Watsonville: Teaching Through Embodied Curiosity, Vulnerability and Full-Body Immersive Experience

Abstract

Watsonville is a virtual reality experience that explores immersive learning as a form of full-body experiential engagement grounded in curiosity, vulnerability, and childlike wonder. Designed as a first-person VR experience, the project situates participants within the physical perspective of a child navigating a domestic environment scaled beyond their reach. Through embodied actions such as crouching, crawling, and cautious movement, participants engage with space in ways that foreground attentiveness, uncertainty, and affective openness. Rather than organizing learning around linear objectives or explicit content delivery, Watsonville explores how embodied perception and affect may function as instructional mechanisms. Drawing on experiential learning traditions, the project examines how immersive environments can position the body as a site of meaning-making. This paper presents Watsonville as a practice-based research project with formative public exhibition evaluation. Observations and brief post-experience interviews collected from approximately 50 participants during a public exhibition suggest that physical articulation, environmental familiarity, and calibrated emotional tension may support sustained engagement and reflective exploration in immersive learning environments.