VR & Empathy

Most of us know VR to be a technology that allows us to immerse ourselves in a video or game. This 3D affect has influenced many games and even movies today. VR can be used for more than just entertainment such as sports, healthcare, and training. Scott Rettberg states how VR has helped the literature community, "Virtual and augmented reality of narrative and poetic works of electronic approaches for the presentation of narrative and poetic works of electronic literature in immersive environments." (Rettberg 196). The VR allows for the person wearing the headset to have an outer body experience. There have been many VR experiments with literature in the last twenty years.

I was really interested in the TED talk "How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine" by Chris Milk. Chris talks about how VR can be a machine that shows individuals how to become more empathetic to others' lives. An example that is done in the video is when the crew went to Jordan to film a video on a twelve-year-old girl named Sidra's life. This VR video shows you Sidra's life in a refugee camp where you are sitting on the ground with her and going through her life step by step. By having this unique experience, it makes it easier to empathize with her as well as others. They presented this VR film to the United Nations. I never thought that a machine could show people to be more empathetic, so I found this TED talk to be very interesting. 

As I was reviewing the last chapter in Electronic Literature, I looked at Word Museum that was written by Willian Gillespie.The visuals were done by Jason Rodriguez and David Dao. This VR was created in Brown's CAVE (Rettberg 197). This reality starts with poetry backed up with sound and visuals. While I obviously couldn't look at this VR stimulation due to my lack of equipment, I still was able to see some screenshots it. I found that it was very easy to read. 

Comments

  1. Dr. MApril 10, 2023 at 8:29 AM

    The CAVE was such an innovative approach to immersive narrative experience, and really ahead of its time. Looking forward to looking at Word Museum!

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