How immersive tech can offer the escapism we need for wellness

WELLNESS SERIES: CONTEMPLATION
by Natalie Smithson

Feat. PunchDrunk’s immersive experience: Viola’s Room, Wake the Tiger’s amazement park, and photogrammetry and VR to make immersive experiences more inclusive.

Nova Is Lost character flying in from the right holding a candle, with orange background

If you’ve ever wanted to get out of your own head, perhaps when life feels difficult, overwhelming or monotonous, you’re not alone.

While there are healthy ways to do this and unhealthy ways, immersive experiences can offer a unique detachment from real world pressures. Done well, they can bring short term escapism and rejuvenation, led by creatives and storytellers, and quietly underpinned by technology.

In a comprehensive global 2024 study, MW Truth Central found “escapism offers a crucial emotional release, with 91% of people globally affirming the need to escape occasionally”.

While 84% of those people view “distractions as a healthy way to manage stress, others use escapism to confront or reimagine their realities,” and if there’s one thing immersive experience designers do best, it’s create new worlds.

Sensory escapism to clear your mind

Described as an “audio-driven journey through a moonlit fever dream,” Viola’s Room invites you to step into an eerie throwback to the 1980s. As I wait to go into the immersive experience at The Carriageworks in South East London, home to immersive theatre pioneers, Punchdrunk, I’m not sure what to expect.

Sitting in a makeshift backstage theatre space, strewn with costume rails and upside down chairs, I’m taken into a dark room to join five other people on this intimate experience. We spray our bare feet with a potent scent, put on some headphones, and sit in a dark circle to hear our instructions for the coming hour.

With the dulcet tones of Helena Bonham Carter loud in our ears, we move through a series of enchanting, wildly realistic spaces from a retro era.

We’re following a story that, we all agree at the end, leaves us with more questions than it does answers. This isn’t a fairy tale or even a story with a clear beginning, middle and end, and some of the rooms we find ourselves in are so surreal or such tight spaces, they throw off your senses like a dog losing its scent.

Floating away into a new, bottomless existence, the perfectly curated playlist that intermittently pounds in your head makes you feel so alive with such deep feeling, I listened to it for days after. I couldn’t escape the smell of the scent or un-feel the fluff of the carpet for weeks.

As haunting and unhinging as much as it is beautiful and mesmeric, the memory of Viola’s Room is one I’ll never be able to dislodge, even if I wanted to, because of the deep consideration in its design.

If I hoped for some sort of transcendence, I sure got it.

Being fully present in the experience with no space for anything external to filter into my mind, I feel mentally reset once I’m out the other side, having been drawn fully into the story and an isolated moment in time.

Story pulls visitors further and further in

The Immersive Experience Network (IEN) revealed in 2024 immersive experience audiences crave entertainment and one of the most important things for this is an “engaging storyline”.

Where a focus on the technology can leave people feeling empty, a more edgy or artistic experience with a strong narrative, like Viola’s Room, can lead to something more profound.

Industry experts, Imagineerium, conclude immersive experiences can go far beyond basic entertainment:

“Immersion has been proven to bring fulfillment and growth to individuals with an increase in learning and deepening of their perspectives and ideas. An immersive experience can provide the opportunity to explore someone/thing else’s personal, and often mysterious, inner world through the transportation to an altered state of consciousness.“
Imagineerium

Purpose-built worlds to let your mind wander

In the summer of 2022 the founders of Wake the Tiger launched the UK’s first “amazement park”. Filling 2,000sqm of warehouse space with fantastical creations from the minds of a hundred artists at least. I discovered when I visited in the early days, you can lose all sense of yourself in a mere two-hour visit.

You’re immediately catapulted into a made-up place called Meridia. Live actors help your transition into a steampunk world where a giant mystical tree marks the entry to the start of your adventure.

There are rooms with giant psychedelic coloured mushrooms you can walk around and hide behind. Pockets of spaces are filled with rich colour, sitting in stark contrast to those all white. Uncovering hidey-holes and peering around corners, mirrors and reflective lighting throws off your perception of where you are inside the venue.

Some of the rooms house interactive puzzles or challenges, but you’re never quite sure what’s coming next, as secret doors lead you through tiny spaces and other doors close quietly with an air of intrigue. There’s no end or beginning here and not a lot of it makes sense.

Looking up from the top of a bottomless wishing well of books, I hear a fellow visitor ask their companion if they think they’ve seen everything, and they reply with wide eyes and a wider smile: “I have no idea what’s happening!”

This aimless exploration taps into what neuroscientist Ben Shotty calls “that eureka moment“. When we let our minds wander, he explains, “we are able to fuse two things that aren’t meant to be fused, and we generate something that is actually great.” This cognitive freedom is what makes Wake the Tiger so mentally refreshing.

Expanding access to transformative experiences

Today, Wake the Tiger has an extra 1,000sqm of space to wow its audiences and has introduced mini experiences to cater for all audiences. There are 18+ only nights for full escapism without the noise of children, plus calm sessions especially for kids who welcome sensory regulation and less people on site.

Deliberately designed to be disorientating, this kind of immersion won’t be for everyone. In acknowledging that, communicating it, and accounting for everyone who’d like to try it is key to securing greater reach across all communities because wellness is for everyone.

Co-founder Luke Mitchell knows better than most the intensity of this kind of immersive experience can exclude those with different neurological needs, mobility limitations, or sensory sensitivities. The newer expansion intends to be more inclusive of neurodivergent people and “good for anxiety“, he says, so everyone can “feel like they can enjoy themselves.”

“There’s so much stigma saying what you have to be, here you are able to be what you want to be.” — Luke Mitchell

Since it’s clear otherworldly spaces like Wake the Tiger can offer mental realignment and bring joy and adventure, we’re seeing fresh commitment in the immersive sector to uncover new ways to make sure everyone can benefit from it.

Tailoring immersive design to suit every need

It’s impossible to predict how people might respond to immersive experiences in an exploratory world of art and technology. What we do know is, according to blooloop, immersive experience audience members are more representative of the UK than traditional theatre goers. This shows widespread demand across a diverse range of people, but currently, the industry isn’t wholly inclusive of them all. An Inclusive Immersive research study by Coventry University and a series of collaborators seeks to change that.

Merging traditional live theatre with photogrammetry and VR, the research team has successfully created virtual worlds where children with learning difficulties can benefit from immersive experiences that might ordinarily overwhelm them. Uncovering ways to tailor sensory input and manage anxiety in virtual environments, the study shows immersive worlds have helped the children with “problem-solving, cognitive, and vocational skills, as well as greater social inclusion and improvements in wellbeing”.

“In a time when we’re all being asked to think about innovation, skills and productivity, alongside inclusion, the Inclusive Immersive project offers a hopeful, human-centred model. One that shows these goals don’t have to be at odds – they can be achieved most powerfully when people are placed at the centre of the process.”
Inclusive Immersive research report

Finding your way back to yourself

Each room of an immersive experience; each piece of equipment, is inspired by imagination and crafted by hand. What started as a fun new way to experience theatre shows, adventure, and art is now morphing into new ambitions for wellness and inclusivity.

Piece by piece, creatives and technologists are opening up new realms you can go to, to see your internal world in a new light and re-shape what you might be feeling.

The benefits of this are novel, and through clever use of new technologies across all disciplines, can be open to anyone who wants to experience that brief, but vibrant detachment from reality for just long enough to recharge and reboot.

Author

Natalie Smithson

Natalie is your copy, comms and creativity partner. She helps people in emerging tech improve their messaging so they can connect with their audience and sell their ideas. See her unique Dawnbreaker framework at nataliesmithson.com.