Haptic Immersion

The alternative take on Mixed Reality

When we think about Mixed Reality, we usually think of a world with holographic visions surrounding us. Mixed reality’s immersive worlds offer us the apparent benefit of staying still while going places: the wonder of being and unbeing on the moon while simultaneously sitting on the sofa in your living room. This emerging technology has great potential, and some of it has already been realized. But there are also dangers in being able to live in a digital world and lose track of that sofa we’re sitting on, taking in an experience that’s been ever more precisely imagined for us.

What if there was another way of looking at mixed reality? One where the definition of immersion is not limited to the idea of being an evolution of watching content on a screen but one that is more akin to the immersion we feel when reading a book. One that is more interpretive and abstract in the way that information is relayed to us. Before I get into what the alternative version of mixed reality might look like, we need to first unpack our idea of mixed reality at present. 

The idea of digital and physical worlds colliding almost feels like a natural evolution in retrospect. More everyday tasks are becoming digitized, from the way we order food to our financial systems, while at the same time, the importance of our online identity is becoming more significant in the real world. The advancement of digital technologies has changed the way we function as a society and catapulted us into uncharted territory, where the real and virtual have started to blend. By that definition, we are already living in a mixed reality world; we just don’t think about it that way because the label we attach to MR is reserved for things that bring virtual three dimensionality to reality.

Yet, this convergence of the digital and the physical realms raises profound questions about the nature of our interaction with technology. As we seamlessly navigate between digital and real experiences, the boundaries blur, leading us to reconsider what it means to be present in a moment or a place. This introspection is crucial as we stand on the brink of further technological integration into our daily lives. 

What's interesting about the convergence of digital and physical in mixed reality?

When it comes to new technology, I’m neither a technophile nor a luddite; I’m generally an optimist. I believe that when old technologies are replaced by newer ones meant to make our lives easier, we end up losing some knowledge of the complexities of the activities we are performing, due to there being less friction between man and machine. In some ways, taking the time to learn how to operate older technology enables us to engage with it in a more thoughtful manner.

For example, in the case of photography, even today, when we have the resources to take thousands of pictures, many photographers still see the value in learning to shoot with film, an older technology that is not as forgiving as digital photography. Film does not provide an immediate re-creation of what the picture might look like and has a limited number of pictures that can be taken on a single roll. It forces one to be more thoughtful about the composition and lighting when taking a picture, whereas the digital medium allows us to take a nearly unending number of images with the ability to delete or edit them instantly. Which has probably led to us being more careless with how we take our images. The counterpoint to this, and why I mentioned that I hesitate to fall into the camp of being either a technophile or a Luddite, is that while it is nice to look back at things and reminisce through a filter of nostalgia, it is also important to acknowledge that newer technologies, such as digital photography, have brought with them more access and equity than ever before by lowering the cost of partaking in the activity and making it more accessible. I bring this up as I believe mixed reality technologies provide an interesting opportunity where the old and new can coexist and retain their respective benefits.

The discourse around mixed reality has long revolved around bringing digital media, that we usually perceive through a screen, to life. This bias has mainly prevailed due to devices such as Head Mounted Displays (HMDs), which have been the focus of mixed reality technology development from the 60s to now, leading to an ocular-centric view of mixed reality. (Rouse 175)

By considering mixed reality as a multisensory medium, we can start to envision it as a tool that changes our perception of the world. Translating sound into visuals, touch into sound, manipulating scale, gravity, and object orientation, sensing emotions collectively rather than individually, or even experiencing sensory deprivation are just some of the ways mixed reality can alter our perception of the environment around us. It enables the creation of spaces where users challenge conventional methods of perception and break away from the usual ways of understanding their surroundings.

Returning to the idea of mixed reality as a bridge between the old and new, its ability to reinterpret what’s old in ways we couldn’t before, is what makes mixed reality technologies intriguing to me. Take the camera, again, for example: imagine taking a picture that could transform into a musical harmony based on the objects captured in the image. While it doesn’t change the device’s primary function as an image-capturing tool, it adds an additional layer of perception that requires the thoughtfulness and composition akin to using a film camera, where the outcome remains somewhat unknown until the picture is taken. While this idea may not be groundbreaking or particularly practical, it serves as an illustration of the potential of what mixed reality could be when viewed from a multisensory perspective.

Affordances of Mixed Reality

To better understand how such experiences that blend the physical and digital world together are to be designed, we need to understand the affordances that mixed reality offers.

Interaction

Due to the nature of mixed reality being based on a digital foundation, it is an inherently more interactive platform than analog mediums to tell stories. In her 1997 book Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet H. Murray explores the potential of digital media, like mixed reality, to revolutionize storytelling. She emphasizes interactivity as a fundamental feature that digital platforms offer, which traditional/analog media cannot. This interactivity allows for storytelling that is not linear but rather branching or multithreaded, providing audiences with the ability to influence or choose the direction of the narrative.

In mixed reality environments, this means that stories can unfold in various ways depending on the user’s actions. For example, a user might choose to explore different story paths by interacting with virtual objects or characters, leading to multiple possible endings. This creates a participatory experience where the user becomes a co-creator of the story, rather than a passive observer.

Immersion

Mixed reality has the ability to create spaces that can be more visually immersive by bringing things that are digital to reality by presenting that data visually. Ensuring that the audience is placed in a more convincing digital world while at the same time being reminded of their sense of place in the real world.

Immersion can take many forms. In her 2020 book Narrative Environments and Experience Design, Tricia Austin talks about immersion as “the non-conscious, persistent, ambient sensory experiences, which create a sense of being surrounded by, or wrapped in, a space which fosters people’s bonds to that place as a seemingly self-contained world.”(pg 127). In the chapter “Immersion” she describes how immersive experiences are not just physical but can also be social and political by providing critical distance. Critical distance is our ability to identify that we are in an immersive environment that we chose to participate in. She quotes Mark Wigley, who in his description of immersive environments says that If there is no critical distance, then we cannot perceive that we are in an immersive environment like a fish in water does not know it is being immersed in water. Critical distance is an important concept for an immersive experience, by letting the audience participate in the narrative with their imagination rather than immersing them in the environment  it allows for greater narrative immersion in the immersive experience.

When we watch a movie in a theater, the director bends time and space to create a visual representation of the story they are trying to tell. The audience is sitting in a dark room being made to let go of their sense of place in the real world and being taken on a ride in an alternate reality by the use of a large screen and surround sound.  The audiences’ sensorial perceptions are being overwhelmed by the sensations demonstrated in the movie  and they become a persistent observer in the life of the actors.

Here the intent for immersion is the transportation of the user as an observer into an alternate world. Even though we are shown visuals and scenarios that are alien to us in the real world, we can still relate to the events on screen because although the settings may be ones that are unfamiliar to us, we can relate the events on screen to the experiences in our own lives. This distance created in the story where we do not fully understand what the actor is thinking is essential to the immersive power of film as it allows us to impose our pre-existing frames of references into the frames of references visualized by the creators of the movie, creating feelings of anticipation, fear, anger, happiness, sadness, or any such emotion, allowing for us to be more immersed in the movie.

Immersion in plays is similar to immersion in movies, but plays lack the ability to post-process as they happen in real time, therefore they are more limited in what can be achieved in terms of world building as they are limited in scale to what's achievable on stage. While the scenography of plays is still intended to create a sense of immersion, it is also aided by the sense of presence that a play affords. But unlike in movies, plays can still allow for some kind of audience interaction, which can range from small interactions with the audience to the audience being able to direct the storyline, as is the case with Punch drunk’s immersive theatrical performances where the audience can walk onto the sets of the play as they happen, while also having the freedom to choose the direction of the story.

Similarly in a video game immersion comes in the form of actually being in the space, the audience is no longer the observer but is an active performer in the story. The role of the creator is to create an immersive environment and interactions through which the story is progressed/ the video game mechanics, to immerse the audience, referred to here as the player. By giving the audience greater agency, it makes the narrative a much more direct and engaging experience. Mata Haggis-Burridge in his  paper “Four categories for meaningful discussion of immersion in video games” suggests ways in which Immersion in video games can be categorized:

1)      Systems immersion can be used to describe when players are deeply engaged with the mechanics, challenges, and rules of a game, and is similar to a state of ‘flow’

2)     Spatial immersion is the sense of a player being present in, or transported to, the virtual world, and is linked to the concept of embodiment

3)     Empathic/social immersion describes the connection that a player may develop towards the characters (AI or human) and the social context of a game

4)     Narrative/sequential immersion can be used to describe a player’s compulsion to see how a sequence of events continues, typically in a narrative, but this is related to any progression, such as exploring new spaces or evolving gameplay mechanics.

Depending on the genre of game that is being played the type of immersion can vary, for example a game like Tetris is more about the systems immersion than narrative immersion when compared to a role-playing game like Witcher 3. Regardless of the kinds of immersion employed by video games to tell the story, the player is truly immersed when they take the time to learn how the game functions, and by becoming the cog that makes the machine run, their role as players extends to one of the creators as well. Here the critical distance is not as prevalent as the player is fully immersed in the game, but by having a sense of presence in the real world and having to use some form of a controller the player is made aware of the immersive environments they choose to participate in. 

In fictional books and novels immersion is perhaps the most abstract as it requires the reader to fill in the blanks based on the descriptions provided by the author. Immersion here is achieved through narrative devices that can either put the reader inside the head of the characters or be an observer of events as they unfold. There are no visuals except in the case of comics or graphic novels, which leave much open to interpretation. In contrast to video games, here the critical distance is provided by the lack of visuals yet, it is interestingly similar to a video game where the act of imagination becomes the mechanism that makes content more immersive.

When it comes to mixed reality it is assumed that greater immersion is possible by the ability to represent fictional environments visually in three dimensions, but by thinking about it as a multisensorial bridge it allows us to incorporate other ways of narrative immersion and can in fact be closer to reading a book than watching a movie.

Transformation of The Senses

In his book The Eyes of The Skin, the architect Juhani Pallasmaa explores architecture from a phenomenological perspective. He criticizes the ocular-centrism of modern architecture and theory, which he claims has reduced architecture to a series of retinal images that detach and isolate the body from the world. He argues that architecture is a multisensory experience that involves not only vision, but also hearing, smell, touch, and movement and advocates for an embodied and integrated approach to architecture that reconnects us with our cultural and natural environment, and that stimulates our imagination and emotions.

Mixed reality technologies in some ways seem to parallel modernist architecture and its criticism where it is primarily focused on the visuals. Thinking about it in such a way can limit the functionality of mixed reality and mixed reality experiences to  something that is novel, but for mixed reality to really be purposeful, changing the way we think about it to an interface between our senses–or in technical terms as a DAC, or digital to analog converter between multiple senses–could enable a whole new way of creating mixed reality experiences.

One artist using mixed reality to change our perceptions is Chris Salter, a new media artist and Professor of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University whose experiments with computational art in the real world often deal with multi sensorial experiences. In his project called Displace he creates a multi-sensory experience that is part of a larger research project called Mediations of sensations, where he aims to create a space where art and design practice can be informed by advanced research in sensory anthropology.

In the experience a group of visitors progress through a series of environments that intermingle olfactory, gustatory, visual, sonic, haptic, and proprioceptive stimuli. The sensory experiences are separated at first but as the experience continues, they begin to converge into intense and almost hallucinatory sensations with flickering colors, sounds, tactile vibrations, tastes, and scents. The experience is an artistic expression based on the anthropological study of how different cultures distinguish and perceive different senses and it is an ongoing study of how a technologically augmented or mixed reality environment can be designed to allow someone from a foreign community to perceive the sensory experiences of an indigenous community.

Salter’s work does not rely on the novelty of mixed reality as a medium to showcase his artistic expression, but he uses it as a transformative approach to let his audience experience a sensorial and artistic expression of his anthropological studies. This anthropological lens enriches the mixed reality experience, making it a tool for empathy and understanding across cultural divides. It illustrates the ability of mixed reality as a multisensorial DAC between the senses and the utility of mixed reality beyond the novelty of immersion.  

Emotionality of Haptics

The Real world is Haptic. From a digital perspective, every haptic interaction is data, data that holds information about the characteristics of objects. Data such as its strength, weight, texture, density, temperature. These characteristics combined relay information that we filter through preconceived notions and conditioning, to have emotional perceptions. A piece of stainless-steel sheet metal for example signifies something that is durable, cold, and, to some, clean. This is because of its use in kitchens and hospitals, where the materials characteristics of being smooth, strong and wear resistant make it an ideal surface that is easy to clean.

While the word haptic in the context of technology is used to describe ways of simulating our sense of touch, in the real world our senses work by association. For example, looking at a picture of a steaming cup of coffee might give one the feeling of warmth without having to touch it. 

In his book Haptic the author Kenya Hara got together a group of multi-disciplinary artists, designers, architects, and scientists to create a sensory experience without having to explain it. It resulted in designers coming up with unusual ways of using materials for projects, such as a juice carton made of banana peels, a lantern made of hair implants, clocks made of paper, and others. Through the examples we learn that the way we perceive our senses is not purely a response to a stimulus but also an analysis and interrogation of the information that we collect through our senses. So, when we say Haptic it goes beyond the perceptions of touch and also includes ways in which we use our senses to make haptic sensations.

These collective associations can be used in a mixed reality experience to not just be a visual aid but also be used as a narrative device to convey the emotionality of the story. 

How stories could be told in mixed reality 

Now that we have a better understanding of the potential for a multisensorial mixed reality experience and its affordances, we can speculate on how stories might be told in mixed reality. Mixed Reality shares some similarities with traditional theater, and the relationship between theater and technology has been in line with the relationship between art and technology, existing in a constant state of flux and feeding off each other.

One of the oldest mediums for storytelling, theater traces its origins in the Western world dating back to ancient Greece. It has undergone many incremental changes over time that have evolved ways in which stories are told in plays, by incorporating new technologies to create a greater sense of immersion. From the use of cranes to portray godly floating figures in ancient times to more modern technologies like projection mapping and virtual reality, theater has always evolved with technology.

What theater shares with Mixed Reality as a medium, when compared to something like film, television, radio, or a book, is its sense of place, whether physical or virtual. In this way, Mixed Reality can be seen as the next evolutionary step for theater, holding the potential to transform traditional theatrical experiences.

While theater shares the sense of place with mixed reality, its affordances have more in common with video games. Video games are a medium developed around interactivity and as such they have also become one that use interactivity to relay its message or story.

Video games make the player the main character and spin an engaging story around them. It gives them the agency that involves achieving a task for which the player is required to make choices and perform some action. The choices the player makes are informed by several factors, but the response within the game establishes the emotions the player feels. 

Building the platform for Mixed Reality

Storytelling is essential to being human. It is a skillset that we have developed over thousands of years not just to entertain but also preserve history, culture, values, and knowledge. It enables us to remember information by making it more engaging while allowing us to gain new insights and perspectives. Stories are dynamic and adaptable to the medium that is used to convey them. With new technologies we have found new ways to adapt them, from carvings on walls to books to films and so on. These containers for storytelling are what we refer to as media and every format of media has its own way of relaying the story or, as the media theorist Marshall McLuhan put it, “the medium is the message”-- a form of media  has the purpose of relaying a message, while concurrently influencing how the message it relays is perceived. For example, the medium of television relays content made up of images and videos that are perceived visually. McLuhan argues that perceiving information in this format also makes an impact on society due to it being a more engaging and a less interpretive medium when compared to reading books or a newspaper.

Mixed Reality is a medium whose message is conveyed through interactivity due to it being based on digital technologies. By taking that idea one step further and thinking about it as a multisensorial Digital to Analog Conversion (DAC) it allows us to get the message across through the emotional perception of haptic sensations.

When I first started thinking about how mixed reality could change the way we consumed media, I looked at the relationship between theater and technology and how Mixed Reality could appropriate theater. What became apparent to me was that a lot of the ideas for developing a more interactive form of theater that allows for greater audience agency had been established in videogames. So combining Videogames and Theater could showcase a way for mixed reality to tell stories differently.

One game in particular that made me aware of how videogame mechanics work to tell stories is the game Hades by Supergiant Games. In the game you play as Zagreus, the immortal son of Hades the lord of the underworld, who is trying to escape from it against his father’s wishes. In doing so you clear enemies or allies of Hades in each room you enter before moving onto the next. Along your journey you are aided by some of the Greek gods who want to see you succeed. You will eventually die and will have to restart from the beginning due to being immortal.  Your failure to escape does not end the game but rather continues it, thereby changing your knowledge of the game, as well as the interactions you have with all the other characters in the story. The more you die the more you discover the stories of the characters in the game, which are all purposefully crafted to help you get further in escaping from the underworld. It manages to be an engaging video game as it requires real skill to get better at it and it does so by using the game’s narrative to keep the player hooked and motivated to get better.

Playing the game was akin to experiencing the Pompidou in Paris as it makes its inner workings an integral part of the entire narrative experience and does nothing to hide this from the player.

While mixed reality shares the affordance of being interactive with video games such as Hades, for storytelling in mixed reality to be meaningful and different from that of videogames it needs to integrate real world haptics that not only aid with immersion but can also work as a narrative device for storytelling. To do so we need to start with the way we construct stories for Mixed Reality.

My thesis is an exploration of this idea. I picked the story of Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek Mythology. It is about two lovers, Orpheus, a demi-god with an angelic voice that can make flowers bloom, and Eurydice, a forest nymph who falls in love with him. They are separated on their wedding day when Eurydice is bitten by a snake and taken to the underworld. Orpheus then goes on a journey to the underworld to bring her back, and after winning over Hades, the ruler of the underworld, he is allowed to do so on one condition: he must not look back at her until they reach the surface. However, he is overcome by his insecurities and looks back, losing her again. They are only reunited after Orpheus dies on earth. It is a simple tale with many emotions that has been told through the ages, most notably in recent times in the Broadway show Hadestown, the play Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, and the video game Hades by Supergiant Games as a subplot.

To reinterpret this story in mixed reality, I created a new storyline that relates to the audience’s journey in which they are on a quest to reunite the two lovers in the underworld. This was inspired by how the story is told in the videogame Hades. Through this experience that the audience is a part of where they have to perform a set of actions to reach the end of the narrative experience they discover the original story of Orpheus and Eurydice.

For instance, In the original story on the day of their wedding. A snake bites Eurydice and she tragically dies, this scene is the setup for Orpheus to go on a journey to bring her back from the dead. In the experience that I have created, the audience first enters a set depicting a forest where the snake bites Eurydice. Instead of visually showing the scene where the snake bites Eurydice, I chose to put them in place of the snake, due to which they sense the room through thermal vision as snakes sense their surroundings using thermal sensations. They must explore their way through the forest by following the warmth. The warmth leads them to a door which upon opening plays the scream of a woman, implying that the audience has killed Eurydice, but the audience is not aware of this until they watch a re-creation on stage of Orpheus and Eurydice falling in love and deciding to get married, the room then goes dark and they hear the same scream of the woman followed by the dead body of Eurydice lying on stage.

Here mixed reality is the DAC that converts thermal sensations to imagery, and it does so in a way to aid storytelling. The interactions are finding their way through the forest by following the warmth. This scene also acts as the setup to the story. Instead of the audience being passive viewers of the lovers parting ways, they become an active participant by being responsible for the death of Eurydice and the grief of Orpheus. They must now find a way to reconcile with them and embark on the rest of their journey. The audience is transformed from an observer to a co-creator or participant in the story. Immersion here is not through enhanced visuals but is achieved by giving the audience greater agency and making them a part of the crew that makes the play happen. While something to a similar effect can be achieved through theater and videogames, mixed reality is uniquely able to use real world haptics to tell stories in an interactive manner that bridges theater and videogames. 

Conclusion 

Considering mixed reality as a multisensorial DAC, where emotions are conveyed through haptic sensations, could redefine how we perceive the conveyed message. This approach involves audience interaction, transforming them from mere observers into active participants in the message as well as its workings. It offers the potential for a deeper understanding of the narrative being communicated.

In the beginning I questioned if immersion in a mixed reality experience could be closer to reading a book than watching TV. For this to be true it depends on how we define a mixed reality experience and our understanding of immersion. 

If we change the way we think about mixed reality from one that is focused on visuals to one that is focused on being multisensorial it changes the definition of mixed reality from being an idea of bringing digital three dimensionality to life to one that views it as any device enabling digital to analogue conversion. This enables us to tell stories through the emotionality of haptics and their manipulation through mixed reality. By viewing mixed reality through the lens of it being a multisensorial DAC, the truth of what could be classified as an mixed reality experience may lie somewhere in-between and is probably something disappointingly mundane like typing on a physical keyboard. While that may not be as exciting as the fantastical visions of mixed reality portrayed by science fiction, it does not take away mixed reality’s ability to be that. It builds on the visual to allow for more profound ways of perceiving the world around us. Ways in which we engage with the media in a more meaningful manner: By not just being observers but also participants in the message. By seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling through the emotionality of haptic sensations that can be transformed and translated.

The second change is how we define immersion. Immersion depends on critical distance, or the distance created by the parts that are left for the audience to fill in, or that are put so close to the fiction that they no longer identify reality. While the preconceived notion of mixed reality is that of it being a medium with the critical distance of the latter where one is completely immersed in their environment, it could also be one that does the opposite by building stories around its affordances of immersion, interactivity, and the transformation of the senses.

Narratives in mixed reality can manifest as a combination of theater and videogames. MR can build on the interactivity of videogames and apply it to the sense of occasion, real life haptics and the live performative aspects of theater. Much of the scenographic wonder in theater is created by giving the audience glimpses of a fictional world and enthralling them by live performances that make them believe in fantasy. By using video game mechanics for storytelling in conjunction with theatrical performances and scenography, we can reinterpret the theatrical experience to be one that is uniquely built for Mixed Reality. 

What does the future hold for mixed reality?  

The technology as we know it today had its origins in the 1960s as a flight simulation tool, for the purposes of space exploration and war. This dichotomous origin is still reflected in people's view of it even today.  While some resist it, citing dystopian portrayals, others embrace its potential to revolutionize daily life. The debate between the two is often informed by the use of the technology as a largely visual medium, but  considering the alternative–where mixed reality is as much about haptic conversions as it is about the visual– could enable ways of Haptic Immersion that are unique to mixed reality storytelling, unlocking new ways of understanding phenomenology and its relationship with technology. An understanding that hopefully brings a synergetic interdependence between the digital and physical.

Works Cited 

Austin, Tricia. Narrative Environments and Experience Design: Space as a Medium of Communication, Routledge, 2020.

Baugh, Christopher. Theatre, Performance and Technology: The Development and Transformation of Scenography. United Kingdom, Macmillan Education UK, 2013.

Rouse, Rebecca, et al. “MRX: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Mixed Reality Experience Design and Criticism.” Digital Creativity, vol. 26, no. 3–4, 2015, pp. 175–181, https://doi.org10.1080/14626268.2015.1100123.

Salter, Chris. Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making. The MIT Press, 2015.

Salter, Chris. Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance. MIT Press, 2010.

“History Of Virtual Reality.” Virtual Reality Society, 2 June 2017, https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/history.html.

Järvinen, Aki. “Understanding Video Games as Emotional Experiences.” The Video Game Theory Reader 2, Routledge, 2008, pp. 107–130.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. United Kingdom, Wiley, 2024.

Milgram, Paul and Fumio Kishino. “A Taxonomy of Mixed Reality Visual Displays.” IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems 77 (1994): 1321-1329.

Murray, Janet H.. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Spain, MIT Press, 1998.

Haggis-Burridge, Phd Mata. Four Categories for Meaningful Discussion of Immersion in Video Games. 2020, http://dx.doi.org/

Supergiant Games. Hades. Supergiant Games, 2020

McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium Is the Message.” Mit.Edu, https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf. Accessed 15 Apr. 2024.

Works Consulted

Clore, Gerald L., and Andrew Ortony. “Psychological Construction in the OCC Model of Emotion.” Emotion Review: Journal of the International Society for Research on Emotion, vol. 5, no. 4, 2013, pp. 335–343, https://doi.org10.1177/1754073913489751.

Weijdom, J. Mixed Reality and the Theatre of the Future: Arts and New Technologies. IETM - International network for contemporary performing arts, 2017.

Palinhos, Jorge, et al. “The Scenographic Space(s) of Augmented Reality.” Dramatic Architectures: Theatre and Performing Arts in Motion, edited by Jorge Palinhos et al., CEAA, 2021, pp. 327–344.

Miller, Mark Roman, et al. “A Large-Scale Study of Proxemics and Gaze in Groups.” Stanfordvr.com, https://stanfordvr.com/mm/2023/03/Space__Time__and_Gaze_in_Social_Virtual_Reality.pdf

Hall, Edward Twitchell. The Hidden Dimension. United Kingdom, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1966.

Jun, Hanseul, and Jeremy Bailenson. “Nonverbal Synchrony, Media, and Emotion.” Stanfordvr.com, https://stanfordvr.com/mm/2021/12/Synchrony-Book-Chapter.pdf. 

Matsuda, Keiichi. HYPER-REALITY. Youtube, 19 May 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs.