VR combined with cloud computing enables surgical manipulation of real-time molecular simulations, accelerating 3D research tasks.

BACKGROUND Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) interventions are being developed and trialled for use in the treatment of eating disorders. However, little work has explored the opinions of people with eating disorders, or the clinicians who treat them, on the possible use of VR in this context. OBJECTIVE To use qualitative methodology to explore the views of people with eating disorders, and clinicians who treat them, on the possible use of VR in the treatment of eating disorders. METHODS We conducted a series of focus groups and interviews with people with lived experience of eating disorders and clinicians on their views about VR and how it could potentially be used in eating disorders treatment. We took a thematic approach to analysing the resulting qualitative data. RESULTS We conducted focus groups with ten individuals with a current or previous eating disorder, and individual interviews with four clinicians experienced in treating people with eating disorders. We describe themes around representing the body in VR, potential therapeutic uses for VR, the strengths and limitations of VR in this context and the practicalities of delivering VR therapy. Suggested therapeutic uses included: to practice challenging situations around food-related and weight/appearance related scenarios and interactions, to retrain attention, the representation of the body, to represent the eating disorder, for psychoeducation and to enable therapeutic conversations with oneself. There was substantial agreement between the groups on these themes. CONCLUSIONS Participants in both groups were generally enthusiastic about the potential use of VR in treating eating disorders and generated many ideas as to how it could be used. They were also aware of potential limitations, and expressed the need for caution around how bodies are represented in a VR setting. CLINICALTRIAL NA

This article uses a dance-somatic standpoint to explore the complexities of body-technology relations across the virtuality and corporeality of bodies and environments using multi-person Virtual Reality technology (VR). Immersion into a virtual environment (VE) using VR can lead to a sense of presence, of ‘being there’. Dancers move attending to a field of sensation which is felt and tactile, undertaking somatic and sensory practices to de-centre vision so to foreground and thus activate non-visual and somatic senses. From this dancerly standpoint, entering into a VE brings into play the immediate effect of a perceptual tension or ‘gap’ between the visual, virtual environment and the physical, felt environment. Technologists and artists engaging with VR typically find ways to cover-over this perception gap in order to create a reality that is fluidly and synchronously experienced by the participant. This article introduces and discusses two participatory performance projects Figuring (2018) and Soma (2020) which challenge this approach. Drawing on participant responses to Figuring, and the creative development of Soma, the article presents and discusses six themes which unpack and challenge normative notions and expectations around VR technology and how bodies sensorially engage with the technology; and discusses an ‘ethics of care’ which calls for somatic activation and participatory agency in human encounters with technology. Throughout, the article offers a commentary on the tensions between a thematic research approach and an intuitive, practice-led approach in the analysis of participant testimonies and in the creative processes of performance-making. 

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