I have worked with therapeutic VR before, where we had guided meditation with music in various nature environments embedded in our cognitive behavioural therapy app. In terms of interactivity, it was mostly just your default VR headset/mobile view, where you could view the environment in 360. However, nothing the user did really changed anything in the visuals.
When we looked at
Osmose in class, I was intrigued by the concept of controlling the stimuli with your breath. I wonder if the constant state of floating and the lack of solid object spaces could help more with relaxation than the route that we followed. This particular method would have its limitations as well, since one needs to breathe all the time, and breathing triggers floating around no matter how slow. People might want to stay still and observe the environment, since ours did not have any spatial ambiguity or superimposed translucent worlds.
All the comparisons aside, I really liked how painterly
Osmose felt while I was watching it. The full-body gear also works well with the concept of it being an art installation aimed at full immersion (this would not be feasible or accessible for a daily-use app). The buoyancy control via chest movements and the sense of constant, contemplative freefall are all great ideas for bringing different spaces into our current environment to induce a meditative state.
Also, one of the things that stood out to me most was that it wasn’t a solitary experience. Other museum-goers could see the shadow of the participant projected live on a wall as they experienced the piece – without headsets but with polarised glasses and spatial audio through headphones. This layer of shared presence adds a beautiful sense of connectedness to the artwork, which I appreciate.