SOCIAL JUSTICE AR/VR
VR Occupy Earth
GAMES
GAMES FOR CHANGE
Founded in 2004, Games for Change empowers game creators and social innovators to drive real-world change using games that help people to learn, improve their communities, and contribute to make the world a better place. We convene stakeholders through our annual G4C Festival, incubate projects with executive production expertise, train educators to run game design classes on impact games and inspire youth to explore civic issues and learn 21st-century STEM skills through our Student Challenge.
THAT DRAGON CANCER
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=vlKCJlhJwxU
A video game created by Ryan and Amy Green, Josh Larson, and a small team under the name Numinous Games. The autobiographical game is based on the Greens’ experience of raising their son Joel, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer at twelve months old, and though only given a short time to live, continued to survive for four more years before eventually succumbing to the cancer in March 2014.
WALDEN, A GAME
A first-person simulation of the life of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau during his experiment in self-reliant living at Walden Pond. Players follow in Thoreau’s virtual footsteps, balancing their basic survival needs with a search for the sublime in the small beauties of the woods. Each season holds its own challenges for survival, but with them, possibilities for inspiration.
VR
TREE: A CASE STUDY
Experience trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERffRXjTAqM
What’s it like to be a tree in the Amazon? Here’s a special first look at “Tree,” a new virtual reality experience by the New Reality Company (creators of “Giant”) that allows you to see, hear, and feel the jungle from the point of view of a magnificent kapok tree.
OUT OF EXILE
Emblematic Group
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiSKz2Wa9w8
Out of Exile is a powerful reminder of the kind of hostility faced by so many in the LGBTQ community. The piece shines a light on a terrible statistic: forty per cent of homeless youth in America identify as LGBTQ, with the majority coming from communities of color.
AFTER SOLITARY
Emblematic Group
Go inside the Maine State Prison to hear the harrowing story of Kenny’s time in solitary – how he coped, “fished” contraband to other inmates and fought guards during cell extractions – and what happened when he got out. After Solitary, a collaboration between Emblematic Group and PBS’ investigative series FRONTLINE, uses photogrammetry and volumetric video capture to tell the story of 39-year-old Kenny Moore, a recently released inmate who spent years in solitary confinement.
WE WHO REMAIN
Emblematic Group
The first character-driven VR film shot in an active conflict zone, the story focuses on the students, mothers, journalists and rebels who struggle to improve their lives in the midst of a war that shows no signs of ending. The story of a region cut off from the world, “We Who Remain” ushers the viewer into the heart of a forgotten conflict in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan.
GREENLAND MELTING
Emblematic
On the heels of the United State’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate agreement, Emblematic’s Greenland Melting – created in collaboration with FRONTLINE and NOVA – provides a rare, up-close view of icy Arctic scenery that’s disappearing faster than predicted.
PRISON REFORM
Project Empathy
Why we’re beginning the series in the U.S. prison system. – How Our Criminal Justice System Targets Communities – https://youtu.be/hZZmMrFQzVs?list=PLbtwwb1Fy5VNk8NGSVfTnXGPVGTJyU7wa
LEFT BEHIND
Project Empathy
Left Behind is a virtual reality scripted short designed to create empathy for children impacted by pain and loss after a parent is incarcerated. It follows a nine year-old girl who ends up in a foster group home after her mom is incarcerated for a first time offense.
TIME MACHINE TO BE ANOTHER
Audience will be invited to experience the perspective of mothers and fathers of victims of police violence. We’d like to invite you all to participate and meet the perspective of these inspiring individuals, fighting with no fear for a society in which young black man will no longer be the target of so many killings, only because of the color of their skin.
Ethos: More than individuals, we are part of a social collective called humanity. As members of this collective, the perception of our own identity is based on our relation with other people and our social environment: how people see us, how we do act and interact with them, and what self image we project to this society and to ourselves. As part of this collective society, the importance of understanding the ‘Other’ and ‘Each Other’ to better understand ourselves is clear. This multidisciplinary artistic investigation plans to use the recent neuroscience approach of ‘embodiment’ and apply it to investigate the perception and comprehension about the Self based on the comprehension of the “Other”.
INFILTRATION ARTIST
Amir Baradan
Amir Baradaran (b. 1977) is a New York based Iranian-Canadian performance and new media artist. His pioneering Augmented Reality {AR}t works question the role of machines and the promise of Artificial Intelligence in our everyday life. Baradaran’s praxis has inspired academic researchers, art professionals and technology developers alike. He is interested in the articulation of visual vocabularies that use Augmented Reality {AR} technology around notions of interactivity, infiltration, data-mining, failed utopias and the ephemeral. His bodies of work, writings, and public speaking, including his recent TEDx talk, engage with the ways in which participatory experiences and new-media instigate speculations about the racialized self, sexualized body, radical subjectivities and technology.
ZERO DAYS VR
Experiencing Cyber warfare at a human scale
Based on the Participant Media feature-length documentary Zero Days Directed by Alex Gibney, Zero Days VR introduces a new dimension to the original feature by telling the story from a perspective that wasn’t possible before the emergence of virtual reality. The Zero Days VR experience visualizes the story of Stuxnet in a new way: audiences will be placed inside the invisible world of computer viruses experiencing the high stakes of cyber warfare at a human scale.
FIREFLIES: A BROWNSVILLE STORY
OVEE
Technology: Unity, C# based chatbot, AR scanning
Ovee is an application that is designed for young women to take control of their sexual and reproductive health. While telehealth and chatbots are becoming increasingly popular in the Digital health market, there is nothing designed specifically for women and their unique health care needs. We are a team of young women, designing a system for young women.
Eventually, we would like every female to have access and feel comfortable receiving the care they need and deserve. We want our technology to provide a judgment free space so women can ask questions and receive reliable, accurate answers. We are especially trying to reach communities of women that do not have health support or their access to proper healthcare is restricted. With our ever-changing political system, it is important now more than ever that women have additional tools to take agency over their health.
HAVAS – SEA LEVEL
NYC Media Lab
School: Parsons MFA Design + Technology
Team Member(s): Lauren Malkani, Paolo Villanueva, Aarati Akkapeddi
Description: See Level is an augmented reality application that explores how Governors Island has been engineered to fight climate change. Visitors will experience rising sea levels first-hand, see the geoengineering inside “The Hills” and explore a new future for NYC.
LAURIE ANDERSON
at Mass Moca
Article: https://hyperallergic.com/440728/laurie-anderson-massmoca/
Laurie Anderson is one of today’s premier multimedia artists, known for her achievements as a visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, vocalist, and instrumentalist, and her innate ability to meld her dynamic practices into new and vibrant forms. Her seemingly boundless oeuvre includes the creation of books, albums, and performances that incorporate film, slides, recorded audio, live music, and spoken word.
STELARC
Stelarc is a performance artist who has visually probed and acoustically amplified his body. He has made three films of the inside of his body. Between 1976-1988 he completed 26 body suspension performances with hooks into the skin. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems, the Internet and biotechnology to engineer intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. He explores Alternate Anatomical Architectures with augmented and extended body constructs.
LOOK BUT WITH LOVE: A STORY OF A DOCTOR
In the slums of Karachi, Pakistan, child mortality is a daily threat. Explore the new emergency wards where Dr. Naseer saves young lives.
THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE
Created by Felix & Paul Studios
Take a historic visit to President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama’s White House. The Obamas guide you on an intimate journey inside the West Wing and the Executive and Private Residences, reflecting on their time together, and recounting the building’s profound history since its construction over two centuries ago.
PALIMPEST
Collective Memory through Virtual Reality
Palimpsest uses 3D scanning and virtual reality to record urban spaces and the communities that live in them. The project aims to question/test the implication if the past, present, and future city could exist in the same place, layering personal stories and local histories of the city at a 1:1 scale.
THIS IS CLIMATE CHANGE: FIRE
In just the last three decades, changes in climate have doubled the amount of land burned by wildfires in the western United States. Experience the scorching California fires of 2017, and follow the dedicated fighters – by air and on the ground – whose jobs have turned into year-round battles against these catastrophic blazes. Participant Media presents This Is Climate Change, directed by Danfung Dennis and Eric Strauss, in association with Condition One.
NOTES ON BLINDNESS: INTO DARKNESS
From Ex Nihilo, ARTE France and AudiGaming, Notes on Blindness – a companion to the feature film of the same name – is a must. It’s a documentary that uses minimilist 3D animation and binaural audio to explore the words of writer and academic John Hull, who started keeping an audio diary in 1983 after he lost his sight. The book, and now the film and VR experience, are based on three year’s worth of entries.
BEHIND THE FENCE
“Behind the Fence” looks inside the 5×5 square mile camp that imprisons the Rohingya muslim minority in Myanmar, and investigates the extremist Buddhists who propagate virulent anti-Muslim sentiment across the country. Behind the Fence profiles Abul, a husband who does everything he can to try to help his sick wife, Barbulu, a twelve-year-old boy whose future is diminished due to the constraints of living in this open air prison, and U Wirathu, the Buddhist leader of the 969 movement who stokes public support for restrictive laws that have rendered the Rohingya stateless in their own land.
DAMMING THE NILE
Ethiopia is a country with big ambitions, and they don’t come much bigger than the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Africa’s largest hydroelectric power project is two thirds finished and the dam can already control the flow of the Blue Nile, which is deeply upsetting downstream Egypt who they didn’t consult before building started. In the first part of the BBC News Virtual Reality documentary series “Damming The Nile” you’ll be taken on a journey from the sacred source of the Blue Nile, down waterfalls and through canyons to see this giant dam being built. You’ll travel on East Africa’s first metro train, go for a traditional Ethiopian lunch to hear why people are paying for this multi-billion dollar project, see the extent of Ethiopia’s growth and ambitions, and hear the government’s view on the political crisis the dam project has created.
THE PROJECTORS
The Protectors, Walk in the Ranger’s Shoes, is a documentary short shot in Virtual Reality that chronicles a day in the life of a ranger in Garamba National Park. These rangers are often the last line of defense in a race against extinction at the hands of poachers slaughtering elephants for their ivory tusks.
ENERGY CAPTURE VR
Energy Capture VR is a Cardboard game featuring three levels based around the renewable energy sources: wind, solar and hydroelectricity. Our client, Mishkat Interactive Center, focuses on inspiring and teaching younger generations in Saudi Arabia about atomic and renewable energy. The goal of the game was to teach the basic concept of renewable power production methods in a playful and engaging way to younger people.
I SAW THE FUTURE
Witness Arthur C. Clarke’s prophetic 1964 speech – predicting many of the technologies in our lives today – in this experimental VR film. In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke, the co-writer of Stanley Kubrick’s on 2001: A Space Odyssey, reveals his vision of the future. By revisiting the signal transmitted by the first cathodic images, this VR experimental film literally plunges us into the sound and visual matrix at the heart of this archive. In a dark expanse that could be the cosmos, we hear a voice: that of Clarke, whose face appears in the distance. His features quickly dematerialize into a multitude of shimmering pixels, creating an enveloping and immersive space out of which the thoughts emerge. I Saw the Future allows spectators to submerge themselves in a three-dimensional space echoing the futurist predictions of a visionary and humanist scholar.
THE PARTY
See the world through the eyes of Layla, an autistic 15-year-old girl, as she deals with a busy social setting, a surprise birthday party for her mum. Recent scientific research has found that autism presents far more frequently in women than previously thought. This has resulted in many autistic women and girls, who are often in need of help and support, going undiagnosed. The Party allows you to enter the world of an autistic teenager, Layla, who is at a surprise birthday celebration. You will hear her thoughts about what she is experiencing and how it is affecting her, and share the sensory overload that leads to a meltdown (an intense response to an overwhelming situation). The drama provides viewers with a powerful first-person perspective on the challenges that social situations may present to someone on the autism spectrum.
LIMBO
Article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2016/nov/10/virtual-reality-by-the-guardian#
What is it like to flee your home and start again in a new country? This virtual reality film allows you to feel this period of limbo, waiting for a decision that will affect the rest of your life. The refugee crisis has challenged Europe. Media coverage has been extensive but despite the many heart wrenching accounts there seems to be no broad social understanding of their plight. What if we didn’t just hear their stories, but could actually experience what they go through? This is the aim of VR film Limbo: no talking heads or footage of wandering Africans, but a piece which places you in the position of a newly arrived asylum seeker cast adrift in a new world, not allowed to work, unsure if you will be allowed to stay. You gaze around a black and white ghost town, taken to the house where you’ll wait with other asylum seekers, seemingly forever. The interview which determines if you will stay is nightmarish – you’re asked details so specific you couldn’t possibly remember, triggering traumas and images from the past. The interviewer’s blurred image blurred image repeats around you: first in front, then beside, then behind. He’s so close you have to look. It’s intimidating and frustrating, and it allows you to get a sense of this suffocating powerlessness.
A THIN BLACK LINE
This interactive VR experience follows five-year-old Patima’s perspective as she flees the violence of war. Patima is five years old when the bombing of Darwin takes place in 1942. It’s the worst air attack on Australia during all of World War II. Previously surrounded by a loving family and her inseparable doll, Patima only has a vague notion of war. That is, until the bombings force her family to leave everything behind to find safety. People are now convinced that a full Japanese invasion is imminent, and her family flees to the south, along with half of the town. It quickly becomes apparent that the family cannot stay together. In this interactive virtual reality documentary, we experience in real time how filmmaker Douglas Watkin’s mother lived through this frightening ordeal. You don’t know any more than the young Patima does, and you watch the changing situation from her point of view. Contemporary Aboriginal artist Vernon Ah Kee made the refined and gray-tinted artwork in this interactive experience.
UNREST VR
An immersive journey into the experience of an invisible illness, myalgic encephalomyelitis.
Unrest VR is an immersive journey into Jennifer’s experience of an invisible illness, myalgic encephalomyelitis, Unrest VR contrasts the painful solitary confinement of a bedroom world with the kinetic freedom of an inner dreamscape. When you’re too sick to leave your bed, where do you go? Drawing upon visceral meditations on pain, fatigue, and neurosensory symptoms, Unrest VR brings users into a personal experience of a hard-to-under- stand condition.
INVISIBLE
An immersive journey into the uncertainty and despair of the UK’s immigration detention system. Concealed behind 20ft prison walls, on the hem of cities, thousands of people are being held with no time limit. In this psychological pressure cooker people are desperately trying to prove why they should be allowed to stay in the UK. The film hears the voices of those with first hand experience of being detained as they lift the veil on the realities of a detention system that strips away identities, and further damages society’s most vulnerable.
THE RESISTANCE OF HONEY
A fascinating, mind-expanding glimpse into the exceptional world inside the beehive. Welcome to the fascinating world of urban beekeeper Bioni Samp. His bees don’t just make honey – they also make music. Always clad in his beekeeper’s suit and mask, Samp makes audio recordings in the hive, then analyzes and processes these. But he doesn’t stop there – even the honey itself makes sound, and Samp has discovered that every honey has a different one. He processes them into experimental electronic music using homemade instruments. Samp regularly uses these sounds in performances, and deejays at ecological festivals. 360-degree recordings from inside the beehive and the shed/studio of this urban nomad are interspersed with close-ups of the world of the bees. But of course the sound is always the principal factor in this mind-expanding, immersive experience.
THE ENEMY
This installation and app invites you to step into the very heart of conflict situations and find out why people engage in violence. Two combatants from opposing sides observe each other. We stand in the middle, confronted with their fears, dreams and motivations to fight. Created by war photographer Karim Ben Khelifa, The Enemy is an ongoing project that operates on the borders of neuroscience, artificial intelligence and non-fiction storytelling. By means of a virtual reality installation and an augmented reality app, The Enemy invites the audience to step out of its role of distant and passive bystander and into the very heart of conflicts in Afghanistan, Israel, Congo and El Salvador. What motivates human beings to engage in violence, at the risk of being killed or killing others? Why do people continue to fight in wars that have been going on for generations, and how do they envisage freedom or their own future? The Enemy challenges existing views and traditional depictions of war. It reveals how the dismissal of someone else’s humanity isn’t so much about the limits of empathy as it is about the limits of our imagination.
RecoVR: MOSUL, A COLLECTIVE RECONSTRUCTION
Article: https://www.doclab.org/2015/recovr-mosul-a-collective-reconstruction/
A virtual environment that brings back to life the historical collection of the Mosul Museum, raided by IS in 2014. With more than 3,500 archeological sites, including centuries-old religious and historic excavations, Iraq’s second-largest city Mosul has the majority of the country’s archaeological wealth. On June 10, 2014, Mosul was occupied by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Images of the destruction of historic sites and artifacts in the city’s museum made international headlines and shocked the world. RecoVR: Mosul, a Collective Reconstruction is a virtual reality installation created in response to this destruction, allowing us to visit the museum again and find out what happened to some of its key pieces. While walking through the museum we see the destroyed artifacts, digitally reconstructed through crowd-sourced imagery. This virtual environment was created by new media artists Ziv Schneider and Laura Chen. Apart from bringing the historical collection back to life, it also sheds light on ISIL’s war on cultural heritage. The project was in part inspired by the Museum of Stolen Art, an earlier virtual reality project by Schneider that will be released online soon.
AR
MIAMI MURALS PROJECT
Article: http://www.beforeitstoolate.earth/hackathon.html
Through murals, drawings, and augmented-reality pieces, artists are raising awareness of the imminent threat that climate change poses to the survival of Miami. Stands out for its ingenious integration of technology and environmental activism.
WIKIUPEDIA
A location based Indigenous Knowledge Network of stories and trails.
We invite you to explore, discover and experience cultural stories, traditional place names and trails.
STOP TRAFFICKING 2016
In collaboration with the ATTeam from the Red Cross Pancevo (part of the Red Cross Serbia), we created #STOPtrafficking2016 to raise awareness about the issue of modern human trafficking. The AR experience was released on July 30, 2016 as part of the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons and explores the issue through the stories of three people affected by it. It uses traffic stop signs as triggers, and users can go up to a real world stop sign or a graphic of one to view the story.
PRIYA SHAKTI
Priya’s Shakti is the first Indian comic book of its kind — not only confronting teenagers with the sensitive issue of sexual violence, but also engaging young people through its innovative use of augmented reality technology
THE FREDDIE GRAY ARREST
Empathetic
For The Washington Post, we created a walkthrough of the events preceding Freddie Gray’s death after his arrest in Baltimore, Maryland on April 19, 2015. Using 3D models, audio, maps, court documents and witness testimony, users can better understand the complexities of the case and the disparities in the cases presented by the prosecution and defense in relation to Grey’s death.
IMMERSIVE MEMORY SPACES
Dan Archer is the creator of Archcomix and Empathetic Media, two ventures dedicated to the narrative of nonfiction graphics and virtual reality and augmented, respectively. What happens when the historical memory and the new visualization formats are found? Journalist Dan Archer arrived in Colombia to tell stories of victims and survivors of the armed conflict in comics, 360º and virtual reality.
THE DEATH OF ERIC GARNER
The experience focuses on the controversial events that led to Garner’s death at the hands of police on July 17, 2014. Garner was wrestled to the ground by multiple officers and put in a chokehold by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, which eventually resulted in his death, all of which was captured by eyewitness Ramsey Orta on video. The experience breaks down the incident into a series of moments that provide the context to the confrontation and background to both Garner and the arresting officer Pantaleo. Garner’s final words, “I can’t breathe” became the rallying cry at protests, as part of the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement. Published by Silicon Harlem on the second anniversary of Garner’s death. Read more here.
WEB APP
BAIL BLOC
How Bail Bloc works – When you download the app, a small part of your computer’s unused processing power is redirected toward mining a popular cryptocurrency called Monero, which is secure, private, and untraceable. At the end of every month, we exchange the Monero for US dollars and donate the earnings to the Bronx Freedom Fund. 100% of the currency your computer generates is used by the Bronx Freedom Fund to post bail for low-income people detained in New York effective immediately.