Moving Contexts: How Culture, Context, and Movement Histories Shape Whole-Body Interaction in Aesthetic Environments
Abstract
Immersive whole-body interactive aesthetic installations are prevalent in galleries and museums, however the impacts of design choices on subjective experiences are not well understood. This article recounts the practice-based development and trials of Vector:Interact: a participatory art installation that supports creative movement improvisation through an immersive aesthetic environment with real-time responsive audiovisual effects. We deployed this installation in three contexts: a landmark building in Auckland, a community art collective in Paris, and a studio theatre in Toronto. Threads of the core experience remained constant while other aspects varied drastically: from paradoxes of how physicality affected immersion, to what movement ‘came up,’ to revealing invisible norms shaping how we should or shouldn’t move our bodies. We use theories of somaaesthetics and embodiment to discuss opportunities to support whole-body interaction and discuss challenges in how research of this type is influenced, limited, and facilitated by the different contexts within which it is carried out.
Authors: Danielle M. Lottridge, Sarah Fdili Alaoui, Antje Budde, Mark Chignell, Jessica Gomes-Ng, Joanna Cook, Roy Davies, Rebecca Weber
Published in: International Conference on Movement and Computing (MOCO) (2026)