Project Description: Writing studies currently is engaged with exploring how writing is an embodied, situated activity. One important study by Jody Shipka and Paul Prior has explored how “writers actively engage in what we call ESSP’s (environment selecting and structuring practices), which not only lead to their texts but also contribute to the distributed, delicate, and partly intentional management of affect, sense, identity, and consciousness.” The included sketch, from their article, is one study participant’s drawing of her scene of writing, noting all of the necessary materials and arrangements.

However, writers’ environmental choices are, of course, limited in the physical world. How might virtual reality change or expand possible ESSPs for writers? How would this affect writing? This experiment would allow writers to experience a variety of environments and make adjustments within them to collect data on the changes made as well as the writers’ responses to them.

Project Type: Experiment

Interest: I would be interested

Device(s) to Be Used: I was thinking a HMD, but CAVE options could be interesting too and perhaps a more embodied experience?

Things I Know How To Do: I know the writing studies theory that would help set up the concept for the experiment

Things I Would Need Help With: All of the technical

Prior, Paul, and Jody Shipka. “Chronotopic Lamination: Tracing the Contours of Literate Activity.” http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies/prior/