Understanding and constructing shared spaces with mixed-reality boundaries

TLDR

The paper highlights the complexities of social interaction across real and virtual spaces, motivating a systematic approach to mixing realities. The study proposes and demonstrates a method for creating shared mixed realities by constructing transparent boundaries between real and virtual spaces to address interaction challenges. The authors introduce a taxonomy classifying shared space approaches along transportation, artificiality, and spatiality, and present a technique for constructing mixed‑reality boundaries that join real and virtual spaces. The authors report staging a poetry performance simultaneously in real and virtual theaters, illustrating the feasibility of their mixed‑reality boundary technique.

Abstract

We propose an approach to creating shared mixed realities based on the construction of transparent boundaries between real and virtual spaces. First, we introduce a taxonomy that classifies current approaches to shared spaces according to the three dimensions of transportation, artificiality, and spatiality. Second, we discuss our experience of staging a poetry performance simultaneously within real and virtual theaters. This demonstrates the complexities involved in establishing social interaction between real and virtual spaces and motivates the development of a systematic approach to mixing realities. Third, we introduce and demonstrate the technique of mixed-reality boundaries as a way of joining real and virtual spaces together in order to address some of these problems.