Glitches in Cinematic Virtual Reality: A Challenge to the Myth of “Total Cinematic VR”

Numerous instances of accidental technical glitches and intentionally designed glitch art styles exist in cinematic virtual reality. However, discussions about cinematic virtual reality often focus more on smoothness, fluency, immersion of content style. and experience of CVR, while neglecting the constructive role that glitches play. From the perspective of visual glitches and interactive glitches in CVR, this paper explores CVR visual and interactive glitch phenomenon and analyzes the viewers􀆳 experience and feelings towards glitches in CVR, explores the path of integrating visual and interactive codes of glitches into the narrative of CVR and discusses the important significance of glitches in constructing the aesthetics of CVR. Through a textual analysis and an interpretive examination of viewer experiences, this study reveals that glitches in cinematic virtual reality can disrupt the technically mediated embodiment relation, highlighting the materiality of both the VR medium and the viewer􀆳s body, cause a break in the continuous embodied immersion experience, and thus break the imagination of “total cinematic virtual reality”. Within the dynamic context of embodied interaction, glitches reconfigure and recombine experience, facilitating a “systemic metamorphosis” that extends the potentiality of content and meaning in cinematic virtual reality, while also resonating with the tradition of glitch art in the digital era.