ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s, qualitative researchers have relied on video-based methods of data collection. However, new recording technologies can create a more spatially volumetric record of the event, both visually and sonically. This chapter proposes a general approach called practice-based volumetric capture analysis (PBVCA), which uses Virtual Reality (VR) technology to better understand and support the practices by which scholars using ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) collaborate over time on developing an analysis of a complex event recorded with multiple cameras. What is novel in this approach is the virtualisation of two sets of practices, namely (a) the viewing and manipulation of mediated representations of complex time-based audio-visual data, and (b) the ethno-scenography of analytical performances of observation, demonstration, and analysis. To virtualise both, a powerful digital tool for immersion within a virtual spatial environment is combined with another tool for capturing and re-enacting live actions volumetrically. With an implementation of volumetric capture (VolCap/RePlay) in VR, PBVCA is used to uncover some of the practices in which these digital tools and virtualisations come to make sense for the participants as they work towards an analysis of socio-interactional phenomena.
