Negotiating Difference in 'Soma,' a Social VR Experience

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The ‘empathy machine’ is a claim that has been directed at the assumed potential of virtual reality (VR) (Sanchez Laws, 2017). Other common claims relate to the potential for VR to enable first-person experience and transformation of self (Slater, 2009) or to ‘body ownership’ and ‘full body illusion’ (Schoeller et al, 2019; Maister et al, 2015) where it is claimed that when a person embodies another in VR, there is a blurring of self and other (Hasson et al, 2019). Other claims value the spaces in between the real and virtual as sites of disruption, asking critical questions about presence and immersion (Wilson, 2020). In this conflicted space, the lecture will focus on Soma, an hour-long collective participatory experience that takes participants on a sensory journey and offers them the opportunity to explore different ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘feeling’ across physical, virtual, and imagined realities. The piece explores the tension between somatic experience, our capacity to sense and feel our living and moving bodies, and the ocular-centric realm of VR technology. In Soma, the negotiation between bodies inhabiting both physical and virtual environments invites disruption to the promissory aims of ‘blended immersion’ sought by many VR experience makers.

“I think there was something happening within me - it’s like I was waking up” (Soma participant).

Soma was developed as a performance supported by a grant from Arts Council England. Initially developed to include dancer guides taking participants through sensory collaborative play in the Soma world, in 2023, we developed and tested a version of Soma, without the dancers, in which participants are invited to guide one another through the experience. Soma was proposed as a practice to think and move through some of the ways in which sociodigital futures are being envisaged, with immersive technologies, and the ethical issues and considerations that arise including challenging the claims to empathy. Soma can be used as an experiential method to provoke dialogue and speculate on more equitable and inclusive alternative futures.

soma-project.co.uk

**Lisa May Thomas **is a dance artist and researcher. She is a Senior Research Associate at the ESRC funded Centre for Sociodigital Futures at the University of Bristol. She investigates the intersections between dance, embodied participation and immersive technology. Lisa is a resident at the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol and Studio Wayne McGregor QuestLab Network Artist. Her practice-as-research Ph.D. at the University of Bristol investigated the role of digital technologies in performance, combining dance-somatic and improvisation practices with multi-person VR technology. Recently, she directed VR participatory performance work Soma (Bloomsbury Theatre 2021) and the participatory binaural sound experience Unlocking Touch in collaboration with UCL’s Digital InTouch Lab (2022).

metaLAB is partnering with the Mahindra Humanities Center to sponsor the Transmedia Arts Seminar, chaired by metaLAB Principal Researcher, Magda Romanska, and an Affiliate, Ramona Mosse.