Emersive VR: An expanded immersive VR practice. Issue 2 (1st October 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chang, Haoran
• Is Part Of: Virtual creativity. Volume 11:Issue 2(2021)
• Page Start: 207
• Page End: 222
• Publication Date: 2021-10-01
• Subjects: Shared virtual environments -- Periodicals; Three-dimensional imaging -- Periodicals; Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) -- Periodicals; 006.8
• DOI: 10.1386/vcr_00055_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2397-9704

Abstract

Creating an immersive isolated virtual environment is the canon in the current mainstream virtual reality (VR) practice and design. Audiences are usually situated in a singular and complete form of space in VR to receive the fully immersive experience. Nevertheless, in this article, I propose a different way of thinking about the practice and design of VR. Rather than seeing VR as a singular and isolated space in relation to other spaces, I am considering a potentiality to have a more expansive and reflexive VR practice and design. I call this emersive VR in contrast to immersive VR. Emersion is a concept borrowing from body ecology, which is a field based on the philosophy of awakening and consciousness. Emersion in body ecology is different from immersion in that people can still sustain self-consciousness without being subsumed by the other. In the notion of emersive VR, audiences are not located in a singular and complete virtual space but in a differential space between the physical and the virtual. The spatial difference is folded through the VR experience perceived by the audiences. In this article, I highlight two different approaches to construct an emersive VR experience: expanded sensory VR and reflexive storytelling. In both, audiences are not isolated in a singular virtual world but in a differential space with multiple embodiments. Emersive VR is a reconfiguration of immersive VR. It is to expand the idea of immersive VR and sketch a more dynamic future of VR as a critical medium.