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Depression and suicidality are characterized by negative imagery as well as impoverished positive imagery. Although some evidence exists supporting the link between positive imagery and enhanced mood, much work needs to be done. This study explored the impact of an immersive virtual reality experience (Edge of the Present—EOTP) on an individual’s mood, state of well-being, and future thinking. Using a 10-min mixed reality experience, 79 individuals explored virtual landscapes within a purposefully built, physical room. A pre and post survey containing mental health measures were administered to each participant. An optional interview following the virtual work was also conducted. The results indicated that positive mood and well-being increased significantly post-intervention. Hopelessness scores and negative mood decreased, whilst sense of presence was very high. This pilot study is among the first to assess the feasibility of a mixed reality experience as a potential platform for depression and suicide prevention by increasing well-being and mood as well as decreasing hopelessness symptoms.

The emergence of a genre of virtual reality at the nexus of human rights is arguably transforming the documentary testimonial genre into one of an affective experience. This is a field of research that raises fundamental questions on the relation between sensation, testimony, evidence and memory. This paper outlines an investigation into the affective potential of immersive media and visualisation technologies to produce appropriate subjectivities for difficult memory and traumatic experience. The 3D immersive project under discussion presents a digital reconstructed reality of the former Australian punitive child welfare institution, Parramatta Girls Home. In this paper, we delineate how we have used the unique aesthetic properties of ambisonic sound, point-cloud representation and scenes of photographic veracity, and how the apposition of these formats provides an encounter with memory itself. Five former residents of Parramatta Girls Home direct our path through a complex visual and ambisonic acoustic environment, a combination we suggest empowers these women to attest to the embodied experience of contested memory.Immersion. Empathy. Narrative. Memory. Imaging and video. Modelling. Point cloud. Multimedia.

This article takes up the concept of performativity prevalent in the humanities and applies it to the design of installation arts in mixed reality mode. Based on the design, development and public access to two specific works, the concept is related to a form of research by design. We argue that the concept of performativity may be further usefully employed in investigations (design and research, artistic and public) into digital arts where complex intersections between concepts, technologies, dramaturgy, media and participant actions are in flux and together constitute the emergence and experience of a work. Theories of performativity are related to these two works in an argument that further suggests there is room in research by design to also include 'performative design'. The article is the result of a wide-ranging interdisciplinary collaboration and aims to convey some sense of that in its reporting style, content and analysis. Keywords: installation art, performativity, research by design, practice-based research, mixed reality, performative design Contexts Art, design, practice & performativity In one way or another, our daily lives are shaped, filtered and filigreed with digital tools and technologies. These are often lodged in our material practices of information search and retrieval, and they are connected to a variety of activities in work and learning, commerce and play. When we think of digital environments we commonly think of desktop interfaces, game worlds or seamless contact via mobile phones. In each of these domains, as users we have direct, active relationships to screen based spaces and the media within them. Alongside such spaces, however, are those realised in and as electronic artworks. Digital art pieces often play with and seek to fissure and deconstruct interface conventions along with our expectations and comfort as participants in which our embodied interaction is central. In such artworks, the aesthetic is often relational. Their poetics is centred on emergence rather than fixity. Self-reflexive qualities often become part of their materiality. They entail performative contributions from visitors as well as ones enacted by the technologies through which they are mediated. Such digital artworks implicate us in the interplay of technologies and the texturing of communication that is made possible by design for participation and through engaged performativity. Many contemporary installation type spaces use a mix of media, static and dynamic, linear, nonlinear and generative. They may be characterized by a type of participative play that involves us as active and implicitly collaborative co-actors and not merely as static, spectatorial audiences. Our embodied engagement is also realised in shifting performativity relations between the immediate context and the distributed character of digitally mediated communication. Andrew Morrison et. al. Designing performativity for mixed reality installations Figures 1 & 2: (Above) Dislocation-on site in the construction of a multi-layered space f...

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