A Multi-Sensory Narrative to Reignite Childlike Curiosity | Leigh Sachwitz
📑 Chapters
01:22 - About Leigh & her immersive experiences
04:30 - Defining immersive experiences
05:50 - Stories by Leigh about projects
08:58 - Childlike wonder on immersive experiences
10:56 - Leveraging AI & bio-neural feedback
14:22 - Revolution Earth Project & its storyline
19:29 - Leigh’s background & inspiration
22:25 - Leigh’s magic
Watch the full episode here.
💕 Story Overview
In S4E7 of the @MAGICademy Podcast, we welcome Leigh Sachwitz from Berlin, Germany. She has been dedicated to creating immersive experiences for over 25 years, finding new ways for people to learn and explore different concepts and challenging traditional skill development environments. We have a great conversation about these types of experiences and how they manage to provoke an emotional response in people by creating stories that touch them in emotional ways they might not have thought about.
Leigh shares some of her background studying architecture in Scotland and pivoting to the music business, where she started experimenting with immersive experiences and had a chance to analyze the deep emotional response they spark in people. She also shares some insights on what makes these experiences unique and tells some anecdotes about past successful events and their outcomes.
🌼 Magical Insights
Multi-Sensory Experiences: According to Leigh, multi-sensory experiences have a greater effect on our bodies and minds since they’re felt from within and involve several stimuli on our bodies. It’s worth exploring the potential of introducing these types of practices into talent development, to guarantee the person feels connected and comfortable on the situation in front of them. An immersive experience on a particular subject will positively impact the talent more than simply another course or conference delivered traditionally.
Releasing our Inner Child on Immersive Experiences: The way to ignite a reaction from a participant is through an immersive experience that they can relate to, and spark that childlike wonder into them wanting to learn more. To achieve that, a good story is necessary. It’s not just about putting any type of knowledge into an immersive experience format, it’s about getting people interested in the subject matter by creating stories that touch them in emotional ways. The bulk of the information must be there, but it must be told attractively.
Simple Versions of an Idea: It’s the simpler versions of a thought the ones that get deep into our subconscious and provoke an emotional response on our end. When developing immersive experiences for learning or sharing knowledge, it’s important to make people feel like they’re not learning something but instead, it’s just an experience for them. So concepts and hard knowledge must be kept simple and suggestive and look for the subject to get carried away.
Integrating AI and Biotech: Implementing AI-driven technologies (such as VR) to biotech environments allows researchers to interact with knowledge in a more intuitive manner. For example, scientists would be able to study molecules more thoroughly, visualize potential drug interactions, and better predict drug efficacy, accelerating the drug discovery process.
⭐ What’s Leigh’s Magic?
Leigh’s magic is being able to understand how to spark emotional responses in people who are inside physical space. She has a way of developing immersive experiences that have people forgetting they’re in one, and they commit fully to the task at hand.
Conclusion
In conclusion, immersive experiences can be a great way to share knowledge or get talents involved in what they need to learn since they stimulate several parts of the brain and touch people in emotional ways they haven’t thought about before. These experiences are unique and they’re a good way to keep people engaged and spark an interest that traditional methods of learning might not accomplish.
If you would like to stay tuned with our future guests and their magical stories. Welcome to join us.
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He, M., & Jiang, A. (2022). Thinking of Aesthetic Empathy in Immersive Exhibitions. Human Factors in Virtual Environments and Game Design;
Legaard, J.F. (2024). Into the wonder – exploring the design of playables. Proceedings of the Design Society, 4, 2405 - 2412.;
Quesnel, D.T., Stepanova, E.R., Aguilar, I.A., Pennefather, P., & Riecke, B.E. (2018). Creating AWE: Artistic and Scientific Practices in Research-Based Design for Exploring a Profound Immersive Installation. 2018 IEEE Games, Entertainment, Media Conference (GEM), 1-207.
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Leigh Sachwitz is the Founder and Creative Director of Berlin based and internationally renowned multimedia content design studio flora&faunavisions.
Flora&faunavisions operates at the forefront of technology, seamlessly blending light, art, and digital frameworks to reshape perceptions. Its mission is to evoke optimistic emotions in all audiences by merging poetic and artistic narratives with colorful, abstract, and intelligent audiovisual and human-centered environments.
https://www.florafaunavisions.de
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Jiani (00:00)
Welcome to MAGICademy Podcast today with Leigh and she has been leading, she has been on the forefront, leading the design immersive experiences since 1999. It's been a long journey and she has always been exploring kind of the intersection between technology, how technology and immersive experiences can.
Leigh Sachwitz (00:15)
Thank
Jiani (00:26)
potentially awaken our human emotions and in a very visceral and embodied way. So the topic that we're going to explore today will be focusing mostly on the immersive experience design and how we can or what are some basic strategies we can implement in that environment to trigger emotions and especially as we develop leadership programs and other learning development programs.
happy and so grateful to have you Leigh to join us today.
Leigh Sachwitz (01:01)
Yeah, thank you so much coming here at you from Berlin, Germany. So it's great how we can use technology to connect in this way and feel close to each other, even though we're actually quite far away.
Jiani (01:14)
Exactly. I feel like as if we're just together. And I think in the future, if we have the immersive space, we can potentially just sit together and then have this conversation moving forward. That would be perfect. I do have, as before we start, I do have a question. Just close your eyes and beep beep beep. And in front of you lands a spaceship and out walks a very friendly alien. Friendly.
For sure. If you were to use one word, one sound, or one movement to introduce yourself, what would that be?
Leigh Sachwitz (01:53)
Hi, I'm the alien Leigh and I'm here to help you feel your emotions through storytelling.
Jiani (02:06)
Beautiful, beautiful. So why immersive experiences and why stories?
Leigh Sachwitz (02:13)
Yeah, well, it's nice to see everyone here and thanks for inviting me to have a chat. mean, it's funny because when you go back, so I started working in this field after studying architecture in Glasgow, Scotland, where I come from originally. And then I moved to Berlin, which just sounded like a good time or a good place to be at the time in the mid 90s. And I started working with
heavily in the art scene and in the music scene, especially around electronic music in Berlin. And we were designing spaces and those spaces were sometimes used for temporary events and temporary art happenings and clubs and stuff. so we were looking for materials and technologies which could help us.
designed something which went up very quick and went down just as quick as it went up. Sometimes some of those spaces were, yeah, some of those parties and events were not legal in the same way that they are now. And so we had to get in and out of these buildings really quickly and through back then, even though you talk about like...
Jiani (03:13)
Mm.
Leigh Sachwitz (03:30)
film projectors or the very first video projectors then seemed to be a good idea to work with technology and light to create these spaces and to completely transform something, a place, a live place where people and humans are physically in it. And this is actually like, these are actually the first immersive experiences or maybe you go right back to like, I don't know, like,
hundreds of years ago when people are meeting in the courtyard or some kind of market or around the campfire or whatever those rituals were at the time, I do believe that these are all immersive experiences. And therefore, in the end, what I've been doing, I've been doing for a long time. It's just that we now name it in a different way. we have, you know, we don't have to say, I design interiors using temporary
Jiani (04:09)
Hmm.
Leigh Sachwitz (04:30)
pieces of technology to create, and you don't have to spin it off like that. And it's great to be able to recognize and name these spaces that we create. And I feel that by connecting with a community and a live space, even though it's great to be talking to you here, I'd much rather be sitting.
they're having a coffee and actually interacting in physical space together. And therefore, yeah, I just started creating these different types of pieces and works and experiences for people to go to and to enjoy together in groups and in their community.
Jiani (04:54)
Mmm.
Mm.
That's beautiful. you, would you, how would you define the immersive one? you, would you, does, does immersive means, the environment is like immediate around you that triggers like maybe embodied experience? Like how do you exactly, like, how do you define that immersiveness? How do you, yeah.
Leigh Sachwitz (05:34)
Yeah, I think for me, know, like this word is being used and it's very trendy to talk about immersive and there's many, many different levels of those types of experiences, the same as you have so many different formats from films to series to short films to whatever. But in my particular field, I think I would describe.
Jiani (05:40)
you
Leigh Sachwitz (05:59)
our immersive experience is multi -sensoric. So I think there has to be more than just, you know, like triggering one sense, like sight or hearing or taste or smell. I think it has to work with the combination of being immersed in something. And I don't think that it's possible to really be immersed if it's only one, triggering one of your sensory organs. So...
Jiani (06:24)
Mmm.
Mmm.
Leigh Sachwitz (06:28)
Yeah, I would say like for us, it's a multi -sensoric experience which triggers you more because it's happening in, because you're inside it, so it's happening around you, you are surrounded by this experience and therefore it is immersive. Yeah.
Jiani (06:49)
And we can talk about emotion and we wanted to kind of tap into some stories to talk about the power of emotion and stories in the immersive environment. So you have launched many, many, many, many, many successful immersive multi -sensory experiences. What out of all that, what was one of the maybe a few memorable experiences that you witnessed that
people came into this experience feeling transformed by the time they walked out of the experience.
Leigh Sachwitz (07:28)
It's a good question. I think like for us or for me as a designer, the best moment is when you go into the space and you hand it over to the visitor and to the patrons and the people that you've actually made it for. So we do spend like anything from a couple of months to a couple of weeks inside one of those spaces before we actually open it.
and this moment of actually opening it and then just sitting back and watching how people respond. And it's always quite different to what you thought. that I always find very positive because you have an idea of how other people are going to respond to the work. But until it actually happens, there are so many other levels and so many things that happen that you didn't think about before.
And it's always just really fun to be, then, the observer, you know, and I've watched... There's a few things, you I don't think I could pinpoint one particular moment, but recently, for example, we have an immersive experience opened at the moment in Australia. And I recently received a message from somebody who had taken their child into this experience and the child had some learning difficulties, I believe.
and the parents had sent me a letter or sent us a letter to the studio saying how amazing the experience was for the child and for them as parents. And of course, like when you receive something like that, then it's just one person, but it makes sense. And it's like, it's worth it, of course, because it's a very emotional message.
But there's also just been really fun things that you see. know, we normally watch the shows before leaving for, you know, 10 or 20 times to understand and to learn and to improve and to watch people. And yeah, it's always fun when you realise that somebody is quite sceptical, maybe, coming in and they're not really sure what to expect. They've maybe never been in a space. All of our experiences are also interactive.
So you can actually co -create those environments yourself. And so they're a little bit like standoffish, maybe in the beginning. And to observe the progress of how they relax and become comfortable with the technology. And in the end, kind of like maybe if it's somebody who's a little older and maybe not used to those types of spaces to watch them kind of break down their barriers and just really
release the inner child in themselves, you know? And so things like that are always really rewarding to observe.
Jiani (10:14)
Mm
What does it look like when people release their inner child in the whole immersive experience?
Leigh Sachwitz (10:27)
I think like for me, it's really about being able to forget and shut out everything else which was going on in your life up until that point and to just be able to be in that moment and to enjoy it without having any inhibitions or fear about, don't know, whatever it was that that individual person was reacting to. So you can see
just how people relax and respond and have fun and enjoy and get excited about things that they, especially in interactive environments that they create and build themselves and space. And yeah, obviously, like there's some feedback and stuff and different ways of collecting feedback. But, you know, I think these days through...
Jiani (11:09)
Hmm.
Leigh Sachwitz (11:19)
technology and enable technology as an enabler to do certain things that you couldn't do maybe if you go back to 20 years ago when I first started. I think it's great because you can actually track and prove and validate that those types of experiences and a lot of these types of in our case very optimistic, very free, open experiences which
are there to spark curiosity in people and not to like preach or not to teach them through enjoyment and through having fun because, you know, like if you go back to, I don't know, like the classroom or just you look at education and you look at learning systems and all of those things, you know, if you can find ways for people to be involved.
through having fun and not realizing that you're actually learning whilst you're doing it, then you have like the jackpot in terms of enabling these types of learning spaces. So, yeah, it's great for us if those things start to happen, then I think those spaces are successful.
Jiani (12:22)
Yes.
Wonderful. so I would safely assume that the strategies of making that immersive, explorative learning spaces happen will take the immersiveness, will bring in the immersiveness in elements such as like multimodal, multisensory perspective. It will also bring in the
the story piece that's where it of it triggers people's to emotions and I'm just kind of assuming because you're the one who's really kind of doing exploring it. if you were to complete that leveraging all the immersive technology such as artificial intelligence and maybe bio neural feedback what would that be? How would that?
We can maybe sketch it as we kind of talk.
Leigh Sachwitz (13:34)
Yeah, I think, you know, like one thing that, that, that I've been focused on is like how to create optimistic spaces and how to create things which help people understand that technology is there to be, assistant and not to take over your life, you know? And I think that especially now when it comes to like artificial and AI and all this stuff that a lot of people.
maybe are not artists or designers or scientists and don't understand the way that they can integrate or use these technologies in order to actually save time or to actually, yeah, that it's nothing that you need to be scared of, you know. In certain ways, I guess there are, and I understand a lot of fears connected to technology, of course, but in the end, like we can show and we can use and we can help people.
become more comfortable around these types of new technologies and embrace them a little bit better rather than being afraid of them. And for example, we would use kind of emotional content and storytelling because if you have a narrative and if you tell a story, it's so much more valuable to triggering and you can prove already that those emotional
and emotions that you feel as a person that these will be triggered in a stronger way. And therefore things like community, dealing with the problem of loneliness, dealing with all of these issues that people feel, especially after a global pandemic and all these things that we're going through in our lives. on a different scale, some people more this, other people this. I live in Europe. We have different fears than...
what's happening in the US, but whatever, but it's complicated. know, the world is complicated. And I think that we can help through creating stories to touch people in emotional ways that they might not have been connected to before. All of those feelings and emotions and thoughts are there anyway. These are not things that we're teaching. It's just helping people to control and to understand and to move forward in this complicated world.
Jiani (15:55)
Yes.
Leigh Sachwitz (16:02)
that we live in. And I think that these types of environments can enable people to understand things in a different way. So it's a great addition, entertainment, educational addition to lots of other formats that are also spectacular, like film or like music or many things can help us. But in particular, I think we can touch and we can trigger people in new ways.
Jiani (16:33)
I love that. And I think in one of the most recent shows that you've developed, it's about climate challenge and you implemented a challenge within kind of the experience and asked people to kind of take on the responsibilities and start to kind of explore and help. Can you delve deeper into like what the storyline looks like and
and how did people respond to that particular story? And climate change is real as we were just talking about. So I think that's kind of a good example for us to kind of anchor a little bit.
Leigh Sachwitz (17:14)
Yeah, I mean, I guess you're talking about there's a couple of things. We have a few projects which work in the direction of like climate and the crisis that we find ourselves in globally. But I think you talk about in particular the Revolution Earth project. And this is a project which was built for a science museum in the Netherlands. So really, the challenge was in the end, challenge was how do we
Jiani (17:29)
Yes.
Leigh Sachwitz (17:43)
bring children, teenagers, younger people who are still in school, more or less, even though there are families and there are parents and grandparents and stuff, but the focus was, you know, from 12, 10, 12 to 18, how do we bring these complicated problems that we have in the world closer to people so they understand through triggering emotions and thinking about situations that they might be forced to
forced to face in the future connected to this issue. And in the end, it's just the same thing as what I was saying before. It's like storytelling. It's a combination of storytelling and co -creation. So you arrive at the space and you're greeted on film, which is a shoot, so a film production shoot, and you're greeted by three kids, and they're from the future.
And they tell you about the world that they live in now. they're like from like whatever 80 years in the future, 60 years in the future, the not too distant future. And they talk about how they've heard and how they've read and heard rumors that there used to be things like nature or water, and they talk about how they've never seen a tree, for example, or they've never seen a lake.
and they have to go on a journey with the rest of the participants to do certain things with inside an immersive space. So using gamification to solve different problems and to reconstruct the world the way it could have been and to pick up rubbish and to just look at different landscapes and all of these things happen.
Jiani (19:27)
Mmm.
Leigh Sachwitz (19:34)
inside an immersive room and whilst they're continuing on their journey and fulfilling some of these tasks, there's a tree in the centre of the space which is lightening up. So it lights up the more they achieve and the more they go through and the more they understand what they have to do to reconstruct the world the way it used to be to be able to see nature or to see water or to experience a tree or to experience a season.
Jiani (19:50)
Hmm.
Leigh Sachwitz (20:03)
changing or leaves changing color or whatever, the tree lights up until it's complete. And then there's kind of like an explosion in the room of joy. And the tree has these different types of effects in it. And that's the completion of the immersive space. And after that, we take them into a third space, which is about reflection.
Jiani (20:16)
Hmm
Leigh Sachwitz (20:31)
So I think when it comes to not for all formats, but when it comes to certain topics like this one and educational topics, which are focused on classrooms and learning, then I think you also have to give that moment to reflect on what it is that you've just experienced because the best immersive experiences are the ones where you don't think about it while you're in it. So like you're just living in the
Jiani (20:31)
Hmm.
Mmm, mmm.
Leigh Sachwitz (21:00)
You're only playing, you're co -creating, you're building the environments, you're interacting, you're talking to whoever else is there, but you're in that particular moment. And so the reflection space is really just about being able to reflect on what those topics were and being able to think a bit about some call to actions that you might possibly take. In the end, think when it comes to the topic of...
the climate crisis, a lot of people feel quite helpless because they feel like it's such a big theme and the world to save the planet is like, what can I do sitting here in Berlin, you know, to save the planet? And so they give up because they think that they can't make a difference. So I think it's really important to like...
take the problems down and break them down into smaller pieces and for people to understand that every single dot and everything counts and is part of something bigger. And I think that this is quite good to do this or the immersive experience or these environments help us deliver that message as well.
Jiani (22:03)
Hmm.
I love that and I'm very curious like when you were like 11 years old back in the times what did Leigh enjoy creating and playing that time disappeared for you?
Leigh Sachwitz (22:37)
When I was 11, I enjoyed lying in my bed trying to get an out of body experience. So I would lie in my bed and try and fly and try and like go to places in my brain or in my consciousness or that you wouldn't actually be able to achieve. I thought it was fun to try and imagine these different types of spaces.
And apart from that, I was really into listening to music and writing down all the lyrics. So I would do stuff like that when I was 11. And I think when I got to like 15, I think when I was 11, didn't, wasn't, you know, like always drawing or always painting or always being creative or I wasn't one of those kids. I think when I got to 15, I started to think about
architecture and physical spaces and then I went on to study architecture but in an art school so more how to deal with problems and how to solve them and not necessarily how to build a structure which remains standing for 50 years or 100 years.
But when I was 11, there was no mobile phone. We had four stations on the TV and you had to be home at seven o 'clock if you wanted to watch your show. And of course we did at some point get a VCR. So you would record something and then you would play it back. I never grew up in a technological on -demand environment. So was outside a lot and reading books.
Jiani (23:52)
I love that. So that's where the
Leigh Sachwitz (24:20)
doing these really boring things.
Jiani (24:23)
I think that's where the real fun is, like the nature that kind of encourages you to go beyond the limitations of technology and go into the outer domains or disciplines that kind of help you to inspire the development process, drawing inspirations from all over. I love that.
Leigh Sachwitz (24:48)
Yeah, I was reading an article like I think yesterday or the day before about a festival. I think it was in Scandinavia somewhere. Maybe it was in Denmark where they literally like just took away all the phones. So it was a mobile phone free festival or free experience. And it was they were measuring like how people.
kind of what other things, how did people then fill their time, you know, and there was a lot of really positive results of like conversations or drawing or doing workshops or just doing other stuff there, the things that we would have done as kids, you know, because we didn't have, you know, we weren't connected, we didn't have Instagram, we didn't have all of those distractions.
Jiani (25:33)
you
Yeah, think to a certain extent it's actually a very healthy thing. What do you think overall is your magic then?
Leigh Sachwitz (25:48)
I think the magic is being able to understand how to spark emotional responses in people who are inside physical space. So I think that the live situation of being inside a space is something that we do very well and that we can understand those stories and understand how just like a beam of light
you know, something really simple which comes over and can just be, you know, like a very small thing can affect somebody in such a way that they feel something and understanding how to do that in time. So at what point in time or at what point during a show or during a time period do certain things have to happen in order to feel certain ways? which is in the end just storytelling. It's how do you tell the story?
for people to be triggered and I think that we do that pretty well.
Jiani (26:55)
And thank you, Leigh, for your time and your energy and your vibes. And I'm very grateful that you were able to stop by from your busy life and say hi to us. And we've learned so much from your stories. And we hope that...
for our folks out there. If you're interested, definitely get in touch with Leigh. Let's build some immersive, emotional, triggering, in healthy way, experiences for you and your people. And thank you again, Leigh, for coming by and hope all the best for you, your design projects and your upcoming.
Leigh Sachwitz (27:40)
Yeah.
Jiani (27:53)
I think the next quarter of the year.
Leigh Sachwitz (27:57)
Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's great for us as well to talk to you. We have a few things happening in the US as well, which will be opening. So I think if you look out for us for Flora Fauna Visions, you'll see us all over the place around the world. And I think that there are audiences everywhere in every country and every corner on every island who want to feel that connection and who want to feel that spirit of community.
Right? And we need to make sure that I feel responsible. I feel like we have a responsibility as designers to make sure that people come together and that we grow together and that we can have fun together and emerge together in the future. And if we can hold on to that, yeah, then I think we can find magic for the future as well.
Jiani (28:51)
That's great. Yeah, collective magic in the immersive story. I love it. Beautiful. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Leigh
Disclaimer
The content shared is to highlight the passion and wonder of our guests. It is not professional advice. Please read our evidence-based research to help you develop your unique understanding.
AI technologies have been utilized to assist in creating content derived from genuine conversations. All generated material undergoes thorough human review to ensure accuracy, relevance, and quality.
