Augmented horizons for a sustainable environment
How the environment influences our subjective reality
The human-made environment generates bodily sensations, and, as a consequence, emotions such as familiarity, safety, well-being, joy, happiness, disgust, pleasure, pain, anger, fear and so on. The emotions we perceive so distinctly are based on the self-conscious response of the brain to visceral feelings that emerge from our inner body. All our senses merge in responding to the stimuli from the environment. Therefore, with our eyes closed, we feel the changes of our organic body more distinctly; the sounds, sensations — and, the self-conscious, emotional responses shaping up in the shadow of the external world. Emotions, as conscious projections of our mind on our environment, are experienced in shape of concrete figures, palpable forms that contribute to a subjective and reproducible reality inside ourselves. Emotions can be studied using Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) to explore the subjective responses to the physical environment. By augmenting the flow of images that we receive from the virtual environment with signals from the inner body, for instance by visualising our heartbeats in a so-called biofeedback loop, it is possible to modify our emotions and to experience the appearance of novel, unexpected ones.
The famous psychologist William James once wrote that in our daily experience, intuitively, this emerging emotional process which is based on bodily sensation, does not seem to match the way in which we feel something to be ‘real’. Since then, many empirical studies at the laboratory have shown that human perception relies on a global sense of reality based on selective attention. Today, through technology, the human environment appears to be more malleable, custom-made and adaptive than ever before. Recent applications, such as immersive and interactive VR/AR, haptic devices or biofeedback, show that it is possible to augment the user’s horizon through multisensory signals, in which several of our sensory modalities are merged together into one realistic effect. Visual contents, for instance, can be enhanced in combination with other sensory modalities like sound, touch, smell or temperature. Scientific investigations show that different aspects of embodiment influence the user’s sense of presence in VR including feelings of depth, well-being, as well as mood or emotions. This can contribute to the definition of individual, subjective design parameters in VR/AR based on human behavior. This improved understanding of human behavior provides us with an opportunity to support ecological sustainability, social interaction and a healthy environment through planning processes: If we know how people react to particular stimuli, we can design better places supporting a happier life.
Custom-made realities
In the coming decades, increasing urban density and evolving lifestyles will further impact our environment on a global scale. Are we well equipped for these challenges? Are we developing technologies that direct such effects towards positive change? The intensified usage of the natural environment, for instance, affects not only the production and distribution of goods, but also the quality of inhabitation, biodiversity. How can we create novel technologies that support this development much in favor of sustainable interactions with our social and natural environment? For instance, could VR/AR become a useful tool to assess the effects of a planned building on its future users, without requiring them to read technical plans at all. In the long run, and in a shift of focus from the necessities of a physical infrastructure towards a digital and custom-made landscape based on multisensory enhancement, “less will be more” by improving the users’ experience and at the same time reducing the environmental impact. In this context, the smooth transition in between realities is a relevant subject in VR/AR. Since its beginnings in the early 70s to support human-machine interaction, VR/AR has become mainstream and will gain more and more relevance in the near future. The current overall shift from physical to digital opens a potential for improvement, for instance by creating straightforward and easy access to highly specialized contents. For many activities, physical presence will become obsolete, significantly reducing the human efforts of traveling, management, and monitoring. The ‘realistic’ character of VR/AR content delivered by immersive and interactive technologies enables us to project ourselves into ephemeral forms of narration with a high emotional impact. Beyond its role in substituting the physical environment, it supports learning processes at a much deeper level, by influencing our inner experience.
VR/AR for the greater good
How can immersive VR/AR indeed contribute to a healthier and more sustainable environment? With immersive VR/AR technologies, we perceive opportunities for novel ways of imagining and inhabiting our environment. A link between data visualization and interactive VR/AR will provide us with augmented places that can be easily accessed and monitored in real-time. This will not only concern infrastructure as mentioned above, but also the development of a healthier and more diverse home and work environment. VR/AR in combination with emotional assessment will furthermore be relevant in supporting decision-making and investments in the long run, but also in promoting the inclusion of broad population groups that remain otherwise excluded in planning processes. This means also that participative planning will gain another dimension. Digitally enhanced environments will provide individual solutions for health and education. Any of these applications depend on the quality of the emotional experience, and, if well implemented, have a positive impact on both, the resources and our well-being.
In her work, Isabella explores the mutual and intimate relationship between the human body and the physical environment by extending the boundaries of the body toward a multisensory enhancement of the visual horizon through immersive multimedia. For her PhD (2012, Swiss National Foundation grant) at the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at EPFL, she empirically investigated the perception of space at the lab. For her Post-Doc project “Visual Touches — Touching Views” (2013–2016, the cogito foundation fellowship grant) at the Center of Neuroprosthetics (EPFL), she inquired about the emotional response to the environment in immersive VR. She presented this research at international science, art and architecture venues, among others at the Salk Institute in La Holla and the Venice Biennale in 2016. Please have a look at the special edition on embodiment in art and architecture that Isabella recently co-edited in Frontiers in cognitive science.
I wrote this article for Ricolab, the independent, radical innovation lab of Swiss SME Ricola. Ricolab works at the intersection of herbs & technology, prototyping businesses that combine traditional knowledge and innovative technology with a focus on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). This article builds on the discussions and learnings of Ricolab’s first meeting on Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) and Nature for Good, that took place in 2017. The event aimed at creating and sharing knowledge on how VR/AR & Nature can be used for good. I was asked to give my perspective on VR, how it links to my field (design, embodied space and self-consciousness) and where the future opportunities of these technologies lie.
