My Contribution

Shared Reality, an original VR world which uses virtual time travel as a way to teach about systemic racism particularly focused on environmental racism. This was a Unity3D VR project focusing on learning about red-lining and gentrification. The setting is that the player just moved into a new neighborhood and one of the neighbors invites the player over to their house for tea. This neighbor is an elderly black woman in her 70s named Linda. As the player enters her home, Linda begins describing the neighborhood and how different it used to be. Soon, the player will be prompted to move towards Linda. At this point, one of the main data collection points of the research is performed. The game will track the distance between the player and Linda and store it as a variable. Proceeding, Linda will appear to time travel to the past, reverting back to a child. Linda will then prompt the player to help her boil a kettle of water. While doing so, the player will be in view of the window and the factory outside. Linda will explain how the factory outside would pollute the air and make it hard to breathe. The player would turn on the faucet to see dirty water flowing out before returning clean again. There is a lot to explain, so feel free to take a look at the video demo to see the full project in action.