Immersive storytelling and affective ethnography in virtual reality

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) storytelling, particularly in its nonfictional modes, promises a sensory immersion among others whose lives and ways of being a privileged viewer might not otherwise experience. In this essay, by focusing on the Emmy-nominated 2018 VR film Traveling While Black, we explore how the immersive power of VR storytelling can enact ethnographic encounters premised less on the impulse to extract meaning from other people and their ways of life than on the sensory and affective force of being with others in an unfolding experience of both similitude and difference. Without wishing to overstate VR's empathy-inducing potential, we suggest that by situating viewers at a paradoxical threshold between proximity and distance, the affective power of VR derives in part from a narrative form capable of fostering nonappropriative relations.

Predictors of Engagement in Virtual Reality Storytelling Environments about Migration

“…In this sense, high presence and high immersion can lead users to feel as if they were the protagonist in a VR storytelling environment [69]. In other words, immersion happens when a sense of presence is created [70] when people feel like they were in the real world or if they were an object/subject in the virtual scenario.…”

The Use of Storytelling in Virtual Reality for Studying Empathy: A Review

“…But real-life stories deriving from personal experiences of individuals can also be the subject of VR narratives and communicated as compellingly as any other VR narrative. VR has the capacity to mentally transport the user in a simulated location that might otherwise be hardly accessible, where stories of people from different communities and with different lifestyles and habits can unfold [20]. Even though every medium has the capacity to offer a narrative experience similar to VR, immersive VR is unique because of its aforementioned properties, namely immersion and the illusions of VR presence and body ownership.…”

The Role of Audio in Immersive Storytelling: a Systematic Review in Cultural Heritage

“…In particular, augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR, which together form a common ground of mixed reality) are relevant enabling technologies and are nowadays widely used by both academic and corporate research as well as development in multiple application domains ranging from neuroscience to sports training, medicine, education, and entertainment [2]. Cultural heritage can also benefit from mixed reality experiences in a variety of areas, ranging from the reconstruction of cultural sites [3] to the creation of accessible knowledge made possible by technologymediated direct experience [4,5]. A soundscape, the acoustic real or virtual environment as perceived or experienced and as understood by a person, in context, gives a valuable contribution to tourism and cultural heritage enhancing cultural proposals [6].…”