The Library of Ourselves is a project developed by BeAnotherLab, that uses the system The Machine to be Another to create pre-recorded VR FILMS, allowing users to step into the shoes and history of others. These VR Films / Embodied narratives compose an archive of individual stories, that are accessible to the users at physical stations in different cultural, social and educational institutions around the world.
Acting as an open book of embodied narratives, the archive of the Library of Ourselves is composed by stories recorded from a first person perspective individuals, belonging to various communities. These stories can be produced by BeAnotherLab and also by educators or collaborators of these cultural institutions, that will be trained by BeAnotherLab.
Year
2015 – now
Concepts
Stories. Lifes. Embodiment. VR. Empathy. Multicultural. Community. Research. Understanding. Interdisciplinarity. Inmersive. Tolerance. Innovation. People. Functional Diversity. Art. Journalism.
So far, the archive of Library of Ourselves have 12 Experiences from all over the word and addressing issues like immigration, gender bias, Police violence, racism, Xenophobia and conflict resolution among others, in average with 10 minutes long:
Docudrama with 4 stories based on real life experience of young muslims facing day-by-day social situations of prejudice in Barcelona
Story of a transgender individual sharing his journey in search for his identity, love and acceptance.
Docudrama created during a workshop with victims of the paramilitar conflict in Colombia, in an attempt to create stories of forgiveness and peace.
The Social VR Stations
The physical stations -called Social VR stations- can be be implemented permanently in cultural / social / educational institutions and are designed for pairs of participants, that can alternate their role between USER (whom goes to the VR Experience) and GUIDE (that helps the colleague to have the VR experiences, based on instructions provided in the system.
The role of educators at the institutions where the system is implemented is to provide access to station, as well as to give a support for participants in cases of doubt. Therefore, in contrast to previous works of BeAnotherLab, this system does not require 2 educators full time dedicated all over the experiences.
By having at least two participants taking part in each experience, our work not only is about the content, but mostly about the dialogue that may emerge from it.
How would it be to experience life...
...in other´s people shoes?
The Research
This long term project also envisions the development of a digital platform that will allow the researchers from BeAnotherLab to collect data from users related to their experiences and empathy related effects generated by the experiences. This work in progress digital platform will be implemented and refined between 2017 and 2019, and aims to provide scientific knowledge regarding how to use Embodied VR experiences to promote empathy.
