Immersive Experiences in Socially Engaged VR: Exploring the uniquely human vernacular of “With What?”

With What? represents an unfolding collective discourse around technology as ancestry. It situates a socially engaged virtual reality (VR) experience within a lightweight visual art installation that introduces a writing prompt and crafting station. The project asks what we carry across borders and through time. Participants answer through written responses and by exploring ritualized paths across physical and digital spaces. The custom VR landscape, developed in Unity, introduces an experimental archive of familial objects, femme figures, and audio recordings gathered through creative workshops and residencies. Participants traverse the VR world by following predetermined pathways and discovering artifacts as they travel. This novel interaction design invites kinesthetically grounded inquiry, with viewers collecting visual, tactile, and contextual insights via improvisational methods. The project considers how socially engaged VR may highlight artifacts of experience, reflecting our uniquely human vernacular.