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Paper short abstract

New desert Virtual Reality artworks that immerse users in stories of survival in colonised more-than-human lifeworlds conjure powerfully uncanny embodied modes of social intimacy.

Paper long abstract

In recent years, Virtual Reality films made by media-artists working with desert communities have conjured uncanny embodied modes of social intimacy by immersing viewers in stories of survival in colonised more-than-human lifeworlds. The re-animation of atomic bombs, animals, trees, songs, fires and healing powers in VR exerts splitting and re-locating forces on place and time perception that in turn multiply possibilities for imaginative projection into more-than-human agents and action. As experimental modes of witnessing, co-presence and narrative participation these VR films operate simultaneously as localising intergenerational pedagogy and universalising/humanising ethnographic gestures.

This paper explores some of the dynamics of community storytelling and media-artist design co-creativity involving 360' and 'first person empathic' cameras, ambisonic and binaural sound technologies and digital animation to shape magics of teleportation and co-dwelling in storied lifeworlds and offer temporary experiences of re-embodiment. What re-arrangements of agency, authority and value are effected in the virtual recasting of historical and traditional stories in these new media works and through these forms of cultural production?