Empathetic Media Blog

When Eric Garner died during his arrest by police on July 17 2014 in Staten Island, Ramsey Orta filmed the incident, capturing Garner repeating “I can’t breath” 11 times while being restrained. It’s a video that fueled protests as part of the Black Lives Matter movement and the phrase has been adopted by activists, celebrities and athletes. Now, on the second anniversary of … Read More

In her article, Kara Platoni explores if virtual reality can help seniors’ mental as well as physical health. In the United States, the elderly, especially those who live alone or in care facilities, often feel alienated and suffer from chronic pain, depression or anxiety, according to Dr. Sonya Kim. With her Aloha VR program, Kim is bringing virtual reality technology … Read More

As Heather Millar writes for Yale’s Environment 360, one of the environmental movement’s biggest struggles is making people care about ecosystems that are often far away from them. Jeremy Bailenson, a professor of communication at Stanford University, said that ““Virtual reality can give everyone, regardless of where they live, the kind of experience needed to generate the urgency required to … Read More

Thanks to Lucas Plank, we were featured in the Austrian magazine Medien Manager. In an interview with our founder Dan Archer, Plank discusses the potentials of augmented reality in journalism. “With the help of AR, journalists can provide the readers with the possibility to experience the news from their own perspective,” said Archer. In general, AR production costs are much lower than VR (virtual reality). Users … Read More

On July 6, amongst global protests against police shootings, a little game called Pokémon Go quickly took over the world. The augmented reality (AR) experience, created by Niantic, uses GPS to let players capture Pokémon around their city and pick up supplies at Pokéstops, which are real world landmarks. After reaching a certain level, players’ avatars can battle it out … Read More

Jesse Damiani (The Huffington Post) provides in his article Storytelling in Virtual Reality: The Basics an easily comprehensible breakdown of not only the components of virtual reality, but also how it can be used as an impactful storytelling method. He links to interesting VR examples and brings in various theories including reader-response criticism, the idea of point-of-view versus perspective, and empathy.

Excellent roundup of our involvement in last week’s #NISBER @EJCenter: “Daniel Archer (@archcomix), Founder of Empathetic Media, showcased some of their projects and explained how, through VR and 360, they put the viewers in “other people’s shoes and foster a connection between audience and storytellers”. For example, the Michael Brown Shooting project allows the user to become an eyewitness of the events occurred in … Read More