VR and Empathy - Cameron W.

 I really enjoyed Chris Milk’s explanation of what virtual reality is like when he says “You feel your way inside of it. It’s a machine, but inside of it, it feels like real life, it feels like truth. And you feel present in the world that you’re inside and you feel present with the people that you’re inside of it with.” I’ve only ever tried VR once and it was just to play a scary video game. I liked that Milk has taken action to utilize the power of VR for a means other than to make money and get people addicted to playing a game. This piece of the talk was very important to me, “It’s not a video game peripheral. It connects humans to other humans in a profound way that I’ve never seen before in any other form of media. And it can change people’s perceptions of each other. And that’s how I think virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world.” His argument was extremely persuasive and I’m so glad to see him using this knowledge and technology to do something good for people in the world. I am interested to see what he has done since this TEDTalk came out in 2015 (It also seems wild to me that this was happening that long ago). I’m glad to have watched this video and understood a different side of VR.


Immemory by Chris Marker


I don’t know if this text from the chapter is exactly what you’re looking for to fit in with VR and AR but it was so intriguing to me that I needed to explore it more deeply. I looked at Immemory by Chris Marker, I’m not sure if anyone has already talked about this. It was released as a CD-ROM in 1997 and it used film clips, text, and images. The book explains that it was part documentary and part fiction but it basically allows you to explore, in any order, the creator's memory. It was really interesting to watch this youtube video I linked of someone going through it. I found an article that quotes Marker’s statement in the booklet that came with Immemory and it said, “In our moments of megalomaniacal daydreaming, we tend to view our memory as a kind of History Book: we have won and lost battles, found and lost whole empires. At the very least we are characters from a classic novel.” I thought this somewhat related to the idea of VR as an empathy machine. Although it isn’t VR, it uses technology to allow you to see the world through someone else’s memories. This seems to me to be a means for enforcing empathy and creating understanding between the viewer and the person’s memory. It feels like an earlier version of VR that attempts to transport you into the mind and remembrance of someone you are not.

Comments

  1. Dr. MApril 10, 2023 at 8:26 AM

    Immemory is a really interesting one and I definitely see the connection here. The closer we get to "it feels like truth" the more immersed we become and the more we can understand one another's subjective human experience.

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  2. Gwen WestApril 10, 2023 at 11:35 AM

    Hi Cam! I also was appreciate of Milk's use of VR as a catalyst for human connection. Using VR to put ourselves in another's shoes is a way for us to immerse ourselves in empathy, and in today's society, possibly bring us closer to peace.

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