Abstract
This chapter concludes the book by reflecting on the primary benefits and limitations of the approach of VR phenomenology. First, the chapter offers a reminder that, since the 1990s, VR has gained an aura of ‘unknowability’ via its apparent uniqueness and novelty. The chapter then offers critical discussion of many contemporary approaches to the medium that seemingly privilege VR’s novelty and immersive capacities, while simultaneously ignoring the most basic and fundamental aspect of the technology—its reliance on an immersive, occluding, and therefore limiting headset. Finally, the chapter gestures towards a number of future research and creative production endeavours in which VR phenomenology can play a beneficial role.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Arnheim, R. (1957). Film as art. University of California Press.
Bailenson, J. (2018). Experience on demand: What virtual reality is, how it works, and what it can do. W. W. Norton & Company.
Bates, J. (1992). Virtual reality, art, and entertainment. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1(1), 133–138.
Bender & D’Silva. (2016). Gone in 360 Seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itWJ221IBrU
Bender, S. (2019). Headset attentional synchrony: Tracking the gaze of viewers watching narrative virtual reality. Media Practice and Education, 20(3), 277–296.
Bertrand, P., Guegan, J., Robieux, L., McCall, C. A., & Zenasni, F. (2018). Learning empathy through virtual reality: Multiple strategies for training empathy-related abilities using body ownership illusions in embodied virtual reality. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 5, 26.
Bordwell, D. (1985). Narration in the fiction film. Methuen.
Bordwell, D. (2012). Poetics of Cinema. Routledge.
Clarke, A., & Mitchell, G. (2000). Playing with film language. The Visual-Narrative Matrix, Southampton Institute. http://transformreality.com/downloads/papers/Playing%20with%20Film%20Language.pdf
Dooley, K. (2017). Storytelling with virtual reality in 360-degrees: A new screen grammar. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 11(3), 161–171.
Fludernik, M. (1994). Second-person narrative as a test case for narratology: The limits of realism. Style, 28(3), 445–479.
Golding, D. (2019). Far from paradise: The body, the apparatus and the image of contemporary virtual reality. Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media, 25(2), 340–353.
Jütten, L. H., Mark, R. E., & Sitskoorn, M. M. (2018). Can the mixed virtual reality simulator into dementia enhance empathy and understanding and decrease burden in informal dementia caregivers? Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders Extra, 8(3), 453–466.
Kleinsmith, A., Rivera-Gutierrez, D., Finney, G., Cendan, J., & Lok, B. (2015). Understanding empathy training with virtual patients. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 151–158.
Lanier, J. (2018). Dawn of the new everything: Encounters with reality and virtual reality. Picador.
Lebowitz, J., & Klug, C. (2011). Interactive storytelling for video games: A player-centered approach to creating memorable characters and stories. Taylor & Francis.
Lemon, L. T., & Reis, M. J. (1965). Russian formalist criticism: Four essays. University of Nebraska Press.
Lescop, L. (2017). Narrative grammar in 360. 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR-Adjunct), 254–257.
Louie, A. K., Coverdale, J. H., Balon, R., Beresin, E. V., Brenner, A. M., Guerrero, A. P. S., & Roberts, L. W. (2018). Enhancing empathy: A role for virtual teality? Academic Psychiatry: The Journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry, 42(6), 747–752.
Metz, C. (1974). Film language: A semiotics of the cinema. Oxford University Press.
Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screening: Journal of the International Society of Neonatal Screening, 16(3), 6–18.
Palombini, A. (2017). Storytelling and telling history. Towards a grammar of narratives for cultural heritage dissemination in the Digital Era. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 24, 134–139.
Parkes, W. (1994, January). Random access, remote control: The evolution of storytelling. Omni, 16, 48+.
Pillai, J. S., Ismail, A., & Charles, H. P. (2017). Grammar of VR storytelling: Visual cues. In Proceedings of the virtual reality international conference – Laval Virtual 2017 (pp. 1–4).
Pillai, J. S., & Verma, M. (2019). Grammar of VR storytelling: Narrative immersion and experiential fidelity in VR cinema. Paper presented at the The 17th International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and Its Applications in Industry, 1–6.
Richardson, B. (1991). The poetics and politics of second person narrative. Genre, 24, 309–330.
Roswell, R. O., Cogburn, C. D., Tocco, J., Martinez, J., Bangeranye, C., Bailenson, J. N., Wright, M., Mieres, J. H., & Smith, L. (2020). Cultivating empathy through virtual reality: Advancing conversations about racism, inequity, and climate in medicine. Academic Medicine: Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 95(12), 1882–1886.
Schutte, N. S., & Stilinović, E. J. (2017). Facilitating empathy through virtual reality. Motivation and Emotion, 41(6), 708–712.
Seinfeld, S., Arroyo-Palacios, J., Iruretagoyena, G., Hortensius, R., Zapata, L. E., Borland, D., de Gelder, B., Slater, M., & Sanchez-Vives, M. V. (2018). Offenders become the victim in virtual reality: Impact of changing perspective in domestic violence. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 2692. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-19987-7
Shafi, R., Shuai, W., & Younus, M. U. (2020). 360-degree video streaming: A survey of the state of the art. Symmetry, 12(9), 1491.
Silverman, K. (1983). The subject of semiotics. Oxford University Press.
Sobchack, V. (1992). The address of the eye: a phenomenology of film experience. Princeton University Press.
Sobchack, V. (2004). Carnal thoughts: Embodiment and moving image culture. University of California Press.
Sobchack, V. (2009). The active eye: A phenomenology of cinematic vision. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 12(3), 21–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509209009361350
Spottiswoode, R. A. (1951). Grammar of The Film University of California. University of California Press.
Stavroulia, K. E., & Lanitis, A. (2019). Enhancing reflection and empathy skills via using a virtual reality based learning framework. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 14(07), 18–36.
Thompson, K. (1981). Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible: A neoformalist analysis. Princeton University Press.
Tyndale, E., & Ramsoomair, F. (2016). Keys to successful interactive storytelling: A study of the booming “choose-your-own-adventure” video game industry. I-Manager’s Journal of Educational Technology, 13(3), 28–34.
Ventura, S., Badenes-Ribera, L., Herrero, R., Cebolla, A., Galiana, L., & Baños, R. (2020). Virtual reality as a medium to elicit empathy: A meta-analysis. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 23(10), 667–676.
Zeitchik, S. (2018, March 31). Cinematic VR could be a game changer – If anyone will pay for it. Daily Herald. https://www.dailyherald.com/business/20180331/cinematic-vr-could-be-a-game-changer-x2014-if-anyone-will-pay-for-it
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bender, S.M., Broderick, M. (2021). Conclusion. In: Virtual Realities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82547-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82547-8_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-82546-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-82547-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)