The Impasse of Current Narrative Typologies and the Aesthetics of 360° 3D Filmmaking

Abstract

The core purpose of immersive technologies is to provide their users with a state of full psychological and physical “immersion”. Yet immersion is a binary phenomenon, as post-digital filmmaking gravitates towards the breakdown of orthodox narrative structures where audiovisual works shot in 360° 3D oppose the very type of experience they strive to deploy. To crack the code of narrative design in the new 360° 3D medium, the author advocates the deployment of vizome, a blend of virtual reality (VR) and rhizome. Based on the concept of rhizome, as introduced by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, who had determined rhizome as a modus operandi of“an acentered... [and]... nonsignifying system” that “has no beginning or end; ... always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo” (Deleuze, 1987), akin to a mass of roots, and having simultaneously multiple exit and entrance points, the vizomatic narrative is in conflict with a pure linear progression of the object-oriented, cause-and-effect, hierarchal story line.

Vizome is evaluated on the grounds of connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity, asignifying rupture, cartography, and decalcomania, whereas a classic narrative is decoded via a number of widely accepted narratological canons. For virtual reality cinema to operate properly, the Deleuzoguattarian schemata must go from being a mere metaphor to a practical post-digital utility that arrests the imposition of outdated cinema aesthetics by blending the binaries of vizome with the established narratological canons such as summary, scene, omission, pause, and stretch, to name a few, which, in turn, renders 360° 3D films a truly immersive experience.