common/room: using Extended Reality technologies to support intercultural relationships in Aotearoa was a PhD in Design thesis project with creative practice by Mairi Gunn, supervised by Prof Mark Billinghurst, Director of the Empathic Computer Laboratory, Dr Moana Nepia, choreographer, video artist and curator, and myself as the main supervisor. The discursive design project common/room explored human–digital–human encounters across cultural difference.
Overview:
common/room comprised a suite of extended reality (XR) experiences that use technology as a bridge to support human connections and overcome intercultural discomfort. The installations are exhibited as an informal dining room, where each table hosts a distinct commensal experience designed to bring people together in a playful yet meaningful way. Each experience uses different technologies, including headset-displayed 360° 3D virtual reality (VR) (common/place), 180° stereoscopic projection (Common Sense) and three iterations of an augmented reality (AR) experience (Come to the Table! First Contact–Take 2 and haptic HONGI). In the latter, visitors are invited to sit at a dining table, don an AR head-mounted display to encounter a recorded volumetric video of an Indigenous Māori woman seated opposite. In a re-imagined first encounter between Tangata Whenua, people of the land, and strangers, she speaks directly to the visitor out of a culture that has refined collective endeavour and relational psychology over millennia.
The contextual and methodological framework for this research is international commons scholarship and practice that locally sits within a set of relationships outlined by the Mātike Mai Report on constitutional transformation for Aotearoa, New Zealand. The goal is to practise and support relationships between Māori and Tauiwi (non-Māori), including Pākehā and newer immigrants.
Thesis abstract:
“common/room explores how new and emerging Extended Reality (XR) technologies might provide an opportunity to trial, investigate, practice and discuss their potential to reverse processes of atomisation, polarisation, discomfort and mistrust in our contemporary society. This practice-led research provided opportunities to discuss our current societal stressors, whilst enabling collaboration between former strangers from diverse disciplines and the broader community as we prioritise relationality and explore our shared values. The theoretical and methodological framework includes international commons scholarship and commoning applications than can sit alongside Indigenous practices such as whanaungatanga, manaakitanga and kaitiakitanga. (Waitoa, Dombroski, 2020) are among very few scholars addressing the interface between Kaupapa Māori thinking and diverse economic discourse. This work contributes to this arena through a transdisciplinary creative practice, backgrounded by Computer Science and Engineering, Social Sciences, History, Economics, Human Ecology and Community-based Indigenous Psychology. A discursive design framework is used to remind, inform, provoke, inspire, and to persuade collaborators, and guests at the (XR) experiences that (re)connecting with other people is worthwhile. From the position of a filmmaker and cinematographer, I use XR in a domestic setting to hear women’s stories and to reimagine first encounters that might lead to conversations and collaboration between people from different cultural backgrounds. The technologies include; headset-displayed 360° stereoscopic Virtual Reality, or Cinematic VR in common/place, a 180° stereoscopic projection, Common Sense, and haptic HONGI in which visitors are greeted by a Māori woman in Augmented Reality. These are contrasted with Round Table, that accommodates a number of visitors who can converse in Real Reality. Guests indicated a preference for the potential and heightened intimacy of Cinematic VR. Masterful work by Australian Settler artist Lynette Wallworth in this area, such as Collisions and Awavena, encourage and motivate further exploration. Motivated by a desire to promote and support intercultural understanding in Aotearoa New Zealand, this thesis contributes design thinking to existing scholarship by non-Māori, (Metge, 2001), and (Salmond, 2017), intercultural co-authors (Hoskins, Jones, 2017), and Māori, (Royal, 2007), (Kruger, 2017) and Moana Jackson (Matike Mai Aotearoa, 2016).”
Keywords: #DiscursiveDesign, #xR #Multiculturalism, #Aotearoa
Outcomes & Impact:
- Gunn, M.G. 2023. common/room: Using Extended Reality technologies to support intercultural relationships in Aotearoa. PhD in Design Thesis. University of Auckland.
- 2022 16-22 June, Ars Electronica Garden Aotearoa 2022: HapticHONGI, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.
- 2023 13 December, Siggraph Asia Sydney 2023. Haptic Hongi – Reiterated. ICC Sydney, Australia.