VR ethnography

AN inquiry on
Audience Experience in VR

A study to explore interactive VR performance through extended ethnographic methods to analyse the range, modes and value of a participatory VR art experience.

In this audience inquiry, the subjects experienced the single-user VR artwork, Skeleton Conductor XR Art, and participated in a qualitative study.
The studied artwork can fundamentally be identified as a phenomenon of subjective human experience within the domain of digital culture and art; therefore, the epistemological framework lies strongly on hermeneutic phenomenology, with ethnographic inquiry methods. The main methods were observing and recording the participants’ engagement with the interactive artwork and semi-structured interviews. These methods were complemented with additional data from a qualitative questionnaire and ethnographically geared field notes from touring with the artwork. The collected data was textualized through a careful thick transcription process and analyzed through grounded theory, accompanied by a phenomenologically oriented embodied analysis.

Part of the collected data and the results were also a starting point and material for an artwork, a multimedia installation, Experiential Sculpting.

Study results will be published in the dissertation commentary…