Developing Embodied Familiarity with Hyperphysical Phenomena

Spatial computing (VR, etc) reveals an expansive and underexplored possibility-space of interactions in which the physics subtending affordances and phenomena can itself be designed, rewarding novel approaches to interaction design.
Through reviewing literature and prototyping spatial interactions, this thesis explores the impact of previously-unencountered physical dynamics upon the development of familiarity with systems and identifies significant representations of external objects and the body itself, with an eye towards the larger goal of transformative tools for thought.
While identifying promising avenues from the convergence of literary sources, this thesis synthesizes research and investigates applications of interactional dynamics by designing prototypes of spatial interactions given different materialities and computed physics, gaining insight through direct engagement with novel spatial phenomena. These VR prototypes illustrate design considerations for now-accessible interactional and material unorthodoxies, recognizing consequences and applications for embodiment spanning body-environment fusion (in depiction and interaction), multisensory integration, and high-dimensional dataset traversal.
Historically the mediums and notations available in a time period have contributed to and somewhat delineated the set of available thoughts. As a medium, spatial computing, by such nuance of bodily input and output and such rigor of calculation, likely affords domains of thought and experience barely conceivable at present.