The applications of nature environments in VR was the subject of a co-authored chapter in the Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art (2020) titled Sonic Intimacies. The Senory Status or Intimate Encounters in 3-D Sound Art. This chapter demonstrates a merging of clinical, medical and scientific research and creative, artistic research, whereby the fusion of the two produces outcomes with substation community benefit.

I was the lead author on this chapter in collaboration with the co-director of the Acoustic Ecology Lab, Dr. Feisst. A copy of the chapter is here and is embedded below

This chapter comes out of nine years of developing nature VR experiences, starting with the Oculus VR headset, crowd funded, Kickstarter campaign. During that time I have worked with Blue Ripple Audio in the UK to develop ambisonic spatial audio tools for the Unity 3D gaming engine which made development much easier, more rapid and opened up deployment to more platforms including smartphones.

I am currently principle investigator in a partnership with the Center for Applied Behavioral Health Policy at ASU in a pilot study to examine emotional affect and stress reactivity among a non-clinical community sample, using Virtual Reality(VR) nature scenes.

Research has demonstrated that exposure to nature can lead to improvements in stress, tension, pulse rate, blood pressure, attention, and post-surgical recovery for children and adults (Largo-Wight et al., 2016; Saadamand et al., 2010).

The EcoRift VR experiences provides access to simulated nature in urban environments, but it also allows patients in hospital rooms without windows or views of nature to have equivalent nature experiences on demand. VR also offers the possibility that health benefits could be applied in a much broader range of research and healthcare as is demonstrated in the above research, looking specifically at anxiety and depression.