Immersive Acts: Disrupting the Frame by Otherwise Narratives

Immersive Acts: Disrupting the Frame by Otherwise Narratives invites contributions that investigate how diverse perspectives and intelligences can be combined with immersive experiences to positively reframe responses to planetary and societal concerns.

Welcoming transdisciplinary and pluralistic forms of enquiry, the symposium will explore how immersive methods, technologies and engagements can be used to address urgent contexts and support equitable and sustainable engagement through creative and critical practice. Contributions that foreground accessible, collective and radically inclusive approaches are particularly encouraged, with an emphasis on those that otherwise query the conceptualisation, perception, terms, modes and impact of immersive experiences.

We invite proposals for presentations, prototypes, demos, installations, performances, workshops, screenings and other relevant formats in relation to three key themes:

1. More-Than-Human Realities
2. Sustainable and Justice-Led Immersive Responses to Crisis and Emergency
3. Immersive Innovation Design: Bodies, Sensors, and New Narratives

For more information on the three themes, please see the details below.

If you are interested in participating, please submit your proposal by completing this form:

The deadline for submissions is Monday 8 December, 12 noon GMT. Selected participants will be notified by the end of January 2026.

This symposium is organised by members of the RCA's Immersive Acts research group.

Any questions or queries, please contact immersive.acts@rca.ac.uk.

Day 1: Thursday 12 March
Exploring collaborations

Day 2: Friday 13 March
Immersive Acts: Disrupting the Frame by Otherwise Narratives Symposium

Track 1: More-Than-Human Realities

This track explores how immersive technologies can be used to reframe our relationships with the complex and interdependent realities of living systems. By enabling participants to perceive and experience the world through multiple species’ perspectives, immersive media can unsettle anthropocentric assumptions, bringing human, microbial, plant and animal lifeworlds into shared sensory, spatial and narrative spaces. Through the integration of scientific data, sensory augmentation and speculative storytelling, these mediated environments can make visible and audible the subtle dynamics of ecological networks, foregrounding non-human agency, temporality and relationality, while opening space for queer ecologies and non-binary ways of sensing, knowing, and being.

We invite practitioners and researchers to share critical and creative approaches that explore how immersive experiences can act as platforms for more-than-human communication, empathy and ecological awareness. This includes projects that translate environmental processes into visual, sonic or haptic forms, create multiperspectival storyworlds where conflicting and overlapping viewpoints coexist or speculate on future ecologies that challenge extractive, colonial and human-centred paradigms. We welcome contributions that embrace interdisciplinary methods, combining environmental science, design, spatial practice, fine art, speculative fiction and technological innovation to imagine and enact alternative modes of living together.

We are seeking submissions that reflect on the role of immersive media in fostering environmental imagination, public dialogue and shared stewardship of multispecies futures. This includes practice-based, research-led and theoretical responses that examine the ethics, politics and possibilities of representing other species’ perspectives, and that experiment with new forms of collaboration, co-creation and dissemination.

Track 2: Sustainable and Justice-Led Immersive Responses to Crisis & Emergency

As immersive technologies become more established, their environmental costs and entanglements with systems of power are increasingly recognised. Responding to this moment requires a critical examination of the structural inequalities these technologies reproduce, paired with a reimagining of the role that immersive practices can play in processes of decarbonisation, decolonisation, and the advancement of environmental and social justice.

This track examines how immersive technologies are being mobilised to respond to the combined climate, environmental, inequality, and human rights crisis. It brings together practices, digital tools, and narrative forms that foreground civic agency, enable co-creation across human and more-than-human communities, and open pathways beyond extractive systems and towards regeneration and renewed understandings of purpose, responsibility, and social transformation.

We invite contributions that employ immersive technologies as tools for change and civic action, addressing crises and emergencies, including but not limited to climate-intensified disasters, extraction and sacrifice zones, slow violence, the legacies of colonialism and ongoing colonialities, conflict, migration, and displacement. Contributions could include, but are not limited to, digital reconstructions, rematerialisations and virtual replicas; applications of immersive technologies in future planning, scenario rehearsals, gamification and digital twinning, public investigations and forensics, factual and fictional storytelling experiences – from immersive journalism and interactive documentaries to speculative and sensorial experiences and location-based installations.

We are particularly interested in approaches that embrace equitable co-creation and co-production with immersive technologies, do-it-with-others collaborative design and storytelling methods (DIWO), low-carbon and Indigenous technologies (Lo-TEK), and approaches grounded in LGBTQIA+ and Global Majority perspectives.

Track 3: Immersive Innovation Design: Bodies, Sensors, and New Narratives

This track investigates how immersive frameworks spanning Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality can be mobilised not only to design and explore virtual worlds but also to reimagine the future embodiments, applications, and socio-technical narratives of immersive technologies themselves. Immersive methods are increasingly entangled with processes of design engineering, enabling the creation of both digital environments and tangible products, while also opening speculative space to envision next-generation hardware, software, and hybrid systems.

We invite contributions that engage critically and creatively with immersive frameworks as tools for ideation, prototyping, and iterative development, whether in the form of early experimental projects, speculative mock-ups, or historical case studies of technologies that have evolved from modest prototypes to widely adopted innovations. This includes work that expands the field across diverse domains such as software and hardware design, hybrid product and fashion innovation, inclusive and accessible design, automotive futures, material science, medical technologies, biotechnology, and bioinformatics.

We are particularly interested in approaches that consider the needs, perspectives, and agency of a wide range of user groups, children, older adults, scientists, LGBTQ+ communities, and marginalised or underrepresented populations, foregrounding inclusive design principles as central to technological development. Contributions may explore how immersive technologies and frameworks can foster new ways of thinking, making, and collaborating across disciplines, and how they can catalyse equitable, imaginative, and socially responsive futures.

Q. Can I submit a proposal in an alternative format (e.g. video or audio submission)?

A. Yes, please contact us at immersive.acts@rca.ac.uk to arrange an alternative form of submission. We can provide a document outlining the types of information we require from you. We welcome video or audio based submissions – please submit these as file attachments or links using the email address above. If you prefer to submit your proposal in another format please let us know.

Q. Can I present online? Or can my collaborator join online?

A. We ask all lead presenters and panel members to join the symposium in-person as we are planning for the event to be interactive. However, we acknowledge that in some cases proposals may involve people and/or communities who live in different parts of the world. If it is essential to involve anyone unable to travel to the RCA in your contribution, please indicate this clearly in your proposal so we can review if their involvement can be supported.

Q. Does it cost to take part in the symposium?

A. No, we are not charging speakers fees and we are also looking to ensure that the symposium is free for as many people to attend as possible.

Q. If I am selected, is there a budget for attending (e.g. travel and accommodation)?

A. Unfortunately we cannot provide financial assistance to attend the symposium. However, we are happy to provide a letter of support that can be used for internal HE funding requests or for any support grant that you have identified.

Q. Is there a budget available for installations, tech demonstrations, workshops etc?

A. Unfortunately we are not able to provide financial support for these areas. Please plan your contribution accordingly and if you have any key technical needs, please identify them clearly in your proposal so we can review if they can be supported. In general we ask that you bring all of the equipment/materials you will need to present your work with you.

Q. How will the symposium be curated?

A. The symposium will be curated in relation to the three symposium themes and the contributions we receive. We are currently planning for the first day of the event to focus on exploring collaborations and the second day to focus on presentations, performances, demos and discussions.

Q. What spaces will I be able to present my work in?

A. The symposium will take place at the RCA’s Battersea site in the Hangar, XR Stage Space and Snap Visualisation Lab. The Hangar is a large double-height space suitable for symposium style presentation events as well as exhibiting free-standing installations and technology demonstrations. The XR Stage Space is a medium-sized space equipped with controllable lighting, spatial sound and motion capture facilities. The Snap Visualisation Lab is a multimodal immersive and interactive virtual environment, capable of displaying complex constructed environments and simulating the real world.