Kelsey Dufresne 0:00
Hello, my name is Kelsey Dufresne.
Bryce Stout 0:02
And my name is Bryce Stout.
Kelsey Dufresne 0:05
And today we're talking about our project Anchorhold Afference: Virtual Reality, Radical Compassion and Embodied Positionality.
Bryce Stout 0:14
So here's a loose overview of what we're going to talk about. We will talk about virtual reality, empathy and materiality. That's our main topic, Anchorhold Afference, meaning the project itself and the process and methods of creating it, the concept of radical compassion versus empathy, basically, possibly gaming and gamification, and then the creative capacity of VR.
Kelsey Dufresne 0:37
So with that, we're very interested in how Anchorhold Afference brings together the issues of empathy, and effective application computing with VR technology and applications, specifically with gamified spaces and experiences. And through that, we want to see how Anchorhold Afference is actually a prime case study of radical compassion that more strongly aligns with feminist media data understandings, through embodied and material experiences, specifically with Julian of Norwich his own lived experience as an anchorite.
Bryce Stout 1:13
And so what Kelsey was just getting out right there is that one anchorite, or an anchoress, actually was with someone who ritualistically would die while still alive, and then live in a jail cell in a church basically, for the rest of her life. And, yeah, so that's what we're attempting to simulate here. And the argument that we kind of have is that, yeah, virtual reality normally does not provide any sort of thing close to true empathy. But it can provide a compassion, a compassionate look like a radical compassionate look at others experiences, you still can get a window into people's experiences. And in this particular instance, the thing that is normally a constraint of VR, which is that you can only move a few feet in either direction. So it kind of breaks the immersion inherently. In this case, we're trying to simulate a jail cell. So it actually makes it a much more vivid experience, which then, you know, yeah, it makes for more impactful experiences, essentially, our argument.
Kelsey Dufresne 2:16
So here's a video of the project and action. And as Bryce was saying, it's really easy to think of anchorholds as jail cells. As you can see, there's very few windows, it was a stone structure most traditionally and historically attached to a church building. And so this video is relaying what a user of the Anchorhold Afference would be seeing. And so they were the spaces designed to not allow a user to go beyond the confines of the anchorhold. And simultaneously, these little blue neon circles and squares and dashes are the Oculus Mirror in action, which is an application that's automatically installed and running, to prevent users from stepping out beyond the confines of the game to protect them so they don't fall and run into anything. And yet, we're seeing a parallel between the infrastructure of the game which is confining a user to a specified specified space, as well as that which Julian of Norwich would have historically experienced herself.
Bryce Stout 3:21
Yeah, so the big thing about the difference between radical compassion and empathy, we are basically not trying to argue that standing and one of these little marked off boxes in our library gives you a window into an empathetic experience for what would have been like being an anchor right in the 1300s. We're not trying to say that this simulates that experience exactly. However, going through this experience does give you a window into being more compassionate towards those experiences. That's all we're saying.That's the main argument. We think it's a pretty strong one. Yeah, and so this is just a different perspective, kind of on the this is what the the actual environment looks like, versus the in real life environment on the last slide. But it's a lot of the same argument being made here, basically.
Kelsey Dufresne 4:13
And so ultimately, through Anchorhold Afference, Bryce and I and hopefully many of you are also very interested in how VR technology carries the creative capacity to help elicit radical compassion. And so while using employing the game is not at all the exact experience that Julian of Norwich would have experienced herself as an anchoress and in an anchorhold. But it does carry the capacity to share light on this historical experience and Julian's own positionality even if only for a moment, and so with that we're excited to see how VR gaming development can continue to explore the infrastructure of radical compassion. So thank you!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai