EMBRACE

A mixed-reality artwork about presence, connection, and the power of a hug

Embrace is a participatory mixed-reality art installation created in response to a growing sense of digital isolation. It uses technology and narrative gameplay to reveal, rather than replace, what it means to be present with one another. In a time when connection is increasingly mediated, the work creates a fragile world that either comes back to life or disappears depending on one simple act: whether participants ask for permission and share a hug.

Across its two editions, Embrace explores how designed interactions can shift emotional awareness, how participation alters perception, and how small gestures accumulate into shared meaning. Critics have described the work as a “poetic site of empathy” and a “VR response to today’s problem of digital isolation,” praising its sincerity and its use of technology as a bridge rather than a barrier to human connection.

EMBRACE VR
2019

  • New Museum’s NEW INC, New York, USA [2019]

  • The first edition of Embrace was created during Skye’s residency at the New Museum’s NEW INC Digital Humanism programme in New York. Developed at a time when social media and emerging technologies were accelerating rapidly, the work used a speculative near-future setting to create safe imaginative distance for exploring themes of digital isolation. EmbraceVR was conceived not only as an artwork but as a playable system: a game in which participants navigated a fading cityscape through a pass-through VR view, with the state of the world directly tied to their actions.

    Players encountered monochrome virtual humans whose internal monologues revealed loneliness, doubt or emotional withdrawal. EmbraceVR was structured as a narrative game with a clear win–lose condition. The only way to save the world and win the game was simple: ask for permission, embrace a fading inhabitant, and restore the world before it disappeared. Each successful embrace returned colour to the avatar, halted the environmental fade and allowed the world to grow gradually more vibrant, while the avatar’s internal monologue shifted from negative to positive. If players made enough connections within the allotted time, the city and its inhabitants were saved; if not, the world continued to collapse into darkness. The installation used projection mapping, full-body motion capture and haptic reinforcement to make the game’s cause-and-effect structure perceptible on both visual, physical and emotional levels.

    Where the later edition expanded into collective responsibility, the 2019 version centred on individual agency. It asked whether one person’s willingness to reach out could meaningfully alter the trajectory of a deteriorating world. The game structure made this inquiry immediate: every action had consequences, and the outcome depended entirely on the player’s choices. EmbraceVR established the project’s foundation and marked the beginning of Skye’s ongoing exploration into how gameplay, narrative and embodied interaction can deepen our awareness of one another.

EMBRACE
2025

  • London Games Week, London, UK (upcoming - April 2026)

    Shelter, London, UK (upcoming - Dec 2025)

    The Art Office, London, UK [2025]

    Harwich Arts & Heritage Centre, Harwich, UK [2025]

  • The 2025 reimagining of Embrace evolved the original concept for untethered, multiplayer headsets and placed the experience directly within real community settings. Unlike the 2019 edition, which used a speculative near-future frame to create imaginative distance, the new version unfolds in the actual environment. After the pandemic, disconnection no longer required a fictional metaphor; the real world carried the emotional truth the work sought to explore. Light AR overlays desaturate the room and allow it to fade, creating an immediate sense that the world at risk is the one the participants share together.

    The stakes remain unchanged: Hugs save the world and its inhabitants. Without them, it fades away. But in this version, visitors no longer interact only with virtual characters; they share the space with both virtual characters and real people, all of whom must be saved by asking for permission and embracing. With each hug, the inhabitants regain colour and their internal monologues shift from negative to positive. A pulsing AR heart above the space responds to these moments, emphasising that the stability of the world depends on collective interaction rather than individual action. At intervals, revived virtual humans and fantastical creatures gather beneath it, creating an emergent signal that participants can choose to join. When all human players come together in a group hug, the heart surges with radiant light. The shift from a solitary experience to a communal one reframes the work: where the first edition emphasised individual agency, the 2025 version examines collective responsibility and how connection is sustained within a group.

    This edition also expands the work into civic space and incorporates drawings by local schoolchildren on themes of kindness and belonging. Their contributions shape the emotional tone of the environment and reflect Skye’s wider practice of participatory storytelling and embodied learning. In both London and Harwich, the local children’s artwork became central to the installation, anchoring Embrace within the communities that helped shape it. For the upcoming presentation at London Games Week in April 2026, the call for children’s artwork will be opened to young people across London to represent the broader community that the festival serves.

Across its two editions, Embrace has remained focused on how immersive tools can heighten our awareness of one another in real space. The installation is rooted in Skye’s wider practice, where narrative, play and sensory design create environments that invite people to step inside an idea and feel their way through it.

Rather than observing technology at a distance, Embrace uses it to stage a situation in which presence, permission and relational care become immediately consequential. By placing these dynamics within a fading world that only stabilises through human interaction, the work reveals connection as an active form of co-creation. Embrace makes this process visible and shared, offering a quiet reminder that the worlds we inhabit (digital or real) grow more vivid through collective attention. That is the heart of Embrace: a quiet invitation to rebuild what digital isolation has worn thin.

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