Virtual oceans: how VR technologies mediate oceanic space

In marine science, VR technologies are being used to model underwater space and enable virtual geoscience fieldtrips for teaching and research. The vast potential in adapting these technologies alongside their speedy application suggests challenges in relation to the standardization of these technologies and what forms of representation come to matter in these contexts. This raises the question regarding how the use of VR technologies produce and transfer knowledge about marine environments. To address this question, I explore VR technologies as tools for mediating human-ocean relations, analyzing processes and technologies used in marine science to produce VR models and digital environments of oceanic spaces that give meaning to the marine. Doing so, I argue that VR technologies flatten the vast materiality of the oceans to create an illusion of depth that is anchored in the “objectivity” of the visual. Additionally, VR oceans currently represent a shift from other representations of the oceans as global or planetary, as they are being used to assist the production of local, place-based engagements of the seas, specifically through positionality and spatial awareness (aka proprioception), which differs from previous representations of the sea based on sight.