Knowing VR through Practice

How might we come to know the particular qualities and affordances – as well as the constraints and biases – of the medium of Virtual Reality (VR)? Responding to this situation from the perspective of Educations and Societies, we submit that more nuanced understandings of the qualities (aesthetic, narrative, experiential) and affordances (conceptual as much as technical) of the medium can be gained if VR is approached as a form of cultural and research practice. In this paper we will present a curated selection of innovative creative research projects developed at SensiLab, a trans-disciplinary research centre based at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; and do so in the interest of exposing some of the investigative ways that practitioner-researchers (media artists, creative technologists, content producers) are extending understandings of both studio practice and the medium itself by engaging deeply, experimentally and reflexively with immersive imaging technologies. Illustratively, these dynamic, discovery-led PhD projects – undertaken by Sojung Bahng (visual artist and filmmaker), Oscar Raby (VR director) and Lucija Ivšić (performing artist) – reveal how we might come to know the medium through practice in an iterative way by investing in creating, making and exhibiting throughout the research process.