King's College London

Recent years have seen growing interest in Extended Reality (XR), a blurring of actual and virtual worlds that embraces immersive media formats and technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR), increasingly in collaboration with AI. Our project brings together scholars and creatives to investigate the problem of attention and perception in XR and explore what XR means for us at this present historical and technical moment. The wide range of what we consider ‘XR media’ and their entanglement with other digital technologies such as AI and IoT presents a compelling opportunity to engage and experiment with the phenomenological and anthropological dimensions of the notions of attention, perception, and experience. We seek to explore these ideas across three strategic areas: research, education, and creative experimentation.

We are interested in opening up discussion around the physiological and socio-cultural mechanisms of making and shaping attention in and with XR; how we might make XR spaces more body-caring and human-centred and how performing arts might inform the design of those spaces; and how we might reshape the knowledge of cultural heritage and create new centres of attention across disciplinary boundaries.

The project consists of a series of events, including a symposium on the problem of attention and perception in XR; XR and Attention seminars series; and an XR hackathon in collaboration with digital performing arts collective CyberRäuber (Germany) working at the intersection of theatre, Mixed Reality, and AI, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

XR and Attention Research Group is open to new members. If you would like to join the group and/or be added to the mailing list to receive news, please contact us at xrandattention@kcl.ac.uk.