scholarly journals Editor's Introduction

Screen Bodies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. v-vi
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Ball
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Emerging Technology ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Affective Experience ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Animal Advocacy ◽  
Film Series ◽  
The Way

The six essays in this in this issue of Screen Bodies explore what we might call the affective modalities of media, that is, each author examines the potential of emerging and traditional media to transform individual and collective relations through the strategic use of embodied affective experience. Three essays in the issue focus on new and emerging technology. In, “The iAnimal Film Series: Activating Empathy Through Virtual Reality,” Holly Cecil examines the potential power of virtual reality to generate empathy in users. In particular, she looks at the way animal advocacy organizations combine documentary film and virtual reality to communicate the embodied experience of living and dying in a factory farm to provoke feeling and widespread opposition to the industry.

The iAnimal Film Series

Screen Bodies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-61
Author(s):  
Holly Cecil
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Film Series

This article explores the innovative use of virtual reality (VR) technology in nonfiction documentary film formats by animal-advocacy organizations. I examine the potential of the VR medium to communicate the living and dying environments of factory-farmed animals, and to generate viewer empathy with the animal subjects in their short, commodified lives from birth to slaughterhouse. I present a case study of the iAnimal short film series produced by Animal Equality, which made its public debut at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Employing a critical animal studies framework, I engage Kathryn Gillespie’s work on witnessing of the nonhuman condition as a method of academic research, and apply to it the embodied experience of virtual witnessing through virtual realty.

scholarly journals Sanctuary: documentary in virtual reality (VR)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shivani Mulekar
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Emerging Technology ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
Mural Paintings ◽  
Nonlinear Form ◽  
Documentary Filmmaking ◽  
Film Viewing ◽  
Viewing Experience

Sanctuary is a documentary film in virtual reality (VR). The film uses 360-camera technology to offer a sensory immersive viewing experience. The film attempts to transcend the borders of filmmaking by merging new 360-camera technology and a nonlinear form of storytelling. The film is an observational piece. 360-degree videos are an emerging technology, which offers the viewer a sensory, immersive experience in virtual reality. Influenced by the 360-panoramic mural paintings created in 1860s, the use of the 360-camera breaks away from the syntax of documentary filmmaking and gives the audience an active role in the film-viewing experience. It breaks the traditional semantics of filmmaking and sets new rules of viewing which are personal and unique to each viewer. Sanctuary documents the Juhasz family, which has been living in a church since November 2014. The film is an eight-minute experience that gives the audience a 360- degree glimpse into the Juhasz family’s life and their living conditions. The film is presented as an installation, using Samsung’s Gear VR as the exhibition technology.

scholarly journals Sanctuary: documentary in virtual reality (VR)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shivani Mulekar
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Emerging Technology ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
Mural Paintings ◽  
Nonlinear Form ◽  
Documentary Filmmaking ◽  
Film Viewing ◽  
Viewing Experience

Sanctuary is a documentary film in virtual reality (VR). The film uses 360-camera technology to offer a sensory immersive viewing experience. The film attempts to transcend the borders of filmmaking by merging new 360-camera technology and a nonlinear form of storytelling. The film is an observational piece. 360-degree videos are an emerging technology, which offers the viewer a sensory, immersive experience in virtual reality. Influenced by the 360-panoramic mural paintings created in 1860s, the use of the 360-camera breaks away from the syntax of documentary filmmaking and gives the audience an active role in the film-viewing experience. It breaks the traditional semantics of filmmaking and sets new rules of viewing which are personal and unique to each viewer. Sanctuary documents the Juhasz family, which has been living in a church since November 2014. The film is an eight-minute experience that gives the audience a 360- degree glimpse into the Juhasz family’s life and their living conditions. The film is presented as an installation, using Samsung’s Gear VR as the exhibition technology.

Do Augmented and Virtual Reality Technologies Increase Consumers’ Purchase Intentions? The Role of Cognitive Elaboration and Shopping Goals

2021 ◽  
pp. 0887302X2199428
Author(s):  
Hyejune Park ◽  
Seeun Kim
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Purchase Intentions ◽  
Mediating Effect ◽  
Cognitive Elaboration ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Virtual Store ◽  
Shopping Goals ◽  
The Way

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the “virtual try-on” technology (AR) and the “3D virtual store” (VR) incorporated in an apparel retail website on purchase intentions. This study highlights the mediating role of cognitive elaboration in the process through which these technologies influence purchase intentions, and examines the way consumers’ shopping goals (searching vs. browsing) interact with the website technology and influence their responses. The two experiments demonstrated that, for browsers, the website with VR was more effective in increasing purchase intentions than were the website with AR or a regular website with no technology, while for searchers, both the website with AR and the website with VR were more effective than was a regular website. In addition, cognitive elaboration mediated the interaction between a technology and a shopping goal on purchase intentions for browsers, while such a mediating effect was not found in searchers.

What are the risks of Virtual Reality data? Learning Analytics, Algorithmic Bias and a Fantasy of Perfect Data

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110127
Author(s):  
Marcus Carter ◽  
Ben Egliston
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Learning Analytics ◽  
Soft Skills ◽  
Education Technology ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Emerging Technology ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Vr Training ◽  
Algorithmic Bias

Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology with the potential to extract significantly more data about learners and the learning process. In this article, we present an analysis of how VR education technology companies frame, use and analyse this data. We found both an expansion and acceleration of what data are being collected about learners and how these data are being mobilised in potentially discriminatory and problematic ways. Beyond providing evidence for how VR represents an intensification of the datafication of education, we discuss three interrelated critical issues that are specific to VR: the fantasy that VR data is ‘perfect’, the datafication of soft-skills training, and the commercialisation and commodification of VR data. In the context of the issues identified, we caution the unregulated and uncritical application of learning analytics to the data that are collected from VR training.

‘Yr Beast’: Gender Parrhesia and Punk Trans Womanhoods

2021 ◽  
Vol 127 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-134
Author(s):  
Jay Szpilka
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Trans Women ◽  
A Site ◽  
Significant Attention ◽  
The Way

While the subject of women’s activity in historical and contemporary punk scenes has attracted significant attention, the presence of trans women in punk has received comparatively little research, in spite of their increasing visibility and long history in punk. This article examines the conditions for trans women’s entrance in punk and the challenges and opportunities that it offers for their self-assertion. By linking Michel Foucault’s notion of parrhesia with the way trans women in punk do their gender, an attempt is made at showing how the embodied experience of a trans woman making herself heard from the punk stage can serve as a site of ‘gender pluralism’.

“There is Nothing New in Cyberspace” a Motion for Debate

1992 ◽  
Vol 36 (14) ◽  
pp. 1049-1049 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell J. Wells
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Information Technology ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Human Computer Interaction ◽  
Cold Fusion ◽  
Major Advance ◽  
Junk Bonds ◽  
Exciting Development ◽  
Computer Interaction ◽  
The Way

Cyberspace is the environment created during the experience of virtual reality. Therefore, to assert that there is nothing new in cyberspace alludes to there being nothing new about virtual reality. Is this assertion correct? Is virtual reality an exciting development in human-computer interaction, or is it simply another example of effective simulation? Does current media interest herald a major advance in information technology, or will virtual reality go the way of artificial intelligence, cold fusion and junk bonds? Is virtual reality the best thing since sliced bread, or is it last week's buns in a new wrapper?

scholarly journals Special Issue on “Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality & Semantic 3D Reconstruction”

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 8590
Author(s):  
Zhihan Lv ◽  
Jing-Yan Wang ◽  
Neeraj Kumar ◽  
Jaime Lloret
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Augmented Reality ◽  
3D Reconstruction ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Key Technology ◽  
Viable Solution ◽  
The Way ◽  
Critical Needs

Augmented Reality is a key technology that will facilitate a major paradigm shift in the way users interact with data and has only just recently been recognized as a viable solution for solving many critical needs [...]

Effect of body-gender transfer in virtual reality on the perception of sexual harassment

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 1089-1093
Author(s):  
Linfeng Wu ◽  
Karen B. Chen ◽  
Edward P. Fitts
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Random Order ◽  
Emerging Technology ◽  
Training Method ◽  
Virtual Reality Technology ◽  
Inappropriate Behaviors ◽  
Immersive Virtual Environment ◽  
Physical Danger

While sexual harassments are inappropriate behaviors in the society, the interpretation of and sensitivity toward sexual harassment can vary by individual. Differences across individuals, such as gender, may influence whether one interprets an action to be sexually harassing or not. Virtual reality technology enables human behavior assessment without interfacing with physical danger. The present work examined whether gender and body-gender transfer in VR influenced the perception of sexually harassing behaviors, and explored the utility of emerging technology in increasing one’s awareness of behaviors that may be considered sexually harassing. Participants (n=12) embodied in virtual characters of different genders and experienced seven sexually harassing scenarios in an immersive virtual environment in random order. In general, participants provided higher rating to the sensitivity toward sexual harassment in the VR harassment scenarios than those scenarios described on paper. There was an increase in participants’ sensitivity toward sexual harassment after experiencing sexual harassment scenarios from the perspective of the victim in VR. Participants perceived higher level of sexual harassment when they embodied in female avatars, which suggested there was an effect of VR with body-gender transfer on perception of sexual harassment. There were gender differences in awareness of harassing behaviors in VR environment, and VR may be a training method to narrow gender gap and increase awareness toward sexual harassment.

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