The audience experience of immersion through intersubjective embodiment in Sensuous Geographies (2003)

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses an immersive interactive installation Sensuous Geographies (2003), created by choreographer Sarah Rubidge in collaboration with composer Alistair MacDonald. It applies phenomenological philosophies to critical interpretations of audience participants’ embodied experience. Rubidge employs choreographic sensibilities in designing a performative human–computer interface where the participants create their own sonic signature through physical behaviours while interacting with each other. The digital sound emerges as the ‘dys-appearing body’, as philosopher Drew Leder terms it, because it becomes part of their doubled embodiment but is perceptible due to its otherness. Moreover, the emergent sound embodies the participant’s subjectivity, which develops out of inter-subjectivity, since it is not transparent for the participant him/herself but generated through the intertwinement of the self and others. The self-perception of the corporeal body is heightened through digital imagery, costumes, facial veils and tactile materials, which provide the participant with a more intuitive and embodying experience of the sonic environment.