Aesthetics of Immersion in Interactive Immersive Installation

: Phenomenological Case Study

Jinsil Hwaryoung Seo
Texas A&M University
College Station, USA
[email protected]

Abstract
This paper examines the aesthetics of immersive experience in
Light Strings, an interactive immersive environment. One of
prominent aspects of Interactive Art is the notion of immersion.
The concept of immersion is generally defined as a viewer
forgetting the real world outside of the virtual environment and
by a sense of being in a make-believe world generated by
computational hardware and software. As an interactive artist and
researcher, I conceive of immersion as any experience where
integrated bodily, conscious, and pre-conscious states thoroughly
intertwine with the world. Moreover immersion is where mind,
body and environment interweave and communicate with each
other inside of technically-mediated, spatially enclosed, and
sensuously-interactive computational environments. Light Strings
was created based on my previous art practice and research into
immersion as a way to study participants experiences with the
artwork. In the participant study of Light Strings, participants
were encouraged to describe the felt experiences of the
installation through phenomenologically oriented research
methods. As a result, an experiential model of the participants
experiences was developed by exploring bodily, spatial, and
contextual consciousness with temporal considerations.

Keywords
Immersive installation, aesthetics of immersion, immersive Consciousness, audio-visual, case study

Introduction
One prominent aspect of Interactive Art is a notion of
immersion. Immersion has been historically explored
mostly by literary and film theorists and more recently, by
Virtual Reality (VR) scientists and artists. It is generally
defined as a viewer forgetting the real world outside of
the virtual environment and by a sense of being in a
simulated world generated by computational hardware and
software. Most research into immersive experience has
been conducted from a scientific perspective. The scientific
research tradition typically standardizes or objectifies
results and doesnt focus on the meanings and qualities of
experience. Similar to other scientific studies, immersion
researchers have largely used quantitative/empirical
methods, such as measuring physiological data and
conducting surveys after the participants experience. [1-3]

In a movement parallel to Computer Science research,

many Interactive Artists have also explored immersion
within VR environments in collaboration with computer
scientists in many times. Their general approach to
immersion is somewhat different from those of scientists.
Artists have explored full-body, sensory immersion
through their artistic creations. [4-6] Their approaches
countered the disembodying tendency of virtual reality
discourses and their artistic pursuit was centred on creating
immersive experiences using new technology (new
hardware or complex systems). Rather than quantifying the
participants immersive experience, their focus was on
creating new immersive experiences.
As an artist, I create interactive immersive installations
exploring the idea of embodiment and materiality. My artist skills and interests have led me to experimenting with
soft materials and light to create immersive environments.
From over 15 years of experience with digital technology
in Interactive Art, I believe that technology can help us to
experience nostalgia and relive our memories, reawaken
habituated senses and provide opportunities to perceive
new things in a creative way. In this study, I created an
interactive immersive installation, Light Strings and conducted participant study to examine how participants experience immersion, how immersion is constructed in my
installation and what the main qualities are of the environment. This paper analyzes aesthetics of immersive experience collected from a case study. Participants were encouraged to describe their felt experiences through phenomenologically-oriented research methods. This allowed me to
gather various data on participant experience.

Background
Understanding Immersion
The sense of immersion has been explored for a long time
but there is no set or universally agreed upon definition for
this term because all approaches converge on the word
immersion from different knowledge areas. The term is
widely used for describing immersive virtual reality, installation art and video games, but no one meaning
dominates. Its meaning remains vague, but common to
each meaning is the connotation of being absorbed, engaged and embraced. Different disciplines use these differ-

ent definitions. This means that immersion has multiple,

flexible qualities that can be applied in different situations.

Contemporary Views
Immersion in New Media
Since the 1990s, more in-depth research on immersion has
been conducted in the Arts and Humanities. The result is
two streams of scholars and artists. One stream explores
various immersive experiences in different realms:
videogames, narrative, and human experience. The other
stream focuses on building immersive experience within
immersive VR spaces.
Salen & Zimmerman call immersion double
consciousness, that the game player is fully aware of the
character as an artificial construct. They argue that this
makes character-based game play a rich and multi-layered
experience. [7] For Bolter and Gromala, a participants
awareness oscillates between feeling immersed and being
aware of an immersive environment. However participants
most of the time are still aware of the real environment and
get immersed from the interplay between real media and
virtual contents. [8]
Many other researchers have focused on the desire to
use technology as the defining factors in immersion; they
describe the term immersion as immersion into presence,
a state of being engaged; in this way presence is a psychologically emergent property of an immersive system. Immersion describes a condition; presence describes an associated state of consciousness. [9] Carol Manetta and Richard Blade defined immersion as an observers emotional
reaction to being part of a virtual world. [10] They consider immersion as mental process created during the use of
immersive VR systems that include HMDs and other
equipment. Immersion can be stimulating process, but in
most cases immersion absorbs and provokes a process, a
change, and a passage from one mental state to another.
[11]
Immersion in Interactive Art
Immersion is in part a spatial experience, in the sense of
enveloping the participant in a discrete and panoramic
space. Moreover, it is also a temporal experience when
combined with computational components. It creates an
intimate connection as a constitutive element of
reflection, self-discovery, and the experience of art and
nature. [11] Immersion is considered paradoxically as
distance, as absorption, and as space and time blur in the
immersive environment. The pioneering immersive artist
Davies explored the concept of immersion using the
metaphor of scuba diving (submersing in water) and using
a concept of cognitive absorption in her projects [4].
Around the 1960s, early new media artists conducted
experiments related to immersion. Artists and designers
have new possibilities for interactive immersive works
become more accessible and more powerful with
programming tools. In relation to VR art, the sense of

immersion is being explored in art projects that encourage

the active involvement of the participant and evoke senses
and/or fully engage with attention. Interactive artists often
try to use limited, inexpensive technology but in creative
ways to examine the sense of immersion because it is hard
for them to use very expensive equipment and because the
sense of immersion does not require photo-realistic or
technologically complex multi-sensory environments.
Immersion can be created from perceptual cues. [12]
Immersion in Physical Environment
Immersive spaces create subliminal awe [13], helping
the viewer/participant become aware of inherent or internal
body senses. Physically immersive environments expand
the boundary of our vision and create imagination evoking
immersive feelings from materials that affect with
perceptions of dimension. Physical installations do not
include normal architectural rooms or spaces where we live
in the everyday life. Even though we are physically
surrounded by a room or nature and may be engaged to
something in the space, it is hard to call the phenomenon
immersion. When we are habituated to the space, we are
rarely aware of our connections to the environment and the
reciprocal relationships within the space. In my study of
immersion, it is critical to recognize that immersive
consciousness is constructed through embodied experience
in the relationships among body, mind and the world.

Methodology
Methodological Background
Art has been acknowledged as research among practitioners, theorists, and educators. [14] In contrast to academic
and scientific research emphasizing the generalizability
and repeatability of knowledge, art research expresses a
form of experience-based knowledge [15] and explores
subjective qualities of experience. Artists identify researchable problems discovered in practice, and respond or
solve them through professional practice. Therefore, artists
know their works and the questions around the works better than any other researchers. An artist is a researcher who
has multifaceted roles: material experimenter, space designer, fabricator, critic, documenter and audience. [16] In
other words, it is ideal that artists take a lead role in the
research of their works, rather than being separated from
the research process. In that respect, artists research activities seem to be appropriate for Baumgartens classical definition of the aesthetic domain.

Phenomenological Approach
In the realm of art research, there has not been much work
dealing with research methods because artists interests
often lean more towards creating new works than investigating the aesthetic qualities and meanings of participant
experience. However recent movements in interactive art
indicate that some interactive artists put value on the quali-

ties and meanings of participants experience with their

works as well as the process of artistic creation. Phenomenology, especially as contained in Merleau-Pontys work,
has been acknowledged as an appropriate research method
by contemporary new media artists. Phenomenology is not
a single method. Phenomenological methods have been
adopted and developed in many disciplines and are being
actively explored in Cognitive Science and Human Science
including Nursing. Because of the nature of phenomenology, there are multiple interpretations and modifications of
phenomenological philosophy and phenomenological research methodology. However the focus is always to get
descriptions about subjective experience from the firstperson perspective in their fullest breadth and depth. [17]

Phenomenological Case Study

provoke a strong visceral feeling. The branching and joining of physical material and technology in my work echoes
the symbiotic relationship between human and technology,
exploring the idea of hylozoism [21] or life from material. In the process of art creation, fiber optics are not simply
cold plastic strands to me. They live in the space the same
as other computer generated interactive elements and participants as well as myself. This encourages active, self
determined relationships within a work of art.

Implementation of Light Strings

The physical space of Light Strings (Figure 2) consists of
over 2500 strands of fiber optics hung from the ceiling. I
used custom produced, straightened fiber optics. Each end
of the fiber optic strand was directly mapped to a point in
the projection grid.

Concept of Light Strings

Bodily Experience
The idea of considering the body as a main felt medium
inspired by phenomenologists, Merleau-Ponty [18], Varela
[19], and Johnson [20] has been a strong motivation for me
to create interactive environmental works. Treating Body
as not separated from the being who experiences an interactive work was critical while I developed my ideas of
immersion. In Light Strings, bodily and sensorial aspects of
the immersive experience were emphasized as one of the
key properties of immersion. The participants body connects to the physical and virtual world through movement.
Movement that occurs within an environment makes intimate connections and interactions with aspects of that environment. I built an immersive environment that makes an
immediate connection to the body. There is no direct sensory mapping for interaction. Any kind of bodily movement affects the environment and computational system,
creating unique but varied qualities. To pursue this concept,
I focused on the creation of a physically immersive installation.
Physically Immersive Space
In Light Strings, I tried to create a physically embracing
space that is flexible and open, and provides participants
with free movement in the space. Participants and multimedia agents co-exist and meet in Light Strings through
touching and using their whole bodies. Full freedom of
physical body movement, creating relations to the physical
installation and a virtual world is a critical condition of
Light Strings.
Since I create physically immersive environments that
engage bodily experience, materials are very important for
me as an artistic media. Physical materials are simple, direct, and apparent in and of themselves. Once they are
combined with digital technology, materials are no longer
simple. They become complex, integrated and interconnected and these new relationships create their own beauty.
When they move, responding to the participants motion in
varying scales from wearables to environments, they can

Figure 1. Audience Interaction with Light Strings

The interactive system design began with observations of

participant experience. First of all, I tried the environment
by myself with my collaborators. This exploration
provided an ability to understand the range of movement
possible in the space. Then, I invited a participant and
observed their movement in the space without any
interactive elements. I was able to classify their
movements into four categories: ambient, exploration,
play, and meditation.
Ambient mode: no audience in the space.
Exploration mode: slow walking
Play mode: very active, fast movement
Meditation mode: very slow or static movement
Based on this categorization, my sound collaborator and
I started design behaviours for virtual agents (visual and
sound) responding to participant behaviour by referencing
the modes of movements. In addition, the agents own
behaviours were also designed. Similar to other living
beings behaviours, they come together, fight, and ignore
each other sometimes.

Interactive System Design

The setup of Light Strings is a combination of three groups
of equipment: a motion tracking system, a visual system, a

sound system as well as a fiber optic structure. The motion

tracking system consists of a computer (Macintosh), two
video converters and two infrared (IR) cameras hung on
the ceiling grid. The computer continuously tracks
participants movement in the space, and analyzes the
movement and sends the movement data to the visual and
sound systems. The visual system consists of a computer
(PC) and a projector that projects visual data on the grid of
fiber optics bundles. The sound system has a computer, the
audio interface and four speakers. M-Audio, an audio
interface, spatializes the sound processed through the four
speakers.

beings in the same space. They dont care about the pink
ones or the participant.

Figure 3. Diagram of the visual agents behaviors

The images of the agents rendered by the system are

projected on to the ends of a bundle of fiber optics. The
fiber optic strands that fill up the installation space create a
tactile light space allowing the light animation to move in
the fiber optics hanging around the space. The behavioral
movements of the agents create the illusion that they are
alive.

Figure 2. Technical Setup for Light Strings

Motion Tracking System

Two IR cameras detect the participants motion in the
installation. The light emitted by the fiber optics has a low
level of infrared spectrum. This allows the use of IR
cameras for tracking the movements of visitors in the
space. Video images from two IR cameras were stitched
together and the custom created application provided
variables to produce interactive virtual agents. The visual
and sound system received these values over the network
and generated the interactive multimedia.
Visual System
The visual system consisted of a PC and a projector. The
graphical aspect of visual agents was implemented using
Processing. In the graphic environment, 8 to 10 visual
agents are created and they move around depending on
their characteristics and behaviours assigned to them
initially. There are two kinds of visual agents: active and
inactive. Two different colors (pink and blue) represent
their characteristics. The pink ones behave actively and the
blue ones are inactive. Their initial characteristics (color,
size, movement, speed) may be changed in response to the
participants behaviour. All visual agents have circular
shapes. Their sizes are randomly assigned between 80 to
100 pixels in diameter. The initial active agents (pink) are
floating around in the space. They move faster than
inactive agents (blue). They are curious and friendly beings
and they explore the environment very dynamically. When
they hit each other, they bounce off each other. The
inactive agents are slow and less friendly beings. They tend
to gather in one area. They are not interested in other

Sound System
The sound system works along with the visual system to
create an immersive environment. Our goal was to create
natural but elemental sounds that respond to the participants movement. They work as environmental sound
agents similar to air in that they move around regardless of
human existence and people can feel them through the
movement of their bodies. The environment contains initial
sound elements from white noise in Max, a visual programming language for music and multimedia. They are
activated when the participants movement is detected in
the space and come and go while interacting with the participant.

Study Design
In the study, I focused on getting participants experience
from their first-person perspectives. To support the
subjective first-person data, other data collection methods
such as interviewing (second-person) and video recording
(third-person) were also used. I used Light Strings as a case
study to look at participants qualities of aesthetics of
immersive experience. The overall process can be
summarized as 1) gathering a full set of nave descriptions
from participants who had experienced Light Strings; 2)
analyzing the descriptions in order to grasp common
elements that make the experience what it is; and 3)
describing or giving a clear, accurate and articulate account
of the phenomenon so that it can be understood by others.
Participants and Study Condition
16 participants were recruited through an open email call
that was available to the general public. They were given
ample opportunity to accept or decline. They were asked to

pay attention to their sensory experience and felt

experience. The participants had a chance to experience
Light Strings three times with different conditions (Both,
Visual, and Sound). The physical environment was the
same for all three conditions. In the Both session Light
Strings had visual elements and sound elements. In the
Visual session, the sound elements were taken away and
the participants only experienced responsive light patterns
in the environment. In the Sound session, there were no
visual images, only a soundscape filled with fiber optic
strings. Early test runs showed that the participants
experiences were affected by the order they experienced
the three sessions. Therefore I used four different orders of
the three sessions to structure the study (Table 1).
Table 1. Four different orders of participants studies

4people

Session
1
Both

Session
2
Visual

Session
3
Sound

4people

Both

Sound

Visual

1:30-2h

4people

Visual

Sound

Both

1:30-2h

4people

Sound

Visual

Both

1:30-2h

Duration
1:30-2h

Procedure
Participants in the study were asked to experience Light
Strings, three times for as long as they want to stay. They
were free to do anything and there were no time limitations
on how long they stayed in the installation. Participants
experienced Light Strings aesthetically via the artworks
kinaesthetic tactile quality as well as visual and auditory
qualities. While the participants were experiencing Light
Strings, their movement inside of the installation was video
captured. Light Strings was already capturing the
participants movement from above using two IR cameras
to analyze movement in the space in order to create
responsive virtual agents that the participants can interact
with. Therefore, I was able to record the camera capture
screen using another video camera. This video data was
digitized and processed to investigate how the participants
moved and behaved in the installation. I did not extract the
video images from the motion analysis process because
recording a video at the same time as analyzing it uses too
much of computers processing ability and made the entire
system unstable.
After each session of experience, the light level of the
room was adjusted for the next activity and the participant
was guided to a writing station. Participants were provided
a single card with three open-ended questions: What did
you experience?, How did you experience? and How
did you feel? They were asked to write down their
experiences quickly and fearlessly when answering the
questions. The quick writing process without analytical
thinking helps to extract their subjective experience
effectively. The participants were instructed: think back
and describe your subjective experience of the artwork as
much detail as possible. They were assured of the
confidentiality of the information. They could write, note

or draw their experiences in a hand written journaling

form. This would give the participants the opportunity to
take their time and to reflect on their experiences and to
reconstruct the event in more detail on their own, without
interference.
As soon as the writing session ended, participants were
involved in an interview procedure. The participants were
told that the interviews would be treated confidentially.
The research instruments for the interview was an openended method. This protocol focuses on the researcher
facilitating the participant in articulating a description of
their experience, creating a phenomenological description.
Each interview was digitally video-recorded. Video files
were marked only with the session number and the participant number. Transcriptions of the interview were used for
the analysis of the data. The participants experienced three
sessions of the installation experience and wrote three
times and interviewed three times.

Data Collection and Analysis

16 participants provided written descriptions of their experience by responding to three questions: What did you
experience?, How did you experience?, How did you
feel? (first-person data). Second-person data (of the participants experience) was collected using an interview
technique adopted from Petitmengin [22] and Varela [23].
All the participants bodily movements in the environment
were video recorded and digitized (third-person data).
After the collected data were transcribed and coded, I
focused on themes arising from the data. In the end, all
the different themes were grouped for each participant and
used to construct a model of qualities of the participants
immersive experience. This allowed the individual models
and general model to be developed concurrently while being compared for validity. Based on the analysis, I constructed a combined model of immersive experience which
can be used to develop a further understanding of the aesthetics of immersive experience.

Aesthetics of Immersive Experience

The focus of the research was to investigate the qualities of
participants immersive experience in physically immersive and interactive environments and explore to find
meanings created by the experience. During the case study,
it became apparent that the participants experiences in
Light Strings were immersive. Unlike other researchers
understanding of immersion, I focus on bodily experience
engaged with culture, society, environment, and history.
My analysis concentrates on building an experiential structure based on immersive consciousness considering temporal aspects.

It was really hard to think of other things during that. I was

sensorially overwhelmed by how cool that was.

Figure 4. Experience structure of Immersive Experience

Immersive Consciousness

The notion of Immersive Consciousness that is built

through my analysis is framed by Bodily Consciousness,
Spatial Consciousness and Contextual Consciousness
(Figure 4). I describe each of these elements in detail
below. I have found that by using this model I am able to
recognize similarities in sensorial and felt experience and
processes across participants. In this paper, I define
consciousness as embodied akin to the way it is defined by
contemporary
cognitive
scientists
[24-26].
Our
consciousness can be affected by the existence of body or
somatic or enactive processes. Therefore, Immersive
Consciousness illustrates embodied consciousness as
experienced through the body and explains how
participants perceive an immersive space and make
meanings out of it.
Bodily Consciousness
Body Consciousness focuses on the sensory experience of
the participants in Light Strings. We learn and understand
the world through our bodies. This is not just about a body
rather a body in the space and in relationship to the installation. It is always connected to the world we live. Therefore investigating participants sensory experiences allows
me to examine the origin of immersive experience and
frame immersive consciousness in terms of embodiment.
Since Light Strings is a physically immersive installation,
the participants experienced and described various sensory
experiences including exteroceptive senses (sight, hearing,
and touch) and interoceptive senses (proprioception, kinesthetics, and vestibular sense). The bodily consciousness
includes mostly sensory experience focusing on what is
seen, heard, touched, felt and some emotional valence from
the sensory experience. Due to the aesthetic characteristics
of Light Strings, multiple senses were stimulated and
helped to create sense of immersion. Sensual richness
helped create a deeper sense of immersion. It is also important to acknowledge that bodily consciousness is closely connected to spatial and contextual consciousness
New Sensations: Awe and Disrupted sensory habituation
Many participants described the experience in Light
Strings as extremely new and said they never had a similar
experience before. This was connected a feeling of being
overwhelmed in the sense that their experience was
sensorially very stimulating (awe).

In Light Strings, the habituated perception of not being

aware of any tactile feeling when we walk normally
became disrupted. Light Strings is filled with fiber optic
strings at a distance of three inches from each other.
Therefore, any movement in the environment causes the
fiber optic strands to touch the body. Descriptions from
participants revealed feelings about new sensations that
they did not experience in a daily life.
It was like experiencing air

From this reawakened sensory experience, many sensory

descriptions were collected. The descriptions focused on
heightened individual senses. Sometimes senses were
associated together and the participants experienced what
might be described as a form of synesthesia, that is a
recombination of their senses.
Associated Senses
Many of the participants said that they noticed two
sensations at the same time. Senses worked together. In
particular, the Both session showed a combination of
sensory elements that really came together effectively. The
associated sensations helped the participants to get
engaged and immersed in the environment and created
emotional and imaginative experiences. When the
participants noticed two or more sensations at the same
time, they often constructed associations and found
meanings.
The tactile modality functioned primarily to integrate
with the other senses. When other senses (visual or sonic)
are prominent, the tactile sense intensifies those senses. In
addition, the physicality and materiality of the fiber optics
extended and enhanced the perceived quality of
dynamicism.
As I was moving through the fiber optics I just felt again that
tactility but also the visual beauty of the lights combining
together and moving away. And so that really had my focus for
a really long time.

Spatial Consciousness
Many participants described Light Strings as a space not an
object. This is important that they perceived it not just by
seeing with their eyes but via embodied seeing through the
whole body. Light Strings provided an opportunity to expand their conscious experience through the space. Participants spatial consciousness can be characterized by an
emphasis on the sensation of a different world, metaphoric
space, embodied space, and vast or proximal scales.
Different Space/World
In the installation, many participants experienced a
different space/world, very different from outside.
Moreover the participants experiences in each session

were very different depending on the computer generated

visuals and sound. At a basic level, the space was
physically always the same, only the media changed. In
general, where it was visual-centric, the space was
perceived as warm, enclosed, meditative space. Many
participants described these different worlds using
metaphors from their memory, movies, and books.
I feel like Im in a different space; some kind of entering into
another dimension or something a space that you can
explore, but at the same time, you feel like youre floating. You
feel the curve and things like that.

Metaphoric Spaces
After experiencing Light Strings, many participants
reported that it is difficult to describe their experience in
words. In the process of perceiving the space, the
participants attempted to relate their bodily feeling to their
previous knowledge or experience using metaphors (all 16
participants). Qualities of physical sensation evoked
metaphors. The prevalence of metaphors means that as the
participants were paying attention to their physical
sensations, their imagination generated metaphors for the
experience. The richness of poetic description really came
from the interplay of their experience with the media of the
system. This shows the success of the piece in terms of
immersion.

Embodied Space
Space is often defined by constituent and their behaviours:
how inhabitants make a connection to environmental behaviors and how they frame it constitutes their space. If we
look at Light Strings in terms of experiential qualities, it
can be interpreted as a playful and meditative space. The
most obvious qualities that the participants felt from the
space were playfulness and meditativeness. These were
characterized by the participants as extremely embodied. In
the descriptions of the participants experience, two different spaces (playful and meditative spaces) were being appeared depending on interaction with the environment.
It felt very playful, kind of organic experience. It was very
flexible and fluid and promoted my curiosity and sort of
seemed to engage back because it was responsive and I really
liked that. I just felt very open to it and sort of calm and curious at the same time.
Very small like um..at one point I just started collecting one
string with another string and looking at it and then another
string..its like watching insects. As opposed to running around
in a forest trying to climb trees. Thats kind of the experience,
its more quiet, more gentle, more detail.

Different Spatial Scale

The most interesting phenomenon of the immersive experience observed was that the participants perceived the
space at widely different scales. Light Strings was perceived as two environments (vast and proximal) at the
same time. The idea of multiple worlds means that the participants were able to connect to the physical sensation of
vastness at the same time as noticing intimate poetic extrapolations. The specific amount of space in the installation was really contained. The participants were contained
within the space but their subjective responses expanded
beyond it. However, the space was often sensed and perceived as differently sized in a positive sense, evoking a
feeling of wonder.

Discussion and Conclusion

Figure 5. Metaphoric Spaces

Error! Reference source not found. is a visualization

of word frequency in the descriptions of the participants
experience drawn from the written responses and interview
data. All the metaphoric words for the space were collected
and categorized by sensory modality. Some metaphors
directly represent visual, sonic and tactile space such as
fireflies and northern lights for visual space, wind and
storm for sonic space, and bushes for tactile space.
However, there were metaphors representing associated
sensory spaces such as grass field for visual and tactile
association. Different aspects of the sensory experience
helped to build imaginative metaphoric spaces.

Light Strings is a minimalistic but physically surrounded

environment: it operates as part of a phenomenological
case study. In the project, the physically immersive
environment was created using fiber optic strings, with
interactive components projected through the fiber optics
and a surround-sound system. Due to the artistic use of
fiber optics, kinesthetic tactility was found to be the main
sense used in experiencing Light Strings, in association
with other senses. The study reveals the primary qualities
of Light Strings: connection, engagement, and attention.
Light Strings became a medium for creating the
participants narratives by provoking metaphors. The
participants brought various narratives and images related
to nature and natural experience from the memories, books,
and movies. Immersive environments like Light Strings

provoke the participants into being creators instead of

passive receptors.
The whole experience in Light Strings can be interpreted
as a meaning making experience with an immersive
property that is co-constructed by the environment and
participant. In the model I elucidate in this paper,
immersion consists of bodily, spatial, and contextual
consciousness. This model suggests how to explore
immersion as a meaningful experience. My research
journey through this model shows that immersion is not
only present in virtual reality environments but also in
physical but interactive realities that strengthen body,
space, and contextual consciousness. This is very critical. I
believe that awareness of our immersive experience will
provide a highly promising path for transforming all fields
of human experience, including the artistic, medical,
pedagogical, and entertainment fields.

Acknowledgements
Dr. Greg Corness; Dr. Diane Gromala; Dr. Thecla
Schiphorst; School of Interactive Arts and Technology at
Simon Fraser University: Department of Visualization at
Texas A&M University

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