Fabricated Preservation

TR Number
Date
2020-05-19
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Volume Title
Publisher
Virginia Tech
Abstract

"Fabricated Preservation" aims to push the boundaries with traditional theses, creating a multi-layered experience that blends fact and fiction through a performance that centers around environmental storytelling in virtual reality. The experience questions the balance of theatrical elements in traditional storytelling which forefront text and human characters over architecture, props, and environment, and critically examines how an environment can play a crucial role in a narrative. The narrative itself focuses on one question: if a genealogy company had access to past environments via time travel, what new information could we learn about our ancestors?

The normal perceptions of a "game" are challenged, introducing real world elements to trick the audience and subtly influence how they navigate a virtual space. A complex fictional character is introduced through the performance and developed through the environment, with the hopes that the audience will gain some emotion toward them: either connecting with the character as if they were a close friend, or feeling unsettled that they observed the character's realistic personal space. This voyeuristic theme weaves its way through each layer of the storytelling, poking at the audience's morals with the hopes that they will question the experience around them.

Above all, the main goal of Fabricated Preservation is to challenge the audience to mentally engage with the virtual experience, by paying attention to the details of their environment and constructing their own version of a narrative from those details.

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Keywords
Environmental Storytelling, Virtual Reality, Photogrammetry, Immersive Environment, 3D Modeling, Conspiracy
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