I make virtual environments. About being in nature. For almost 20 years, in a variety of media, I've worked to communicate how extraordinary it is to be alive, conscious, and embodied in the flow of life through space and time.

The medium of immersive virtual environments offers a unique means of expressing this sensibility. You can't step into the space of a painting because it's two-dimensional, but you can do that in an immersive virtual environment because of is enveloping quality. Just as the invention of film extended the stillness of painting into the flow of time, the technology associated with virtual environments extends painting and film into three--dimensional space. In such a place, the artist can construct animated, conceptual models of the world that can be explored by others through real-time interaction. The viewer becomes a participant within the artist's visionary world.

I write this essay in a clearing in a forest on the slope of a mountain in southern Quebec. Surrounding me are a sea of summer greens, the rush of wind through leaves, and apples growing in June warmth. Nearby, a creek flows over rock. I have been coming to this land for five years, seeking an antidote for the high tech world I customarily inhabit. This land is my comfort, my muse.

Since 1994 I've created two virtual environments, Osmose and Ephémère, drawing on the natural world for inspiration. To enter these works, you wear a head-mounted display, enabling you to see 3D computer graphics and hear sounds generated in real time by an SGI supercomputer. Every person's journey is different — what you experience depends on your behavior and location within the work. Your breath and balance are tracked by in interface vest. Breathing in causes you to rise; exhaling causes you to slowly fall. Leaning gently lets you change direction. Thus, it is possible to float, gravity free, through these places — visually and aurally enveloped in an unreal world.

In both works you can travel through forest clearings, into moving water, or down through the earth. In these realms everything is semitransparent and immaterial. You can see and pass through everything as if you've left your physical body behind. In Ephémère, the ebb and flow of day and night, spring, summer, and fall highlight the metaphor of time. Seeds sprout when gazed upon; staring at boulders reveals other worlds hidden inside, visible but inaccessible. Both works end gently after 15 minutes.

Many of the more than 10,000 people who have been immersed in these two installations reported feeling as if they were dreaming. Others felt like angels and said they were no longer afraid of death. Some expressed feelings of euphoria and wonder, while a few wept upon emerging.

Thirty-five years ago, in The Poetics of Space, the philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote: "By leaving the space of one's usual sensibilities, one enters into communication with a space that is psychically innovating.... For we do not change place, we change our nature." At the time, he was speaking about the potential of places such as the desert and the deep sea—spaces unlike the environments with which most of us are familiar—to transform us psychologically.

Full-body immersion in Osmose and Ephémère triggers shifts in mental awareness—it feels real but it's not. It feels real because of the three-dimensionality of the space and because you're navigating via your own breath. It's not real because of the semitransparent graphics and the feeling of floating. This is the paradox of immersive virtual space.

Those who enter the dreamy landscapes of Osmose and Ephémère are released from their everyday perceptions. These kinds of immersive environments, capable of evoking feelings ranging from euphoria to loss, are a potent means of reminding people how extraordinary it is to be conscious and embodied in the living world.