More-than-human design asks us to attend to non-human lifeworlds, yet human perception is overwhelmingly visual, making it difficult to engage with sensory realities unlike our own. Inspired by the star-nosed mole—a creature that navigates entirely through touch—we designed FeltSight, a mixed-reality wearable system that shifts the user's perceptual priority from vision to touch. The system pairs a visually-reduced MR headset with custom vibrotactile haptic gloves, suppressing visual dominance while extending tactile sensitivity beyond the skin, so that users encounter their surroundings through active, pre-contact probing rather than passive observation. This sensory inversion induces somatic defamiliarization, drawing on Haraway's “tentacular thinking” to invite users to approximate a tactile-first umwelt. We conceptualize this novel form of interaction as Touch Beyond Reach. Previously exhibited as an interactive artwork, this pictorial details the design process and implementation of the system.

Mixed Reality (MR) increasingly explores how virtual elements can shape physical behavior, yet how MR objects guide group movement remains underexplored. We address this gap by examining how virtual objects can nudge collective, co-located movement without relying on explicit instructions or choreography. We developed GravField, a research-through-design, co-located MR performance system where an “object jockey” live-configures virtual objects (e.g., ropes, springs, magnetic fields) with real-time, parameterized “digital physics” (e.g., weight, elasticity, force) to influence headset-wearing participants’ movement, made perceptible through augmented visual and audio feedback serving as cognitive-somatic cues. Our bricolage analysis of the performances, based on video, interviews, soma trajectories, and field notes, indicates that these live nudges support emergent intercorporeal coordination and that ambiguity and real-time configuration sustain open-ended, exploratory engagement. Ultimately, our work offers empirical insights and design principles for MR systems that can guide group movement through embodied, felt dynamics while preserving participants’ sense of agency.

As see-through Mixed Reality Head-Mounted Displays (MRHMDs) proliferate, their usage is gradually shifting from controlled, private settings to spontaneous, public contexts. While location-based augmented reality mobile games such as Pokémon GO have been successful, the embodied interaction afforded by MRHMDs moves play beyond phone-based screen-tapping toward co-located, bodily, movement-based play. In anticipation of widespread MRHMD adoption, major technology companies have teased concept videos envisioning urban streets as vast mixed reality playgrounds-imagine Harry Potter-style wizard duels in city streets-which we term Immersive Mixed Reality Street Play (IMRSP). However, few real-world studies examine such scenarios. Through empirical, in-the-wild studies of our research-through-design game probe, Multiplayer Omnipresent Fighting Arena (MOFA), deployed across diverse public venues, we offer initial insights into the social implications, challenges, opportunities, and design recommendations of IMRSP. The MOFA framework, which includes three gameplay modes-''The Training'', ''The Duel'', and ''The Dragon''-is open-sourced at https://github.com/realitydeslab/mofa.

Projection mapping is a form of urban public art that uses light and video to transform buildings and structures into dynamic canvases. However, producing high-quality projection mapping content with compelling storytelling requires extensive time and resources, as it involves integrating local culture, urban spatial understanding, and animation production. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a method that combines artistic co-creation with AI, audio-visualization, and data-visualization techniques. The authors present a case study: “Urban Symphony,” an immersive public art installation that showcases our method and leverages AI and data-driven storytelling. This method fosters interdisciplinary research collaboration and explores the potential of projection mapping as a bridge between art, technology, and society. The paper describe the motivation, design, and production of the artwork, the outcomes of the performance, and the challenges and limitations of our method. The authors also suggest future directions for further improvement and exploration in this domain.