Call to Action and Rhizomatic Networked Perception in Cine-VR 3D

Abstract

This article focuses on the embodied activity of perception and expression within 360° stereoscopic spherical film (3DSC), which, by being situated geographically in the centre of viewing experience, destroys any illusion of what the author of phenomenological spectatorship Vivian Sobchack calls a transcendent space: the black void as the distance between the screen plane in a movie theatre and the audience. Instead of being afforded a specific point of view, the VR viewer has specific mobile bodily engagements with subjects in film whose visible activity articulates a shifting field of vision, all in conflict with the community-mediated VR viewing platforms that, in turn, morph the current phenomenological cinematic experience into a rhizomatic networked spectatorship. Personal prototypes shot in 3DSC are used in support of the argument that the latter spectatorship form is both an alternative and optimal mode for film viewing in the new virtual space.