Designing Awe in Interactive Digital Media
Assim Kalouaz, Jean-François Jego, Brendan Rooney, Pamela Gallagher
Awe, an emotion marked by perceived vastness and cognitive accommodation, can broaden perspective, dampen rumination, and support well-being. Although interactive artists often evoke awe intuitively, the underlying psychological mechanisms remain largely tacit, leaving designers without actionable guidance. Building on psychology research, we identify core cognitive processes and phenomena that are components of an awe experience in interactive digital media. We then present Passenger, an evidence-driven installation that operationalises these processes. Breath serves as the sole input, modulating concentric holographic and panoramic visuals while a 4 Hz binaural audio track facilitates a more meditative brain activity. The piece scales from a fragile human silhouette to a rotating Earth to a wrap-around snapshot video of life around the world, progressively amplifying perceived vastness. We outline the system’s design, methodology, and planned empirical evaluation using the AWE-S scale and cognitive-processing measures. By grounding creative design decisions in psychology research, this work could offer a reproducible framework for crafting awe-inspiring experiences and presents Passenger as both an artwork and an experimental stimulus for future psychology research.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH // 11:30 – 13:00H
SESSION 11: AI, GENERATIVITY, PRACTICE