How virtual reality can create social change

[Music]

there’s a debate i have fairly

frequently that goes a little bit like

this

our new technology is the key to helping

us tackle the major social problems we

face in the world today

or are they actually one of the main

contributors to those very problems

it’s a debate that probably goes back to

the printing press one that seems to go

in cycles of public opinion

since the pandemic started i’ve

witnessed a definite shift towards more

positive sentiment around technology

more discussion of how it’s going to

help us build a better world after covet

yet despite this shift there still seems

to be one technology largely missing

from the conversation

one that has enormous potential to help

influence social change

so today i want to talk to you about vr

or virtual reality

and the opportunities that i see it

offering

now in a world where so many of us are

spending a lot more time in digital

spaces

it does seem strange that br might still

be being overlooked

however in part i think that’s because

we simply haven’t taken it very

seriously as a technology

if i were to guess what first came to

your mind when i said virtual reality

i might think that it was video games or

perhaps 3d movies

and those things are a little frivolous

and a little mosaic

to put it into context the first major

at-home vr system

was the nintendo power glove back in

1989

and if i remember it correctly it came

with half a dozen games

including one i loved where you were a

magician that used the glove to cast

spells

so i can certainly understand at least

for my generation that we all would have

these slightly

silly childhood connotations rather than

coming to mind as a tool for social

change

except that games because they’re

immersive because they’re interactive

actually have enormous power to shape

our view

i’ve lived in london for 16 years now

and i

still tend to view it as a giant

monopoly board

and it’s this ability to create spaces

that help us rethink our own reality

that keeps drawing me back to the

potential of immersive art forms

now that fascination didn’t start with

vr in fact my first great passion was

the theater

when i was growing up i had two

ambitions one to be an actress

and two to save the world and that

resulted in me creating these truly

terrible plays that were about lecturing

my parents and the neighbors to donate

to charity

and unfortunately at drama school

somebody introduced me to the

ideas of august overwell and in

particular forum theater

and this is about creating a play around

a social issue

and then inviting the audience into the

performance space to allow them to

experiment with ways of dealing with

that problem

and we use those ideas to create work

about bullying

which is then toured around schools and

it was amazing to see the pupils

developing their ability and their sense

of agency

to tackle a problem that was important

to them and a lot more empowering and

engaging

than a play that simply told them what

to do

and in vr i see the chance to enhance

and extend

that same power that i first found on

forum theater

i’m not the only person excited about

these opportunities either

the un have been experimenting with vr

resources most notably in 2015

creating a piece called clouds of a

sidra in partnership with the filmmaker

chris milk

it’s set in the zatari refugee camp in

jordan and in it you meet 12 year old

sidra who is a refugee from syria

and she shows you around the camp tells

you about the people and places that are

important to her

and shares a little bit of her story

milk has made his own talk about

creating the piece

and what he had to say really resonated

with my experiences of how vr creates

more engagement and action

as an example clouds oversight was used

in street fundraising for unicef

where it raised nearly 4 billion almost

twice as much as similar non-vr

campaigns had raised in the past

and a lot of this difference was

attributed to this idea of immersion

that because people were using a 360

degree headset to access the piece

they felt a sense of agency in the space

they were choosing where to look

and which parts of cidro’s story to

engage with and that translated into

them wanting to take action

in this case to make a donation as a

film however clouds over sidra only just

begins to touch on the possibilities vr

offers us as an immersive art form

another example is the work of the

virtual human interaction lab at

stanford university which created a

piece that allowed

virtual simulation of cutting down a

redwood tree with a chainsaw

and as well as having a visual element

with the headset participants were also

given wristbands that produced haptic

vibrations

that gave them a sense of the friction

of the saw against the bark

as well as a headset that played a

forest soundscape that was unshattered

by the trash of the falling tree and

again this experiment found a link

between an immersive experience and

behavioral change

not only did the participants report

having a more visceral understanding

of what it would mean to cut down a tree

as part of the paper making process

but in a follow-up exercise they were

observed to use 20 less paper

than a control group so we can

understand

immersion as the first of three key

affordances to help us make sense of vr

as a tool for social change

and importance is a concept i find

really useful in analyzing all kinds of

technology

put simply it’s what that technology

allows or encourages you to do

based on its innate attributes or

characteristics

so a pencil enables you to share certain

kinds of messages

by allowing you to write and vr

encourages you to

make behavioral and therefore social

change by allowing you to become an

actor

rather than a spectator of a social

problem

now the second key affordance i believe

is embodiment

in the examples i’ve given so far the br

is still asking you to identify as

yourself

whether you’re visiting the refugee camp

or cutting down a redwood

and that means you’re coming from an

external compassionate viewpoint

that it makes you want to help somebody

or something else

but we are also quite uniquely allows us

to identify with another by quite

literally letting us put ourselves in

their shoes

take for example the work of artist lucy

bonner and particularly her peace

complement

which aim to raise awareness about

street harassment

based on her own experiences living in

new york which rather sadly resonated

with some of my living in london

she aimed to show how violating the

experience of being catcalled could

really be

particularly for those who might

otherwise dismiss it as a compliment

now these were often individuals who

felt physically dominant in their

day-to-day lives

and so the vr work to disrupt this

feeling

as the recipient of the cat calling your

perspective is set rather low

and that allows the other characters to

really loom in and invade your screen

creating that palpable sense of threat

and intimidation

that’s not a perspective everyone would

have been able to imagine

but having had it materialized for them

they’re therefore able to access the

experience and the feelings it provokes

perhaps use this as a basis for

behavioral change

so this ability to jump the imagination

gap between ourselves and another

suggests that vr is also capable of

giving us an empathetic mindset

based on self-identification with an

issue

now that distinction between compassion

and empathy

may be becoming increasingly important

in a world where it seems that

compassion fatigue is

growing perhaps based on a sense of

overwhelming problems in the world

and the need to have a bit of an

emotional defense mechanism

so if embodiment can both give us a

sense of identification with an issue

as well as the belief that our actions

are creating real change

it can become increasingly important for

those advocating for a course

therefore it’s no surprise that there’s

a small but growing trend of charities

and campaign organizations

creating embodiment-based vr whether

that’s disability rights organizations

giving

us a color-blind perspective of the

classroom or perhaps an animal welfare

campaigning group

letting us see the eyes through the eyes

of a cow in a slaughterhouse

now that last example brings me to the

third key affordance which i think is

transcendence

because as well as allowing us access to

hidden spaces vr lets us overcome

boundaries of time

space and risk to give entrance into

hidden spaces as well

for example another of my great passions

is wildlife photography

but it’s a hobby i had to be careful

with because viewing animals in the wild

means i’m encouraging on their habitat

and potentially putting undue stress on

their ecosystems

i’m at this chat in the windy

impenetrable forest and as the name

suggests it is not the most accessible

area

as well as the geographical challenges

there’s periodic civil unrest in the

region

and in the wake of covert calls to

further restrict future tourism

over concerns of disease transmission

between humans and guerrillas

yet the tours in this area provide

incentive for conservation

particularly as former poachers are

retrained as tour guides

so a number of organizations have been

working with the rwanda development

board

to create vr gorilla safaris they still

give people the chance to meet these

magnificent creatures in the wild

and encourage investment in local

conservation whilst

removing the risks and repercussions of

having people physically present

in the forest virtual spaces also allow

us to go beyond simply recreating a

location

and lets us give access to additional

context such as the histories of stories

that have shaped a space

whilst i was studying in australia i had

the chance to be involved in a workshop

with indigenous filmmakers

who were looking at how to reclaim

landscapes from colonial narratives

and as part of this they were

investigating using vr in tourist

centers

so that people could experience cultural

landmarks such as uluru

through indigenous perspectives rather

than by visiting and potentially

damaging or desecrating sites that were

considered sacred

unfortunately i had to return to the uk

before i could be further involved but

i’ve been so excited to see the fruition

of projects coming from a similar

mindset

such as the work of repliban at the

university of new south wales

his piece the torah’s straight virtual

reality lets people experience these

unique australasian islands and their

flora and fauna

whilst being guided by the stories and

navigation systems of the indigenous

tourist straight islanders

a perspective they might not otherwise

have been able to get

so a whirlwind tour of different

examples there

and one that hopefully gives you just a

glimpse of the hidden potential of vr

and its three key affordances for social

change

immersion to create agency embodiment to

invoke empathy

and transcendence to allow us access to

hidden spaces

and wherever you fall in the technology

debate i’m hoping there’s at least

something there

that gets you excited about vr and its

potential

however i’m not overlooking you if you

feel that you fall on the other side of

the debate

that technology causes more problems

than it solves

because here’s the really crucial thing

about affordances

they’re not neutral now neither are they

good or bad by default

but instead they shape and are shaped by

the society around them

so acquiring a pencil may change the

kind of messages that you’re able to

write

but there are so many other factors that

will influence

what you choose to say it’s the same

with vr

in fact i don’t believe any technology

by itself is going to help us solve any

of our social problems

but i do believe they can be part of the

solution if we use them correctly

in order to do that we need to

understand how each of their affordances

could cause harm if used in the wrong

way

whilst my research has focused on the

experience of a number of marginalised

groups and their use of vr

i’ve taken a particular interest in how

it’s been used in mental health

and that’s because as an individual my

identity has been significantly shaped

by living with a long-term mental health

disability

that’s allowed me to be part of projects

looking at using virtuality as an

educational and anti-stigma tool

in doing so one key risk that i’ve

observed is that by allowing us to

transcend boundaries

vr also allows us to violate spaces

the process of oppressing any group

often involves occupying and rewriting

their lived experience

and there’s any number of overly

negative and inaccurate portrayals of

mental ill health

frequently written by people that just

don’t have the experience to know

i’d be horrified to see any of those

becoming the basis for a voyeuristic vr

experience

so we need to start by ensuring that vr

users are invited in

rather than trespassing and that means

making sure resources are made by

or at the very least with people that

have the legitimacy and the experience

to really share a perspective on an

issue

unfortunately by being marginalized such

groups are often on the wrong side of

the digital divide

so to tackle that challenge we need to

be talking about access rights and

disenfranchisement

without that any sense of identification

or participation that vr

offers will be illegitimate and

potentially counterproductive

there’s also the fact that even amongst

people with lived experience there’s

really just one viewpoint on an issue

a project i was involved in looking at a

vr experience of psychosis

quickly stalled due to arguments around

the use of medicalized terminology

a key debate for many mental health

rights activists

and that showed me that vr can be a poor

choice for a contentious issue

because embodiment lends itself to

seeing just to a single viewpoint

whilst at the same time immersion helps

remove the cues that remind us to keep a

critical distance on an issue

because for all its sense of immediacy

and presence we have to remind ourselves

that vr

is scripted and created with an agenda

just like any other art form

so we need to be asking questions and

making sure that that doesn’t replace

conversation

in fact disagreement finally there’s the

fact that we’re unsure

about the significance or the longevity

of the empathy effect

often research into social impact

has looked at small or short-term

behavioral changes amongst new or

inexperienced users

research from a slightly different area

looking at br as a mental health

therapeutic tool

suggests that repeatedly immersing

people into the same experience

desensitizes them to that experience

this suggests that we need to be doing a

lot more research to understand how vr

affects our emotions

long term so that we don’t over saturate

people

and therefore end up provoking more

compassion fatigue than we tackle

so understanding vr from our affordances

perspective

as our co-creator of change it’s clear

there’s some questions we need to be

asking to make sure we maximize its

positive potential and minimize the

negative

we need to know whose perspectives are

being prioritized

where the funding is coming from to

create a resource and who is holding the

overall balance

of power in the making of vr and i think

now is a critical time to be asking

those questions

because for a long time now vr has

stayed in the sweet spot of becoming

increasingly affordable and accessible

whilst not by having the mainstream

success that would have led to it being

monopolized

and that means plenty of people have had

the chance to create and experiment and

research in relative freedom

but we’ve come a long way since the

power glove and i don’t think that vr is

going to be overlooked for that much

longer

in fact just a few years ago facebook

bought oculus makers of one of the most

popular vr headsets

and there’s another a number of other

major companies who are increasing their

investment in the technology

i think that means the balance of power

may soon be about to shift

so what does this mean for the future of

vr as a social change tool

well in true forum theatre style i’d

like to throw that answer back to you

i’d like you to think of a technology

that you think has either significantly

contributed to or alleviated a social

problem

whether that’s nuclear power plants or

social media or indeed

the printing press and now i’d like you

to imagine that you were there when that

technology was being developed

and you’d had your chance to have a say

would you have been one of the early

internet advocates

writing its manifesto of open access and

radical politics

or would you have been an industrial

revolution naysayer

demanding that your organization think

about its unintended consequences

or are both of those hopelessly naive

perspectives would you have done

something