Abstract

ABSTRACT

Virtual Islands, Submersion, Empathy, and Identity in Virtual Reality

Olivia Mc Gilchrist, Ph.D.
Concordia University, 2024

This project explores the novel possibilities of representation offered by VR, and the tension between the promise of VR-as-empathy-machine and VR as another form of media relying on limitation or stereotype. As an artist-researcher, I engage with various Black thinkers and artists to reimagine how my iterative research-creation artwork can foster constructive dialogue around the re-inscription of Blackness and whiteness within immersive installations and VR worlds. With VR’s potential omnipresence in mind, the thesis’ theoretical component advocates for an approach to VR that builds on concepts and practices proposed by established theorists and working artists across the realm of contemporary art and popular culture, in regard to Black representation, feminist representation, and submersion - water as a historical space - through the lens of Black futurity and Caribbean hybridity within a postcolonial context. My positionality as a French Jamaican, visibly white and of non-visible mixed heritage, informs this project’s artistic component. My artwork initially sought to interpret these theoretical lessons by designing a VR experience where Black and white subjects are represented in relation through performance. Moreover, these same thinkers and artists led me to continue interrogating how a white-passing artist can create VR art that is able to address issues of race and gender, and that transcends their white privilege. By shifting my approach to focus on the experiential aspects of submersion, I propose a call toward a mode of inclusive, collaborative VR creation, exploring the technology’s potential while remaining watchful when undertaking the portrayal and enactment of distinct identities through VR mediums.