AR as a tool to evoke empathy for a refugee
13 October, 2020
“Alex” is a pseudonym to protect the identity of a Sri Lankan Refugee currently seeking asylum in Australia. The Guardian recently wrote about the fact that Alex is one of the longest detained people in Australia’s immigration detention system. He has been held for more than 11 years despite having no criminal convictions and facing no charges. He has been quoted as saying, “After 11 years, I want to live freely”.
I wanted to explore how augmented reality could potentially bring to life his plight in a way that would encourage understanding and empathy from Australians.
Condensing cognitive distance
The Vietnam War occured far from American homes. Even with reporting via newspapers, radio and occasional video footage, it would have been difficult to fully understand what was happening on the ground and how it affected the lives of real people.
“Bowl of Fruit” by Martha Rosler, 1966-72. Brooklyn Museum Collections.
Martha Rosler is an American artist whose work "Bowl of Fruit" challenged the reality of middle class American life in the 1970's by inserting unexpected images into a scene of domestic normality.
Most people can relate to a modern kitchen. Its often referred to as “the heart of a home” where families share quality time. But set against a kitchen backdrop -that could have easily been an advertisement for expensive appliances - Rosler subtly placed a Vietnamese child on the kitchen counter. The child is smaller than real life scale and coloured in black and white, as if taken from a newspaper image. A naked caucasian woman has also been inserted into the image, a distraction that draws the viewer’s gaze away from the child.
This jarring juxtoposition condenses both a physical and cognitive distance. A small vulnerable child against a shiny, cold, modern, new kitchen. This war impacts on children. It affects families who are not so different from your own.
Why AR?
I often pose this question during ideation. What affordibility does AR provide, over other digital mediums? Why not just create a responsive website or mobile app?
One important advantage that AR has is user Interaction in real world space. In this project it may provide the viewer with a sense of agency (“what can I do to help”) or to emphasise Alex’s own lack of agency. AR also affords alternate or multiple perspectives and in turn, multiple narratives.
Ideation
Trapped and Time
My early concepts were based on the idea of being trapped within an empty square cell with various external scenes that are inaccessible to Alex representing how life goes on as normal for everyone else. I explored removing the roof so that the viewer could have a better view within the cell.
I also wanted to explore different representations of time that has elapsed (11 years) through the number of bars on each side of the cell or potentially descending into the horizontal plane with each step symbolising another year.
Most Australians are unaware of the specifics that face individual refugees. They are often perceived as a faceless and anonymous group of people. I decided that any representations of Alex should be in an anonymous way such as a featureless humanoid 3D model or simple black silouhette (although this may create some visibility issues later when viewed in AR). This approach is also aligned with the face that Alex’s real identity is currently protected.
While listening to J.Cole's "Middle Child" I was struck by the lyric "Spending they birthdays inside of a cell", capturing how time progresses for someone while in confinement and how sad it must be to pass a personal milestone in such an environment. This inspired a few concepts using birthday imagery and notably using 11 candles to repsent each year of Alex’s detainment. Sometimes these candles are black to symbolise bars and confine the human figure.
In the concept on the right (image below) I retained the roof of the cell and used solid brick walls to further confine Alex. The only way the viewer can see Alex is via a small viewport of a window slit with iron bars. I feel that this heightens the viewer’s sense of being a voyeur, peering in and watching Alex as if he’s some kind of animal at the zoo, while he gazes at a birthday cake alone.
Perspective
I read an article written by Mardin Arvin as an opinion piece for The Guardian comparing the dificult Covid-19 quarantine conditions faced by many Australians with his own experience in immigration detention. Arvin is a Kurish Iranian writer and translator who has been imprisoned by the Australian government since 2013.
I want to ask something of those people appearing on that small rectangle TV set and talking about how they are ailed by quarantine: “Until now have you ever been in a situation where you were confined to a hotel room for almost a year? A situation where you could only go for a walk in your room or a corridor? It is ridiculous! Perhaps they have never thought to themselves that even while they are quarantined their freedoms are what some person is dreaming of – someone like me. Someone like me cannot go out from this place I am confined in.”
Other news articles have quoted hotel visitors as describing their experience of spending 14 days in 4 or 5-star hotels as “traumatic”, “dehumanising” and as if “we were dropped in a hole and forgotten”.
Inspired by Arvin’s quote, I changed perspectives and placed the viewer inside the cell, with only a small window slit from which to view a looping video of the sky outside.
This format places the viewer at the centre of the narrative, as the protagonist. The window has 11 bars representing each year that Alex has been imprisoned.
In this concept, it would be core to the experience to ensure the room is at scale. Although not indicated in the drawing below, I would also place the window much higher.
To incorporate elements of quarantine and evoke more empathy from the viewer, I toyed with placing objects within the cell: Crown hotel signage,, a landline telephone with “call for room service” label, a door handle sign that reads “do not be disturbed” and a flat screen tv.
I added a toggle that allows the viewer to switch between the “refugee” and “quarantine” perspective, demonstrating the viewer has agency, we can choose, while Alex can not. I chose Crown hotel imagery because in Western Australia the Crown Metropol hotel, a 5-star hotel, is currently used to quarantine interstate and international visitors.
AR Image Tracking
The previous concepts are based on an AR experience being triggered by horizontal plane detection which then anchors AR objects or scene to that plane.
An alternate AR trigger is image detection and tracking. The AR objects or scene are then anchored to that image. In the concept below I’ve used the side of a milk carton to project a typical “missing person” template which reveals Alex as a person “lost” in the system of Australia’s immigration policies and beauracracy. I also added a button that directs the viewer to a change.org petition appealing the government to release Alex from detention and grant him a Safe Haven Enterprise Visa.
Summary
One of the most powerful things that AR can offer as a digital medium is to place the viewer at the centre of the story and in the shoes of the protagonist.
I feel the most powerful concept that came out of my ideation was the confinement versus hotel quarantine idea.
Covid-19 has dominated our lives in 2020 and globally there is much empathy for anyone who has been directly affected by the virus. I believe this AR concept leverages this empathy and tries to extend that towards a refugee who faces even more dire circumstances by juxtoposing 2 views of the same room at real world scale.
I don’t wish to diminish the very real experience of people in quarantine and how they felt when confined to their rooms. But anyone who can empathise with those people should also consider the plight of refugees who face years of confinement often with no end in sight or to have hopes dashed repeatedly by beauracracy.
Thumbnail image by Malik Earnest on Unsplash