Environmentalism Finding a New Voice in Virtual Reality?
Virtual reality is not only the new frontier in cinema but could be the future of art installations. Virtual reality is merging science, art, and education. Patrons enter a designed room or space that grounds you in a tactile universe before sending its experiencers into an immersive virtual world.
Film festivals are a hot spot for viewing VR projects like Tribeca Film Festival in New York City and Sundance in Park City, Utah. The Future of StoryTelling (FoST) Festival features over 100+ new technologically immersive experiences to the public and houses an exclusive invite-only summit for creatives. Festivals are exponentially increasing their virtual reality content and it’s attracting attention from big partners like Microsoft, Google, and Spectrum.
3D can be seen as a precursor and intermediary to virtual reality. Immersion Cinema: The Rationalization and Reenchantment of Cinematic Space addresses how we’re wowed by the novelty of technology and links this back to the birth of cinema. “Many of cinema’s pioneers focused not on its storytelling potential but on the spectacle of its projections themselves. The most realistic films of the time, such as the Lumière brothers’ footage of workers leaving a factory, and the most fantastic, like Méliès effects-laden A Trip to the Moon (1902), were opposite sides of the same ‘cinema of attractions’ … displaying its visibility and calling attention to its own extradiegetic features” (Gunning, 1995B) (Recuber, 316).
Maybe VR can be used as a voice or tool for environmentalism/conservation and not just spectacle as it emerged from 3D and IMAX. The American Museum of Natural History in New York City houses an IMAX theatre that screens both 2D and 3D documentaries that focus on the natural world. Bill Breukelman, “former chairman of IMAX, said of this new immersive medium, ‘when you see our movie about mountain gorillas you are not a human being watching a gorilla. You are a gorilla’” (Wollenm 1993, p.10)
Could VR become a voice for environmentalism? Environmentalism seems to be a trend that’s appearing across several virtual reality projects within the last few years. Scott Higgins study, 3D in Depth: Coraline, Hugo, and a Sustainable Aesthetic, draws upon Bill Paul’s Aesthetics of Emergence essay. Paul claims that 3D is a short-lived gimmick and that IMAX3D claims to be the pinnacle of immersive experience because the massive scale screen fills your periphery visual field. “Protrusion may be 3D’s signature effect, but the price is an acute awareness of the frame as a boundary, and of cinema’s artifice in general.” The truly effective immersive experience hinges on the technological promise of erasing the frame (Higgins, 197).
VR welcomes the patron into a universe with no boundary of a frame. With a 360-degree visual field, the experiencer can feel totally immersed in a world apart from their own. Possibly with creators tackling issues facing the natural world, experiencers can be opened to new perspectives and VR cannot only be used for spectacle, but for education. Can we use virtual reality as a tool for education? Conservation? Ecological awareness? ““The virtual reality platform allows someone who has never even been in the ocean to experience what ocean acidification can do to marine life. We are visual creatures, and visual examples can be very striking”, explains Kristy Kroeker, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a consultant on the VR project” (Millar, YaleEnvironment360).
Chris Milk defines VR as an “empathy machine”. If VR viewers are put in a new headspace to understand and see the damage caused to our environment and only planet, possibly it could lead to change. “VR has also become a part of thinking about animal welfare, with experiences like iAnimal, a harrowing but necessary examination of factory farms. If it causes us to think more about the meat we eat, that can only be a good result for the planet — according to the World Watch Institute, animal agriculture amounts to as much as 50 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases” (Bright, huffpost). Two recent virtual reality experiences grant a look into the secret world of trees. Hopefully with the success of these projects, guests will be emotionally moved and fight for change.
TREE — NEW REALITY CO.
New Reality Co.’s Tree premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2017 and was on display at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. It’s now travelling internationally on the festival circuit. A multi-sensory VR project enhanced by haptics. Haptics, or kinesthetic communication works in time with the eight-minute film to stimulate moments of growth, wind, and fire. At Tribeca the project was run on the Oculus Rift headset but has also been screened on the HTC Vive. Headphones, hand sensors, and a vibration generating backpack are all accoutrements to the experience. Guests start as a seedling and grow into a Kapok tree. Their body becomes the trunk and arms transform into branches.
Creators Milica Zec and Winslow Porter are bringing awareness to rainforest deforestation and climate change. The experiencer is placed in the headspace of an earth grounded, living organism. You enjoy the beauty of the rainforest and all its inhabitants until the experiencer hears distant human sounds.
Tree has some fantastical elements, such as out-of-body experience/third person perspective that doesn’t allow for the narrative to fall specifically into a documentary. However, New Reality Co. worked closely with Rainforest Alliance to accurately represent the Peruvian rainforest.
TREEHUGGER: WAWONA — MARSHMALLOW LASER FEAST
Marshmallow Laser Feast’s Treehugger: Wawona has experiencers interacting with a physical installation. Once in the tethered headset, the VR viewer approaches the tree. The guest takes a look into a knot of a foam tree trunk to see the secret life forces. In the simulation the installation is a redwood tree. The longer the guest hugs the tree, you experience the movement of water up the tree to the canopy. The more time you spend with the tree the simulation becomes more abstract. Treehugger: Wawona is enhanced by haptics and viewers wear headphones, hand sensors (strapped to their arms for free movement), and a vibration generating backpack.
Janet Murray defines immersion as, “a metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of being submerged in water. We seek the same feeling from a psychologically immersive experience that we do from a plunge in the ocean…” (McMahan, 68). Both Tree and Treehugger: Wawona use scent to encourage deeper engagement with the environment. Each project takes the guest on a fully sensory journey, seamlessly syncing storytelling and haptics. In classical narrative cinema, often POV (point-of-view) shots are used to permit the audience to identify with a character. Possibly the use of haptics in VR experiences can share a similar effect to POV shots, forcing us to identify with the character. In Tree and Treehugger: Wawona, the tree itself. If viewers can empathize with the trauma of deforestation, maybe they’ll be encouraged to give a voice to environmentalism?
Bibliography:
Bright, Robert. “How Virtual Reality Tech Will Help The Environment: This Immersive Technology Will Be a Game-Changer.” Huffpost, 5 Sept. 2017, www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/how-virtual-reality-tech-will-help-the-environment_uk_59a7f038e4b010ca289a8578?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_cs=MEvrjWgQ6HgAmna5KvvX-Q.
Condliffe, Jamie. “Virtual Reality Can Provide Insight into Environmental Issues, Study Says.” UConn Today, 20 Oct. 2016, https://today.uconn.edu/2016/10/save-planet-first-put-vr-headset/#.
Elsaesser, Thomas. “The ‘Return’ of 3-D: On Some of the Logics and Genealogies of the Image in the Twenty-First Century.” The ‘Return’ of 3-D: On Some of the Logics and Genealogies of the Image in the Twenty-First Century, 2013, pp. 217–246. Critical Inquiry 39 (Winter 2013).
Future of Storytelling , futureofstorytelling.org/fest#Partners.
McMahan, Alison. “Immersion, Engagement, and Presence: A Method for Analyzing 3-D Video Games.” pp. 67–86.
Higgins, Scott. “3D In Depth: Coraline, Hugo, and a Sustainable Aesthetic.” 3D In Depth: Coraline, Hugo, and a Sustainable Aesthetic, vol. 24, Indiana University Press, pp. 196–209. Film History 24.2 (2012).
Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” Electronic Book Review, 10 July 2004,
electronicbookreview.com/essay/game-desig-as-narrative-architecture/.
Jenkins, Henry. “Searching for the Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling,”
Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, NYU Press, 2006, pp. 93–130.
Millar, Heather. “Can Virtual Reality Emerge As a Tool for Conservation?” Yale Environment 360, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 27 June 2016,e360.yale.edu/features/can_virtual_reality_emerge_as_a_tool_for_conservation.
Recuber, Tim. “Immersion Cinema: The Rationalization and Reenchantment of Cinematic Space.” 2007, pp. 315–330. Space and Culture 10.3 .
Schwartzel, Erich. “Virtual-Reality Movies: Get Ready for the VR Revolution.” The Wall Street Journal , 4 Mar. 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/virtual-reality-movies-get-ready-for-the-vr-revolution-1457030357.
“Tribeca Immersive: Virtual Arcade Featuring Storyscapes.” Tribeca Film Festival , tribecafilm.com/immersive.
