Challenging Disability and Interaction Norms in XR: Cooling Down the Empathy Machine in Waiting for Hands

TL;DR

This paper critiques the use of VR as an empathy tool for disability by presenting an XR installation that subverts traditional narratives through absurd performance and alternative interaction methods, fostering critical reflection.

Contribution

It introduces Waiting for Hands, an XR installation that challenges normative disability representations by using absurdist performance and novel controllers to promote ethical engagement.

Findings

Disrupted traditional empathy narratives in XR with absurd performance.

Created alternative controllers to repurpose interaction norms.

Engaged audiences in critical reflection on disability representation.

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) is often described as the "ultimate empathy machine," framing disability as an experience to be simulated through such technologies, which can reduce disability to a spectacle of pity or inspiration. In response, we present Waiting for Hands (WfH), an interactive eXtended Reality (XR) installation that critiques this logic by: (1) repurposing interaction norms in XR through the creation of Alternative Controllers, and (2) staging an absurd XR performance using the built controllers to disrupt sentimentalized disability narratives. The performance involves eight people: two XR participants on stage and six audience members watching a projected documentary about Hema Kumari, an Indian singer living with Rheumatoid Arthritis. The XR users partially obscure the film, drawing attention through strange mouth and hand movements performed in XR. This creates a layered experience that disrupts direct engagement with Hema's story and introduces uncertainty. While XR is often seen as a fully immersive, sensory-dominant medium, this piece subverts that framing by using XR to produce absurdity and alienation. By challenging empathy-driven and pitiable narratives of disability, we ask what ethical stance an XR performance can take to attune participants to non-normative embodiment while resisting spectacle.