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Gedal, Anna "How to Make Immersive Technologies More Equitable: Confronting the Medium’s Inherited Legacies and Role as Empathy Machine." MA in Media Studies
, The New School, 2021
Keywords/Fields of Study : Immersive technologies, Cultural production, Early 20th-century amusements, Colonial legacies, Antiracist allyship, Design justice
Abstract: This thesis explores the inherited legacies of immersive media and offers an analysis of contemporary works to showcase the manifestations of these legacies. Exploring two historical case studies, A Trip to the Moon (1901) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1903), this thesis project examines the first iterations of immersive, interactive environments as their own, distinctive medium. Drawing from media, performance, literary, memory, trauma, Black studies, anthropology, postcolonial theory, and cultural history, I analyze their experiential, pedagogical, and epistemological functions to better understand the medium’s enduring, fraught legacies and profound impact on contemporary technologies. I argue that the early rides were a powerful pedagogical tool for cultural knowledge sharing that offered the crowd a visceral, full-body thrill while simultaneously providing an embodied travel simulation. The audience temporarily embodied the colonizer “discovering” foreign people and lands. In conversation with the ethnographic villages surrounding them, the rides justified imperialism and, by extension, scientific racism while erasing their violence. The impact was profound, shaping Americans’ views on race and political policies.
Drawing lessons from my case studies, I argue that the early rides were precursors to 21st-century immersive technologies (namely virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality). Thus, it is imperative to critique the medium or otherwise risk reinscribing the colonial encounter in contemporary experiences. As precursors, they inform both the ideas of interactivity and immersion in contemporary media, as well as their pedagogical and epistemological approach. My four contemporary examples include two 360-degree films, The Displaced (2015) by The New York Times and Traveling While Black (2019) directed by Roger Ross Williams; and two interactive archives, Dimensions in Testimony produced by the Shoah Foundation, and Not the Only One by artist-scholar Stephanie Dinkins. Through them, I articulate the manifestations of these inherited legacies and demonstrate what happens when creators either ignore or confront them. In my analysis, I introduce key terminology and critical questions to help contemporary creators identify these legacies and reframe their own cultural production process. In between acts (chapters), I seek to lead by example, showing how a research-based praxis can introduce alternative ways of knowing and critical discourse outside the confines of a formal research paper. I offer glimpses of more in-depth personal reflection and artistic exploration of my research, writing, and resistance.
I end with an emphasis not just on the profound risks of these technologies but also their possibilities. With historical context, conscious design practices, and shared creative partnerships, immersive technologies can offer new spaces for community healing, cultural preservation, and historical justice.
Department: Media Studies
, The New School
Advisor(s): Fabiola Hanna, Amir Husak
