Paper short abstract:

How can the stories of as mothers and children living in prison, be represented using immersive storytelling? This paper analyses which methods appied,e limits and potential of the virtual reality technologies within the frame of multimodal anthropology and collaborative research practices.

Paper long abstract:

LINKS TO THE VR PROJECT:

- Scene example based on an illustration workshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGK6aAivCQw

- example based on shooting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm0Rfl9u6os

Within the framework of multimodal anthropology, I carried out research started many years ago, on mothers and children living together in condition of imprisonment. After having produced a feature length documentary based on participant observation approach, I started practice-based research to experiment different methods and technologies, in the same environments. In particular, I wanted to explore how immersive storytelling might be used in visual anthropological research to better communicate topics that are painful and difficult to represent and to explore the capacity of 360° video to share the experience of oppressive of spaces. Specifically, I wanted to know how 360° video might convey more deeply to an audience, the spaces and affects of confinement as they are experienced by women and children in an Italian special prison for inmates-mothers. In order to explore these topics, I started Doctoral research that mixes theory and practice, with the intent to analyze the production of a VR documentary film (due to be finished by May 2022), combining live action shooting and animation (see up links at demo scenes).

In the attempt to narrate the different points of views of inmates and their children about their lives in confined spaces, we designed a collaboration aimed at supporting the polyphony necessary for a counter-account of the prison life that was open to the imaginations and emotions of children. We employed participatory creative practices adapted to virtual reality, with illustration, photography and digital storytelling labs, all participants contributed to the script for the VR film. This multimodal anthropological research helped me to reflect more about the kinds and qualities of interaction that emerge through storytelling practices and immersive technologies; seeing potentials and limits to create projects that are able to offer a multiplicity of voices and to create stories that can represent complex issues without privileging a particular point of view or story form. I explored how the VR filmmaking process – more than the normal ‘flat’ documentary cinema – requires a deeper collaboration with participants, and a strong commitment to support different media and forms of art, in order to express meanings and feelings about the past and the future, expecially for children.

In my opinion, VR projects might foster the participation of people involved, especially if they are young. Furthermore, new media and multimodal ethnographic practice enable us to imagine different futures both for the discipline but also for the topics we research and might help in the circulation of knowledge beyond the academy, including to a younger public, since VR films are nowadays appealing to youth.