[Applause]
every person that you meet is fighting a
battle that you cannot see you’ve
probably heard this same before and it’s
very true
so every single one of us at some point
of our lives we encounter something that
might be difficult to communicate let’s
illustrate that just for a moment so
this is us here today in this theater
and let’s say that for a moment we
represent all Canadians let’s picture
one type of a battle that is very
invisible and a lot of people can’t see
it
chronic disease so 60% of Canadians have
won now let’s try another one invisible
disability 14% of Canadians have won and
that could be something that’s physical
it could be mental regardless as a name
states is invisible we can’t see it yet
it’s there and this is just one example
there’s so many more things that go on
in people’s lives stay in and day out
that we have a difficult time
communicating and often listening to so
I ask you what’s the story that you’ve
always wanted to tell perhaps you know
right away perhaps you’re not quite sure
yet for me my own story has actually
transformed how I approach my work in my
life so I am one of the 14 percent of
Canadians who has an invisible
disability and in this case is called
ankylosing spondylitis or yes it sounds
like a very exotic disease but the truth
is it’s just as frequent as rheumatoid
arthritis which a lot of people are
familiar with and it is a type of
inflammatory arthritis so our short
definition is the body is attacking
itself and there’s no cure and it also
happens to happen to people they write
in the prime of their life between age
15 and 35 so right when you’re trying to
figure out who you are as a person go to
school maybe start a career or start a
family this happened
and for most people it’s just an aspect
of their life that they battle and they
move forward but it doesn’t make it any
easier to communicate to anybody else
so when I do try and describe to people
what I might need on a given day even if
they know me very well perhaps they’re a
stranger I often get frequent responses
from them they sound something like this
are you sure young people don’t get
arthritis oh you’re way too young you’re
too female only men get that kind oh my
back hurts sometimes too you just need
to exercise more and build up your core
are you sure this isn’t something that
you’re just imagining like in your head
cuz you look you know normal maybe you
just want to sick leave to get an
extended holiday my personal favorites
my auntie’s cousins stepfathers best
friend cured this by going paleo but the
most common one is you look fine
and I do this is what a s looks like
this is a competitive athlete this is me
my teens performing at my best on my
best days of course you don’t see the
bad days because I didn’t want anyone to
see them and I continued into adulthood
this is me as an adult picking the most
empowering activity that I could find
because I wanted to don’t just prove to
myself that I was strong but I wanted
other people to know too that I was as
strong as I wanted to be and that my
onus did not absolutely did not define
me as a person but it didn’t make it
easier to communicate as the years went
on as a child I might say hey I can’t go
and hang out with you guys today I’m
just not feeling it and my friends would
give me this funny look of okay you know
I’m not sure what’s going on with her
and as an adult I say the same thing I’d
say hey you know why I can’t join you on
the craft brewery tour because I just
realized all the venues have these hard
wooden benches and if I sit on those for
several hours it could leave me
regretting it for days to come so
I might just skip so it’s it’s
interesting because not only do I have a
condition that sounds like an extinct
dinosaur and like something somebody in
their seventies might have because I’m
neither a dinosaur nor mind my 70s but I
had to find a way to try and communicate
to people so that they might be able to
understand and that’s that was on me to
have to do and I thought for a while
there is a youth well you know what a
machine can do this what if we could
just invent a machine and it could help
somebody understand what I experience I
can it can help me help them understand
I thought that was a really cool idea
but it’s also a bit of a cop-out because
each and every one of us has something
called a worldview and that’s a lens in
which you see your life through and like
any lens it can be as narrow or as wide
as you make it to be so my lens is not
going to be the same as your lens and
vice versa so I thought well why can’t
we just you know communicate and talk to
one another
can’t that just work why don’t we need a
machine to do that for us but the truth
is we’re not really great at
communicating you know we’re not great
at listening as children but as we get
older we think we know a lot about the
world we’ve developed this world for you
and we tend to interpret what people are
saying in a way that makes sense to us
and it might not actually be what
they’re trying to say so maybe there is
some sort of technology or communication
style that might work when words fail
and I did find like so many others must
find that at times worlds just they fail
they don’t serve you so I had this aha
moment about 15 years ago I entered
something called Virtual Reality
installation and I put a headset on and
using just my breathing and basic
movements back and forth in space I was
able to levitate to the very top
branches of a tree and descend below
ground into the root system and it was
as beautiful as it was profound because
I realized
communication can be very subtle and
maybe we don’t actually always need
words maybe technology can actually help
to expand our worldviews so this
actually changed the shift and the
course of how I actually work with
artistic practice in my scientific
practice this is virtual reality so how
it actually works is you have your
immersive virtual environment and you
have your physical environment and
you’re in both at the same time so your
mind and your body believe what is
happening is real so that’s very very
profound you’re actually there the
things that you do in that virtual
environment actually have ramifications
for you
this is also virtual reality this is a
VR installation that we created at Simon
Fraser University in which you wear the
headset and just using your body to move
in the direction that you want to go you
don’t even need your hands you simply
exist so this light comes and it takes
you on a journey from this forest where
you’re alone eventually into outer space
or you see earth and afterwards maybe
you feel like the world is huge and
you’re just one person on it and maybe
there’s a lot of people out there like
you so that’s the research that we do is
to look at how all in wonder might be
able to facilitate feelings of
connectedness that sounds profound it’s
because it is turns out that VR can
actually facilitate pro-social behavior
you can create pro environmentalist
behavior it can help people to
internalize and learn from one another
and this was actually in the case of med
students learning from their patients it
can create perspective shifts so seeing
the world in a way that you actually
haven’t seen before of course is we’re
finding people might just feel connected
through immersive all
it cannot be described it must be
experienced this is something people say
about the immersive realities after they
try it try talking about something that
your body went through it’s very
difficult to do using again just words
but this thing is often said as it
relates to empathetic understanding it
must be experienced
so creating empathetic understanding how
might you do that with a story that you
want to tell I ask you because maybe the
first thing that pops into mind is a
story that you’ve been wanting to tell
for a long time or perhaps your story’s
still being written
this is something artists for centuries
have been asking how can I tell my story
in the best way that other people might
understand and this has actually been
done in the immersive realities for
quite some time in 1992 Reed Addison an
artist was involved in an accident that
left her with a traumatic brain injury
so Rita went through a very difficult
recovery process and at the end of it
she met with a group of individuals who
were like her had brain injuries and she
finally realized just how isolating that
whole experience was for her and she
decided to do something about it
so she called on her skills as an artist
and using technology she never even
touched before virtual reality she
created detour brain reconstruction
ahead an immersive environment that
showed people what it’s like to recover
from a brain injury and people walked
out with their worldview completely
transformed as to what they thought the
experience would be like
and there’s other experiences like this
that are being developed every single
day not just in research labs – but from
people who are just like ourselves in
2015 I created a venue called VR village
at an annual conference called SIGGRAPH
for computer graphics professionals and
the purpose was to create a home for
these types of experiences so they’re
not just about tech they’re not about
entertainment and gaming definitely not
only about that they’re about how we
might connect to one another and how we
might use the technology to
tell stories and create experiences that
we’ve actually never seen before because
it should be noted that we’re in a
really exciting time this is a huge
shift that’s happening this technology
has never been more accessible than it
is right now in the same way that the
internet made information and knowledge
accessible the DSLR cameras that
everybody uses and your mobile phones
have made photography and documentation
accessible
well the immersive realities or making
experience is accessible and in order to
be successful at doing this we need as
many diverse voices and actions involved
as possible so I prompt every single one
of you to actually go out and try
something so you might be thinking well
how in fact do I do that isn’t that
difficult don’t I need a lot of
technical know-how or maybe I need to be
an artist but the truth is having now
experienced close to 1,000 virtual
reality installations in close to three
years there’s two traits in particular
for the ones that succeed the best at
connecting people to one another and
creating this sense of empathetic
understanding those two traits are
authenticity and co-creation so what do
I mean by authenticity it’s pretty
straightforward
the idea is that you stay true to the
origin of the story that you want to
talk about so what does that actually
mean well maybe let’s look at an example
of something that’s not authentic this
is a disability simulator the act of
blindfolding somebody so that they might
have trouble doing impossible tasks like
shooting a bow and arrow
this isn’t authentic because for an
individual who is blind they might
actually have no trouble doing this at
all they’ve built up a lifetime of
skills and abilities and these
experiences are now known not to create
empathetic behavior they don’t succeed
at doing that so what might we try
instead we can learn from somebody named
John hull now John was interesting when
he found out that he was going blind he
started taking audio recordings of the
experience and he wanted people to
understand what it might be like to live
in the world beyond sight that’s how
he put it his world didn’t stop when he
became blind so he teamed with a group
of virtual reality creators about three
years ago to create notes on blindness
VR to show people and help them
experience what it might be like to
develop these multi sensory abilities
just like he did so that’s an excellent
idea
next co-creation what does that mean
well that last example actually was
pretty good at telling you what
co-creation might be because here you
have a storyteller who needs to tell
their narrative and you have a team
who’ve got the skills I can help him do
that
that’s what co-creation is and the truth
is like any communication medium it
takes an entire village to create it but
what’s interesting is in the immersive
realities co-creation can actually mean
one more thing and this that the
narrative doesn’t have to be linear ABC
in sequence a narrative can actually be
generated through the experience itself
and not just by one people but by
multiple people so the story can keep on
going
this is dream makers this is an
experience that was at V our villages
past year and how it works is you have
one person who has a tablet it’s saying
essentially it’s a recipe book full of
what you need four ingredients to create
dreams so that person goes and they
actually distribute those ingredients to
the person who’s in the VR headset that
person must think either up the
ingredients combine them together and
only then can the dreams be made reality
so only by working together can these
two people create this experience and
it’s going to be unique for every single
person who goes through it the other
beautiful thing about lists is they may
never meet it doesn’t matter what gender
they are what age they are what their
backgrounds are what their skill Tuffle
is they could just be there and they
could work together and create their own
story together
so I encourage you to step inside an
immersive environment and contemplate
the experience that you’ve had so how am
I you go on to use a technology to tell
a story that you’ve been wanting to tell
and maybe have been at a loss for worse
to do so because never before has this
technology ever been so affordable and
accessible as it is right now and the
truth is the experiences that we create
that end up out there in the public they
need diverse voices and they’re only
going to be as good as we make them and
that’s us thank you very much
[Applause]
every person that you meet is fighting a
battle that you cannot see you’ve
probably heard this same before and it’s
very true
so every single one of us at some point
of our lives we encounter something that
might be difficult to communicate let’s
illustrate that just for a moment so
this is us here today in this theater
and let’s say that for a moment we
represent all Canadians let’s picture
one type of a battle that is very
invisible and a lot of people can’t see
it
chronic disease so 60% of Canadians have
won now let’s try another one invisible
disability 14% of Canadians have won and
that could be something that’s physical
it could be mental regardless as a name
states is invisible we can’t see it yet
it’s there and this is just one example
there’s so many more things that go on
in people’s lives stay in and day out
that we have a difficult time
communicating and often listening to so
I ask you what’s the story that you’ve
always wanted to tell perhaps you know
right away perhaps you’re not quite sure
yet for me my own story has actually
transformed how I approach my work in my
life so I am one of the 14 percent of
Canadians who has an invisible
disability and in this case is called
ankylosing spondylitis or yes it sounds
like a very exotic disease but the truth
is it’s just as frequent as rheumatoid
arthritis which a lot of people are
familiar with and it is a type of
inflammatory arthritis so our short
definition is the body is attacking
itself and there’s no cure and it also
happens to happen to people they write
in the prime of their life between age
15 and 35 so right when you’re trying to
figure out who you are as a person go to
school maybe start a career or start a
family this happened
and for most people it’s just an aspect
of their life that they battle and they
move forward but it doesn’t make it any
easier to communicate to anybody else
so when I do try and describe to people
what I might need on a given day even if
they know me very well perhaps they’re a
stranger I often get frequent responses
from them they sound something like this
are you sure young people don’t get
arthritis oh you’re way too young you’re
too female only men get that kind oh my
back hurts sometimes too you just need
to exercise more and build up your core
are you sure this isn’t something that
you’re just imagining like in your head
cuz you look you know normal maybe you
just want to sick leave to get an
extended holiday my personal favorites
my auntie’s cousins stepfathers best
friend cured this by going paleo but the
most common one is you look fine
and I do this is what a s looks like
this is a competitive athlete this is me
my teens performing at my best on my
best days of course you don’t see the
bad days because I didn’t want anyone to
see them and I continued into adulthood
this is me as an adult picking the most
empowering activity that I could find
because I wanted to don’t just prove to
myself that I was strong but I wanted
other people to know too that I was as
strong as I wanted to be and that my
onus did not absolutely did not define
me as a person but it didn’t make it
easier to communicate as the years went
on as a child I might say hey I can’t go
and hang out with you guys today I’m
just not feeling it and my friends would
give me this funny look of okay you know
I’m not sure what’s going on with her
and as an adult I say the same thing I’d
say hey you know why I can’t join you on
the craft brewery tour because I just
realized all the venues have these hard
wooden benches and if I sit on those for
several hours it could leave me
regretting it for days to come so
I might just skip so it’s it’s
interesting because not only do I have a
condition that sounds like an extinct
dinosaur and like something somebody in
their seventies might have because I’m
neither a dinosaur nor mind my 70s but I
had to find a way to try and communicate
to people so that they might be able to
understand and that’s that was on me to
have to do and I thought for a while
there is a youth well you know what a
machine can do this what if we could
just invent a machine and it could help
somebody understand what I experience I
can it can help me help them understand
I thought that was a really cool idea
but it’s also a bit of a cop-out because
each and every one of us has something
called a worldview and that’s a lens in
which you see your life through and like
any lens it can be as narrow or as wide
as you make it to be so my lens is not
going to be the same as your lens and
vice versa so I thought well why can’t
we just you know communicate and talk to
one another
can’t that just work why don’t we need a
machine to do that for us but the truth
is we’re not really great at
communicating you know we’re not great
at listening as children but as we get
older we think we know a lot about the
world we’ve developed this world for you
and we tend to interpret what people are
saying in a way that makes sense to us
and it might not actually be what
they’re trying to say so maybe there is
some sort of technology or communication
style that might work when words fail
and I did find like so many others must
find that at times worlds just they fail
they don’t serve you so I had this aha
moment about 15 years ago I entered
something called Virtual Reality
installation and I put a headset on and
using just my breathing and basic
movements back and forth in space I was
able to levitate to the very top
branches of a tree and descend below
ground into the root system and it was
as beautiful as it was profound because
I realized
communication can be very subtle and
maybe we don’t actually always need
words maybe technology can actually help
to expand our worldviews so this
actually changed the shift and the
course of how I actually work with
artistic practice in my scientific
practice this is virtual reality so how
it actually works is you have your
immersive virtual environment and you
have your physical environment and
you’re in both at the same time so your
mind and your body believe what is
happening is real so that’s very very
profound you’re actually there the
things that you do in that virtual
environment actually have ramifications
for you
this is also virtual reality this is a
VR installation that we created at Simon
Fraser University in which you wear the
headset and just using your body to move
in the direction that you want to go you
don’t even need your hands you simply
exist so this light comes and it takes
you on a journey from this forest where
you’re alone eventually into outer space
or you see earth and afterwards maybe
you feel like the world is huge and
you’re just one person on it and maybe
there’s a lot of people out there like
you so that’s the research that we do is
to look at how all in wonder might be
able to facilitate feelings of
connectedness that sounds profound it’s
because it is turns out that VR can
actually facilitate pro-social behavior
you can create pro environmentalist
behavior it can help people to
internalize and learn from one another
and this was actually in the case of med
students learning from their patients it
can create perspective shifts so seeing
the world in a way that you actually
haven’t seen before of course is we’re
finding people might just feel connected
through immersive all
it cannot be described it must be
experienced this is something people say
about the immersive realities after they
try it try talking about something that
your body went through it’s very
difficult to do using again just words
but this thing is often said as it
relates to empathetic understanding it
must be experienced
so creating empathetic understanding how
might you do that with a story that you
want to tell I ask you because maybe the
first thing that pops into mind is a
story that you’ve been wanting to tell
for a long time or perhaps your story’s
still being written
this is something artists for centuries
have been asking how can I tell my story
in the best way that other people might
understand and this has actually been
done in the immersive realities for
quite some time in 1992 Reed Addison an
artist was involved in an accident that
left her with a traumatic brain injury
so Rita went through a very difficult
recovery process and at the end of it
she met with a group of individuals who
were like her had brain injuries and she
finally realized just how isolating that
whole experience was for her and she
decided to do something about it
so she called on her skills as an artist
and using technology she never even
touched before virtual reality she
created detour brain reconstruction
ahead an immersive environment that
showed people what it’s like to recover
from a brain injury and people walked
out with their worldview completely
transformed as to what they thought the
experience would be like
and there’s other experiences like this
that are being developed every single
day not just in research labs – but from
people who are just like ourselves in
2015 I created a venue called VR village
at an annual conference called SIGGRAPH
for computer graphics professionals and
the purpose was to create a home for
these types of experiences so they’re
not just about tech they’re not about
entertainment and gaming definitely not
only about that they’re about how we
might connect to one another and how we
might use the technology to
tell stories and create experiences that
we’ve actually never seen before because
it should be noted that we’re in a
really exciting time this is a huge
shift that’s happening this technology
has never been more accessible than it
is right now in the same way that the
internet made information and knowledge
accessible the DSLR cameras that
everybody uses and your mobile phones
have made photography and documentation
accessible
well the immersive realities or making
experience is accessible and in order to
be successful at doing this we need as
many diverse voices and actions involved
as possible so I prompt every single one
of you to actually go out and try
something so you might be thinking well
how in fact do I do that isn’t that
difficult don’t I need a lot of
technical know-how or maybe I need to be
an artist but the truth is having now
experienced close to 1,000 virtual
reality installations in close to three
years there’s two traits in particular
for the ones that succeed the best at
connecting people to one another and
creating this sense of empathetic
understanding those two traits are
authenticity and co-creation so what do
I mean by authenticity it’s pretty
straightforward
the idea is that you stay true to the
origin of the story that you want to
talk about so what does that actually
mean well maybe let’s look at an example
of something that’s not authentic this
is a disability simulator the act of
blindfolding somebody so that they might
have trouble doing impossible tasks like
shooting a bow and arrow
this isn’t authentic because for an
individual who is blind they might
actually have no trouble doing this at
all they’ve built up a lifetime of
skills and abilities and these
experiences are now known not to create
empathetic behavior they don’t succeed
at doing that so what might we try
instead we can learn from somebody named
John hull now John was interesting when
he found out that he was going blind he
started taking audio recordings of the
experience and he wanted people to
understand what it might be like to live
in the world beyond sight that’s how
he put it his world didn’t stop when he
became blind so he teamed with a group
of virtual reality creators about three
years ago to create notes on blindness
VR to show people and help them
experience what it might be like to
develop these multi sensory abilities
just like he did so that’s an excellent
idea
next co-creation what does that mean
well that last example actually was
pretty good at telling you what
co-creation might be because here you
have a storyteller who needs to tell
their narrative and you have a team
who’ve got the skills I can help him do
that
that’s what co-creation is and the truth
is like any communication medium it
takes an entire village to create it but
what’s interesting is in the immersive
realities co-creation can actually mean
one more thing and this that the
narrative doesn’t have to be linear ABC
in sequence a narrative can actually be
generated through the experience itself
and not just by one people but by
multiple people so the story can keep on
going
this is dream makers this is an
experience that was at V our villages
past year and how it works is you have
one person who has a tablet it’s saying
essentially it’s a recipe book full of
what you need four ingredients to create
dreams so that person goes and they
actually distribute those ingredients to
the person who’s in the VR headset that
person must think either up the
ingredients combine them together and
only then can the dreams be made reality
so only by working together can these
two people create this experience and
it’s going to be unique for every single
person who goes through it the other
beautiful thing about lists is they may
never meet it doesn’t matter what gender
they are what age they are what their
backgrounds are what their skill Tuffle
is they could just be there and they
could work together and create their own
story together
so I encourage you to step inside an
immersive environment and contemplate
the experience that you’ve had so how am
I you go on to use a technology to tell
a story that you’ve been wanting to tell
and maybe have been at a loss for worse
to do so because never before has this
technology ever been so affordable and
accessible as it is right now and the
truth is the experiences that we create
that end up out there in the public they
need diverse voices and they’re only
going to be as good as we make them and
that’s us thank you very much
[Applause]
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