Digital Body Culture
Digital Body Culture was a five-day research and development project I led at the Immersive Visualisation and Simulation Lab (IVSL) at Norwich University of the Arts. It explored what it means to inhabit and interact with digital bodies in immersive, technologically mediated spaces. Working with a multidisciplinary team of staff, technicians, and 15 students from the Computer Arts and Technology program, we investigated how identity, embodiment, and agency shift when our physical selves are mirrored, transformed, or replicated in digital form.
Research Questions
I’ve long been interested in how humans live alongside technology, and this project extended that inquiry into a collaborative, hands-on immersive environment. The central question we explored was simple but rich: What is digital body culture? From avatars and deepfakes to surveillance profiles and social media representations, we looked at how digital selves fragment, duplicate, and circulate. What does it feel like to be watched, mirrored, or even partially controlled by technology? How does it shape our sense of self?
Collaborative Processes
The process was highly collaborative and playful. Over five days we combined improvisation, experimentation, and rapid prototyping, using volumetric scanning, motion capture, layered sound, and a 360° immersive screen. Participants self-organised into teams focusing on sound design, 3D modelling, environment creation, and motion capture experimentation, while I coordinated the overall flow and integrated ideas. The decentralised, flexible approach encouraged ownership, creativity, and risk-taking, letting unexpected connections and discoveries emerge organically.
The Immersive Environment
The immersive environment was created in Unreal Engine and used Kinect Azure to create digital doubles that mirrored and transformed participants’ movements in real time. These avatars shifted unpredictably between responding to the participant, interacting with others, or returning to a neutral pose, creating moments of ambiguity around control, agency, and identity. Visual motifs referenced digital interfaces, surveillance, and the body as data, while a dynamic soundscape, built from participant recordings and ambient textures, added a further layer of immersion. Peripheral screens displayed short statements and reflections from participants, giving additional insight into the creative process and thematic concerns.
Audience Experience and Impact
Visitors to the sharing hosted at the IVSL became both performers and observers, interacting with digital doubles and moving within a social choreography that was constantly shifting. Everyone’s presence contributed to the collective experience, creating a live, unpredictable performance of observation, reflection, and play. Student reflections highlighted the emotional and conceptual impact, from the disorientation of seeing a digital double of themselves, to thinking critically about ownership, control, and visibility in digital spaces.
Reflections and Personal Impact
For me, Digital Body Culture was as much about discovery and making as it was about producing a finished work. It confirmed the power of collaborative, practice-led research in immersive environments and opened new directions for exploring interactive digital embodiment and the potential for choreography to emerge from group dynamics in future projects.
