Abstract (short paper)

Keywords: Virtual Reality, experimental documentary, interactive documentary, digital art, realism, abstraction, micronarrative

This paper presents the artwork In Pieces VR and its main design challenges and goals. It is a VR-based experimental documentary on political prison that uses micronarrative and abstraction as the main strategies in order to create a documentary and artistic experience that departs from conventional immersive journalism. The overall experience is one where much of the making sense of the piece is left open, so that the viewer has to fill in the gaps and piece together the story adding from her own experience. After introducing the work, these micronarrative and abstraction strategies are discussed, and connected to the ideas of intimacy, empathy and contact.

• Joan Soler-Adillon is an artist and associate professor at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). He holds a PhD on Social Communication and a Masters in Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a Masters of Interactive Telecommunications from New York University, and a Bachelors Degree in Philosophy from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His research and practice revolve around digital interactive media and its manifestation in digital art — particularly interactive installation, interactive storytelling and documentary, and virtual reality. From a full-body interactive game run on an inflatable slide, to a VR-based experimental documentary, he has participated in a myriad of projects with a focus on both behavior design and interactivity, and on fostering the audience collaboration and participation, which have been exhibited in cities such as London, New York, Berlin and Barcelona.