Doing vs. Being: A philosophy of design for artful VR

We present a practical philosophy for how to design artfully for virtual reality. Framing this design philosophy is the balance of doing vs. being as a central duality in all design for VR. The values underlying this way of thinking draw from a diverse set of interdisciplinary perspectives and from our own practice in computer music design. We develop a set of design principles, through which we critically analyse several popular musical VR experiences as well as some of our own creations. These include a tool for audio programming in VR, a set of design etudes on musical instruments and a multi-movement artistic work. Through these principles and case studies, we hope to provide lenses - both critical and practical - to inform the design of artful VR.