Interrogation … a VR encounter in Asad J Malik’s Terminal 3. Photograph: Sheffield Doc/Fest
Experience life after a horrific accident, play a customs officer or swim with sea otters. A new breed of VR film-making is making viewers engage in a deeper way with the issues they confront.
Sitting on a stool opposite me is Ayesha, a young American I’ve been asked to interrogate about her recent trip to Pakistan. “Did you visit any areas controlled by the Taliban?” I ask. “No, I did not,” she responds.
Ayesha is a hologram, and I’m “playing” a US customs officer in an augmented reality experience called Terminal 3. I spend 15 minutes in my fictional airport, asking her questions based on choices that appear in writing in my field of vision. My voice triggers her responses – which start off clipped and defensive but become increasingly intimate – to the point where I feel like I’d really like to hang out with her.
Ayesha is one of six participants of Muslim descent that were filmed with Depthkit technology to enable a surprisingly lifelike encounter that challenges stereotypes. It puts me in the position of authority – do I choose the tough questions or the softer ones? At the end I’m asked to decide whether to let her in to the country or detain her further. There’s a lot of hype around augmented reality at the moment but this piece – which came about after the director, Asad J Malik, had a bad experience with a customs officer in Abu Dhabi – had a narrative thrust that felt different to what’s gone before. You could imagine this sort of encounter happening in your own home in the not too distant future.
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Source: The Guardian