Jessica Pissini

Embodied by Design: The Presence of Creativity, Art-making & Self in Virtual Reality

From a technical viewpoint, virtual reality (VR) is a well-researched and established technology and mode of communication. However, from an arts perspective, virtual reality has very few, if any, defined parameters as an artistic medium. This study aims to explore the technical affordances and the experiential and creative phenomena of art-making in virtual reality in an effort to establish VR as a contemporary artistic medium framed within an arts and museum education context. The embodied, open-ended play of art-making with the virtual medium presents a different kind of user experience than most other VR applications, which deserves alternative ways of classifying the immersive elements of virtual art-making. By using the social cognitive framework (Bandura, 1986) to guide my research, I consider the dynamic relationship between environment, person, and behavior in order to understand not only the technical elements, but also what type of immersive process and embodied creativity virtual artists experience and what types of art can they make. Through a phenomenological framework, design-thinking approach, and an arts-based research methodology, this study analyzes data collected from participants and uses data visualizations to bring the research to life and make it more accessible. Additionally, this study aims to discover how artists and educators can use the virtual medium to inspire creativity and impactful art experiences within museum spaces in ways that transport the visitors from viewer-of-art to maker-of-art.I specifically use the VR app called Tilt Brush within this study and have collaborated with Ohio State’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts & Design. Below are some in-progress videos and images of my work and participant’s work: