Semio-narrative positioning, forensic storytelling and post-digital activism in Travelling While Black (2019)

Abstract

Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR), as a new spatialized and interactive narrative media, affords under-represented perspectives among viewers and story agents. It is arguably a unique storytelling genre in its own right capable of placing viewers as forensic investigators in a fully developed 360° storyworld. This said, the current study employs cognitive-stylistic and cognitive-semiotic analytical tools to demonstrate how, by claiming semio-discursive space in CVR experiences, storytellers and viewers alike adopt different identity positions and viewing roles, respectively, in virtual interaction and in the course of narrative transportation in a recent CVR production, Travelling While Black (2019). By virtue of affording a multi-sensorial alternative reality in the realm of post-digital activism, the documentary provides a new form of citizen engagement aimed at social and political change. Through the strategic and synergetic manipulation of a wide range of stylistic, semiotic, linguistic, and attentional cues, the documentary fosters narrative transportation and a tripartite transition enabled by three successive viewing positions and roles, namely invisible observer/witness, active participant/investigator, and active interpreter. The study of the multi-semioticity in TWB showcases the panoptic and post-panoptic features of the CVR experiences and how entextualization, recontextualization, and resemiotization are fundamental triggers of identity work.

Keywords

• Cinematic virtual reality
• forensic storytelling
• narrative positioning
• netnography
• post-digital activism
• resemiotization