Embedded Files
Virtual Costume Games
Exploratory WorkshopDec 16 & 17Virtual Costume Games
This workshop is a series of improvisational games between virtual costumes and actual people. Over two days, participants will be invited to play improvisational games while “wearing” virtual costumes through the affordances of VR headsets and a camera-based motion capture system. The workshop will end with the opportunity for participants to work together with the researcher to design their own virtual costume game based on what they have discovered throughout the workshop.
Aim + Objective
Investigate response-able practices in virtual embodiment
by exploring the agency and meaning-making potential of costume design in extended reality.
Research Question
How is meaning made between virtual costumes and the physical bodies that "wear" them?
Theoretical Framework
Cyberfeminism
(Haraway, 1991, 2006)
New Materialism
(Barad, 2007; Malafourais, 2026)
The response-ability to weave
intra-actions between
bodies and technologies
for a better future.
Enmeshed
Enmeshed
An extended reality experience that explores how virtual costume can shape the space between bodies through play.
Dressing virtual costumes on physical bodies
Dressing virtual costumes on physical bodies
A VR demo project that explores the potential of virtual embodiment through costume design.
Screen recording of first-person perspective "wearing" a virtual costume.
Screen recording of first-person perspective "wearing" a virtual costume.
Screen recording of first-person perspective "wearing" a virtual costume.
Method
I am crafting costumes with technology, thinking-with 1s and 0s, to investigate how virtual materiality entangles with human presence.
Re-embodied vision
Re-embodied vision
A case study that examines virtual costume practice through the lense of Donna Haraway's 1991 essay on situated knowledges.
External recording and screen recording of first-person perspective "wearing" a virtual costume.
Screen recording of the virtual body (by MOVERSE) wearing the costume.
Results
This research advances costume studies, HCI, and artistic research by practicing and critically examining new possibilities for costume in extended reality. When we know how virtual materials can shape meanings and bodies, practitioners can be ethical with the agencies they create through extended reality technologies.
Virtual Costume Games II
XR ExperienceVirtual Costume Games II
in development
This extended reality experience features a series of improvisational games that can be played between virtual costumes and the actual people that wear them. In a 3 x 3 meter area tracked with camera based motion capture, two participants can each put on a VR headsets and experience moving and being moved by the virtual costumes they embody. The experience will be cast on a screen so additional spectators can watch the performances created between virtual costumes and people.
References
Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822388128.
Barbieri, Donatella, and Melissa Trimingham. Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture, and the Body. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474285353.
Candy, Linda. The Creative Reflective Practitioner: Research through Making and Practice. Routledge, 2020.
Doyle, Denise. Digital Embodiment and the Arts: Exploring Hybrid Spaces through Emerging Technologies. Intellect, 2024.
Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. Routledge, 1991. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203873106.
Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
Höök, Kristina. Designing with the Body: Somaesthetic Interaction Design. The MIT Press, 2018.
Malafouris, Lambros. People Are STRANGE: Material Engagement and the Creation of Self-Consciousness. The MIT Press, 2026. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10284.001.0001.
Marshall, Susan. Insubordinate Costume: Inspiring Performance. Focal Press, 2024.
Monks, Aoife. The Actor in Costume. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Østergaard, Charlotte. Crafting Material Bodies – Exploring Co-Creative Costume Processes. Research Catalog, 2025. https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3184425/3219026/3132/8746.
Pantouvaki, Sofia. “Researching with and through Costume.” In Insubordinate Costume, 1st ed., by Susan Marshall. Focal Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003341000-11.
Schön, Donald A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books, 1983.
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