Researching Interactional and Volumetric Scenographies – Immersive Qualitative Digital Research

Students’ interaction in postdigital practices is complex, mediated and unpredictable. As postdigital practices are constantly evolving and changing it is challenging to research the interactional work that students do. If we want to get an understanding of the complex ways students work together using different mediational resources, it is important that researchers expand their focus and interest towards the interactional and volumetric scenographies that students build and inhabit in and through their interaction. In this chapter, we introduce immersive qualitative digital research as an environment that facilitates a more qualitative, immersive and emancipated way of working with audio-visual data. Immersive qualitative digital research is closely linked to emergent technologies such as Virtual Reality and 360 video, which create a new environment for researching immersive and volumetric scenographies in the postdigital age. Using three examples of digital software (AVA360VR, CAVA360VR and SQUIVE), we present and discuss how researchers can come to a better and more nuanced understanding of the thickness of lived postdigital practice.