VR Stories of Travel and Exile: Forensic Storytelling and the Politics of Dynamic Framing

Abstract

In this article, I analyse recent VR works that emphasize fictional or documentary stories of travel and exile, and thereby consider an active engagement with the environment crucial to the construction of narratives. In so doing, I re-examine and bring into dialogue three existing strands in film theory from the perspective of VR: an aesthetics of discovery (Andrew, 2007), the idea of liberal and embodied perception (Bazin 1953, Sobchack 2004) and an implied connection between film spectatorship and forensics (Benjamin 1931 & 1939). I then propose forensics as a narrative model for VR storytelling, and thereby emphasize broader epistemological and ideological implications of the discovering spectator. As in forensic research, a VR environment offers the spectator scenes in which each detail is potentially relevant to the story: meaning is then achieved through the discovery of relevant pieces information.

Keywords

• vr travelogues
• widescreen aesthetics
• liberal spectatorship
• politics of place