[C25] Echoed Selves

Inspiration

For decades, technology has drawn humans into flat screens, disconnecting us from our own bodies. We asked ourselves: What if movement could become the interface? What if embodiment could return to humanity through technology? From this vision, Echoed Selves was born — a mixed reality experience where digital echoes turn dance into presence, play, and healing.

What It Does

Echoed Selves invites participants to co-create a duet with their own digital echo. Gestures are mirrored, delayed, and transformed into light, rhythm, and sound. Users can choose between three distinct modes: • Release — a meditative mode where slow movements expand into glowing trails. • Euphoria — a joyful mode full of bursts of color, rhythm, and play. • Oscillate — a deep, heavy flow where movements echo as pulsing waves.

The experience runs fluidly without controllers — only the body is needed.

How We Built It

We combined Meta’s XR SDK, hand-tracking, and Unity’s real-time rendering to create a system where movement instantly transforms into visual and sonic landscapes. Our team merged choreographic thinking with interaction design, building dynamic shaders, audio-reactive elements, and a multi-mode environment optimized for presence and play.

Challenges We Ran Into • Hand-tracking optimization: keeping the movement fluid and responsive while avoiding lag. • Designing intuitive feedback: ensuring that colors, shapes, and sounds “felt” natural to different emotional states. • Balancing art and tech: integrating an artistic vision into a technically stable prototype within hackathon time limits. Accomplishments That We’re Proud Of • Created a fully functional, controller-free mixed reality prototype in just a few days. • Blended artistic expression with real-time XR technology. • Designed three distinct emotional modes that users described as meditative, playful, and powerful. • Built a system that allows anyone — regardless of dance background — to step in and create beauty with their own movement.

What We Learned

We discovered how to merge dance and choreography with interaction design, and how XR can become a tool for embodiment rather than disembodiment. We also learned that accessibility and inclusivity are crucial: the experience needs to adapt to different levels of mobility and comfort.