, Maud Ceuterick 
It is based on a qualitative empirical study of how readers of Randall Okita’s VR memoir, The Book of Distance, engaged and empathised with individual characters of the story. The data suggests that, in the context of literary-experimental VR fiction, existing concepts of empathy as a form of reader engagement and as an affective spectrum need to be relativised and expanded. It further suggests that spatial design has a non-trivial role to play in the degree to which readers are made to feel part of the storyworld, which in turn affects their perceived proximity to fictional characters. Ultimately, the study confirms that empathy needs to be seen as a fraught, multidimensional and contingent concept that VR authors can problematise for their audiences through »distance design« techniques.
Astrid Ensslin is Professor for the Dynamics of Virtual Communication Spaces at the University of Regensburg, where she leads the Digital Area Studies Lab (DAS|LAB), which she founded in 2023. Previously held full professorships at the University of Wales (Bangor), the University of Alberta (Canada) and the University of Bergen (Norway). She has published 12 books and over 80 peer-reviewed articles on digital fiction and literary computer games, body image, femtech and digital media, critical community co-design and narrative therapy, discourses of gaming, the spatial design and narrative potential of virtual realities, as well as in methods of digital humanities and empirical reader research. She has been a Director of the Electronic Literature Organization since 2018 and, since 2019, Principal Editor of the Bloomsbury “Electronic Literature” book series.
mehrMaud Ceuterick is a senior researcher in Film and Media Studies at University of Bergen. Studied English and Spanish Language and Literature and Film and Media Studies before receiving a PhD in 2016 from the University of Otago, Dunedin, N. Z. Research interests include Queer Studies and aesthetic and narrative mechanisms in digital Media and Virtual Reality. Publication: Affirmative Aesthetics and Wilful Women: Gender, Space and Mobility in Contemporary Cinema (2020)
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