Alone, Together

Inspired by a sentence in my research paper, “AR is constantly looking for planes,” I introduced an “augmented accessory” that the users can wear, which expands a plane around their body. This prototype was meant to challenge how users nowadays are always asked to find a clean surface in order to start an AR experience. With this augmented accessory, the user will have the autonomy of creating a clean plane anytime, anywhere they want.

From this testing session, insights emerged from the participants' behaviors. For example, the users started combining their planes to create a bigger one, or they played with the opposite side of the plane. These insights led me to a series of drawings that reflect on the current methodology (i.e. only the top-side of the AR plane is actionable), and imagine the functions that can be derived from composing the planes in various ways.

One of the drawings indicates two planes overlapping perfectly to create an in-between space. What if that space becomes a place that encrypts some input data? If so, what should human users do to achieve that spatial composition?

These permutations demonstrate potential interactions within a larger group of people. The wiggly forms around the planes are either the indication for possible behaviors of how humans can interact with each other, or the interchange of information/data in these intersectional spaces. If we apply the same concpets of spatial-physical correlations on other permutations of the planes, we can delineate possible applications for decentralized networks, filtering/sharing data, etc.

We can further articulate this relation with VR’s volumentric space, and imagine the correlations between volumes or even between planar and volumentric spaces.

By intermingling these spatial units and speculating how do we perform our body to achieve the compositions, sociality stemming from this technology starts emerging from these moments when we apply this framework to the physical actions in immersive reality experiences.

For instance, when we only hug with people who's very dear to us, that level of intimacy and trust creates a layer of credibility for this relationship that allows data encryption to take place. This proposal provides the digital experience a viseral feedback—the physical interaction. But then questions like what is a genuine gesture, what is performative, or what is the gesture for decryption will arise.

So far, all the scenarios are build upon the premise of users residing in the same experience. But what if they aren’t? Additionally, all the prototypes above are only examining the technological parts but nothing about the human parts, the users. Therefore, Alone, Together starts another thread on user interaction: when we observe the users while they are in an immersive experience, their gestures can be interpreted with some personality, or material conditions. So every experience is assigned to one condition by the way its user operates within, which could be aggressive, calm, rigid, or flexible.


To further explore the idea of materiality, I made a balloon suit to both simulate the volume of a virtual experience and examine how the fragility and elasticity of the suit will change the user’s behavior. The observation that users meticulously slowed down their own actions when they needed to go through a gate/entrance inspired me with the concept of virtual threshold.

Building on this concept, we can design a system for a city to choreograph different experiences. In the video, different colors represent a zone or a lane, like a highway, that only allows realities that have similar or complimentary conditions to be experienced. When a user wants to switch to another reality, what does a transitional experience look like? Should it be seamless or seamful? Who determines the range of an experience?