Brown, Juliet; (2024) Immersive Encounters with Boarding School Syndrome: A series of multimodal experiments. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis analyses the production of multimodal forms for therapeutic method and considers which one most effectively evokes reflective introspection. I scrutinise the multimodal in a series of practice experiments which move from realism towards blank symbolism. I consider the effectiveness of visual symbol of the child-self, (as a representation of an aspect of the individual that is childlike) in different media forms. The research was undertaken with a group of adult participants who identify as “boarding school survivors” and interpret their symptoms as aligning with the condition Schaverien has labelled “Boarding School Syndrome.” The research outcomes consist of a series of practice-based experiments which began with tried and tested methods such as therapeutic clients envisaging their child-self in their imagination, then using a photograph of themselves as a child. The next, more novel, experiment involved an encounter with a photorealistic avatar representation of the child-self in a virtual reality therapeutic environment and finally the group experimented with art therapy and plasticine play representations of their younger selves. Two forms of interactive documentary (i-doc) were trialled with the participants, a 360-degree animated film and finally an i-doc which allowed participants to move freely through a 3D virtual therapy room and boarding school on a desktop computer. I argue that the more abstract the visual representations were, the more effectively they served as mnemonic devices. These findings run counter to the overall push in the technology industry for greater levels of realism, for instance in gaming where it is used to make games more immersive. I conclude that digital multimodal methods need to face the possibility of reinforcing hierarchies and existing power structures and it is important to discern the unconscious capabilities of multimodal knowledge production approaches to therapy and identify what they intentionally overlook as part of their strategic decisions.

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