It is well known that spatial perception is multi-sensory, and the interplay of our senses goes beyond the cross-fertilization of sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. Yet architectural design tools only touch the surface of what we can feel regarding our spatial environments, such as our sense of gravity, balance and orientation, our ability to feel time passing, or our knowledge of where each of our body parts is without having to look at them. Some of these “always-there-but-never-felt” sensations can be physically experienced when we enter an immersive virtual environment. As our brain adjusts to these novel surroundings, we can suddenly feel our senses at work.

The performative extended reality model “Infra-thin Magick” allows you to experience how such insights can be purposefully evoked by displacing and reassembling the components constituting your multimodal and synaesthetic spatial perception. It invites you to co-create embodied spatiality through active participation and play.

This object will be presented at the TACK Conference in the object session SHAPERS, 21 June 2023 between 14:30 – 15:45 (CEST) at ETH Zürich (Auditorium HPV G5).

Paula Strunden is a transdisciplinary artist with an architectural background who studied in Vienna, Paris and London and worked at Raumlabor Berlin and Herzog & de Meuron Basel. Since 2020, she has been conducting her PhD as part of the European research network TACK at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.