XR + Spatial: Introduction

Extended Reality (XR) — encompassing Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) — is redefining how we experience and interact with environments, information, and each other. Spatial design within XR moves beyond single flat screens, aiming for immersive, multi-dimensional experiences where physical and digital realities blend.

This area of design focuses on crafting environments, narratives, and interfaces that live within three-dimensional space — whether fully virtual, layered over the real world, or a hybrid of both. It demands new ways of thinking about presence, movement, human emotion, and spatial storytelling, requiring interdisciplinary approaches that draw from architecture, interaction design, visual communication, psychology, and sound.

This section of my work explores how designing for presence — in all its forms — opens new possibilities for education, storytelling, cultural memory, and expanded creative practice.

A bit about my VR/XR Background

In XR and spatial design, the user isn’t just a viewer — they become an active participant. Experiences must feel intuitive, emotionally resonant, and deeply human, while navigating emerging technologies, platforms, and cultural shifts. Below are a few project galleries that visually document my engagement and work within the VR/XR industry since 2014 (the tumblr watermarks, Oculus DK1’s and DK2’s!! 😂). Seriously though, I’ve worked across professional VR startups, exhibitions, educational workshops, conferences and more for over a decade.

Amsterdam and Cologne VR Collective and GamesCon circa 2014

XR Bridging Physical and Digital Space

In this 2015 project (you can see I’m using an Oculus DK2) immersive VR spatial experience needed to represent exact measurements and characteristics of physical surroundings. This required matching physical and virtual design scale for experience design

Transformative Colour-Resonance Environments (TCRE)

#XR #DigitalAvatar #ExhibitionDesign #ImmersiveGalleries #DigitalMediaCuration #DesignPsychology #ColourPsychology #AudioVisualDesign DesignByResearch #UX #ProcessMapping #ProductionDesign #IterativeDesign #QuantitiveAnalysis #QualitativeAnalysis

Introduction:

Resonance and Colour, as spectrum languages for designing and conveying impactful emotional experience, are more often than not subconsciously tied to memory, social constructs and dominant cultural or utilitarian functionality. This learning design, training and assessment course provides a structured design by research methodology which applies comparative analysis of empirical and quantitative studies of audiovisual-colour resonance and how modulations and transformations are affective. Individual user-research pathways are integrated within broader fields of UX/interaction design as technical and creative resonance and colour theory and research.  

Overview:

With a strong conceptual and research focus on developing procedural, persuasive, informative, technical and research writing and design documentation frameworks for presenting both process and performative digital media. Outcomes contextualise and integrate resonance and colour based on the general foundations of data/science and behavioural psychology in an innovative, creative and explorative way. Finally, exploration of process documentation of practise based research as emergent multi-sensory environmental design outputs is realised through exhibition curation as an expression of immersive and interactive folio presentation.

Deliverables:

skills development focuses on:

• Researching conceptual and practical integrations of resonance and colour, based on the scientific foundations of each, as well as learning about and applying foundational behavioural psychology in a creative and explorative way

• Developing design psychology skills, with a particular deep research focus on understanding relationships between resonance and colour.

• Innovate beyond current benchmarks for digital media practice and build on ways to add tools and approaches to enhance applied design thinking. 

• Designing platform-based virtual gallery experiences of project research, design, and development

Key Insights:

Quality and refined accumulation of TCRE research expressed and communicates overarching creative and technical cohesion of innovative approaches to strategic design thinking and practice. Highly polished audiovisual work(s) that clearly demonstrate iterative development of both final outputs and both qualitative and quantitative user research that inform outputs.

Skills development also demonstrates proficiency utilising a software agnostic interdisciplinary design approach to project-specific briefs, including exhibited process/workflow as design outputs.

Selected 360 Video for VR works

Introduction

360 video is a dynamic and evolving medium that offers engaging & interactive forms of storytelling, documentation and visual communication design thinking. Working within a conventional video browsing experience or as an interactive video browsing experience 360 video places more emphasis on environment as a central narrative element to be experienced rather than passively observed.

Augmented Organism Project

The Augmented Organism Project (Cy Gorman and Jazmyne Geis (USA) explore immersive ‘environmental dance’ filmmaking. Movement and its relations to identity with its many developments and outcomes, connecting with landscapes, waterways, weather patterns, and currents and flows involved in navigating a space— working in a relationship that is both internal with the spirit and voice of the land, and external in the global context of events (the stage) within which the land speaks.

This project investigates how “dance” provocatively (re)interrogates and (re)conceptualizes fundamental questions about region, nation, and location, as well as their symbolic representations. This includes studies of both emerging and preexisting creative practices and theorization.

AUGORG is in consideration of issues affecting identity and geopolitics across lands and waters as well as across the global and regional— celebrating and interrogating the connecting, mediating and negotiating power of creative practices, as well as the shifting relationships and pedagogies of integrating dance, film, interdisciplinary design, and technologically creative storytelling.

360 vs UHD Anamorphic transformations of 360:

UHD Anamorphic transformations of 360

360 BTS IMMERSIVE CHOREOGRAPHIC JOURNEY

Side by Side BTS Demonstration of Dance/Choreographic Site Specific Performance

Transient Status

The Transient Status Project, featured as part of the One Night Stand: Transient Status group exhibition at 524 Flinders Exhibition space, Melbourne. It offers a 360 audiovisual experience to be experienced through a browser or in Virtual Reality (VR) and combines stunning footage from Europe and Asia with creative treatment of filters and visual effects.

Cy Gorman & Meng Wang: Altared Forest

Cy Gorman and Meng Wang, collectively known as Yaosai, present here a poetic audiovisual experience of the duet performing 'Altared Forest - Part 1' at Queens College in Melbourne. Immersive video and VR offers new ways of experiencing a musical performance context.

MERGENESIS

#AR #3dScanning #InteractionDesign #InstallationDesign #LightingDesign #SoundDesign #ProductionDesign #CreativeDirection #Videography #PostProduction #360Video

Introduction

This two-part body of work was produced in collaboration with performance artist Tony Yap, and a guest artist, Brendan O’Connor, carried out at Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne, in January 2021 and post produced in 2022.

Part 1 Overview - Interactive/Performance/Installation/Environment

Part One of Mergenisis explores dynamic and responsive sound-colour resonance to inform and influence performance. In addition to performance, it showcases my custom built interactive light/sound installation and also my 360 camera cinematography and post production.

• Creative Direction

• Installation Design

• Digital Media Production Design

• 3D Scanning and acquisition of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) assets

• 3D post-production and design

• Rendering and curation of digital environment selected stills

• Production design thinking and planning for further iterative development including image/digital XR assets

• Sound Design

• Music Composition - ‘Holding Pattern’

Both video examples here were produced using 360 camera tech to acquisition both 360 video (for VR or interactive browser experience) as well as morphed 16:9 ratio. The combination of 360 cameras and post production for standard HD format produces a unique perspective on both object and environment. Both Spectrum 1 & 2 were recorded in 5.7k (VR) to be outputted at 4k resolution for screen. Here, they are a lower res MVP demonstration example.

My focus for the following scenes are to depict the dualistic collapsing and expanding nature of virtualising representations of digital self, in dialogue with dual-masculinity as a singular entity non-binary entity.

It is important for me as an artist beginning to challenge and explore more deeply aspects of ‘masculinity’ and ‘masculine’ beauty when confronted with the void that technology presents to the human form, consciousness and nexus of co-existence across physical and digital space.

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