Our special issue on VR empathy & immersion co-edited by Brooke Belisle & me is out now in the Journal of Visual Culture. Featuring:
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Janet Murray on what has and has not changed from 90s VR to the recent revival
Grant Bollmer & Katherine Guinness on Wolfson’s ‘Real Violence’ and the nauseous limits of empathy
Lisa Nakamura on the fallacies of promising racial empathy delivered by a ‘VR for good’
My essay arguing if VR creates empathy it is aimed at those bringing VR into existence – whether positive or negative in emotional charge
Maria Engberg and Jay David Bolter on the critical affordances of 360 video vs VR proper
Michael LaRocco on the Oculus Best Practices & VR’s endlessly deferred promise of full immersion
Brooke Belisle on GoogleEarth VR and what it means to promise the ‘world within reach’
+ our editors’ intro on the renewal of VR Studies in the humanities
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I’m excited to have this issue contribute to recently emerging wave of critical VR studies responding to the recent VR revival. This project first emerged from a series of VR-themed panels at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference in 2018. Thanks to Brooke for bringing those together in the first place!
(for the paywalled: the intro is open access; a preprint of my piece can be accessed here)