Can You Feel What I Feel? Leveraging aesthetics in visual and spatial audio VR experience.

Virtual reality is an immersive technology that provides unique perspectives on aesthetics, art, medicine, and philosophy. This research proposes applying aesthetics as the base for experiences in Virtual Reality not only theoretically but in its artistic considerations that may be improved independent of the advances in computing graphics. This artistic research culminating in an immersive VR experience using a headset is aimed at artists, designers, scientists, persons who develops or deploys VR experiences for the purpose to promote wellness. For this research, we developed a virtual reality immersive exploratory experience with spatialized audio with attention to light, color, scale, and design elements inspired by minimalism and Light and Space Movement in the arts. The method utilized to gather feedback was phenomenology both quantitative and qualitative. 13 people from 23 to 57 years old participated in the experience on Quest 2 and gave insightful feedback. Updates on interactive gameplay and simulations will be considered as will the use of EEG device to provide data on brain waves during the experience. The VR experience could serve the virtual reality community as a future reference to apply aesthetics for wellness purposes.