Multisensory experiences drive immersive physical environments

Bathing in sensory experiences

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany experiment with virtual, multi-sensory forests for therapeutic services. In Japan, shinrin-yoku describes the process of immersing oneself in forest environments for meditative purposes. The activity is often referred to as forest bathing and involves focusing on the sensory sensation of experiencing nature. The researchers found “forest bathing in virtual reality improves emotional well-being and increases connectedness to nature, particularly when several senses (sight, hearing, smell) are simultaneously engaged”.

Employing 360-degree virtual reality (VR) imaging, the sound of forests and the smell of firs, the study exposed test subjects to several simulations. Combining these three sensory stimuli resulted in mood improvements and stronger emotional connection to nature in contrast to only applying individual stimuli. More research is needed to deepen understanding, but “we can already say that digital nature experiences can absolutely produce an emotional effect – even if they don’t replace actual nature”, says Leonie Ascone, lead author of the study and researcher at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf.

Simone Kühn, director of the Centre for Environmental Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute and leader of the study, points to healthcare and wellness applications: “Especially in places with limited access to nature – such as clinics, waiting areas or urban interiors – multisensory VR applications or targeted nature staging could support mental well-being. The images, sounds and scents of nature offer previously underestimated potential for improving mood and mental performance in everyday situations.”

Experiencing multisensory art

The multisensory art exhibition reSound New York teases Feel the Light, See the Sound, Touch the Moment. Seven stages attract visitors with various synaesthetic experiences, which are experiences that cross senses (similar to the way that some musicians perceive musical notes and melodies as colours). South Korean’s design firm d’strict, which develops “innovative spatial experiences”, and Arte Museum New York unveiled reSound in October 2025. The organisers invited artists and art studios to reinvent the exhibition space as a distinct sensory and psychological environment, evoking emotional and physical responses that merge art, sound and interaction.

Exhibitions include d’strict’s Arrival, featuring a large video installation that establishes a “dark, immersive wave that surrounds visitors with sound and motion”. Meanwhile, Boundless “translate[s] complex narratives into unforgettable, interactive experiences” and features a tactile orchestra by Dutch design firm Fillip Studios that transform walls into instruments. The walls enable visitors to create musical harmonies through touch. Eric Gunther’s Boundless Body reimagines poetry as “vibration along a twelve-foot wooden bench”.

Inspired by black holes, astrophysicist Erin Kara, anthropologist Ian Condry and several collaborators created Echo, an installation that fuses scientific sonification with kinetic light and spatial sound. Clearly, verbal descriptions are insufficient; these installations are meant to be experienced.

Revealing the overall objective, Sean Lee, d’strict’s CEO, says: “To us, immersive art means engaging all the senses in an innovative way to create an indelible experience that fully surrounds and involves the audience.”

L.J. Kim, d’strict’s director, adds: “It’s about touch, sound, emotion and perception, not just screens or devices.” Highlighting an aspect of immersive technologies that points to future use cases, Kim notes: “A shift in sound, a vibration, a resonance or a distant echo can change not just our perception of the artwork but our awareness of the space and of others nearby.”

A similar concept, Japan’s teamLab showcases immersive art globally. In April 2025, teamLab’s location Phenomena Abu Dhabi opened, featuring some two dozen artworks that immerse visitors in multisensory landscapes such as projected forests, hologram ceilings and colour-lit waterfalls. TeamLab has been around for a quarter century but continues to incorporate newest technologies in its installations.

Its cofounder Toshiyuki Inoko outlines the art corporation’s mission to connect to the potential that spatial and immersive technologies enable: “What people have created historically just happened to be tangible objects, so that’s how people perceive the world, but there’s a lot of the world that is not object-based in the physical sense.”

Other groups explore the power of immersive technologies to empower visitors to tell their own stories. Visions 2030, a New York design studio, is using immersive technologies to create societal narratives on climate issues, social justice and urbanisation, for example. Leveraging “diverse disciplines such as design, art, science and technology, [the artists] strive to explore the immense potential of imagination to facilitate new ways of thinking”.

The group created the Lumisphere Experience, a “multi-sensory, immersive journey” that guides visitors through three domes via visual and narrated storytelling. Visitors are immersed in moving projections and sound environments. The purpose of the installation is to let visitors explore potential worlds. In the final dome, they can use a tablet and “are invited to create the ideal eco-future they just dreamed”.

Artificial intelligence (AI) creative Refik Anadol makes visual art that leverages portfolios of photos and visuals to create mesmerising work. His work has been featured by the Sphere in Las Vegas and at the façade of the Walt Disney concert hall in Los Angeles. Most prominently, the Museum of Modern Art in New York commissioned the art installation Unsupervised in 2022. In a recent 60 Minutes portrayal, he outlines his approach to leveraging AI.

“Data around us has its own voice…When I think about data as a pigment, I think it doesn’t need to dry,” he says. “It can move, in any shape, any form, any colour and texture.”

Anadol is also incorporating sensory sensations such as a neck-worn device that pumps out scents of rain and flowers, and he is experimenting with a wrist-worn device that measures wearers’ vital statistics such as their heartbeats to then change the art in real time according to the measurements.

Calling out immersive sound

Sight and sound naturally go together and are most-used senses in art and entertainment. As visuals advance rapidly towards three-dimensional, immersive landscapes, sound is perhaps only some steps behind in creating multilayered, textured soundscapes. New solutions can create personalised sound experiences in public spaces, to cancel out noise to create silent bubbles for individuals, or to focus relevant information on selected individuals such as making navigation information in cars only audible to drivers.

A research team of Assembly AI, Microsoft and University of Washington has shown how to use AI to create silent zones. These zones enable speakers to have conversations without noise interference from outside, with the team saying: “This sound bubble allows people within a radius of up to 2 meters to converse with hugely reduced interference from other speakers or noise outside the zone.” The group’s system “analyses audio data to clearly identify sound sources within and without a designated bubble size. The system then suppresses extraneous sounds in real time”.

In another effort at the University of Washington, a research team developed AI headphones for use in public spaces, an environment where many existing applications fail due to the surrounding noise. The University of Washington team created Spatial Speech Translation, which leverages existing noise-cancelling headphones and microphones and combines them with a newly developed algorithm.

“The team’s algorithms separate out the different speakers in a space and follow them as they move, translate their speech and play it back with a 2 to 4 second delay,” says the team. The system not only translates the speech but also “maintains the expressive qualities and volume of each speaker’s voice”.

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say that “recent advancements in digital signal processing and loudspeaker array design have enabled us to experience immersive spatial audio in virtual/augmented/extended reality environments in our daily lives”. The team is working on “highly localised remote audio spots” that they call audible enclaves to enable novel future opportunities to create immersive sound applications. The Penn State researchers readily admit that their technology “isn’t something that’s going to be on the shelf in the immediate future” – distortion affecting sound quality and power efficiency are some of the issues that will hold back commercial use for some time.

Moving towards a sensory internet

Multisensory environments will become commonplace as technologies advances, costs come down, and professionals and consumers get familiarised with related applications.

Ericsson’s chief technology officer Mallik Tatipamula, and Google’s chief internet evangelist Vinton Cerf, even see a sense-focused incarnation as one of the seven phases of the internet that they identified: “Through every phase, connectivity has been the unifying principle, although with every successive phase also comes new forms of connection.”

They argue that after the original internet, the mobile internet, the internet of things and the internet of AI agents (which is currently emerging), the internet of senses will develop, which will focus on perception. Researchers foresee the final two phases as being the ubiquitous internet and the quantum internet.

They outline their vision of the internet of senses: “Multisensory communication expands the network’s palate beyond just text, audio and video. In the age of the internet of senses, networks will carry signals that convey the modalities of touch, taste and smell. Advances in haptic wearables, digital olfaction and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) will allow a shopper to ‘feel’ the texture of clothing online or ‘smell’ perfume before buying. In healthcare, doctors will remotely examine patients using haptic gloves that transmit the sense of feeling. Meanwhile, education will become more immersive, enabling students to explore history or science through tactile and sensory experiences.”

Martin Schwirn is the author of ‘Small data, big disruptions: How to spot signals of change and manage uncertainty’ (ISBN 9781632651921). Schwirn has advised companies internationally for SRI International and Business Finland. He is a strategy and innovation consultant for Global 2000 companies.