A new virtual reality exhibit that opened here last weekend gives viewers a first-hand look at what it’s like to try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border — and a peek into what could be the future of political ads.
In “Carne y Arena” (Meat and Sand) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, visitors strap on VR goggles for an immersive six-and-a-half minute movie where they find themselves among a group of migrants attempting to cross the U.S. border.
They are confronted with U.S. Border Patrol agents pointing guns in their faces, and they feel the cold of an immigrant detention cell. They hear personal stories from immigrants who’ve made the trek.
In important ways, Carne y Arena could be an example of the political and advocacy campaigns of the future. VR is an “empathy machine,” as filmmaker Chris Milk argued in a 2015 TED Talk, because it gives viewers a first-hand perspective of life as another person, causing them to care more.
The experience is directed by the filmmaker Alejandro Iñárritu, the Mexican director of the Oscar-winning films “The Revenant” and “Birdman.” It allows “the visitor to go through a direct experience walking in the immigrants’ feet, under their skin, and into their hearts,” Iñárritu said in a statement.
Carne y Arena, which first screened at the Cannes Film Festival, is hardly a mainstream work of advocacy. It has surreal touches: Viewers can literally peek into the chests of the virtual immigrants and see their beating hearts.
But as debates about immigration roil American politics, it’s impossible not to see the exhibit through a political lens.
“I would pay for a bunch of Trump supporters to go and have this experience,” said Anne Demo, who traveled from Pennsylvania to see the exhibit on Monday. “There’s a level of humanity that really reaches you.”
Such VR experiences have already become a staple of the high-end charity circuit. Black-tie clad donors at galas for the organization Charity: Water can strap on VR goggles and follow in the footsteps of a girl in an Ethiopian village getting clean water for the first time.
Cathe Neukum, an executive producer at the International Rescue Committee, which advocates for refugees, said half of the donors who watched her organization’s VR production of a refugee camp in Jordan took off their headsets in tears. “If you’re watching a regular video on your TV or your laptop, you can walk away, but when you’re engaged in a headset, you’re in it in a completely different way,” she said.
When a VR exhibit about a day in the life of a young Syrian refugee was included at mall kiosks soliciting donations for UNICEF, the number of people giving money doubled, said Christopher Fabian, an executive for the charity.
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Another project called AltSpaceVR brought people from around the country together in a virtual space to watch presidential debates and have political discussions. Arguments between people who see each other in virtual reality tend to be more civil than on social media, said Eric Romo, the company’s CEO: “It’s more difficult to be negative if you actually see another person in front of you, than when you’re hiding behind a keyboard.”
The advent of television transformed American politics and campaigning, ushering in live debates and the 30-second campaign ad. While it’s too early to say if VR could get anywhere near that level of influence, it’s likely to at least play a role, especially as the technology gets cheaper and more widely available.
In 2020, Romo predicted, all the major presidential candidates will have some kind of VR element in their campaigns.
Source: The Mercury News