The Aesthetics of Uncertainty: Co-Constructing Playful Ways of Knowing and Understanding Extended Reality (XR) and Care Identity.

Abstract

This research focuses on investigating new modalities of experience with lens-based technologies and creative expression for meaning-making with care experienced individuals. The digital artefacts presented in the demo emerged from trauma-informed Research through Design (RtD) workshops, collaborating with care experienced young people in Edinburgh and London. We present findings for communicating insights on playful ways of generating new perceptual and agential affordances of extended reality (XR) technologies in addressing ethical challenges of participation and representation with the care experienced participants. Key outcomes of the practice research are digital ethnographic artefacts intended to supplement statistics on care identity and qualitative data on what people say and do with insights into the patterns of meaning from what people make, improvise and dream. These artefacts represent a trauma-informed means of presentational knowing while embodying the playful and participative RtD experience towards illuminating deeper tacit and latent aspects of individuals’ personal constructs. The artefacts are presented as interactive XR prototypes to be experienced in the HoloLens headset and on mobile devices. From a qualitative research perspective, the prototypes are a form of data visceralisation which extends the actively participative process of their creation by exploring the affectual collaborative sense-making potential of XR with participants and audiences.