Expanding the magic circle: Immersive storytelling that trains environmental perception

Scholarship on immersion in simulated environments often emphasizes cognitive immersion, or the suspension of disbelief that takes place in an illusionistic space that simulates reality, making the fact of mediation disappear in the experience. Marie-Laure Ryan writes that: “immersivity can be understood in two ways: in a properly VR sense, as the technology-induced experience of being surrounded by data, and in a narrative sense... as being imaginatively captivated by a storyworld” (230). Both of these definitions rest on the notion of cognitive immersion. Grounded in the field of post-dramatic multimedia performance, this paper will focus instead on immersive storytelling that activates the senses in a phenomenological experience. Rather than transporting the spectator into a fictional imaginary space, post-dramatic multimedia performance aims to make participants aware of their presence in the here and now (Klich and Scheer, 128). This paper will describe an immersive storytelling project that integrates virtual reality (VR) into live participatory performance events that take place outdoors. The paper is co-authored by an artist-researcher and two students who are working as research assistants on this project. We recount our creative research process in developing a pervasive game, which Montola defines as a “game that has one or more salient features that expand the contractual magic circle of play socially, spatially or temporally” (2005, 3). This game is played in a park and at key moments, inside VR environments that simulate that same park. The purpose of the game is to attune participants to the species in that particular environment.