“A Case for Play: Immersive Storytelling of Rohingya Refugee Experience” presented by Lc and


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Session Title:
  • Virtual and Mixed Reality

Presentation Title:
  • A Case for Play: Immersive Storytelling of Rohingya Refugee Experience

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Abstract:

  • The displacement of refugees from their natural homes have caused violence and estrangement all over the world, to the detriment of victims who live in unbearable conditions outside their homelands. There’s misunderstanding amongst hosts and Western media that see refugees as destructive hoarders of resource. Educating two sides of a refugee-host divide have applied immersive filmmaking following the cinematic 2D approach, portraying static scenes with narratively voiced works that try to put us inside refugee camps to elicit empathy. Instead of this approach, we embarked on a refugee-centered journey-based approach to show the daily lives of Rohingya refugees in Balukhali, Bangladesh using dynamic movements in VR space, spatial audio that surprise, and collaborative filmmaking that involves the participants empowering themselves using 360 camera and phone as tools for exploration. Instead of investigating the hardships of refugees from a Western perspective, we enabled a boy and his family in the refugee camp to create a visual experience that represent their lives. The interactive VR film is an empowerment tool to enable self-expression in a corner of the world that have become used to being the observed as opposed to the observer, taking advantage of VR as a medium for immersion and capability to surprise.

     

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