Bodies without organs

a Tactile AND bodied mixed-reality experience

Spaces and bodies are not what they used to be. They are no longer merely isolated and static in their physicality but extended, plastic, virtual, augmented, mixed, and networked. When physical spaces lost their accessibility during recent critical times, spatial computing technologies and SocialVR platforms have not only entered and transformed our built environments into places of remote socialization with their ability to stimulate telepresence but also afforded new online modes of experiencing spatiality and spatial production strategies which build upon the notions of telepresence, and sociability. Consequently, the socio-spatial impacts of SocialVR platforms fundamentally redefine the spaces we inhabit. 

Following this, the multi-user and fully-bodied mixed reality experience of Bodies Without Organs investigates online modes of spatial production that include objects of physical and digital materialities inside the physical/virtual overlap. The project examines the notion of embodied telepresence, tactility, avatars and sociability through assembling a series of intelligent API (Application Programming Interface) such as Pose Estimation, Hand-Tracking, and Passthrough as building blocks that constitute a spatiotemporal and tactile mixed reality experience allowing for a shared and embodied socio-spatial practice rendering itself onto the dwelled physical space with the participation of users’ telepresence from both local and remote places. Arguably, here, the built environment turns into the telecommunication medium where proprioceptive bodies and spaces are streamed across a spatial network.

Keywords: Bodies Without Organs, Spatial Computing, VR/AR Changing Physical Space, IoT, Avatars, Tactility, APIs, Assemblage Theory, Network Actor Theory, Becoming, Proprioception, Social distancing vs Physical distancing, Remote Communication, Embodied Telepresence,  SocialVR, Local vs Global, Plasticity, Materiality, Here&There, MixedReality, Networked, SpatialInterface

./studio3 Institute for experimental architecture

Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Kathrin ASTE