and Senior Research Associate, ESRC Centre for Socio-Digital Futures (University of Bristol) and resident artist at Pervasive Media Studio
- Naresh Kaushal, interactive art and moving image artist
- Dr Zhi Xu, Senior Lecturer in Dance, technology and cultural identity at BSU
- Professor Vicky Hunter, researcher in site-specific dance and human-place engagement at BSU.
The NCACE and KE dialogues funding has supported the team to participate in two grant writing workshop days structured around the AHRC funding bid criteria and protocols. Activities included brainstorming, a ‘walk and talk’ session in which participants identified key questions and explored them through a ‘mobile’ discussion on foot, research visioning and creative questioning.
These tasks and activities helped the group to identify ‘the problem’ and central themes for exploration, context and relevant current practices, identify potential outcomes of future collaborative research, possible beneficiaries, impact, and the research’s related potential for social good.
Framed in this way the workshop day aligned with NCACE’s work and KE dialogues key themes through transferring knowledge and expertise between academic, cultural, and artistic domains and exploring the application of technology for social good.
Read the latest blog posts from the Creative Practice and Embodied Knowledge research group.