Maturing the narrative sense through mixed reality games

Abstract

This article explores the human ability to see meaningful narratives in the world and to invent fictional narratives as a sense. The senses allow us to pick up on patterns in the world and to coordinate our behaviour in relationship with those patterns. Sensing narratives plays an important role in situational appraisals and provides important context for what we see, hear, touch, etc. Drawing upon the predictive processing framework in cognitive science, this article will defend this thesis and explore how virtual and mixed reality technologies can contribute to new ways of making sense of the world. These new tools of situational appraisal will be understood in the context of a cultural and cognitive condition that media theories Douglas Rushkoff calls ‘present shock’.