this is one of the first films that we
have that you see on screen it was made
in the late 1800s by the French film
pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumiere and
rumor has it that when audiences saw it
for the first time in Paris they jumped
out of their seats because they thought
perhaps there was an actual train that
was going to burst through the screen
and come into the theater and it seems
silly to us today something that is just
an illusion
that was not so obvious to them at that
time but what’s meaningful about this is
that it speaks to the power of film and
the ability it had to change our
perceptions about the world around us
and you can see that the language of
cinema was going to be developed from
this that pretty soon we’d had editing
and close-ups and wide shots and that
this language that we know today of
cinema was taking place and starting to
take shape
and in cinema now after so many years
have gone by we have some really
standout pieces of work you know that
have changed our perceptions about how
we see the world around us think about a
film like The Matrix how many times do
we say to each other are we living in
the matrix or something like the film
Inception with which bends and warps how
we see time and there’s something
similar that we can do with this medium
as well and that’s called in virtual
reality or VR as we call it VR has the
power to connect us to each other in
ways that no other creative medium can
and so like those people in Paris in
that theater who were maybe a little
scared in the beginning seeing this I
was a little scared too when I first
started VR to work in VR I thought that
putting this headset on would
effectively disconnect me from the world
around me and that it would cut down on
human intimacy and connection to each
other which are the very bonds that make
us human and I also thought that just
because you can’t do something just
because you have the means and ability
to do something new doesn’t necessarily
mean that you should like anything the
advent of something new comes with
tremendous possibility but also the
possibility for harm
and I realized when I got into it you
know beyond just looking silly like I do
in this photo I mean you have all the
gear you have the headset you have the
wires you have touch controllers
sometimes you’re wearing a backpack
beyond just kind of looking silly and
having this gear what I realized is that
there’s something deeper to be said
about this technology what does it mean
that we can do what we can do and why is
it important in connecting us to each
other and reminding us of that
universality of human connection so also
the deeper that I got into it I realized
it was a little bit like riding a bike
you can have all the gear you can buy
the helmet you can buy a fancy bike you
can buy some riding gloves but at the
end of the day you really have to get on
that bike and you have to go somewhere
you actually have to learn to write it
if you want to go on a journey and it’s
the same thing in VR so I’ve always been
more interested in channeling human
behavior and being able to put that into
artistic mediums and I’ve always been
wanting to search and connect with
people around me in different ways and
to people that I may never have the
opportunity to meet in real life so now
a few years have gone by and we know
that we can tell stories and elicit a
feeling of presence in VR and we know
that we can experience certain things
that this medium only offers but another
thing that it really offers is the
ability to live as somebody else would
to have all of these sensory emotions to
touch something the way someone else
would touch it to smell what they would
be able to smell to feel what they would
feel to experience things as they would
and this word experience is really
important and when we talk about VR we
say that somebody experiences something
not just watches it I experienced this
VR piece I didn’t watch this VR piece
and we use that word because you can
really experience it it’s not just
watching something I mean other forms of
media are more or less passive as
impactful as it may be you’re not
actually participating in something the
way that you can in VR
so if we’re able to experience something
as somebody else would and feel what
they feel touch what they touch smell
what they smell we’re able to live their
truth and we can do this in VR and when
we’re able to live their truth and have
their memories that’s also what makes me
are so unique and impactful our ability
to remember our memories are what make
us who we are nobody else on the planet
has our exact memories we have ownership
over them and in today’s world where we
have so much information that we put out
into the world we’re easily connected to
each other and so many things of ours
are used without our consent
our memories are what remain intact
it’s the foundation of our identity and
personal embodiment if I can experience
something as someone else would it will
teach me more about myself because if I
can have these memories or experiences
it’ll imprint on my own mind and memory
and indeed I can change my entire
perspective one of the first to be our
films that I was on the producing team
for was a film called perspective
directed by Rose troche and it was about
a police brutality incident in New York
City and police brutality is a big issue
in the u.s. it’s a big topic that’s
happening all the time and this was a
POV piece so you could choose between
four different perspectives you could be
two New York City cops or you could be
two african-american brothers and
imagine that I could actually be this
person if I was the cop I could look
down and I could see my arms and my legs
I could see that I was wearing a uniform
I was this person and similarly if I was
one of the children I had my backpack on
I was talking to my brother it was just
a normal day and suddenly were followed
out of the store the cop thinks that we
stole something he’s coming after us
he’s shouting after us and we don’t
think that we did anything wrong so we
just keep going and suddenly it
escalates the officer demands to see
what I have in my bag I don’t want to
give it to him
and I’m separated from my brother things
get very very confusing it all happens
very very quickly and I’m shoved to the
ground the officer calls for his friend
to come and all of a sudden the other
officer comes I’m knocked to the ground
again and I’m shot and the world warps
around me the sound becomes completely
disoriented and the last thing I see is
my brother calling for help as my eyes
slowly closed and from my point of view
of the officer it looked like maybe this
kid was pulling a gun from his pocket
but it was just a phone so you see how
easily things like this can happen and
escalate and biologically after
something like that you feel like you
lived that experience and it creates
again an illusion on your own memory and
you form a type of memory that merges
with this other person’s so it feels
like it becomes something of your own
and I was speaking with a friend before
this film premiered at the Sundance Film
Festival and she said to me but do
people really want to see that do people
really want to see somebody go through
something like that and experience it as
if you lived it and it was kind of an
aha moment for me because I felt well
okay well what can this medium offered
to us that you can’t get from reading a
book or watching a play and I realized
that one of the hallmarks of humanity is
being able to remember things even as
distant memories and the ability to live
someone else’s experiences I could have
a new POV and it made me question things
this experience also does not it made me
feel like I can’t see things in the same
way anymore with topics like this I
asked myself well what did I see as one
of those kids or what didn’t I see as
one of the cops and I don’t look at this
the same way anymore at all there’s
another VR experience that had a big
impact on me and it’s called notes on
blindness it was created by a man who’s
a colleague of mine now named Arnold :
art and it documents the process of a
now late British author whose name was
John hull and he began losing his sight
several deck
ago and what he did is he recorded audio
diaries of the process of losing his
sight so that when he eventually went
blind he could go back and listen to
those cassette tapes and feel what it
was like to be at the park for instance
or to sit on his front porch and watch
kids play and this experience was so
impactful on me you really feel as if
you’re there and you really feel as if
you’re seeing everything around you when
he describes something through his audio
Diaries and you hear his voice in your
ears when you’re when you have the
headset on you see everything come to
life around you see the wind blow
through the trees see leaves blowing on
the ground so beautiful and everything
the myriad and voices and sounds creates
where there is no activity there’s no
sound but then that part of the world
dies so that’s just a small little clip
of that and it’s completely different
when you actually watch it but you can
see that this is something that really
can only take place in this medium in an
interesting turn of events after a few
months after I saw this experience my
own mother suffered a serious emergency
with her eyes and she was at risk of
losing her own sight and I was in her
house and I was helping her try to
adjust to what maybe was going to be a
total life change and I had no way to
connect with her on that I couldn’t see
what she was seeing I couldn’t feel what
she was going through and experiencing
but because I had seen this VR
experience I was able to connect with
her on a level that I didn’t think was
possible she had an Institute for the
blind come and and install these little
buttons all over her house on appliances
that she used a lot like her coffee
maker or her washing machine and so I
was helping her kind of do all of this
and I was able to connect with her in a
way beyond words and indeed it’s kind of
impossible to put into words what that
was like but I could because I had this
experience where I could see and feel
what it was like when I took away all of
those other emotions there was something
about that experience that reminded me
of the simplicity of life and that was
really beautiful and important when
there’s a VR pioneer named Jaron Lanier
who has really had a big impact on me
and he’s one of the people who first
coined the term virtual reality and he
had a start up in the 1980s in Silicon
Valley that made some of the first
headsets and or modern head-mounted
displays and he believes that we should
never separate a discussion of
technological advances from their human
effects and he has this phrase called
doubling down on being human that
basically means that as we redefine
it means to be human in light of these
technologies it becomes more important
than ever to express and exercise our
unique points of view to remind us of
what defines us as being uniquely human
and these glitches and mistakes in the
technological field should be embraced
because these are also a hallmark of our
humanity
we’re not perfect people and we can
perhaps relate to each other in ways
that we have done throughout all of time
ironically through this technology
there’s one more viewer experience I’d
like to talk about and that’s a piece by
the director Alejandro and yet II do and
it’s called carne de Rana and it plays
in a few places in the world and one of
the places that it’s at is it a museum
in Los Angeles called LACMA and you go
inside this room and for a minute you
forget you’re at this major cultural
institution that’s in the middle of a
huge urban city and you put this headset
on
well first you take your shoes off your
bare foot and you step into a large
space that’s filled with dirt and you
put this headset on and the space itself
is also filled there’s a large walls
everywhere that are made of sheet metal
and their border walls so you step into
the dirt with this headset and suddenly
you’re in the middle of the desert and
you don’t really know where you are but
you you also smell that you’re in the
desert and all of a sudden there’s
people walking towards you and as you
get closer to them you see that they are
migrants they also have no shoes they’re
carrying water and they’re very tired
it’s lots of children with them as well
and suddenly a helicopter comes overhead
the backpack that you’re wearing starts
to vibrate you feel the vibrations of
that as it gets closer to you
lights shine down people start screaming
trucks pull up shine their lights on you
and you realize that you’re on the
border between the u.s. and Mexico and
you’re trying to get into inside the
United States and as they get out of the
car the border agents and shine their
lights on you and get out their guns you
don’t need to speak English or Spanish
to under
what is happening you’ve been caught and
you’re forced onto the ground on your
knees and so many things start to happen
so quickly as they start separating
people and there’s so much confusion
this experience was one of the most
impactful pieces I’ve ever seen I felt
like I myself had gone through this I
could smell everything I could feel the
wind blowing as the helicopter got
closer and let me tell you I don’t look
at migrants or displace people in the
same way anymore for a split second I
went through something that they were
going through it’s not the same thing
it’s absolutely not the same thing
but because I of course didn’t have that
same level of fear at the end of the day
I knew I was inside of a museum but for
a split second I could experience a
piece of that fear that these people go
through so as we move forward into the
future we should be creating work that
can only take place in this medium
that’s what makes it so unique if we
remember that what it offers us is a
chance to ignite something within
ourselves that we didn’t know was there
that’s where it’s gonna mean the most
and resonate and it maybe a little bit
of an old-fashioned myth that we go out
into the world to seek new things only
to find the truths that we were looking
for right at home but that’s what we do
we’re humans were explorers we build
rockets and go to space we’re always
going to want to find new ways to
communicate with each other on deeper
levels that’s just a hallmark of our
humanity and so through these really
extraordinary ways VR makes me feel more
human ironically that reminding me that
I’m not anything other than myself and
it has the potential to show us
different versions of ourselves that
makes us question who we are and who
we’re going to be
and today more than ever this matters khari still Polly thank you
have that you see on screen it was made
in the late 1800s by the French film
pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumiere and
rumor has it that when audiences saw it
for the first time in Paris they jumped
out of their seats because they thought
perhaps there was an actual train that
was going to burst through the screen
and come into the theater and it seems
silly to us today something that is just
an illusion
that was not so obvious to them at that
time but what’s meaningful about this is
that it speaks to the power of film and
the ability it had to change our
perceptions about the world around us
and you can see that the language of
cinema was going to be developed from
this that pretty soon we’d had editing
and close-ups and wide shots and that
this language that we know today of
cinema was taking place and starting to
take shape
and in cinema now after so many years
have gone by we have some really
standout pieces of work you know that
have changed our perceptions about how
we see the world around us think about a
film like The Matrix how many times do
we say to each other are we living in
the matrix or something like the film
Inception with which bends and warps how
we see time and there’s something
similar that we can do with this medium
as well and that’s called in virtual
reality or VR as we call it VR has the
power to connect us to each other in
ways that no other creative medium can
and so like those people in Paris in
that theater who were maybe a little
scared in the beginning seeing this I
was a little scared too when I first
started VR to work in VR I thought that
putting this headset on would
effectively disconnect me from the world
around me and that it would cut down on
human intimacy and connection to each
other which are the very bonds that make
us human and I also thought that just
because you can’t do something just
because you have the means and ability
to do something new doesn’t necessarily
mean that you should like anything the
advent of something new comes with
tremendous possibility but also the
possibility for harm
and I realized when I got into it you
know beyond just looking silly like I do
in this photo I mean you have all the
gear you have the headset you have the
wires you have touch controllers
sometimes you’re wearing a backpack
beyond just kind of looking silly and
having this gear what I realized is that
there’s something deeper to be said
about this technology what does it mean
that we can do what we can do and why is
it important in connecting us to each
other and reminding us of that
universality of human connection so also
the deeper that I got into it I realized
it was a little bit like riding a bike
you can have all the gear you can buy
the helmet you can buy a fancy bike you
can buy some riding gloves but at the
end of the day you really have to get on
that bike and you have to go somewhere
you actually have to learn to write it
if you want to go on a journey and it’s
the same thing in VR so I’ve always been
more interested in channeling human
behavior and being able to put that into
artistic mediums and I’ve always been
wanting to search and connect with
people around me in different ways and
to people that I may never have the
opportunity to meet in real life so now
a few years have gone by and we know
that we can tell stories and elicit a
feeling of presence in VR and we know
that we can experience certain things
that this medium only offers but another
thing that it really offers is the
ability to live as somebody else would
to have all of these sensory emotions to
touch something the way someone else
would touch it to smell what they would
be able to smell to feel what they would
feel to experience things as they would
and this word experience is really
important and when we talk about VR we
say that somebody experiences something
not just watches it I experienced this
VR piece I didn’t watch this VR piece
and we use that word because you can
really experience it it’s not just
watching something I mean other forms of
media are more or less passive as
impactful as it may be you’re not
actually participating in something the
way that you can in VR
so if we’re able to experience something
as somebody else would and feel what
they feel touch what they touch smell
what they smell we’re able to live their
truth and we can do this in VR and when
we’re able to live their truth and have
their memories that’s also what makes me
are so unique and impactful our ability
to remember our memories are what make
us who we are nobody else on the planet
has our exact memories we have ownership
over them and in today’s world where we
have so much information that we put out
into the world we’re easily connected to
each other and so many things of ours
are used without our consent
our memories are what remain intact
it’s the foundation of our identity and
personal embodiment if I can experience
something as someone else would it will
teach me more about myself because if I
can have these memories or experiences
it’ll imprint on my own mind and memory
and indeed I can change my entire
perspective one of the first to be our
films that I was on the producing team
for was a film called perspective
directed by Rose troche and it was about
a police brutality incident in New York
City and police brutality is a big issue
in the u.s. it’s a big topic that’s
happening all the time and this was a
POV piece so you could choose between
four different perspectives you could be
two New York City cops or you could be
two african-american brothers and
imagine that I could actually be this
person if I was the cop I could look
down and I could see my arms and my legs
I could see that I was wearing a uniform
I was this person and similarly if I was
one of the children I had my backpack on
I was talking to my brother it was just
a normal day and suddenly were followed
out of the store the cop thinks that we
stole something he’s coming after us
he’s shouting after us and we don’t
think that we did anything wrong so we
just keep going and suddenly it
escalates the officer demands to see
what I have in my bag I don’t want to
give it to him
and I’m separated from my brother things
get very very confusing it all happens
very very quickly and I’m shoved to the
ground the officer calls for his friend
to come and all of a sudden the other
officer comes I’m knocked to the ground
again and I’m shot and the world warps
around me the sound becomes completely
disoriented and the last thing I see is
my brother calling for help as my eyes
slowly closed and from my point of view
of the officer it looked like maybe this
kid was pulling a gun from his pocket
but it was just a phone so you see how
easily things like this can happen and
escalate and biologically after
something like that you feel like you
lived that experience and it creates
again an illusion on your own memory and
you form a type of memory that merges
with this other person’s so it feels
like it becomes something of your own
and I was speaking with a friend before
this film premiered at the Sundance Film
Festival and she said to me but do
people really want to see that do people
really want to see somebody go through
something like that and experience it as
if you lived it and it was kind of an
aha moment for me because I felt well
okay well what can this medium offered
to us that you can’t get from reading a
book or watching a play and I realized
that one of the hallmarks of humanity is
being able to remember things even as
distant memories and the ability to live
someone else’s experiences I could have
a new POV and it made me question things
this experience also does not it made me
feel like I can’t see things in the same
way anymore with topics like this I
asked myself well what did I see as one
of those kids or what didn’t I see as
one of the cops and I don’t look at this
the same way anymore at all there’s
another VR experience that had a big
impact on me and it’s called notes on
blindness it was created by a man who’s
a colleague of mine now named Arnold :
art and it documents the process of a
now late British author whose name was
John hull and he began losing his sight
several deck
ago and what he did is he recorded audio
diaries of the process of losing his
sight so that when he eventually went
blind he could go back and listen to
those cassette tapes and feel what it
was like to be at the park for instance
or to sit on his front porch and watch
kids play and this experience was so
impactful on me you really feel as if
you’re there and you really feel as if
you’re seeing everything around you when
he describes something through his audio
Diaries and you hear his voice in your
ears when you’re when you have the
headset on you see everything come to
life around you see the wind blow
through the trees see leaves blowing on
the ground so beautiful and everything
the myriad and voices and sounds creates
where there is no activity there’s no
sound but then that part of the world
dies so that’s just a small little clip
of that and it’s completely different
when you actually watch it but you can
see that this is something that really
can only take place in this medium in an
interesting turn of events after a few
months after I saw this experience my
own mother suffered a serious emergency
with her eyes and she was at risk of
losing her own sight and I was in her
house and I was helping her try to
adjust to what maybe was going to be a
total life change and I had no way to
connect with her on that I couldn’t see
what she was seeing I couldn’t feel what
she was going through and experiencing
but because I had seen this VR
experience I was able to connect with
her on a level that I didn’t think was
possible she had an Institute for the
blind come and and install these little
buttons all over her house on appliances
that she used a lot like her coffee
maker or her washing machine and so I
was helping her kind of do all of this
and I was able to connect with her in a
way beyond words and indeed it’s kind of
impossible to put into words what that
was like but I could because I had this
experience where I could see and feel
what it was like when I took away all of
those other emotions there was something
about that experience that reminded me
of the simplicity of life and that was
really beautiful and important when
there’s a VR pioneer named Jaron Lanier
who has really had a big impact on me
and he’s one of the people who first
coined the term virtual reality and he
had a start up in the 1980s in Silicon
Valley that made some of the first
headsets and or modern head-mounted
displays and he believes that we should
never separate a discussion of
technological advances from their human
effects and he has this phrase called
doubling down on being human that
basically means that as we redefine
it means to be human in light of these
technologies it becomes more important
than ever to express and exercise our
unique points of view to remind us of
what defines us as being uniquely human
and these glitches and mistakes in the
technological field should be embraced
because these are also a hallmark of our
humanity
we’re not perfect people and we can
perhaps relate to each other in ways
that we have done throughout all of time
ironically through this technology
there’s one more viewer experience I’d
like to talk about and that’s a piece by
the director Alejandro and yet II do and
it’s called carne de Rana and it plays
in a few places in the world and one of
the places that it’s at is it a museum
in Los Angeles called LACMA and you go
inside this room and for a minute you
forget you’re at this major cultural
institution that’s in the middle of a
huge urban city and you put this headset
on
well first you take your shoes off your
bare foot and you step into a large
space that’s filled with dirt and you
put this headset on and the space itself
is also filled there’s a large walls
everywhere that are made of sheet metal
and their border walls so you step into
the dirt with this headset and suddenly
you’re in the middle of the desert and
you don’t really know where you are but
you you also smell that you’re in the
desert and all of a sudden there’s
people walking towards you and as you
get closer to them you see that they are
migrants they also have no shoes they’re
carrying water and they’re very tired
it’s lots of children with them as well
and suddenly a helicopter comes overhead
the backpack that you’re wearing starts
to vibrate you feel the vibrations of
that as it gets closer to you
lights shine down people start screaming
trucks pull up shine their lights on you
and you realize that you’re on the
border between the u.s. and Mexico and
you’re trying to get into inside the
United States and as they get out of the
car the border agents and shine their
lights on you and get out their guns you
don’t need to speak English or Spanish
to under
what is happening you’ve been caught and
you’re forced onto the ground on your
knees and so many things start to happen
so quickly as they start separating
people and there’s so much confusion
this experience was one of the most
impactful pieces I’ve ever seen I felt
like I myself had gone through this I
could smell everything I could feel the
wind blowing as the helicopter got
closer and let me tell you I don’t look
at migrants or displace people in the
same way anymore for a split second I
went through something that they were
going through it’s not the same thing
it’s absolutely not the same thing
but because I of course didn’t have that
same level of fear at the end of the day
I knew I was inside of a museum but for
a split second I could experience a
piece of that fear that these people go
through so as we move forward into the
future we should be creating work that
can only take place in this medium
that’s what makes it so unique if we
remember that what it offers us is a
chance to ignite something within
ourselves that we didn’t know was there
that’s where it’s gonna mean the most
and resonate and it maybe a little bit
of an old-fashioned myth that we go out
into the world to seek new things only
to find the truths that we were looking
for right at home but that’s what we do
we’re humans were explorers we build
rockets and go to space we’re always
going to want to find new ways to
communicate with each other on deeper
levels that’s just a hallmark of our
humanity and so through these really
extraordinary ways VR makes me feel more
human ironically that reminding me that
I’m not anything other than myself and
it has the potential to show us
different versions of ourselves that
makes us question who we are and who
we’re going to be
and today more than ever this matters khari still Polly thank you
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