VR & Empathy

 I've focused on empathetic mediums a few times over this semester's blog, specifically pertaining to interactive fiction elements that better bridge the gap between audience and creator. Chris Milk's TED Talk covered this exact topic- emotional emersion, reducing the divide between the audience and narrative, and "living" the story the creator wants to tell. From a writing standpoint, there are amazing benefits to VR as a medium, but it has shortcomings as well. The greatest positives lie in the tangibility of the work itself; an audience has quite literally blinded themselves to the world around them and is focusing solely on the story before them, which inherently magnifies their focus on the content itself. From the other side, I would argue that the "window" covering a film and the distance between them is where imagination really lies, and that imagination is the highest form of empathy we can experience. There's something in the act of choosing to step that gap into a story you read in a book or watch on a movie screen as opposed to limiting your perception to only that one thing. It's an amazing technology to be sure, but in my opinion a be-all end-all of empathetic storytelling lies in our own imagination, not in a visor. 

This Is Not Private was a great example of exactly what I'm talking about. You can hear the stories of people (although my French is not even half good enough to understand them fourth-hand from a speaker to a mic to a screen to a speaker to a mic to my computer earbud) and watch them as they tell those stories, with your own face following your eyes to blend you and the storyteller together. You're still present in your own space, and the both literal and metaphorical projection of yourself into the story can be seen without closing yourself off to the rest of your own experience. It's a unique concept and I can understand why it garnered attention, seeing your own experiences in someone else's story is one thing, actually seeing yourself while they're telling it is probably something deeper to an audience member.