Updates in Media Theory: VR

Since its inception to this day, film has transformed considerably. From silent, to sound, colour to wide-screen and digital to 3D: with each change, Film Studies has been forced to adjust its theoretical and aesthetic conventions. This methodological flexibility, though crucial in post-war critical and academic discourses, has been largely disregarded in structuralist media theories of the seventies onwards which, today still, are considered foundational in the field. “Updates in Media Theory: VR” looks at older film theory from the fifties to understand current changes in film and media language, focusing specifically on Virtual Reality.

Virtual Reality is an integral part of our contemporary digital society. With an accelerated implementation in numerous fields, however, a critical and historical account of VR from a Media Studies perspective is still lacking. In this project, therefore, an alternative methodological approach is developed and implemented in which theory can be established from practice.

image credit: Film critic A. Bazin in his office, Paris 1948 (photographer Janine Bazin or Chris Marker, modified)