Enhancing Psychological Well-being in Extreme Environments: Customized Environmental Projection System applied at the "St. Kliment Ohridski" Bulgarian Base in Antarctica

This paper presents an experimental study conducted at the Antarctic Base of the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute (BAI), investigating the potential of audiovisual systems to mitigate the psychological and emotional challenges associated with prolonged stays in confined and extreme environments. The experiment examines how personalized environmental projection techniques, combined with customized visual and auditory stimuli, can alleviate negative psychological effects of isolated, confined and extreme environments (ICE) on emotions, mood, and concentration. The present study examines whether personalized visual content of landscapes that an individual is familiar with, depicting two types of natural landscapes (forest and icescape) and one type of urban landscape, differ in how it can influence the participants’ reported emotional state, mood, relaxation, motivation, and focus. In addition, we explore the potential of AI-generated visual content as a means to avoid habituation to the projected content, and thus investigate imagery type by retaining visual characteristics from literal landscapes and generating corresponding abstract representations. To this end, the experiment followed a 3x2 within-subjects design with two factors, landscape content (forest, icescape, urban environment) and imagery type (literal, abstract), and 13 participants were exposed to 16-minute audiovisual projections in three sessions and completed questionnaires before and after. The outcomes of this study show a significant interaction between the displayed landscape content and imagery type in how much participants liked the projection. Both natural landscapes were found to be more preferred than the urban landscape, but only for the literal imagery type. At the same time, imagery type also had a significant influence on liking, with the literal visualisations being more preferred than the abstract ones. Analyses comparing the change in participant responses from the beginning of the experimental session with those after exposure to the audiovisual projections showed no influence of either landscape content, imagery type, or their interaction on changes in happiness, excitement, relaxation, or mood. On the other hand, we found an energizing and vitalizing effect of landscape content, and particularly of the icescape compared to the urban landscape, on how energized participants felt after exposure to the projection compared to the beginning of the experimental session, as well as how easy it was for them to focus and how motivated they felt. Despite the limited sample size, these outcomes provide insights on how customized interventions can support well-being and guide strategies to enhance crew performance and mental health in space and other extreme environments.