Is there Real Value in Virtual Reality?
We’re halfway through what is by far my favourite course and this week we explored the idea of using virtual reality (VR) to evoke empathy in the context of community development. As explained by House of VR, VR is “a computer-generated environment that lets you experience a different reality.” It allows you to emerge yourself in a completely different (and often unimaginable) space.
One of the VR films I watched is called Clouds Over Sidra. If you check out this link, you can watch the (regular) film for yourself— it’s less than ten minutes long and accessible on your laptop, phone, iPad, smart watch, etc. In this VR experience, I listened and watched Sidra, a young Syrian girl living in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, walk me through a few moments of her daily life.
The film was created in partnership with the UN, who referred to VR as “the ultimate empathy machine.” I will admit that I was a little shook after the experience (albeit part of that was nausea). While some might argue that VR can help build empathy, I would argue that this is not the most effective way to share these messages.
I wonder how much value this really adds to our understanding of community-based issues and I question whether it might be doing more harm than good. I appreciated feeling as if I was in the space where the story was set. There is significant value in talking about issues within the environment that the issues are actually taking place. However, feeling like you are in a community’s space in this context really worries me because it might lead outsiders to assume that they have a shared understanding of an issue based on these very short lived impressions. Consequently, I see a real problem with suggesting that this could help us understand a community’s experiences. Besides, any feelings we experience in VR would come from a place of privilege since we don’t actually belong to that community and we are not actually connected to that physical space. This leads me to believe that VR can create some disconnect and result in less participatory engagement.
VR is not a very accessible tool for this purpose — its expensive, not widely available, and not ideal for those with a weak stomach (like myself). I do think there is some value in this experience, but sharing stories has always been a deeply valuable tool to learn from others and it certainly doesn’t have to be in the form of VR to be effective.
