Immersive Embodiment: Theatres of Mislocalized Sensation

This research monograph will examine the intersections between applied immersive performance practices, VR/telepresence technologies and recent neuroscientific studies in embodiment. The overarching argument is that to reconcile the paradox of the 'immersed' audience's physical presence in a circumstance beyond their immediate 'here and now', a necessary transformation of the spectator must occur. Concomitantly, I will demonstrate that an ontological desire that undergirds immersive experience is the desire to feel more fully with the body of another - it is this desire that I will argue has precipitated the integration of scientifically-tested body transfer illusions in applied performance. It is my contention that in the context of the selected hybridised case studies examined in Part Two of the book, that illusion-inducing approaches are deployed to access a proximate sensory reconstruction of the ineffable first-person experiences of neurological subjects. I will frame this subset of immersive theatre practices and its interdisciplinary intersection with the scientific study of body-ownership as theatres of referred sensation. Structurally, this book has been divided into two parts. In Part One, the trajectory through the first four chapters is focused on accumulating for the reader the necessary theoretical groundwork. Chapter 1 revisits the enduring philosophical debates in the field of art criticism that have sought to deny the spectator's presence in the reception of art, with immersive theatre belonging to a counter-tradition that art critic Michael Fried had termed as the 'theatrical' artwork. Chapter 2 provides an interdisciplinary examination of how the terms 'immersive' and 'immersion' have come to be defined in fields as diverse as interactive performance, media studies, video-gaming, etc. I will highlight that immersion in the 'theatrical' artwork is undergirded by the problematic ontological promise that spectating bodies might physically 'enter' dramatic or simulated situations. In Chapter 3, I will draw on neuroscientific research in embodiment illusions to highlight a potential reconciliation to the paradox of the spectator's presence 'inside' the elsewhere phenomena of other bodies (referring the immersant's phenomenal sensations to a virtual body/avatar). In Part Two, I will examine how body transfer illusions have been appropriated qualitatively to immerse audiences inside a first-person experience of different kinds of neurodivergent bodies in the applied performance practices of both charities/research organisations (e.g. The National Autistic Society's Too Much Information (TMI) project, Alzheimer's Research UK's VR experience, A Walk Through Dementia etc.) and immersive interactive theatre-makers - for example, Jane Gauntlett/Sublime & Ridiculous (In My Shoes) and BeAnotherLab (The Machine To be Another). I will also examine the development of a practice-based research project within which I was embedded, entitled Transports. This research and development project funded by the Wellcome Trust was a collaboration between Analogue, Parkinson's UK and Prof. Narender Ramnani (a neuroscientist at Royal Holloway University) to develop an immersive installation to transmit physical sensations associated with Young-Onset Parkinson's disease. Finally, I will draw together the different threads of my argument in Chapter 7, before progressing to a summary of my conclusions.