Transformative Gazes Gaze, Participatory Sense-making, and Renegotiation of the Self in Virtual Reality

As it triggers and regulates meaningful dyadic interaction, the direct gaze, i.e. another individual’s gaze meeting one’s own gaze, can be understood within the frame of “participatory sense-making”. In my presentation, I will rely on the notion of participatory sense-making to explore the effects of eye-based interactions between human users and AI-based characters in virtual reality (VR). First, I will argue that VR promotes a “homogenisation” of audience space and image space, and of human users and virtual characters. This, I will propose, allows to speak of participatory sense-making – a notion mostly applied to real-life interactions – in relation to VR as well. Then, reworking the notion of “diegetic space”, I will identify two opposite modalities in which the mentioned “homogenisation” can occur: “absolute diegetisation” (typical of entertainment VR) and “end of diegesis” (typical of training and therapeutic VR). Each of these options, I will show, correspond to specific modulations of gaze dynamics, participatory sense-making, and renegotiation of the user’s self.