Digital Junkyards: Archiving nascent open-source efforts in contested digital spaces

Are web-based spatial environments effective archives for online scenes, communities and resources? In 2025, Cailean Finn and Aiden Brady produced “Emancipating XR Practice” a prototype 3D reference site for open-source creative practices in Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR). Using the browser-centric format of digital gardens as a starting point, this project conceptualised the use of a 3D environment (or “game”) supported by WebXR to deposit audiovisual materials documenting online materials relating to open-source VR practices. This presentation draws from this practice-based effort to sketch out the possibilities and difficulties for creating a niche 3D environments to document online discourse. Emancipating XR Practice is a multiplayer game, where users on desktop machines and VR headsets can simultaneously occupy the online space. Throughout the production of this site numerous ethical, access and technical considerations emerged. Not least of which was, the question, how does one authentically represent the interests of open-source communities in an authentic way when building a technically complex website to do so? Cailean Finn and Aiden Brady will reflect on their practice-led approach to the Emancipating XR Project. They will outline why this project was deemed relevant and the motivations behind the chosen approach of developing a 3D reference website for open-source VR practitioners. Throughout, they will activate their reflections on the process by incorporating pertinent questions which emerged around how to properly reflect open-source values in the project. As a nascent area of media practice, VR/XR is heavily contested and flourishing new scenes in this space are frequently objectified by powerful entities in the digital space. This paper will reflect on an alternative digital repository format to engage with these tensions.