Between Physical and Virtual Territories

The article presents the initial steps of a research-creation project that has been developed within the scope of the Federal University of Espírito Santo in Brazil and whose main objective is to give visibility to socio-environmental conflicts in the metropolitan region of Grande Vitória, the capital of Espírito Santo, from the development of interactive and immersive audiovisual works. At first, field research was carried out in a specific territory of the capital – the Jesus de Nazareth neighborhood – in order to identify some of these local conflicts and the community's ways of acting in an attempt to solve the problems. The problem proposed by the ongoing research can be summarized as follows: using research-creation as a methodology and work process, how to develop interactive, immersive and collaborative multimedia works that make it possible to increase the visibility of socio-environmental conflicts existing in a given territory – in this case, the metropolitan region of Greater Vitória – and, in parallel, promote scientific dissemination and the popularization of science? The research has a multidisciplinary character and brings together the following fields of study: i) research-creation and digital humanities; ii) new communication technologies, immersive (augmented/virtual reality) and interactive media; iii) socio-environmental conflicts in the metropolitan region of Greater Vitória (ES) and their impacts on the population; and iv) scientific dissemination. In addition to the objectives and expected results – to increase the visibility of socio-environmental conflicts and social injustices, research data on these issues and disseminate possible solutions –the research is also justified by the possibilities of learning and experimenting with technological resources on the part of professors and students at a public university in Brazil. The article brings data about the main conflicts already mapped in the Greater Vitória region, information about the visited community and theoretical notes on the concept of socio-environmental conflict, understood broadly but which includes the articulation between the environment and social relations. The text also presents the principles of creation as research and its use as a methodological process. The current stage of the study consists of collecting and selecting data from scientific research banks and reviewing the literature.