Touring the ‘World Picture’: virtual reality and the tourist gaze

Leotta, Alfio; Ross, Miriam

doi:10.1080/17503280.2018.1503859

Cited by 13 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…On the one hand, it can be read in the narrative as footage from the automated orbs, attempting to survey and control the landscape. On the other hand, it aligns with the contemporary use of VR aerial shots to replicate the colonial tropes of a land under command that have been produced in 2D media (Leotta and Ross, 2018). However, within the Indigenous frameworks provided by The Hunt , this footage and production technique is turned upon itself.…”

Section: Case Study 1: Indigenous Led and The Huntmentioning

confidence: 56%

Fourth VR: Indigenous virtual reality practice

Wallis

Ross

2020

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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Indigenous creators are currently using virtual reality (VR) tools, techniques and workflows in wide-ranging geographical locations and across multiple VR formats. Their radical adaptation of this new technology folds together cultural traditions and VR’s unique audiovisual configurations to resist dominant, particularly colonial, frameworks. Within this context, we ask how VR is being used to create space and capacity for Indigenous creatives to tell their stories and how do Indigenous creatives negotiate Eurocentric modes of production and distribution? To answer these questions, our Fourth VR database provides a snapshot of Indigenous VR works. By drawing on three case studies drawn from the database – The Hunt (2018), Future Dreaming (2019) and Crow: The Legend (2018) – as well as the wider patterns emerging across the database, it is possible to see an Indigenous-centred VR production framework. This framework is diverse but also contains repeated trends such as the ability to use VR to express and realize Indigenous Futurism; foreground native languages in virtual worlds; provide new articulations of Indigenous activism; embody connections between the past, present and future and demonstrate the interconnectivity of all living things. In turn, this growing body of work, engaging with the full spectrum of VR formats and tools, provides a rich contribution to the wider arena of VR practice.

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Section: Case Study 1: Indigenous Led and The Huntmentioning

confidence: 56%

Fourth VR: Indigenous virtual reality practice

Wallis

Ross

2020

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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“…As Brooke Belisle (2013) writes, “By creating the perception of virtual co-presence, stereoscopic representation supported colonialist fantasies about collecting all the world’s diversity and its historicity under the auspices of one coordinating point of view” (p. 5). Building on Belisle’s analysis, Alfio Leotta and Miriam Ross (2018) use examples from VR travel documentaries to show that very little has changed, with experiences that position the viewer as the privileged tourist whose gaze is a raced and gendered enactment of colonial “visual dominance.” For centuries now, even as the apparatus changes, much of the experience remains the same.…”

Section: Context: Situating the New Within The Oldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“This would be sweet in VR”: On the discursive newness of virtual reality

Harley

2022

New Media & Society

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When virtual reality (VR) entered the consumer market in 2016, it was accompanied by claims of its potential as a “revolutionary” new technology. This article examines these claims of newness by focusing on statements made by industry leaders and other professionals. The findings suggest repetitions of problematic discourse, in which colonialist language of “pioneering” expansion appears to be used to mobilize developers who are dominantly young, White, and male. I argue that recontextualizing the “newness” of VR opens opportunities to contest its depoliticized histories and to question its imagined futures. Situating VR within a much longer history of digital and non-digital technologies not only challenges the notions of newness that are foundational to industry-led VR discourse, but also offers a critical alternative.

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“…While the majority of the studies on this topic have focused on the attempt to measure the effectiveness of tourism TVCs on either destination image or soft power, very few scholars have accounted for the historical evolution of audiovisual tourism promotion. A significant exception is represented by Leotta and Ross (2018) who in their analysis of a set of international VR travel documentaries discussed the aesthetic differences and similarities between contemporary VR travel experiences and early tourism films. Another major contribution to the historiography of audiovisual tourism promotion is represented by Bonelli (2018) who attempted to trace the evolution of the representation of Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, in tourism audiovisual advertising from the early twentieth century until the late 2010s.…”

Section: Tourism Audiovisual Promotion: a Conceptual Challengementioning

confidence: 99%

“…New technologies such as AR and VR are also increasingly used by DMOs, media producers and ordinary travellers to showcase tourism destinations. As pointed out by Leotta and Ross (2018), however, VR tourism experiences differ significantly from other promotional tools such as films, TVCs and DPVs. As the viewer is left free to roam the image, the possibility of emphasising or ‘framing’ one specific element of the landscape, which according to Pan et al (2011) is a key element of tourism TVCs, is reduced while the potential to interact with the landscape is enhanced.…”

Section: A History Of Audiovisual Tourism Promotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘This isn’t a movie . . . it’s a tourism ad for Australia’: The Dundee campaign and the semiotics of audiovisual tourism promotion

Leotta

2019

Tourist Studies

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This article proposes a theorization of audiovisual media promotion as a distinct media field. Despite their omnipresence, very few scholars have examined the aesthetic, thematic and institutional characteristics of tourism films, commercials and promotional videos. The field of tourism audiovisual promotion poses a significant conceptual challenge as it consists of a vast array of diverse media texts and aesthetic forms. Such vast aesthetic differences, along with the different promotional potential associated with each of these forms, complicate any straightforward definition of this media field. This article will use the analysis of a recent case study – the Dundee campaign launched by Tourism Australia in 2018 – to develop a theorization of audiovisual tourism promotion. In particular, it will argue that the meaning and function of tourism audiovisual promotional texts are determined by a ‘discursive framework’ which, in turn, is informed by converging textual and contextual factors.

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Touring the ‘World Picture’: virtual reality and the tourist gaze

Cited by 13 publications

References 18 publications

Fourth VR: Indigenous virtual reality practice

Fourth VR: Indigenous virtual reality practice

“This would be sweet in VR”: On the discursive newness of virtual reality

‘This isn’t a movie . . . it’s a tourism ad for Australia’: The Dundee campaign and the semiotics of audiovisual tourism promotion

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