The possible worlds of VR documentary

Rose, Mandy

Abstract

Producers have been drawn to virtual reality (VR) for its potential to render vivid experiences of nonfiction content. The politics of the platform’s affective operation, particularly in relation to distant human others, has been analysed and critiqued. This chapter explores what is at play when that affective potential is deployed within mediated encounters with non-human species and speculative worlds. It considers case studies of VR projects that engage the temporal imagination and that reflect human entanglement with some of the other life forms that we share the planet with. In some of these projects, I argue, we can see the affective power of VR harnessed, not simply to provoke feeling, instead to trouble dominant ‘structures of feeling’ and support new formations of consciousness.

• Online Publication Date: Apr 8, 2025
• Publication Date: Apr 8, 2025
• Deposit Date: Feb 14, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: May 9, 2025
• Publisher: Intellect
• Book Title: The Intellect Handbook of Documentary
• Chapter Number: 7
• ISBN: 9781835950685
• Keywords: Documentary, Virtual Reality, Ecomedia, Immersion, Climate Crisis, More-than-Human, Temporal imagination, Affect
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11715508
• Publisher URL: https://www.intellectbooks.com/the-intellect-handbook-of-documentary
• Contract Date: Feb 11, 2024