Call for Participation:

“Sensing Immersion: Video passthrough, bodily technologies and sense coupling in co-extensive reality”
A talk by Chris Salter (Zurich University of the Arts)
May 19, 2026, 16:00 – 18:00
University of Siegen, Germany and online
https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/en/events/talk_-by_chris_salter_en/

Registration: https://my.liberaforms.org/talk-registration-sensing-immersion

ABOUT THE TALK

The introduction of worn mixed reality devices such as the Meta Quest 2 or the Apple Vision Pro marks an important shift towards re-centering virtual experience back onto the human body as a mediator between self, others and the world. Yet, as optical sensing technologies and their associated algorithms transform virtual reality headsets into camera-based sensing systems that “passthrough” the outside world to the wearer using live video technology, wearers increasingly must navigate two spaces simultaneously: a computationally shaped and at the same time, still phenomenally experienced physical world. This is in marked contrast to virtual reality, which has historically ignored the physical world together with the complex ways in which human bodies make sense of its affordances for perception. Taking up Saker and Frith’s description of co-extensive space (2022), we argue that we can only perceptually grasp such mediated experience through what is called “sense making” – in which an entanglement between human and machine sensing is seen as essential for understanding joint forms of meaning making. Such “participatory sense making” as a tight sensory coupling between human and machine sensing is in marked contrast to either suggesting that machine sensing is either wholly responsible for world making on the one side (data extraction) or, privileging the human or biological as the unique site of sensory cognition, on the other.

The talk will act as the kick-off for the workshop “Mobile Sensing / Sensing Mobility”

No need to commit to workshop participation. If you just want to listen to the talk, feel free to join us on Tuesday.

Please register here: https://my.liberaforms.org/talk-registration-sensing-immersion

ABOUT CHRIS SALTER

Chris Salter is Professor for Immersive Arts and Director of the Immersive Arts Space at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). He is also Professor Emeritus, Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal and former Co-Director of the Hexagram network for research-creation in arts, cultures and technology and Co-Founder of the Milieux Institute at Concordia. He studied philosophy and economics at Emory University and completed his PhD in theatre studies with research in computer music Stanford University. His artistic work has been seen all over the world at such venues as the Venice Architecture Biennale, Barbican Centre, Berliner Festspiele, Wiener Festwochen, Grand Palais Immersif, MEET Center, ZKM, Kunstfest Weimar, Musée d’art Contemporain, Muffathalle, EXIT Festival and Vitra Design Museum, among many others. He is the author of three monographs, all published by the MIT Press: Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (2010), Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making (2015) and Sensing Machines (2022).

VENUE

University of Siegen
SFB 1187 Medien der Kooperation
Herrengarten 3
57072 Siegen
Germany

Online: Webex (link is sent upon registration)