This video essay was recommended watching for our VR session.
Reflections
- I think the main issue that the video essay is describing is the conflation of creating 3D visual audio environments with human to human emotional relatedness
- I like the way they compared VR to film (another visual audio medium) and talked about how different viewpoints and perspectives in film are empathy generating in a way that taking a fixed but interactive point of view may not be.
- It’s also interested to think about the potential unintended consequences of trying to create empathy for people in situations using VR – i.e. when they talk about disability and how some VR simulators could be said to be perpetuating oppressive or disablist situations rather than contributing to better understandings or ways of thinking
- One of the messages I’ve been taking away from discussion about the limitations of VR tech is the idea that the body is more than it’s eyes and ears. Meaning making is more complicated than what we are seeing and story telling, as a core way of us making sense of the world, needs as much consideration in a VR context as it would do in any other visual audio medium.
Reference
Eitzen, D. (2020). Why VR Does Not Promote Empathy. Deleted Journal, [online] 7(2). doi:https://doi.org/10.16995/intransition.11281.
