Why immersive experiences, apps and games are good for emotional grounding

Feat. Marshmallow Laser Feast’s immersive ‘Of the Oak’ experience, Orli Health’s app for families, and the Ancestors game from The Smartphone Orchestra.

Speak to people about where they go to find inner strength and you’ll find some common themes:

• Being in nature, to reestablish a sense of place in the world.
• Turning to friends and family for love and support or comfort.
• And faith or spirituality for a deeper sense of purpose or meaning.

We crave connection to ourselves, to other people, and with environments all around us, but it isn’t always easy to achieve and there’s a growing disconnect.

The World Health Organisation finds one in four elders feels socially isolated and up to 15% of adolescents too. This can “have serious consequences for health and well-being,” they say, with disconnected people “at higher risk of stroke, anxiety, dementia, depression, suicide and more”.

Technologists feel this loss of connection too, and through art, science, creativity and fun, they’re using their skills to develop unique approaches to help us heal. With a growing number of smart, thoughtful and intriguing ways to tackle the problem, all you need to join the mission is a willingness to explore it.

Getting outside reminds us we’re not alone

In our homes and offices, cars and other confines, we’re alone with our thoughts when life gets overwhelming. Research by the Mental Health Foundation shows “people who are more connected with nature are usually happier in life and more likely to report feeling their lives are worthwhile. Nature can generate many positive emotions, such as calmness, joy, and creativity and can facilitate concentration. Nature connectedness is also associated with lower levels of poor mental health, particularly lower depression and anxiety.” 

The experiential art collective, Marshmallow Laser Feast, routinely produces immersive experiences using augmented, virtual, and mixed reality that invite us to consider our place within nature. Of the Oak, involving a solitary 6-foot screen at London’s world-famous Kew Gardens, invites viewers to interact with a pixelated recreation of a real oak tree that stands steady right beside it in the grounds, living and breathing.

Standing at the base of the tree, blue bubbles swoosh left and circle right as you move, following your walk, run or twist in front of it as ambient sound fills the open space. A staff member at Kew Gardens told me one visitor did an impromptu dance in front of the oak for an enraptured audience as the tree responded to the movement of her limbs and lift in her heart.

Watching the Of the Oak sequence in full, you see the seasons transition in the pixelated sky and the roots under the ground grow. The same staff member told me the yellow threads show the network of roots running under our feet, and this network can sense us overhead. You recognise with fresh feeling how much we take greenery for granted and how integral we are to the ecosystem.

Solemnly, the black back of the installation acts as a huge memorial to the hundreds of tree species listed upon it that are currently under threat.

Recognising your part in something bigger than yourself

Everything you feel intently watching the oak evolve is delivered through use of technology. Subtle sensors and speakers are hidden to reveal the magic.

“Oh, I get it now!” said one woman as a small child excitedly waved their arms like a wizard to affect the tree, and everything you learn or come to understand through Of the Oak is anything but static ― it’s an energy.

Immersive arts is an entrancing way to have you consider where your feet stand on solid ground, and that, underneath, as a mirror of our own breath, is a network of fungi and bugs and tree roots whispering their plea for our urgent attention. All of us living beings affecting one another.

With 90% of students admitting to Student Minds in 2023 concerns for the environment “impacts their mental wellbeing,” creative use of tech can breathe air into these worries, so you can sit with them and give them clear thought. Bonding with the oak on the screen as it chases movement of your own palms is an oddly emotional experience, leaving you both sombre and invigorated by the part you play in nature. 

Watching others do the same is an easy opener for conversations that can weigh heavy in your own head, yet feel lighter when shared.

Seeking shared wellness bonds you to other people

Closer to home, big questions about how we navigate and find our place in the world are also being explored with the help of new technologies. Orli Health is recognising the struggles of young people today and offering support for emotional wellness, and for their parents too.

As much as getting out into nature can be healing, traditional tech has become a barrier to stepping outside in the first place. The Centre for Internet & Technology Addiction reports “the average user checks their phone 142 times daily”. Almost half of adults admit to relationship “conflicts” over device usage, and while almost 70% of children say they hide their online activity from parents, 58% suffer increased anxiety when separated from their phones. This isn’t an easy crisis to solve, but companies like Orli are making it a prerogative.

Developed by doctors, their app brings children and their parents back together by blending online and offline activities to support positive emotional development. Passive device use becomes active play, and rather than children being alone on their phone, the app reconnects them with their family in real time. For parents struggling to find the right balance in tackling an invasion of screens in their child’s life, Orli “puts real support in your pocket, right when you need it”.

• Children have a digital twin to help manage their emotions, while adults can learn to understand their child’s moods and patterns
• Games help children grow their confidence and emotional resilience, while adults get personalised support to help them flourish
• Using the same gamification tools that trapped children behind screens, Orli uses badges and rewards for positive emotional security
• And app challenges are linked to real-world challenges, so families become fluid and more connected through a mix of online and offline activity

As much as people of all ages are now trying to take screen breaks, Orli doesn’t seek to take away the “tools children love,” pushing phone use further into hiding. Instead, the two founders bring phone play out into the open to prevent any harm that could affect every family member. As an emergency care doctor and a psychologist, they’ve seen first hand how damaging digital isolation can be, and they’re using compassionate technology to play big tech at its own game to change the end result.

With 83% of parents telling Orli it’s hard to access the right support, this “emotional operating system for families” is an urgent response to a growing need for emotional wellness. The app can even connect to schools and healthcare systems where a child has more complex support needs, so every part of a child’s ecosystem is working today to help them feel grounded and secure in their emotional development. 

Play is important to feel less lost on your wellness path

All the issues people are dealing with daily inside and outside their homes and family can be overwhelming at times, and play is a great antidote to this stress. From interactive installations like Of the Oak to games and family challenges from Orli, play is where technology can truly come into its own.

One artistic collective is wielding the divisive smartphone to bring worlds of people back together. You join the Ancestors game from The Smartphone Orchestra with a roomful of strangers but, by the end of play, are connected intimately to each and every one of them.

It starts by getting to know other people in a large crowd. You’ll take a selfie and follow simple instructions until you see a large heart emoji on your screen. Your task is to find someone else in the room with the same emoji. It feels odd at first, navigating instructions appearing on your phone with someone else you don’t know doing the same.

You each pick the same number from a list and have a task to do. Everything from staring into each other’s eyes for a few seconds to pretending to be astronauts as you make your way across the room, to shouting into the crowd before everyone erupts into laughter.

Is it silly? Yes. Is it fun? Yes. Is there a serious side to this experimentation? Absolutely. What starts off as a group of strangers slowly but steadily becomes family.

You’re shown an image of a person and have to find someone else with the same photo on their device. The person shown is your child, a mergance of you and the other person from a selfie you took at the beginning of the game. You’re to give the child a name, say what traits they inherit from each of you, and other such small details.

As the game grows, you become grandparents, and your children, then their children, become entwined with other families as larger and larger groups of people unite to share stories. In the end, all of the different families in the room eventually form one circle to show that in some small way, each member of the circle is connected to every other person standing around them.

Where once you stood alone, a little nervous perhaps of what was to come and feeling a small pressure to understand the instructions and not mess up the game, in the end, you’re surrounded by everyone, smiling and laughing. Brought together by smartphones, emojis, and generated images of imaginary people, you suddenly belong, and it gets you thinking of your real world family.

Whether it’s close, distant, messy, or straightforward, you can recognise how integral you are to something far bigger. Your ancestry is in humanity itself, with your genes carried forward after just a short time in the spotlight.

The game serves as an important reminder your existence matters, and there’s every reason to celebrate your past, your now, and your future. It’s clear the choices we make today affect everyone tomorrow.

Focussing on the connection, not technology reunites people

Whether it’s a child psychologist who’s seen the ill emotional effect of digital addiction or a creative director with an experience to deliver through play, technologists are reclaiming the use of devices and adding scientific artistry for a positive social impact. Their intentions shape how deeply the technical outcome can affect us.

Barnaby Steel, co-founder of Marshmallow Laser Feast, takes some of his inspiration for immersive experiences like Of the Oak from a book called Existence: A Story, by David Hinton. 

“When monks were creating these paintings they would draw themselves from the third person, and when they apply ink to paper you start with nothing, and from nothing comes something. The pattern of the cloud, the rock, the mountain, the trees, the rivers, the human, is all rendered from the same stuff, so essentially there’s no separation. Everything is just existence tissue and everything flows into everything else … all that exists is the relationships.” ― Barnaby Steel speaking at theIEN Summit 2024

While creatives like Barnaby acknowledge immersive technologies like VR and screens can detach us from the world and each other, he reminded his audience at the IEN Summit it’s important to acknowledge we’re in the infantile stages of progressive technologies like VR, AR, and AI, and what we see today is the equivalent of photographers shooting film in black and white before the camera phone took hold.

“We’ll keep using technology as it expands,” says Barnaby, and, with that, “the ability to connect people on a deeper level expands” too. In the right hands, with the right focus, it’s evident emerging tech is wielding great power to help us question who we are and what we want from ourselves and each other going forwards.