ABSTRACT
Occulus Rift Virtual reality headgear is usually donned for video gameplay – to provide superhuman strength and far-off adventures, to kill dragons or soldiers, or to explore fantastic places – not to hold teacups and faded family photographs and to tell domestic tales. But Canadian digital artist Caitlin Fisher challenges such expectations, and the explicitly gendered associations of games and virtual reality (VR), by using this very technology for new modes of feminist storytelling. Fisher’s Circle (2012) is a work of augmented reality storytelling that embeds Quick Response (QR) bar codes onto analog objects, little domestic treasures passed down among four generations of women. You read this work by selecting, holding, and even fondling these analog objects before you scan them with a digital device (in some versions of the work, you use Occulus Rift and in others an iPad); this action elicits a digital connection that plays the multimedia and multimodal story files to present an augmented or virtual reality experience in storytelling. Fisher inserts the domestic stories of women onto the very things they supposedly touched and shared, and she invites her readers to read by touching. The result is an affective experience that is both deeply embodied and complexly digital.
