Possible Bodies was a collaboration between the Master Media Design + Swiss Paraplegic Group. This workshop focused on creating playful, immersive virtual reality experiences to facilitate the rehabilitation of people with motor difficulties. Our mission in this project was to develop unique prototypes that use immersive gameplay to explore new potentials for rehabilitation.

Students imagined new ways of moving, playing, and feeling in virtual space — creating immersive experiences for and with paraplegic players. Six functional and semi-functional virtual reality prototypes were created.

« Nul ne sait ce que peut le corps », Spinoza, Éthique III, 2, S

The project Possible Bodies focused on creating playful, immersive virtual reality experiences to facilitate the rehabilitation of people with motor difficulties. The result was six functional and semi-functional virtual reality prototypes.

We worked with and for the Swiss Paraplegic Foundation (Groupe suisse pour paraplégiques, GSP). Our mission was to develop unique prototypes that used immersive gameplay to explore new potentials for rehabilitation.

Each group worked with a Meta Quest 2 or Quest 3 virtual reality headset and used virtual reality to project players into a unique immersive world. The goal of this virtual projection was to open the player and their body to a new world of possible interactions. This experience was built using the Unity 6 game engine.

Following the title of the workshop, the goal was to use immersive virtual reality and gameplay to explore what was new and possible in the body of a paraplegic, as opposed to focusing on what was not possible.

A key component of gameplay was the interactive exploration of freedom inside of constraints. The game created the constraints, and the player explored expressive possibilities within those constraints. Projects were expected to exploit this intrinsic logic of gameplay, but within the context of paraplegics exploring a virtual world.

A previous design collaboration with GSP + HEAD via our friends and colleagues in the Fashion Design department, explored the concept of beauty in fashion, in an attempt to move beyond reductive medical definitions of paraplegics and their bodies. Just as in that previous project, where students strived to create something unique, through our projects in the Master Media Design we looked for that specific, often-intangible thing that only immersion in a virtual world could offer. Care was taken to avoid overloading the senses: simplicity and decisive choices in art direction were almost always better than a hodgepodge of confusing visual cues.

All VR projects from the Possible Bodies workshop were submitted by the GSP for the 2025 Design Preis Schweiz as part of their collaboration with the competition, and the project Color To Life by Peter Ha & Antonin Ricou was short-listed for the competition. This project was also presented at the Virtual Territories exhibition, GIFF 2025.

Projects used a hybrid approach combining generative 3D models (Meshy.ai, Tripo3D, …) and traditional 3D modelling (Cinema 4D, Z-Brush, Blender, …). Projects also used a text transformer (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, …) during their ideation phase. Finally, projects used a code-specific chatbot and code completion during the development phase of the project. All three of these technologies are quickly becoming the new normal for creative technologies, or were expected to do so soon — so students needed to start creating strategies sooner rather than later for this new baseline reality.

Compose your path through sound in a world shaped by your presence.

Sparks Within is a meditative VR experience where you explore a sound-based universe as a drifting consciousness. By tuning into the presence of others, you gather their unique sounds and gradually form your own symphony — a sonic reflection of your journey.

Set in another dimension, you drift as a disembodied consciousness, navigating this realm by tuning into others — beings whose presence you can hear when you gaze at them. As you listen, you are invited to gather their unique sounds. Each collected sound allows you to move through an evolving environment. As you travel from entity to entity, the sounds stay with you, forming a personal symphony — a melody of the universe. Silence turns to resonance, and the shifting world around you settles into harmony — a place of calm, shaped by your presence. At the heart of Sparks Within is the experience of paraplegic patients who must adjust to a body that is still present but limited. Through the concept of being a disembodied consciousness and sharing consciousness with other entities, we hope our game can explore embodiment and perhaps create a space where saying goodbye becomes a gentle act of trans- formation rather than loss.

  • Halcyon — A Whispering Mountain
  • Chakir Ali & Bruno Costa
  • Halcyon (PDF)

Halcyon is a VR Climbing game where each climb is different, and each path narrates the story of a lost civilization.

Discover a VR climbing game designed to support psychological well-being, reintroduce verticality, and gently encourage upper-body motion in paraplegic users. Built around simple arm gestures used in climbing, this game allows players to reclaim verticality. As they move, players regain not only physical mobility but a sense of progress, perspective, and presence.

The mountain of Halcyon may be vast and ancient, but it is not lifeless. Layered with multiple levels, lives, jokes, grief, cave paintings and song, it expresses the final breaths of its forgotten people.

Through intuitive mechanics, the mountain invites players to climb without fear of falling. Grips are procedural, glowing softly as they respond to the player’s hands with color shifts and audio cues. ,There is no danger, no falling, no failure. What remains is the act of moving forward, moving upwards, with the mountain beside you.

You will only progress towards the peak, towards betterment, tedious as it may be.

A virtual reality game where players can breathe life into their environment through the power of their gaze. Placed in complete darkness, they gently illuminate their surroundings, one object at a time. The more they discover the landscape, the more lively it becomes through vibrant colours and relaxing sounds, creating a world of wonder.

A game about memory, sound, and completeness.

The Lost Thread is a VR game designed for players with physical mobility limitations, specifically paraplegics. The experience eliminates the need for handheld controllers and is entirely navigated through gentle head movements.

Set along the mythological Sanzu River—a symbolic threshold between life and death—the game positions the player as a disembodied head. The design draws from the Chinese folklore figure Feitouman, a flying head detached from the body, who doesn’t have hands, cannot touch the world, and has to rely on hearing: echoes of forgotten melodies in the air.

Gameplay centers on sound-based interaction: players find objects and characters, guided only by sound cues. This emphasizes the ability of paralyzed people to be attentive to sound and uses sense as a key gameplay mechanism.

While offering a full, challenging gameplay experience, The Lost Thread also provides a gentle and immersive world built for players with mobility impairments — a space to engage, enjoy, and simply exist within nature.

The disco ball has lost its shine.

In this AR game, a disco ball is shining in the space you’re in. Suddenly, the lights and the music go off. The disco ball has lost its shine. Your mission is to help it recover. To do that, you need to bring the light back, from the inside. You’re invited to enter the disco ball. By using your gaze, turn on the stars, each one representing a light, and gradually restore the shared brightness. As you light up more stars, layers of the music return, step by step. You will also shine more and more with the disco ball. When you finally turn all the lights back on, with the full music, the disco ball will shine again and leave your head.

In a realm of infinite possibilities that exists between mind and matter, you are gravity.

You are the gravity weaver. You stand in a blank space as discs emerge from clouds. Activate gravity to pull everything toward you discs and clouds alike. By attracting and combining discs, unique landscapes spawn around you. Be carefull though, maintaining or releasing gravity for too long may destroy your whole environment or even yourself!

Balance is essential to shape the space around you. Inspired by Kabbalah’s Tree of Life, the game explores world building from nothingness. Da’ata is an experience where your curiosity becomes the catalyst for cyclical growth in a universe of your own making.

Bibliography

  • Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 1944
  • Roger Caillois, Les jeux et les hommes : Le masque et le vertige, 1958
  • D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 1971
  • Takefumi Makino, Gunpei Yokoi : Vie et philosophie du dieu des jouets Nintendo, 1997
  • Florent Georges, The History of Nintendo: 1989-1980 From Playing Cards to Game & Watch, 2008
  • Florent Georges, L’histoire de Nintendo : 1980-1991 L’étonnante invention : Les Game & Watch, 2018
  • Donna Haraway, The Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism In The Twentieth Century, 1985
  • Antonin Fourneau & Douglas Edric Stanley, ENIAROF: Guide de bricolage pour fabrication de fêtes foraines, 2013, eniarof.com
  • Kat Holmes. Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design. MIT Press. 2018

This last reference — Mistmatch — was the key required reading by all of the students at the beginning of the project. Here is a video presentation of Kat Holmes presenting her approach: