Designing an 'Immersive' Story Environment: Racism and the Sonic Representation of the Stephen Lawrence Murder

Immersive storytelling has recently gained popularity as a technique for interacting with audiences, typically providing experiences favouring visual media through 360-degree video, virtual reality, etc. This paper investigates the potential of using a multi-channel sound-only experience to explore the issue of racism in society by revisiting the murder of Stephen Lawrence, in 1993, and the media and public debates generated by the case. Fusing the dimensions of sound, storytelling and computer-mediated interactivity, the practice-led research involved developing a prototype for a responsive sonic story environment based on the case. The prototype was tested on an audience and qualitative data, based on in-depth interviews, was collected. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed, with reference to the dimensions of experiential engagement proposed by Busselle and Bilandzic (2009), to gain an understanding of audience engagement with the story environment. The paper illustrates the role that artists/designers can have in providing new insights into and/or understandings of real life and lived experience.