The document discusses new approaches to narrative and concepts of reality using 360 virtual reality. It explores how VR may enhance a reader's capacity for empathy by allowing them to literally enter the interior worlds of others. However, it also notes challenges, such as the risk of "poverty porn" or presenting only certain perspectives. The document also examines how VR can reconfigure concepts of truth and reality by showing multiple perspectives and narrative fallibility. It suggests VR may require considering the physical experience of the viewer in new ways compared to traditional media.

1. New narrative approaches
and the ‘Real’ using 360 VR
Shannon Walsh

2. "Nobody knows anything.”

3. Narrative Virtual Reality & Immersive 360 video
The EMPATHY MACHINE
RESTRUCTURING
NARRATIVE
PHYSICALITY
WHAT IS THE ‘REAL’ - DO WE
WANT IT?
RETHINKING THE STORY

4. The
Empathy
Machine?

5. “Researchers from
Washington University
…scanned the brains of
fiction readers and
discovered that their test
subjects created intense,
graphic mental
simulations of the sights,
sounds, movements, and
tastes they encountered in
the narrative.
In essence, their brains
reacted as if they were
actually living the
events they were reading
about.”

6. The New School for Social Research (Kidd & Castano):
Genre (popular) Fiction, Non-Fiction had no results
Literary Fiction improved capacity for empathy, and a reader’s capacity to understand
what others are thinking and feeling
York University (Raymond Mar):
86 fMRI studies
Substantial overlap in brain networks used to understand stories and those used to
navigate interactions with others
Mar, R. 2011. The Neural Bases of Social Cognition and Story Comprehension, Annual Review of Psychology Vol. 62: 103-134
Kidd, David Comer & Emanuele Castano. 2013. Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind, Science. Vol. 342, Issue 6156, pp. 377-380
The New Novel (1877)
Winslow Homer
(USA, 1821–1896)

7. Literature “prompts the
reader to imagine the
characters’ introspective
dialogues. This
psychological awareness
carries over into the real
world, which is full of
complicated individuals
whose inner lives are
usually difficult to fathom.”
-Scientific American 2013

8. Will VR displace or enhance this
capacity?

9. Could VR function more like literature –
allowing you into the interior worlds of
others – in ways that have not been
possible in cinema and radio?

10. CHRIS MILK – “Building the ultimate empathy machine”

11. A still from Vrse.works’ virtual reality film, “Clouds over Sidra” 2015,
produced for the United Nations by Gabo Arora and Chris Milk
Clouds Over Sidra

12. The Zaatari Refugee Camp is home to 130,000 Syrians fleeing violence and war.
Children make up half the camp's population.
This is the story of Sidra, a 12-year old girl who has spent the last 18 months in Zaatari.

13. "We can't tell the viewer exactly what to look at
and if someone's more interested in the shoes
the person's wearing than what they're doing
then that's their choice.”
–ABC Rural Reporter Cassie Hough
“The first time VR made me cry…”

15. Who exactly are we “feeling” for?
-Poverty Porn
-Euro-Lensed colonialist ‘tourism’
-i.e. Crossroads refugee & poverty immersion experiences at Davos
Listserv comments from Liz Man / Michele Stephenson

16. “We can’t be around the camera or we’re in the shot.”
On the Brink of Famine, South Sudan VR doc

18. “If you grip the handles, sir, you
will… share his suffering, as you
know, but that is not all. You will also
participate in his… ‘World-view’ is
not the correct term. Ideology? No.
[…] No word will do, and that is the
entire point. It cannot be described
— it must be experienced.”
— The Little Black Box, Philip K. Dick
(Published in Worlds of Tomorrow, 1964)

19. Machine To Be Another: Gender Swap
https://vimeo.com/84150219

20. In the Eyes of the Animal
Mashmallow Laser Feast

21. “We thought of PLACEHOLDER as a set of
environments imbued with narrative potential -
places that could be experienced and marked
through narrative activity. When a person visits a
place, the stories that are told about it - by
companions, by rock art or graffiti, or even by
oneself through memories or fantasies - become
part of the character of the place. Stories give us
ideas about what can be done or imagined in a
place”
– Brenda Laurel, 1994

22. The “Real” reconfigured?

23. The ‘Real’?
Do we want THE REAL?
As Lacan reminds us, it is an impossible state, one that only may occur in
adulthood through moments of complete rupture or trauma, when the
symbolic order has collapsed.

24. 6 x 9
Project Creators: Francesca Panetta & Lindsay Poulton
Key Collaborator: The Mill

25. “6×9 utilizes a lot of innovative immersive storytelling techniques to show you
the hallucinogenic effects of spending an extended time within a 6′ by 9′ prison
cell. You experience blurred vision, floating, objects that disappear if you try to
look at them, and a lot of animated text projected onto the virtual walls.”

27. Viens! (Come!)
“In this sensually playful, live-action VR, three women and four men, all naked, appear out of nowhere in the
white sunny space of a bright room outside of time. They meet, touch, share their energy, and are transformed
spiritually; they let themselves become one with the world.” VR film by Michel Reilhac & Melanie le Grand

28. Slippery “Truths”
Topics like Racism & Police shootings:
Janicza Bravo's “Hard World for Small Things”, live action
VR of a day in the life of a tight-knit community of South
Central Los Angeles.

29. Multiple perspectives, reveal narrative fallibility, the ambiguity of reality
and the authority of narrative.
No single truth: “the fact that we are present is not a guarantee that we
see what really truly happens.”
Rose Troche and Morris May

30. Considering the Body
A whole new set of
issues need to be
taken into
consideration:
paramount perhaps is
the physical body of
the spectator;
360 Video is not VR

31. NEW NARRATIVE
In the ‘Round’
Intentionally having things that
can’t all be seen
Importance of Camera Placement
Sound as trigger
Inside stream of consciousness:
Literature