Chicanx Graphics in the Digital Age, (blog2) EdwardsLouisa

Nonny de la Péna,
Out of Exile: Daniel’s Story

Nonny de la Péna,
Out of Exile: Daniel’s Story

AR/VR provides new ways to engage viewers in ulterior lives or supplemented realities, with “subjective vision”; Is the chance for perspective, to live a day in the live of someone who is for example undocumented and queer, via VR allow better empathy, and better allyship/co-conspiracy with this community?

Nonny de la Péna would answer yes. In the Project, Out of Exile: Daniel’s Story, you can physically feel a person's vulnerability? Do you think there are some experiences/things that should not be made into AR or VR? Like police violence on Black, Brown or Trans people? Is it more important in these cases to preserve the memory of these individuals such as in Oree Originol’s Justice For our Lives and prevent further trauma. Is using another person's trauma to further or inform a cause justifiable and important? Should the guidelines be that the work must not only be used as a form of political action but also honor the deceased? 

AR/VR could, similarly to the way violence in video games does not much affect a person's level of violence, have limits to affecting action. Due to the mental separation between the real world and the fantastical world. Yet again, VR is more immersive than video games. Playing video games is a voyeuristic experience. So is watching films yet, I find (effective) films to be a strong appeal to pathos. 

Perhaps Lev Manovich would argue that by borrowing a role or persona other than one's own and living, in a sense, through it there would be heightened ability for self reflection. In the case of Glass House by Jacalyn Lopez Garcia this is more of the video game setup. The “visitor” is just that, a visitor, a voyeur. Though they have some autonomy in choosing what order and which items and spaces to interact with, the scope of interaction is already paved by the artist. Does the knowledge of this being about a real person eliminate the video game disassociation affect? My guess would be yes.