Literature magically allows us to experience a new world and evinces an array of emotions, however, only when we are able to truly visualize one’s circumstances and reality can we truly empathize with others. When reading novels, poems, essays, songs, etc, about heavy topics such as sexual assault, war, poverty, or murder, there are times when I struggle to fully piece together the entire picture. Every adjective, pronoun, and verb used to convey the heaviness of each story is sometimes enough to experience the truly heavy punch to the face when read repeatedly. However, for the majority of the time, it isn’t enough. For me, literature is limited in its ability to convey a story and transport one to another world when it comes to our reality. What’s truly powerful and transporting is our auditory perception. Being able to hear every word spoken by the narrator with their unique accent, frequency, emotion, and volume. Listening to the noises of the environment that gives hints to one’s location, situation, and actions.
Through auditory perception, it allows for a deeper connection with another person on the opposite side of the globe through the emotion the listener experiences, sometimes simultaneously, with the storyteller. The ability to have a VR experience, to listen and see what the narrator saw, truly enhances one’s understanding of the story and our world’s reality. In the video “Clouds Over Sidra”, we meet a young girl named Sidra who is twelve years old and native to the country Syria. Within 8 minutes and 35 seconds, I was able to experience, learn, and relate much more to Sidra than I could’ve reading a paragraph on a white page. The babies crying, the father’s voice, the young students’ cacophony, the gravel scraping across the ground, the screams, the breeze. All of it transported me to her world and made her life more tangible to me, the person all the way on the other side of the world watching, listening, and experience her story and reality.
Halley, I agree that auditory stimuli can be far more powerful and effective in establishing empathy, or at least, sympathy, than any visual medium. While I am unsure if the immersive visual component of virtual reality can augment your understanding of foreign experiences, the sounds that accompanied each video definitely had a telling impact on me.
ReplyDeleteThe New York Times' Magazine recently published their annual "Voyages" edition, in which journalists embark on all types of adventures across the globe, and detail their time on the move in stunningly vivid and complex narratives. This year, though, there was a twist: instead of writing down their accounts, the authors simply made recordings of the places they traveled to. The recordings were then published online, and the paper magazine was filled, not with words, but with incredible images of the places in question. By refraining from putting words on a page, you were made to articulate your own thoughts on the subject matter, which, I believe, resulted in a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the things the journalist experienced in that particular environment.