Autopoiesis through agency in virtual reality nonfiction

Documentary filmmakers are gradually embracing immersive media to create novel Virtual Reality Nonfiction (VRNF) content. Over the past twenty years initial experimentation in this new medium has brought forward numerous linearly structured 360° documentaries that maintain a close link to traditional documentary modes. More recently, we have observed a shift from the relatively passive 360° cinema towards more open-world, non-linear, game-like interactive experiences that challenge traditional definitions of the documentary genre. Volumetric world-building techniques provide nonfiction creators with additional tools that afford ‘viewer-users’ spatial and interactive agency, leading to a heightened autopoietic realisation of the storyworld. VRNF creators have the potential to allow their viewer-users enhanced control over framing, temporal ordering of the plot and spatial unfolding of the diegetic world, thus inviting them to become actual co-creators of a deeply personal and personalized experience. This article addresses how VRNF may go beyond the mere ‘documentation’ of people, places or past events that existed in a pre-filmic reality and provide viewer-users through augmented agency a unique present-tense autopoietic experience that pushes the boundaries of traditional 2D documentary.