Documentary approaches to Virtual Reality
The works presented in Oculus Rift manifest a serious change in technological and aesthetic approaches to nonfiction.
It is as earthshaking as the coming of sound or the portable synch-sound camera/tape systems of cinema vérité/direct cinema. For documentary makers, the new sensory spaces opened up by the technology will reposition the same ethical and artistic questions that have beset the field since Robert and Frances Flaherty gave us Nanook of the North.