5 Virtual Reality Projects That Will Change How You View the World

In 1915, two decades after the first commercial film premiered, American audiences packed cinemas to see “The Birth of a Nation,” a three-hour, silent epic directed by D.W. Griffith. The story of racial tensions during Reconstruction demonized intermarriage and championed the Ku Klux Klan as guardians of white women’s chastity. The nation’s first blockbuster, the movie gained popularity for reflecting contemporary fears of racial inclusivity; it possibly even exacerbated prejudices.

If one of the first major experiments in the new medium of film ended up with such a retrograde product, what should we expect from this century’s emerging medium, virtual reality? By immersing viewers in another world, as opposed to the passive experience of watching a movie, virtual reality’s storytelling has the potential to change our moral point of view. If Griffith’s century-old film mythologized men in white sheets, could VR help us see beyond our skin color?

That, essentially, is the goal. But as with most mediums, especially one that removes us from our surroundings, there’s always the danger of escapism in to fantasy. NationSwell examined five recent works (sometimes called “sims” or “experiences”) to see if filmmakers have found a new way to generate empathy.

A still from Nonny de la Peña’s “Project Syria Demo,” a VR sim about the life of refugees.

1. Embracing Our Differences

Nonny de la Peña is sometimes referred to as the “godmother of virtual reality.” At Emblematic Group, the VR company she founded a decade ago in Santa Monica, Calif., de la Peña brought the genre of “immersive journalism” (often pairing real sound with low-budget digital animations) to the mainstream with her short project “Hunger in Los Angeles,” which recreated the experience of waiting on line at a Skid Row food bank. Later films took viewers to a Syrian refugee camp and the Mexican border. This year, at the Sundance Film Festival, she debuted her most recent, “Out of Exile: Daniel’s Story,” about an LGBT youth coming out to his disapproving family. De la Peña, a former Newsweek correspondent, believes that VR can make viewers feel in a way no other artistic medium can. “If you feel like you’re there, then you feel like it could happen to you, too,” she recently told Los Angeles Magazine.

The “Perspective” series includes a story about sexual assault at a college party.

2. Adopting Another Perspective

For the last two years, Specular Theory’sPerspective” series, which premiered at Sundance in 2015, has been showing how social cues can be misinterpreted very quickly. Playing two sides back-to-back, the narratives by Rose Troche and Morris May show varying perspectives on a crime. In the first chapter, “The Party,” about sexual assault, a man and woman meet at an alcohol-soaked college kegger. Gina, the girl, passes out, too intoxicated; Brian, the boy, has sex with her anyway. This year, “The Misdemeanor” doubled the number of perspectives around a fictional officer-involved shooting in Brooklyn to four: a teenager who’s shot, his brother and two cops. “Who will approach the piece and only watch one thing and think that they have the story?” Troche said to Wired. “That’s pretty much what we have in real life. The piece demonstrates the fact that just because you’re there, doesn’t mean you see everything. Through the four strings, you get to see the full picture.”

Director Janicza Bravo was inspired from events in her own life when making “Hard World For Small Things.”

3. Contemplating the Bigger Picture

The Wevr-produced film “Hard World for Small Things,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016, likewise tackles police brutality. In the five-minute story, director Janicza Bravo, a black woman, retells a deeply personal story from her own life. In 1999, while on vacation from her native Panama, a cousin had been killed in Brooklyn while holding a bag of coke. After looking up the event, all Bravo could find were short write-ups in local newspapers. Bravo’s film goes beyond that brevity to capture a whole life, leading up to its final moments. “What if their lives were more than a couple of paragraphs; what if it was their friends, where they were going, what they had read, what they had desired, etc. I wanted to make a short piece that was emotionally longer than a paragraph, and that you got a slice of his life before he died. So when he died, it’s not about the event and what he did to have died; it becomes about who he was, his humor, his laugh,” Bravo has said. For her new sim, she transposed the story to a mini-mart in South Los Angeles, where police mistake someone’s identity and fire at him with questionable cause.

A Stanford University VR project puts a chainsaw in the hands of the viewer.

4. Respecting Animals and Nature

Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab is bringing the rigors of academia to VR. At the university’s campus in Palo Alto, Calif., professor Jeremy Bailenson, the lab’s director, tests whether virtual reality can improve all life by making viewers more empathetic, more aware of the need for environmental conservation and more communicative. Essentially, he wonders, can visualizing the effects of our behavior change our actions? In one sim, a headset-equipped viewer grabs a chainsaw and cuts down a tree in a forest. In another film, after a person gets down on all fours and straps on the VR goggles, they become a cow grazing in a pasture before being driven to a slaughterhouse. It might just be enough for you to think twice about loading paper into a printer or ordering beef for dinner.

“It Can Wait” shows the dangers of texting while driving.

5. Putting Personal Responsibility in the Driver’s Seat

Even the lowly PSA is going virtual, too. Reel FX and AT&T’s recent commercial simulates the consequences of distracted driving. In “It Can Wait,” a person places her hand on a wheel before the simulation starts. She motors around a neighborhood while texting, barely avoiding bikers, swerving cars and schoolchildren in the crosswalk. As you can guess, the experience ends in tragedy. “Although people admit that such behavior is terrible and that they do it, they don’t necessarily see themselves as part of the problem. What people are doing is rationalizing that there is a safe way to do it,” Michelle Kuckelman, executive director of brand management at AT&T, told USA Today. By experiencing the film, participants get to see the danger from afar, while still catching a glimpse of disaster up close.

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Not Ready For Tofu? Here Are 7 Easy Ways To Eat Less Meat Without Going Vegan

We’ve all heard of the wonderful things that a plant-based diet can do for your health, your wallet and the planet. But we get it how hard it is to swap a juicy burger or steak for pulverized soybeans. So until lab-grown meat becomes a viable and affordable alternative, eating animals and animal products involves a (tasty) side of guilt.
The good news is many Americans have cut back on consuming meat, and many others want to eat less. Still, there’s a long way to go. The fact is, Americans eat more meat than every other population on the planet.
But there’s no need to go cold turkey and become a vegetarian or vegan. Taking baby steps can make a big difference. The environmental magazine Ensia recently gave some tips about eating more sustainably, including:
1. Practice Meatless Mondays
Studies show that if every American eliminated meat for a single night a week, it would be the same as removing 30 to 40 million cars from the roads for a year. We previously reported that the Meatless Mondays initiative (which has the aim of reducing global meat consumption by 15 percent) was recently adopted by a whopping 57,000 students enrolled in Boston’s 128 public schools.
2. Do the “species switch-out”
We’ve said before that red meat is one of the primary sources of human-induced methane (a by-product of manure), which is more than 20 times more toxic than carbon dioxide. So the next time you’re thinking of meal ideas, choose chicken, turkey or pork instead of beef or lamb. As Ensia writes, “it takes far less grain (and therefore cropland) to produce a pound of pig or poultry than to produce a pound of cow.”
3. Choose local, sustainable or organic meat
Unfortunately, most of the animal products that are available in our grocery stores or restaurants come from factory farms, which are environmental nightmares. If you are craving a burger or a steak, use your dollars to support small farmers who care more for animal welfare and specialize in pasture-raised meats. You could also choose from a wide variety of sustainable seafood. Yes, it’s more expensive but you’re saving money from eating less meat during the week.
And here are some ideas from us…
4. Help yourself to more side dishes  
Meat doesn’t have to be the star of your meal. It’s recommended for health reasons that we shouldn’t eat a serving of chicken or steak that’s larger than a deck of cards, so fill up your plate with fruits, vegetables and whole grains instead. You can also bulk up your burger patty with plant proteins such as mushrooms, black beans and veggies.
5. Try a diet that lets you cheat
We get that eating is a social activity. If you want some sliders or buffalo wings during happy hour, go for it but make sure you don’t eat any meat before then. That’s the idea behind Mark Bittman’s “Vegan Before 6” diet, which is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of going fully vegan or vegetarian, “this [diet] easier because every day you get your meal that is completely satisfying to you,” the New York Times food writer said in an interview. There’s also the newfangled Flexitarian diet (a portmanteau of “flexible” and “vegetarian”) which has a similar idea: a plant-heavy diet that allows you to indulge in meat once in awhile.
6. Use meat as a condiment or flavoring
It’s been said that the reason why we like the taste of meat or animal products so much is because of umami, which the Japanese term for a pleasant, savory taste. Instead of going full hog, add notes of this delicious element to pasta or vegetable dishes (such as little bits of cured meats or a splash of chicken or fish stock) to bring out those carnivorous flavors.
7. Go global
U.S. News and World Report released a list of the top 10 plant-based diets, and the Mediterranean diet and the Asian diet were first and fourth on the list, respectively. These cuisines (think traditional Greek, Italian, Vietnamese, Thai, etc.) rely more on fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables and fish, unlike typical American fare that’s heavy on red or processed meats. CNN compiled a list of the 10 healthiest ethnic cuisines and suggested dishes that are not only healthy and flavorsome, but that also don’t feature much food that used to have a heartbeat.
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One of the Country’s Largest School Districts Joins Meatless Monday

A single day can make a world of difference.
The Boston Public School system will be adopting the practice of Meatless Monday — a non-profit initiative with the aim of reducing global meat consumption by 15 percent — to promote better health and help save the environment.
According to a news release, the 57,000 students enrolled in Boston’s 128 public schools will have vegetarian choices such as black bean burrito bowls, garden salads topped with chickpeas, protein-packed chili and other healthy entrees that, hopefully, won’t leave anyone wondering “where’s the beef?”
“Offering students nutritious meals as part of the Meatless Monday programs allows us to meet the diverse needs of the families in our district while getting the week off to a healthy start,” Deputy Director of the Boston Public Schools’ Department of Food and Nutrition Services, Deborah Ventricelli says in a statement. “Now, every Monday, our students know they can look forward to a high-quality meatless option in addition to the choices they already have.”
The school district is working with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to implement the once-a-week break from eating animals. Kristie Middleton, a food policy manager at the HSUS says, “Students will also be seeing posters in cafeterias encouraging them to take a holiday from meat in order to do their part to save the environment and to eat healthier.”
MORE: A Titanic Shift: James Cameron’s School is the First in the Nation To Go 100 Percent Vegan
EcoWatch reports that the schools started Meatless Monday after receiving more than 1,000 requests from parents and students.
As we’ve mentioned before, Americans are way over-proteined — consuming more meat than nearly every other population on the planet. Although the American Heart Association recommends eating less than six ounces per day of meat, many of us eat double that amount, putting us at a much higher risk for cardiovascular disease.
Meat-eating also puts stress on the environment. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, meat production is responsible for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — more than all forms of transportation combined. Eliminating meat for a single night a week is the same as taking 30 to 40 million cars off the road for a year.
While we’re not telling you to wave bye-bye to burgers, eating less meat is not only better for your health, it’s better for the planet’s health, too.
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