Daily Archives: January 29, 2022

The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.

Joe Huntings camera remains steadfastly trained on his subjects. Theyre lingering in and around a place called Bar Pyxis, awkwardly flirting and bumping into one another. Most are dressed in their cyberpunk finest, although a solitary sailor stands in the doorway. Many of their bodies are frozen; one looks passed out on the ground. The Covid-19 pandemic rages on all around them, but no one is in a mask. Not a protective one, at least. This party is happening in VRChat, and everythingeven Huntings camerais happening in the rarefied air of the metaverse.

To be certain, this isnt the metaverse of Mark Zuckerbergs dreams. There are meetings, but not the work kind. Some spaces look like conference rooms, but theres no infinite office. This is the metaverse gamers and other extremely online people have known about for years. The organic one, the one for people who just wanted to hang out and find a place to be themselves. The one that now seems most ephemeral, like it could be swallowed by Meta at any moment.

Capturing the metaverse, mind you, is not part of Huntings directors statement. His documentary, We Met in Virtual Reality, which premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival, isnt a diatribe on the corporate takeover of digital spaces. Instead, its about showcasing the people in the small progressive communities that have built social VR into what it is. Theres Jenny, an American Sign Language teacher who is working to create a space for deaf and hard-of-hearing people in VR. There are nonbinary folks discussing the possibilities of exploring identity in virtual space. And there are two couples who, as the title suggests, met in VRChat. Their stories are similar, but not overlapping, and they provide a snapshot of the metaverseand Im using that term in its broadest possible definition hereas it stands on the precipice of transforming from an online outsider space to whatever it will be next.

We Met in Virtual Reality is also a glimpse into the burgeoning metaverse at a time when folks needed it most. Hunting, who shot the entire documentary inside VRChat (he used a VRCLens, a virtual camera made for this purpose), had been thinking of doing a doc about virtual spaces for a while, but it wasnt until Covid-19 hit that he was able to focus up and do it. I essentially lived in VR during the pandemic, Hunting said while introducing his doc at Sundancewhich, in an ironic turn, was also being held virtually because of Covid. I captured a few stories that I felt were very telling on the ways in which we can connect online and express ourselves and find community during a time where our physical lives were a lot more limited.

Huntings goal, then, was to show what being present in VR is truly like. And that he does. Theres no need to spoil anything here, but his movie is far from one big party. People discuss deaths in their families, struggles with addiction, and identity. If ever there was an argument for virtual reality still being reality, this is it. Huntings film makes the case that all those dreamers who envision a digital world that brings people together might be on to something.

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'We Met in Virtual Reality' Is the Best Film From the Metaverse - WIRED

GE: Your recommendation is, apply long term thinking to the goal of getting a tattoo, which is something that doesn't happen too often.

AS: I don't know, tattoos are forever, Gilad.

GE: I'm actually blown away to learn that you already have four tattoos because ... To the listeners out there, Adrienne has a very wholesome vibe, obviously putting out some mom energy into the world. And I've also just been in your physical presence and not noticed that you were tatted up.

AS: As far as my parents know, I don't have any. Mom, cover- Mom, earmuffs. But yeah, this is part of my brand, Gilad. Adrienne: not a gamer, not tattooed.

LG: It's all a faade.

GE: You're living a lie. You're living a second life, Adrienne.

AS: Good one.

LG: Oh, I bet people will be charging tattoo artists in the metaverse to tat up their virtual avatars.

AS: Oh, that's such a good idea. The lines in the metaverse would probably be shorter than the real ones at this point.

GE: Don't hurt as much.

LG: Gilad, do you have any tattoos?

GE: No, I don't have any tattoos and I never will.

LG: OK, all right.

GE: Lauren, you're supposed to say, "Why mess with perfection?"

GE: Oh, thanks Lauren. Thank you, that's so sweet.

LG: Why mar anything that's already perfect?

GE: OK, OK, OK, we get it.

LG: But Adrienne also, I respect that you are going to get a fifth tattoo at some point. If I can help in any way, let me know. You can come down to San Francisco and get it done. It'd be really fun.

AS: Yay.

LG: All right Gilad, he who does not have any tattoos, I must ask you now, what is your recommendation this week?

GE: It's not off the wall, it's food related. It's basically a recipe. I've been enjoying making mashed cauliflower recently. It sounds like a sad, healthy version of mashed potatoes but it's not. It's a good, healthy version of mashed potatoes because I like cauliflower and it's also quite a bit lighter than mashed potatoes, which can sometimes be pretty heavy. You just chop up your cauliflower, boil it for quite a long time to get a nice and ... Not an hour but probably good 25, 30 minutes, I would say. Drain it, mash it up, and then I've actually ... The last time I did it, I used the immersion blender to get a really nice, smooth consistency. And then because you're doing cauliflower, I feel more liberated to put in quite a bit of butter. And then I also like to put in a good bit of Greek yogurt, which is creamy but also has some tang and some acidity to it, which is really good for the flavor.

And then obviously, you can customize this however you want but just throwing that out there. It's a nice side dish and you feel good about eating it but it actually tastes good.

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Honey, I Brought the Kids Into Virtual Reality - WIRED

A virtual reality system is helping Boone Hospital workers deal with the stress and anxiety of the pandemic.

COLUMBIA- A new research trial is allowing hospital workers to escape the stress and anxiety that comes with working during the pandemic.

"It's important to equip frontline healthcare workers," Healium CEO Sarah Hill said. "People who've been doing really important work over the last several years."

Boone Hospital is partnering with Healium to provide a virtual reality system that lets workers step into another world to relive stress.

"They come in the form of kits with virtual reality goggles," Hill said. "It's personifying your anxiety."

One hundred Boone Health employees participated in the study that lasted several months. The virtual reality googles are now available to all Boone Hospital workers.

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"You put it on your face and you're instantly taken to a place that is less stressful," Hill said.

Hill said that Frontiers in Virtual Reality published a study that states the powered digital tools reduced anxiety in as little as four minutes.

"That was a really groundbreaking research," Hill said. "The fact that immersive media can quickly improve mood."

Hill said that nurses can use a break room or a quiet room while using the virtual reality system.

"Because after all, this is the 'Stress Olympics,'" Hill said. "Not all of us have trained for it."

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Virtual reality helping Boone Hospital workers recover from the 'Stress Olympics' - KOMU 8

Facebook's announcement in October that it was further embracing the metaverse and rebranding itself as Meta set off a firestorm. While experts say the metaverse is still many years away, the explosion of the term has many asking, what is the metaverse?

The metaverse aims to innovate the way people interact with each other on the internet, interacting in a way previously only thought possible in science fiction.

"The metaverse is essentially a massive, interconnected network of virtual spaces," Rabindra Ratan, associate professor of media and information at Michigan State University. told ABC News Live. "In theory, we'll be able to move from one virtual world to another in the metaverse, but we'll be wearing virtual reality goggles or maybe augmented reality."

Technologies like virtual reality, a computer-generated simulation of a 3D image or environment, and augmented reality, superimposing a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world, will play a significant role in bringing the metaverse to life.

The metaverse could potentially use virtual reality, or augmented reality as we know it now, to immerse users in an alternate world. The technology is still being developed, but companies like Meta say they are building and improving these devices. Meta's Oculus Quest, now in its second model, is one such device.

"When you're in the metaverse, when you're in a virtual reality headset, you will feel like you're actually sitting in a room with someone else who can see you, who can see all of your nonverbal gestures, who you can respond to and mimic," Ratan said.

Immersive worlds and creating online avatars is nothing new, as games like Grand Theft Auto Online, Minecraft and Roblox have already created virtual universes. Meta's announcement last October aims to go beyond entertainment, and create virtual workspaces, homes and experiences for all ages.

"What's happening now is the metaverse for social media without gaming," Ratan said. "The new metaverse is designed to support any type of social interaction, whether that's hanging out with your friends or having a business meeting."

Pan Bohang, left, founder of vHome, a virtual reality (VR) social gaming platform, wearing Meta's Oculus VR headset speaks with a user during a virtual gathering, at an office in Beijing, Jan. 21, 2022.

While the excitement around the concept of a metaverse is rapidly growing, Ratan said bringing that vision to reality is still many years away.

"People are building it in slow bits and pieces," Ratan said. "We don't know exactly how people are going to use the metaverse."

Experts say companies are making sure they are prepared once the change takes place.

"I think no one really knows exactly what shape it's going to take, but they need to make sure that they're at the forefront of it," Arun Maini, a tech YouTuber from England with over 9 million subscribers.

The possibilities of a virtual world, where everything is supported by lines of codes, could open new revenue streams for companies diving into this new venture. The opportunities are limitless, and based on how Americans have adopted an increasingly digital life, the change is already taking place. Walmart announced earlier this month it would step into the virtual world, providing currency and allowing customers to buy and sell NFTs.

"Over the next five years, you're going to see Metaverse technology become real, concrete and sampleable," said CNET Editor-at-Large Brian Cooley. "I think it's going to be impressive, but I think it's going to have many flavors, not just one."

A Pew Research study from March 2021 found that 31% of Americans were almost always online, while 79% were online several times a day. Maini said the recent patterns show how people are starting to shift away from physical to virtual goods based on the time spent on apps and games.

"In the metaverse, you will still have those stupidly expensive designer Gucci trainers to be able to show that, 'Oh yeah, look, I'm doing well for myself,' even if really it's just a line of code," Maini said.

An attendee demonstrates the Owo vest, which allows users to feel physical sensations during metaverse experiences such as virtual reality games, including wind, gunfire or punching, at the Consumer Electronics Show on Jan. 5, 2022, in Las Vegas.

The efforts required to make that world a reality, however, could be extensive. Many people in the U.S. still don't have access to high-speed broadband connections, and the price of reliable VR hardware could be high. But for Maini, he said the hardware is becoming more affordable and accessible as new technologies are developed.

"Like every day, the promise of this virtual land is increasing. So like a person's willingness to pay is going up and up and up. And if at the same time that hardware is getting cheaper, there probably will be a point where there's like mass adoption," Maini said.

With a high demand, the need for innovation is even higher. Meta announced on Jan. 24 it's developing a new AI supercomputer, describing it as a building block toward bringing the vision of a metaverse into reality.

"The AI Research SuperCluster, or RSC, will help Meta's AI researchers build better models that can learn from trillions of examples; work across hundreds of different languages; seamlessly analyze text, images and video together; develop new augmented reality tools and more," Meta said in a statement.

"Ultimately, the work done with RSC will pave the way toward building technologies for the next major computing platform -- the metaverse, where AI-driven applications and products will play an important role," the statement continued.

Virtual interactions offers enticing financial opportunities for big businesses, but they also raise concerns over the impact on users and safety of its users.

Facebook employees take a photo with the company's new name and logo outside its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Oct. 28, 2021.

Meta continues to face scrutiny for alleged harmful effects on young users and how it monitors hate speech across its apps, including Instagram. With millions of users able to join different platforms, Maini said moderation is important.

"If you're trying to moderate something of that level of freedom, then you're going to have to be moderating in a way that's like incredibly invasive," Maini said. "So we either end up in a situation where it's complete chaos and everyone's allowed to do everything and you know, there's racism, sexism, abuse and all that kind of stuff, or there's incredibly tight moderation and no one's allowed to do anything."

With the speed at which technologies are being developed and companies are implementing innovative ideas around immersive reality, it's only a matter of time before the metaverse becomes a reality.

"The experience of the web will be different in many ways than it is now," Ratan said.

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How the metaverse could impact the world and the future of technology - ABC News

Dear Reader (though not necessarily amateur rocket scientists),

When Margaret Thatcher (praise be upon her) passed away, the hashtag #Nowthatcherisdead took off on Twitter. And almost immediately, scores of people started freaking out about Chers passing.

Im reminded of this story, which I thought was hilarious, because in the wake of Neil Youngs ultimatum to SpotifyThey can have Rogan or Young. Not both!Who is Neil Young? started trending on Twitter. Of course, a lot of the people saying Who is Neil Young? actually know who Neil Young is, they just wanted to dunk on Young or suck up to Rogan.

The brouhaha between Rogan and Young leaves me passionately ambivalent. On one hand, I feel like the world would be a better place if they settled this with broken pool cues with the Joker declaring, Were gonna have tryouts. Of course, I dont condone violence. Also, the tryout wouldnt last very long. It would end in about 90 seconds with Rogan showing Young his still beating heart. Doesnt look like a heart of gold to me, old man!

On the other hand, I agree with Young that Rogans anti-vax stuff is terribly irresponsible. I also think Spotify is perfectly within its rights to say, Your terms are acceptable to Young and show him the door.

The thing is, Ive got more hands than the Hindu Goddess Gurda about the whole thing.

Sonny Bunch, much to my dismay, has the right take. From a certain point of view, the infamous defender of Alderaanian genocide writes, this is an example of the system working well, protecting the rights of artists and the prerogatives of businesses alike. But we might stop for a moment and ask whether this is the system we want.

He runs through a bunch of the other hands in this argument. And then the Sith sympathizer adds, But this is, perhaps, an inevitable result of our flattened world and our existence within an eternally online state.

So, like a totally innocent Alderaani family racing to an escape vessel as Sonny cackles, lets use that as our departure point.

A brief primer on nationalism.

There are a lot of different kinds of nationalismcivic nationalism, ethno-nationalism, economic nationalism etc. And there are even more, often conflicting, definitions of these terms. But one thing they all have in common is nationalization.

I dont mean in the economic sensenationalized industry, socialized medicine etc. I mean the process of creating a recognizable and distinct nation.

Historically, the process of domestic nation-building requires a state; These people and these places belong to usor, for a lot of monarchs and emperors, they belong to me. But it also requires some common denominators, chief among them language, ethnicity, and religion. The original German nationalists defined Germanness in overwhelmingly linguistic termsthe ethnicity stuff came later.

In other words, the forces of nationalization can come from abovethe stateor from belowthe people. But as a factual matter, it usually takes both.

James Scott, in his indispensable book, Seeing Like A State, persuasively argues that one of the chief projects of states is the process of making their citizens more legible. For instance, states hate nomadic tribes and other groups with no fixed address. So they make them stay put (this is called sedentarization). They also like to collect taxes, conscript soldiers, and generally to know where to find people and distinguish one individual from another. Thats how we got last names. In a sense, building a nation larger than a city-state involves some degree of imperialismimposing uniformity on distinct communities, tribes, or whatever.

A lot of this has to do with economics. From the states perspective, the people are a giant warehouse of economic resources. And good inventory management requires knowing how many farmers, blacksmiths, soldiers, and potential soldiers you have on the shelves. That requires a tally of your inventory. And once you have a list of what youve got, you can also see whats missing. This is where mass education starts. As farming becomes more efficient, the population grows, the share of the workforce dedicated to agriculture shrinks, and the need to find and fill more skilled jobs in bursting cities expands. This in turn fuels the need for even more legibility. And so it goes.

But for embryonic nation-states, education isnt just about school stuff (Wolfgang has 6 apples and gives 2 to Thor ). Its a cultural project. The state needs to explain to its own people why they owe it allegiance and, well, money. For instance, the Confederation of Germany, founded after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, was a league of some 39 sovereign states, each of which had its own distinct culture and subcultures, customs, and even dialects. It takes work to convince all of those Hessians, Prussians, and Bavarians that they are first and foremost Germans.

This effort had all sorts of legal and economic corollaries, eliminating internal borders, generating all sorts of paperwork denoting citizenship, and really putting teeth behind the concept of your permanent record.

This is also where nationalist ideologies come in. But Im going to skip ahead.

The first thing to understand about 20th and 21st century progressivism is that it is thoroughly nationalist. The fact progressives dont like the word nationalism doesnt matter, and we can concede that progressivism today is not necessarily nationalistic in the ways progressives define nationalism.

But it is impossible to look at, say, the New Deal and not see it as a nationalist endeavor (a point the dean of New Deal historians William Leuchtenberg would not dispute). Federalism was a joke to the New Dealers. Industry and workers were conscripted into industrial armies. At the heart of the New Deal, writes William Schambra, was the resurrection of the national idea, the renewal of the vision of national community. Roosevelt sought to pull America together in the face of its divisions by an appeal to national duty, discipline, and brotherhood; he aimed to restore the sense of local community, at the national level.

Progressivism holds that the government in Washington should have undiluted authority to work its willconstrained to one extent or another by democratic legitimacy and respect for civil rights and liberties (particularly when they agree with how those rights are used). Read Bidens inaugural speech again. Its all about unity, American unity (he wasnt speaking to Canadians after all). What is American unity other than a platitudinous euphemism for national unity? Or, simply put, nationalism? Read Obamas second inaugural. In his vision, there are only two legible units in American politics: the government in Washington and the individual. No mediating institutions, no states, no churches, and no associations:

No single person can train all the math and science teachers well need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

All of the hate tweeting that passes for argument against Florida these days boils down to the idea that states shouldnt be able to set their own policies if those policies are at odds with those set by Washington. The progressive rage against the Supreme Courts rejection of a federal police power to require vaccination is a nationalists rage. The bowel-stewing disgust at the idea the Senate should represent states is the disgust of a nationalist. The desire to federalize our election system is a nationalist desire.

The online state.

So what does all of this have to do with Sonnys point? Again, he writes, this is, perhaps, an inevitable result of our flattened world and our existence within an eternally online state.

As a conservative, Ive railed against the centralizing nationalism of progressivism for my entire professional life. Its one of the reasons I think all of the new nationalist conservatives are so misguided. Yes, theyre fighting the left, but their strategy is to embrace the means of progressivism on the barmy assumption that this is the way to achieve (allegedly) conservative ends.

But there are other forces of nationalization that we tend not to recognize for what they are. Big corporations have historically pushed for national homogenization and centralization. National standards and weak internal borders are the cats pajamas for companies that want to maximize efficiency. The railroads, for instance, hated dealing with local jurisdictionsbetter to have one-stop-shopping for lobbying and bribery in Washington, after all. AT&Ts old monopoly was a nationalist nod to efficiency. Big business loved the New Deal and Wilsons war socialism. Certain American Marxists like Gabriel Kolko, as well as old libertarian intellectuals like Murray Rothbard, had some important insights in their attacks on corporate liberalism.

That stuff is alive and well today. I assume youve seen these Facebook commercials. Aesthetically, theyre bizarre. Facebook employees sit down for one-on-one sessions with some nameless HR commissar type and explain why they desperately want the federal government to regulate Facebook. Others feature young, hip professionalsthe sort of folks who might be freaked out about Chers demisetalking about how cool and modern new federal regulations would be.

But its not just the folks running Facebook. Facebook itself, Twitter, and all other social media platforms are forces of nationalization. The New Deal vision of creating a simulacrum of local community at the national (or global) level is at the heart of Facebooks and the broader Silicon Valley crowds vision. What the hell is all this Meta and augmented reality crap if not a rejection of the idea that physical spaceliterally where you liveis an inconvenient barrier to be overcome?

And lets not forget that the other part of the agenda is to make Americans ever more legible to the companies. Your data profile makes the permanent record my teachers threatened me with look like a toddlers crayon drawing. When I look at China (where the distinction between the state and the private sector doesnt exist and Tyler Durden dies on the way back to his home planet) and its Orwellian social credit score, I become evermore nervous about the idea of the U.S. government getting involved in social media regulation.

One of the greatest bulwarks against centralization and nationalization has always been the existence of defined physical communitiesyou know, towns, neighborhoods, whateverthat are beyond the easy or daily reach of faraway social engineers. Social media, by design, seeks to overcome these physical impediments.

And heres the problem: It doesnt work. We glimpse through the peepholes of Snapchat and Twitter at the wholly curated images of how people far away live and think were seeing something real or meaningful. We think chat room conversations are conversations, properly understood. We think we can know someone from a tweet. Nineteenth century pen pals had a better understanding of people far away than social media provides.

Does any of this foster a greater sense of community? Real community? Are livestreams of church services a remotely adequate substitute for in-person services? Maybe theyre a necessary alternative during a pandemic. But a substitute? Of course not. Just look at the damage that remote schooling does to kids. The virtual world is a pinched, two-dimensional realm that reduces the full gamut of human interaction to just a couple facets. Ive never understood the appeal of online sex, but even if thats your bag, youre never going to convince me its an equally valid substitute for the real thing.

The funny thing is that the people most invested in the idea of homogenizing our politics and culture are often the ones most invested in social media. The Twitter socialists and Twitter nationalists spend all day owning each other, pointing out how people hither and yon live wrong, all the while deluding themselves that with one election, one change of the rules, they can impose their will across the whole of the country. But the only thing theyre succeeding at is making each other even angrier and causing their opponents to dig into their positions to the point where the opponents become existential enemies. Social media has been great for what Julien Benda called the organization of political hatreds.

I suspect Joe Rogan and Neil Young could have a great conversation, probably a heated one, in person. But their avatars or brands cannot abide being next to each other on a Spotify menu because of the antibody response to digitized nationalization.

Look, maybe technology will get to the point where the techno-astral plane is a real substitute for meat space. I doubt it. But in the meantime, this process of nationalization is simultaneously tearing the nation apart and encouraging the nationalists of all parties to just try harder.

Various & Sundry

Canine update: First, I want to apologize to Pippa, or at least to Pippa fans. Pippa herself doesnt care what I tweet about her. I could compare Pippa to Bela Kun and shed be fine with it so long as I kept rubbing her belly. But this comparison to perhaps the worst character in the Star Wars universe struck a lot of people as a low blow. Then again, I just got word that Pippa rolled in some Stygian foulness on the midday walk (Im at the cigar shop). So maybe she is getting payback. This morning we had to put Lucy on a plane back to school and that meant everyone was up very early and luggage was ominously moved around. Zo yelled at us in a riot of Aroos the likes of which Ive never heard. Other than that, the girls are doing great with a great deal of silliness thanks to the cold weather. I do wonder what evolutionary function is triggered that says, Cold weather? Snow? Lets burn a lot of calories on pointless rough housing!

ICYMI

Last Fridays G-File on the politics of candy

Ukraine in the brain

Do the Russians love their children too?

Why Biden needs a Sister Souljah moment

Wednesdays newsletter on the perils of identity politics

The Dispatch Podcast on Ukraine and the upcoming midterms

The weeks second Remnant, featuring a certain firearm and golf cart enthusiast

And now, the weird stuff

Evening at Bernies

Meanwhile, in Texas

Topsy turvy

Nothing lasts forever

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The Perils of Our Virtual Reality - The G-File - The Dispatch

Child of Empire, the VR docu-drama getting its world premiere at Sundance 2022, immerses viewers in some of the horrors of the forced migration

God was a little late that day, says Iqbal-ud-din Ahmed, before recounting how the terror of the Partition claimed the soul of his village (Ropar in East Punjab), as a bleak sense of terror hung in the air around charred houses and dreams doused forever.

Ahmeds character is voiced by actor Salman Shahid in Child of Empire, the docu-drama directed by Delhi-based Sparsh Ahuja (24) and London-based Erfan Saadati (27), which premiered at the ongoing Sundance Film Festival.

In the 17-minute immersive animated virtual reality (VR) film, two men from the Partition generation Ishar Das Arora (voiced by Adil Hussain), an Indian Hindu who migrated from Pakistan to India, and Ahmed, a Pakistani Muslim who made the opposite journey share childhood memories of their experiences while playing a board game. And it goes straight for the jugular, sticking to the facts of the Partition itself.

Our original plan was not to go the animated route, says Ahuja. But when Covid hit, we were left with no choice. However, Ahuja and the team would realise that the animated format was a blessing in disguise: it was far better placed in mirroring the horrors of Partition.

The film was created by Project Dastaan a peacebuilding initiative that reconnects individuals displaced during the 1947 Partition with their ancestral villages through VR in association with Anzo films. It is immersive, immediate, haunting, moving, and destabilising; one lives the days exactly as refugees in 1947 would have, fleeing, migrating, witnessing massacre and loss, says oral historian and author Aanchal Malhotra (Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition Through Material Memory), one of the advisors on the project. To be a listener of such stories is one thing, but Child of Empire may be the closest in imagining what millions of people experienced and survived.

Another advisor, historian William Dalrymple, says that he was both moved and astonished by the power of the medium and the material itself. His son, Sam Dalrymple, is a co-producer.

The team at Project Dastaan had an ambitious target before them: to complete 75 interviews of the Partition survivors (across the UK, India and Pakistan in five languages) on the eve of Indias 75th year of independence. However, Covid-19 delays meant only 35 could be completed. When we were sifting through the recordings, I was biased towards my own maternal grandfathers experience, says Ahuja.

In the documentary, the characters of Arora based on the experiences of Ahujas maternal grandfather, Ishar Das Arora (who migrated from Bela, a village in West Punjabs Attock Tehsil to Tilak Nagar, New Delhi) and Ahmed jointly based on the memories of the latter (who migrated from Ropar, East Punjab, to Lahore) and Jagdish Chandra Ahuja (Ahujas paternal grandfather who migrated from Dera Ghazi Khan in West Punjab to Tilak Nagar, New Delhi) recount stories of crouching under the seat of a humid train as a mob lashes at it, with images showing candles turning into ransacked villages.

More than anything, both share how each was saved by a member of the other religion. For Ahuja, this was telling of a larger political shift in his own family. My maternal grandfather was saved by a Muslim man but many in my family, who have now become fervent nationalists, had no idea that this was the case, he says.

Separating fact from fiction

Last year, Sparsh and the team at Project Dastaan had the rare opportunity of actually visiting Pakistan. And he managed to track down the family of the Muslim man who had saved his grandfathers life. This was in a small hamlet that goes by Bela, he recounts. The man had passed away a while back, but his family was overjoyed to see me. He recorded the entire experience in a VR format for his grandfather to experience back home. They wanted me to stay there for at least a week and even attend their cousins wedding. I collected some pebbles from the village to fashion them into wearable jewellery.

But there was a surprising revelation at the heart of this experience: Ahuja would soon understand that this Pakistani family, much like his own, had sympathies for the extremists in their country despite being happy for each other. Its strange and ironic how history plays out. In a different world, we would be a single unit.

Nearly every frame of the docu-drama features a child either crouching under a train seat, running away from a frantic mob, or simply sitting next to burning pyres. It appears that their presence is both a metaphor for the many children quite literally lost to us and a searing indictment of just how unfair it was that they were witnesses to our countrys blackest spot.

Ahuja believes that if we were to remove the two central narrators, Child of Empire would essentially parallel a single, tragic migration story. Its important to note that both the narrators are Punjabis, he says. They have internalised the political shifts of their time, which shows in the way they narrate their stories. When they recalled their experiences in the interviews, you could see the trauma in their eyes. It is that very experience that we want our viewers to come close to.

The way Arora sees it, for the uninitiated viewer, Child of Empire provides just the right context to understand how multifaceted the Partition experience was. The fact that both the characters have so much in common helps. We wanted the most moving and human stories to make it to the film from over two dozen interviews.

Towards the end of the documentary, a soulful rendition of Subh-e-Azaadi originally penned by the Pakistani revolutionary poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, composed by Vasundhara Gupta, and sung by Amira Gill beckons the viewer to contemplate the sheer human price of one of modern historys largest and bloodiest forced migrations; and the price of freedom itself.

Child of Empire is currently screening on-demand at sundance.org, as part of the New Frontier programming slate, which showcases works at the crossroads of film, art, and technology. This year, their Spaceships programme allows viewers to experience the films by teleporting themselves to the festival using virtual avatars.

Read more from the original source:

Flashback 75: Partition in virtual reality in Child of Empire - The Hindu