Embodied Encounters in Virtual Reality Narratives

Abstract

In recent years a diverse range of narrative-based virtual reality (VR) projects have been exhibited globally at festivals, in bespoke venues or via online platforms. Drawing on cinema, games and immersive theatre conventions, these projects offer sophisticated user interfaces and interactive devices, which foster a sense of presence and embodiment for the interactor. This involves the placement of the user within a 360-degree story world as an invisible or physically represented avatar.

This presentation explores the narrative qualities and experience of entertainment-based VR with a specific focus on the interplay between virtual bodies and styles of narration. Through an analysis of recent VR projects that blur the boundaries of film, game or immersive theatre, I explore the ways that the digital avatar, as a replacement for the user’s ‘real’ body, enables them to meaningfully engage and interact with an unfolding narrative. This analysis is guided by Kilteri et al.'s definition of sense of embodiment (SoE) in virtual reality (2012). This contends that a SoE can consist of three subcomponents: sense of self-location, sense of agency, and sense of body ownership (p. 375-377). With reference to this framework, I demonstrate how VR narratives incorporate the user’s body as a storytelling tool, fostering user-centred stories that unfold in three-dimensional space.

I argue that this phenomenon is especially clear in works that offer a visible, digital avatar as a stand-in for the user's physical body. Through this digital avatar, users are given the ability to shape the storyline by moving their bodies and interacting with characters, enabling their real-time actions to significantly impact upon how the narrative unfolds. However, one can also observe that a virtual body representation or avatar is not essential for a compelling, embodied engagement with a VR experience. Projects that cast the user as an invisible observer can still harness their physical body as a storytelling instrument by requiring interaction with a scene. I argue that this form of embodiment fosters 'self-presence' (Biocca 1997), which involves salient mental models of the self within a virtual setting.

Short Bio

Associate Professor Kath Dooley is a writer/director and academic based at the University of South Australia. Her creative work as has screened at events such the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival and FIVARS, Toronto. Kath is author of Cinematic Virtual Reality: A Critical Study of 21st Century Approaches and Practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and co-editor of Screenwriting for Virtual Reality: Story Space and Experience (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). ​ Her research interests include embodiment in the context of screen media, virtual reality and screenwriting, women’s screen industry practice, and diversity in the screen industries.

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