After Neumark, Dr Eleanor Dare considers the software and processes through which Immersive Visual Storytelling (IVS) develops and unfolds as a medium and material in which we perceive, rather than ‘an object that we perceive’ (Neumark, 2017, p. 28). The critical and creative strategies Eleanor will discuss in this talk have the intention of surfacing the assumptions, affordances and dissaffordances of the technological and social terrain of IVS, to avert a critical vacuum in which immersion becomes a spell, arguably making us too beguiled to exert political and social agency. Dr Dare will preview scenes from an evolving project, Queer Psycho, part of several long term works which re-envision and re-evaluate aspects of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, often deploying artificially intelligent agents and automated cinematography as a critical practice.

Dr Eleanor Dare will be joining UCL in April as Lecturer in Practice Based Research and Media. Eleanor currently works at the Faculty of Education, Cambridge and was formerly Reader in Digital Media at the RCA and Head of Programme for MA Digital Direction. Some of Eleanor’s work, short stories and academic publications can be found here: https://rejectedshortstories.uk/2021/10/20/academic-publications/