From Anthropocentrism to Interbeing: Overcoming Barriers to Ecological Awareness for the Biodiversity Crisis Through Immersive Experience

Co-designing a multi-user virtual reality experience that translates deep ecology ritual and contemplative practice into group perspective-taking exercises.

Project Summary

Most environmental engagement tools inform, but rarely transform. This project will co-design a multi-user Virtual Reality (VR) experience that merges  deep ecology and contemplative practice into immersive perspective-taking exercises helping people access a felt sense of interconnection with the living world in ways that support access to transformative modes of eco-centric being, doing and seeing.

Drawing on systems theory, deep ecology philosophy and practice, immersive interaction design, and contemplative practices, the project will develop a scalable virtual reality prototype of an immersive ritual deployable in research, schools, galleries, clinics, and community hubs.

What are we interested in?

There is a need for engaging, scalable methods that help people experience a felt sense of interdependence with the living world and embody eco-centric action. Access to practices that help to enable transformative shifts in eco-consciousness are too often limited to those who can afford the financial and time investment to attend costly wilderness retreats, or those who are part of particular networks of communities likely to come across such concepts.

We are interested in whether immersive, participatory environments can play a role in overcoming these socio-economic and cultural barriers for many urban communities to expand access beyond ‘the usual suspects’ to:

• Disrupt anthropocentric perception
• Cultivate relational identity with the more-than-human world
• Induce a felt sense of awe, wonder, re-enchantment, magic, and interconnectedness with the natural world and its beauty
• Encourage access to, and cultivation of, faculties of imagination
• Enhance self-regulation and mindfulness
• Support durable pro-environmental motivation

The goals of our project

This project will develop an innovative VR prototype that fosters ecological consciousness, contemplative awareness, and a felt sense of interconnectedness with the more-than-human world. The experience will enable participants to feel individual wonder and shared interconnection, supporting meaningful culture change towards eco-centric ways of being, doing and seeing, and providing alternative pathways to access such experiences that may expand the participants in transformative eco-centric shifts in consciousness.

Outcomes / activities

• Develop and user test a prototype of a VR deep-ecology contemplative process
• Bring together environmental activists, contemplative science and climate researchers, ecologists, nature connection practitioners and immersive media experts
• Develop scholarly outputs and public engagement through media articles, papers, and an art exhibition plan.