Polyphonic Materiality in Extended Reality

Much human-computer interaction design (HCI) research on materiality investigates the ways in which computational qualities become embedded within physical materials, often under the banner of 'the material turn'. With the development of extended reality (XR) and the emerging metaverse, how might we understand and articulate the qualities and agencies of digital materials as they overlay, embed and replace the physical world? This paper advocates for an ontology of digital materials to understand how they actualise in the world without being tangible, providing a way for XR designers and artists to critically work with them as part of an assemblage. It will introduce an idea of polyphonic materiality, drawing on Anna Lowenhaupt-Tsing's concept of polyphonic assemblage. It will locate digital materiality within Giles Deleuze's idea of the virtual and actual, and Karen Barad's concept of agential realism. This provides a conceptual underpinning to the proposition of polyphonic materiality as a typology for doing XR design, where material properties emerge as various physical and digital processes coalesce or intersect.