Abstract
ABSTRACT Beginning with a close look at the VR ‘apparatus’ – technology plus ideology – this essay seeks to interrogate the phenomenal sway that the notion of VR as the ‘ultimate empathy machine’ holds in the public imagination, following Chris Milk’s oft quoted Ted Talk of 2015. Offering a close reading of two seminal VR works – ‘Clouds Over Sidra’ (2015) by Gabo Arora and Chris Milk himself, and ‘Carne y Arena’ (2017) by Alejandro G Iñárritu – along with a range of scholarly studies by traditional critics and writers like Susan Sontag and Virginia Woolf as well as a range of contemporary VR scholars, this essay clears the ground for a more sophisticated VR aesthetic to evolve, one that is fully cognizant of both the limitations and risks of the empathy model. As a foundational theory for this emergent medium, it is held that this reappraisal would be of value to VR practitioners, scholars and pedagogues alike.
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