It’s one thing to read articles and watch news reports about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. It’s quite another to find yourself standing among workers getting dressed in protective suits, or in a schoolyard surrounded by children orphaned by the disease. Vitual reality known as VR can enable ’empathy at a distance’ an order of magnitude more powerfully than any technology before it. Once VR recording develops past the presence-breaking technological limitations of simple 360-stereoscopic video, its effects will be truly profound.
A virtual reality film aims to draw attention to prejudice towards Ebola survivors by guiding viewers through the life of a woman in Liberia who uses her immunity to help others affected by the disease, the creators said on Tuesday.
The new virtual reality film “Waves of Grace” gives viewers that jolt of proximity by essentially embedding them with an Ebola survivor in Liberia. Produced in partnership with the United Nations, the movie is intended as a potential antidote to the numbness that can come with traditional media coverage of disease and disasters.
https://vrse.com/watch/index.html?id=121
The film shows markets reopening, children going back to school and men returning to work in Liberia, which could once again be declared Ebola-free this week. But Davis warns of suspicion towards survivors, who are often ostracised by their communities.
