Paradise is an immersive audio piece exploring themes of domestic violence that was an interdisciplinary collaboration between Darkfield, VR documentary filmmaker Gabo Arora of Lightshed.io and researcher and clinician Nancy Glass from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. It attempts to blend a number of different XR genres together in a provocative fashion, including elements of immersive horror to provoke emotional reactions, interactive AI to tune the experience according to gender, elements of social impact documentary to challenge pre-conceived notions for why victims of domestic violence stay within abusive relationships, some social dynamics experiments done with your intimate partner about communication and understanding, and all set within a narrative context of a social game hosted by AI therapist of the future exploring why couples stay together or fall apart. I found the end result be confusing, muddled, and a bit too experimental without coherently tying everything together in the end.
Paradise also attempts to generalize themes of domestic violence into a more universal story for anyone within a relationship who experiences relationship problems, and so rather than addressing issues of intimate partner violence from a more distant third-person perspective, they designed a first-person experience to be done with your intimate partner. This resulted in a number of provocations designed to evaluate if you’re trapped within a relationship and to explore alternatives other than violence if things go wrong, but I found that these provocations merely sowed doubt and conflict without being properly contextualized or resolved by the end of the experience.
Paradise is intended to be a provocative piece, but overall I found it to be a bit too scattered across many tonal shifts prioritizing too experimental innovations in immersive storytelling. It felt like an experience to stir the pot, but I was left with a lot of questions about how this project came about, what they were trying to achieve with the pieces, as well as some of the specific design decisions that were made. I was able to get more context and backstory about Paradise by talking with the creators in this podcast interview.
Paradise was born out of an interdisciplinary collaboration at Johns Hopkins University. Gabo Arora founded the Immersive Storytelling and Emerging Technology program at Johns Hopkins University while Nancy Glass is a Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing as well as a clinician and researcher who focuses on prevention & response to violence against women and children. They collaborated with Darkfield, who has specialized in using the medium of spatial audio to explore themes of psychological terror within the horror genre.
I had a chance to talk with Darkfield’s David Rosenberg, Arora, and Glass about the journey of creating Paradise and their intentions behind the piece. Both Arora and Rosenberg have aspirations to push the artistic boundaries of immersive audio and immersive storytelling within the XR medium, and intended to provoke listeners to explore possibilities beyond violence if their relationship starts to break up. Glass intended to provide provocations within the field of nursing around the topic of domestic violence that encourage people to move beyond blaming the victim for not leaving abusive relationships. I saw the piece again after speaking to the creators, and I still found that their story was not quite landing and there were some significant gaps between their intentions and my direct experiences of it.
I think this piece could benefit from focusing on a more specific target demographic. Is this piece for nurses to learn more about how to relate to victims of domestic violence within a medical context? Is it for people who are already within a relationship with intimate partner violence? Is it for anyone within a relationship? What about people who are single? According to Glass, each and everyone of these demographics would ideally be targeted within a piece, but to me it feels like there are many tradeoffs in medical training vs entertainment that would provide sufficient context for a piece like this, as well as more a focused onboarding and offboarding process that could help bring their message home.
I also found that there’s a number of limitations in trying to translate an experience like domestic violence into a first-person experience through the lens of universal challenges that all couples experience. They included speculative thought experiments designed to provoke visceral reactions, but without fully contextualizing or unpacking them.
If it’s intended to shift the field of nursing or cultivate empathy for people experiencing domestic violence, then it can be difficult to fully contextualize other people’s third-person experiences within the context of a first-person narrative. Francesca Panetta found that it was difficult to include 3rd-person perspective testimonials from prisoners who had experienced solitary confinement within the context of a first-person experience of solitary confinement VR narrative of 6×9. Instead, she used 2nd-person language focusing on what you were experiencing from your first-person perspective of being within a virtual solitary confinement experience. So there are inherent limitations to cultivating empathy or educating people about other people’s experiences within the context of a first-person perspective.
I still believe that there’s a lot of power and potential of spatial audio to evoke strong emotional reactions, but this piece feels like more of an early iteration of a unique interdisciplinary collaboration that could use a bit more Institutional Review Board oversight for an academic study rather than a provocative & experiential narrative piece pushed out as a commercial release on an entertainment horror platform before they’ve had a chance to fully evaluate whether or not it is hitting the mark or achieving it’s intended goals.
I do think that we will inevitably and eventually start to see a blending and blurring of different genres and forms of immersive storytelling to be able to achieve some fusions of them, including social impact documentary, AI-driven interactive narratives, horror, and social dynamics with your intimate partner. But Paradise feels like it’s taking a bit too many leaps without tying it all together and ultimately leaving the audience behind. You can try out the piece and judge for yourself by downloading the Darkfield app here.
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Music: Fatality
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. So in today's episode, I'm covering a special audio piece called Paradise, which was a collaboration between Darkfield, LightShed.io, and Johns Hopkins University. So the piece is of a larger theme of why we stay together or fall apart within the context of relationships It's got some AI interactive elements to it But it's also trying to do this social impact documentary exploring themes of domestic violence and it's also using elements of the horror genre and it's got some interactive and social dimensions with your intimate partner. So there's other elements of exploring relationship dynamics within your existing relationship. So it's a piece that had a lot of moving parts, and I found that it was a little confusing when I first saw it. To be honest, I didn't understand what was trying to be said with the piece. And so then I talked to the creators to get a little more context for how this project came about. And then watched it again. And I still think there's a little bit of a gap between what the experience is setting out to do, what it's able to actually accomplish. And so it's been a little bit of a challenge of trying to articulate what that gap is. But I first wanted to set the broader context of this conversation that I had with the co-creators and then dive into my own experiences, trying to unpack it a little bit more. So thanks for coming on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with David, Gabo, and Nancy happened on Thursday, March 17th, 2022. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:38.704] David Rosenberg: So I'm David Rosenberg, and I'm one of the artistic directors of Darkfield. And I also do the sound design for Darkfield as well.
[00:01:50.326] Gabo Arora: Gabo? I'm the CEO of Lightshade.io. I work with VR, AR, AI, a lot of emerging technologies for social impact. And I'm also the funding director of ISET, where I'm at Johns Hopkins that focuses on immersive storytelling.
[00:02:11.772] Nancy Glass: I'm Nancy Glass. I'm a professor at Johns Hopkins, specifically at the School of Nursing. I'm a clinician and researcher who focuses on prevention and response to violence against women and children.
[00:02:26.010] Kent Bye: OK, so I'd love to hear the back story, both Nancy and Gabo, how this project came about.
[00:02:32.896] Nancy Glass: So part of the work that I have done for many years is to try to improve the quality of care for survivors of partner violence and their families who seek services in the health care system. So they come to a health clinic, they come to the emergency department. they're pregnant, mental health services, so trying to improve our response as clinicians to identify women who are in unsafe relationships and it could certainly it could be men as well but primarily we focus on women and so Really, how do we respond with a trauma-informed response? How do we build empathy and inspire clinicians to take action to support women to access services in the community? Not focusing on encouraging to leave a relationship, but helping them think through what's best for their situation and helping them identify that there are services and people that they can talk to that they may not be aware of. And so we've been doing this work for a long time. And we just haven't moved the needle enough. In my opinion, we haven't sustained the training protocols, we haven't improved At the level, I would like to see in the healthcare response, certainly there's been improvements but there's still a way to go. And not blaming the victim, I think is the summary. And so I became aware of Gabbo's work through his joining Hopkins, and seeing some of the cool things that he had done with VR. and AR and especially I also work in global health and conflict areas with he's working in refugee camps and went to visit his lab and just came really inspired about how technology could be used to advance health care's response to survivors of violence. So then in talking with Gabbo, we thought through a proposal and wrote a grant to get funding to try to do this. And then I'll hand it to Gabbo because he's the creative genius and then bringing in Darkfield. So Gabbo, I'm handing it to you.
[00:04:54.729] Gabo Arora: Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Nancy. For me, I am most excited by working with other research experts. And, you know, I've given a lot of demos since I've joined Hopkins to very different parts of Hopkins. And the idea is to do some interdisciplinary work and how we can converge the kind of creativity and artistic sensibilities to these very real world problems. And so you know, we did that we wanted to do something and we didn't know really what that was. And when we start out, there's a big, at least on my side, I feel like I have to showcase a lot of what's possible. Nancy and Rachel, other team members of Nancy's We just decided to do an exploratory process of, you know, that could be VR, it could be AR, what would really make sense? And in all of that, I have done some immersive audio work before. And Kent, I think you've had Lauren Hutchinson, now Lauren O'Rourke, my wife, on your program for when she did Pilgrim. So I've had that kind of experience with immersive audio, how powerful it is. And during the pandemic, I came across Darkfield's work when there was an experience called Double, which was also a partner audio experience. And when I did this poem, I was rather amazed by what was possible with using just the technology of your regular cell phone to have this sort of immersion. And a lot of my work also, even in VR or spatial computing, is very audio forward and very sound forward, especially for drawing out emotion and for creating a sense of presence. So I presented this to Nancy and I think we both were really bowled over by it because it's so incredible, but also we could tell that it was something that was relevant to this particular approach and story that we wanted to take only because a lot of these issues do take place kind of in the domestic sphere. So I think kind of having that juxtaposition and kind of understanding that was something that we felt very moved by. So with that, I kind of talked to David and his team at Darkfield and We really had to get them on board and develop this sort of collaboration, which I'm so happy that we finally made it. And we're on the other side of actually having this premiere.
[00:07:35.454] Kent Bye: Yeah. And David, I'd love to hear your perspective as how did you hear about this project? And then what was, I guess, the intent that was presented by Nancy to you in terms of how to translate the technology that you have with this binaural audio, the spatial audio. in the format of this application that you have to be able to deliver these spatial audio experiences to people in a way that was at the same time and kind of a performative context. But what was the intent that was communicated to you in terms of a piece that would be created?
[00:08:07.196] David Rosenberg: So, well, Gabbo then approached us and spoke about the basic concept of the project and the subject matter. And so this was the first project that we have done that isn't a sort of horror, psychodrama type of narrative. So this was the first time that we were then working with something that was intended to have impact and another purpose other than the sort of entertainment, I guess, which is what all of her work previously had been. So it was very interesting in that respect, but also came with it this additional responsibility, where one of the key challenges at the beginning was to try and find a way that respected the subject matter, but also was able to still feel like a show that people would want to do, an experience that people want to do. And then there was also this other desire from the beginning to include a new functionality for us in the app, which was speech recognition, quite simple speech recognition, but yet still we wanted to use this. And it seemed to fit very well with the subject matter, given that so much of this subject is about how people consent. and what people agree to between couples. So it felt that the particular technology we're working with, with this additional element of speech recognition was something that we were then also then trying to find a way that we'd be able to create an experience. And we also wanted to be something that was interesting to do with your partner. Of course, as the experience goes on, the problems that couples have, but we also wanted it to be something that could just throw a light on maybe some smaller things or smaller complications of relationships and habits you might have. So yeah, so I think it was a fairly long process of coming up with the basic narrative of the experience, but I think there were lots of reasons why we sort of unfolded the way it did.
[00:10:31.085] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's a lot of moving parts in a piece like this. I'm seeing it in the context of the film festival. I'm familiar with Darkfield's prior work and horror. And then there's some beginning part, a little bit more tongue in cheek tonally in terms of exploring some of these different things. And then there's an interactive part, which I thought was interesting. And then it kind of takes a thematic turn and a tonal shift that gets into a little bit more documentary style. And then really using the spatial audio medium to explore some of these dynamics of domestic violence. And then some more interactive parts at the end. And you're also doing it with a partner. So there's other things that are happening in this piece that have to do with you doing this experience with somebody at the same time, preferably your intimate partner. Although I was at South by Southwest, so I wasn't doing it with my partner. So I, I can't speak to the relational dynamics that were revealed by doing this piece, but I wanted to maybe take a step back to something you said, Nancy, which is that you were finding it hard to move the needle. And so I guess if we go back to the potential of technology after you've seen Double from Darkfield and saw what the potential from your own experience was, you know, and when you think about this issue, who are you referring to in terms of moving the needle? And what did you see in those initial experiences that made you think that maybe the spatial audio specifically was a medium in which that this could start to address this topic of domestic violence in a way that up to this point haven't been able to really utilize and what you thought the potential of that might be from the work that you do?
[00:11:56.657] Nancy Glass: You know, I think this is the key question for me in my work and what I've struggled with in this field for almost 30 years is a very conservative field. Interestingly, we're very conservative in almost sometimes controlling Because in many way, the advocacy community in this area of work, counseling communities, the legal communities, we think we know what's best for women or others in abusive relationships. And so we have developed systems and services that in many ways I have found that work well if you're a good battered woman, meaning that you're white, have a job, not addicted to any substances, and have no mental health issues. The system works quite well. But if you're not those things, the system can be very punitive. It could be, well, you don't have a job, you have mental health issues, you have addiction, so part of this must be your fault. And, you know, I don't think that's unique to the United States. It's been my experience globally. So I have struggled with, and I'm not saying that I'm sort of generalizing, I have this, I think there's very innovative programs, I think there's very thoughtful advocates, but I think that there is a system that doesn't allow for the complexity of this issue, you know, the intersections of race, gender, poverty, et cetera, and how that impacts women's decisions in their relationships. So I, in many ways, have been bored with the responses and have been trying to push into using technology and giving more control over to survivors to have access to information and make decisions based on their situation. So tailoring the response, giving them access to resources. What are the available resources in their community? What do these resources do? How can they use them? And then have them reach out and with more information, more awareness, hopefully feel more empowered to seek the services that will work best for them. And that goes to with training advocates and healthcare providers and counselors around how to see control or this notion of I know best back to the survivor and so I think. Part of it is building empathy and awareness of the complexity of the decisions that are being made and that a lot of the conflict and relationships are subtle and it's communication and it's hard to sometimes to pinpoint what is exactly this behavior. So part of it is raising awareness of behavior that can escalate and be quite controlling and then I think a really powerful part is why doesn't she just leave because that's constantly the question and. we haven't moved past that after many, many years. And so understanding that there are many reasons why abusive relationships continue. And there are things that we should think about doing to help support the couple, not just arresting our way out of the issue, not just saying you have to break up, but what are some things that we can do as a community to help couples Have these hard conversations early thinking about what they value in their relationships and you know without communication and support these conflicts can become very dangerous. And they're not alone, that this is a global issue one in three women globally are in an abusive relationship in their lifetime and that we need to reduce the notion of shame. that they're the problem. So, I mean, it's a long answer, sorry, but I think it's really the thing that motivates me the most to reach out to people who see the world different from how I've been trained and can push me to think differently and bring in the audio was, I think, incredibly important because then you can disseminate it to a larger audience because we don't need special expense of the special equipment, for example. That's my story.
[00:16:28.806] Kent Bye: OK, yeah, that helps give a lot more context. And I was surprised to hear the conservative nature of this field of responding and dealing with domestic violence and violence against women. But it sounds like that there's these notions of the narrative that why doesn't the woman just leave? And in some sense that this piece, would you say, is trying to address that larger issue culturally rather than, say, be targeted towards people who are already in domestic violence relationships. Because I guess part of my experience of seeing this within the context of a couple was I'm just imagining people who were potentially in a domestic violence relationship. And I was unsure after I saw the piece, if this piece was meant for people who are already in those domestic violence relationships and some of the dynamics that may arise as they go through an experience like this, or if you see that it's just to the larger culture and the ideas about domestic violence and why we do or do not stay in relationships with all the AI that's happening. And, you know, as I did it, it's hard for me to know the branching narrative and everything that's happening on the back end of the AI so we can dig into that. But before we do that, I'm just curious to really focus in on that target audience. If you see this as a piece to try to make a larger cultural shift or if this was really trying to get to the people who are already in those abusive relationships.
[00:17:44.105] Nancy Glass: Well, I have to say, I think it's both. I think that I do think also that there are many people that are in relationships that feel that there are issues but would not call them abusive. So I think it's also a notion of prevention, like really start to think about these issues and maybe start to have conversations about behaviors that make us uncomfortable in a relationship. So I think there's a component of trying to prevent and encourage people to start thinking through these issues in their own relationships. I think it also could be, certainly would reach people who are in unsafe relationships and could hopefully help them understand that they're not alone, that this is a very common experience in our world and that their reason for staying is not crazy and that there are people out there that understand. And that's why we build in referrals as well. for people once they have gone through this. And I think that for a larger norm shifting approach too, that to start raising empathy, that this is not an individual's problem or a couple's problem, but this is often, you know, many people grow up in households that saw violence, witnessed violence in their own childhood, in their own lives. And so not really having good role models for relationships and that challenging the norms that quote victims are, you know, weak or just not able to stand up for themselves and they're never going to leave. So I think it's, you know, also trying to push back on that norm and help people sort of start to think through and really build empathy for the complexity of the situation and then inspire people to when they see things in their friends relationships or family relationships to start feeling comfortable and asking questions.
[00:19:38.051] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah. And one of the things that when I was reading the description of this piece and just to turn it to over to you, Cabo and David, I went to the piece and then I, because I've gone through dark field experiences before I was expecting like an entertainment narrative horror genre piece. And then when it started to talk about some of these issues, I was like, whoa, what are they doing with using these topics as a narrative trope? And then it kind of switched into this like more documentary style. It's like, okay, where's this going? And then, you know, I had my own reaction to the piece. And then when I went back and looked at the description, I noticed that nowhere in it does it say that this is a piece about domestic violence. It was sort of hidden or coded in a way. And so I'm wondering the decisions there to hide some of the aspects of the more documentary aspects of this piece into something that was more neutrally spoken about in terms of like why people stay or why they decide to leave each other. And so I guess speaking in terms of someone who would be a potential audience member, understanding Darkfield and their past and the horror genre, and actually going through some experiences with my wife in the past who She's personally not into the horror genre, so it's a whole other separate thing, but I guess as people are entering into it, knowing kind of what they're getting into versus being able to have something that is able to deliver the piece that if it was disclosed that this was about domestic violence, that it would maybe turn people off and they wouldn't be as interested. So I'm just curious to hear a little bit more about those dynamics and then how to address all those other things that Nancy was trying to say in terms of, you know, trying to shift these cultural taboos.
[00:21:12.483] David Rosenberg: Well, I mean, I think there are various different contexts that we think that this piece will be shown or different groups that we will target and for different uses. And I mean, it is tricky in the festival context. I mean, especially with the live activation where, you know, this is an experience for couples probably in their homes. So I think how we message this experience will differ depending on who specifically we're targeting. But I think we still want to be able to reach people who might not have completely signed up for what it is. I think it would be a shame if people were just dismissing it as something that they don't want to get involved with or they don't want to get into. I mean, there's a balance, obviously. People need to be warned. I think it is about other things as well. It still is about a relationship that you are having. So, yeah, the messaging is complicated and maybe we, you know, I think it's still possible we can work more on that.
[00:22:20.061] Gabo Arora: Yeah. In the context of my other work, which also is about other very serious issues. I'm always trying to think of the universal themes it does, and I think if we were just kind of honing in on the intimate partner violence part of it, like Nancy said, I don't know if we would get to the kind of complexity and nuance that this issue has. And in a lot of ways, I think people who haven't had any experience with intimate partner violence, I still think there's a lot of benefit for them because I think it's something that, you know, we might know people or it could happen statistically in a lot of people's future. I think that is a little bit of the problem of the issue is that they don't think that's something that can happen to them until it does on all sides. So I think that's why we were looking for a way to kind of make people feel engaged with it, you know, and at the festival. We did get feedback from people who were either survivors or had no impact. And I think they both felt it was very meaningful to them, only because I think it is that kind of experience where depending on where you are in your relationship, you will have very different reactions to it. But I think all of them will be towards different parts of the experience. So that's why we were going for what we were doing. We do very clearly And we would be, you know, we're going to see if that works with the trigger warnings, with consent, with on the website, on every messaging we're trying to do. We're trying to let people know that this is about, you know, exploring themes of violence. So that's how we were able to think about it.
[00:24:07.646] Kent Bye: Yeah, Nancy, I'd love to hear, and I want to get into some of the technical bits of the piece in terms of the AI and interactivity, but before we dive into some of those parts, Nancy, I'd love to hear, now that you've seen this initial cut, like what's next for you in terms of your work, if it's about doing studies or just using it as an impact campaign or how you see all these kind of narrative elements that are in there and how you see that's going to start to potentially move the needle that you've been trying to move for many, many years now.
[00:24:37.888] Nancy Glass: So this is a really important next phase for us. I think it's been really an interesting learning process and fun for me. You know, I've never, as an academician researcher, I never thought about South by Southwest, right? So it's just a different way to show the potential of this work. So now we've gotten some feedback. We'll come back as a team, sort of look at that feedback. And then we have in our building up a focus on evaluating. We want to have people do it. We have specific questions we would like to ask them. And some of the questions will be, what's the best way around trigger warnings? What's the best way around consent? areas of the content that are problematic, how do we best address that, and we'll do that with survivors will do that, people who are currently in an unsafe relationship, people who have left an unsafe relationship, healthcare providers counselors advocates to see, you know, And part of that will be asking them, too, how best to use this. What is the venue? How do we disseminate it? And that's the next phase. And I think what I'd like to see do is that we continue this collaboration, because as the technology, I think, advances and we learn more, there's just more and more opportunities to use this type of innovation and immersive storytelling in ways that can have a significant impact or norms around violence in our communities. And so I think this is a starting point. But it's very encouraging to me that we're able to partner in this way, you know, bringing these really diverse backgrounds together. I think it's kind of been always my dream. So it's sort of re-energized me to think through how we can push the needle further.
[00:26:31.350] Kent Bye: Yeah. And I'd love to turn to some of the actual experience now in terms of the new thing in this piece that I haven't seen done in this context is the AI to be able to have interactions, you're asked questions you can answer. And so I guess maybe the first question is how much of this experience is branching in terms of it being customized or tuned based upon some of these answers that are being provided to you?
[00:26:55.837] David Rosenberg: So it's, um, Spoiler, it's not.
[00:27:00.719] Gabo Arora: Don't answer, David, don't answer. This is a trick question.
[00:27:08.102] David Rosenberg: I think the thing that's important to us, that was always important to us with the way that speech recognition was used, was that it was much more about the audience having more of a moral responsibility for what they're listening to. So there's a certain number of things that happen throughout. So one of them is this kind of continual asking for consent. And so if you don't consent, then you are requested to remove your headphones. And it's kind of, there's something of the story of Oh, about this, this idea that you consent to the next bit, and then you're in it. And then you have another opportunity to consent to as you go deeper. And that felt, with this subject matter, this felt very important to get that continual consent of the audience as they go on, because things get more difficult as you go on. So that was one important use of the speech recognition. And then there is also the idea that we can find out certain things about the audience in order to, at certain points, direct them more appropriately as to their chosen gender, for example, but also to respond to certain answers that they might give. And then there is a kind of climax, I suppose, of the speech recognition where you are involved in this exercise of the AI therapists fighting, where you have an opportunity at that point to be provoked. And I think from what I can tell, most of our audience have not been provoked, but there is a potential there. And that feels within the subject matter, it feels important.
[00:28:57.262] Kent Bye: Yeah, so there's a scene where the AI therapists, and I treated them as humans, not as AI robots. And so I treated this scene that was happening behind me as almost like a domestic violence scene. But if it was professional AI therapists that are coworkers, I mean, I guess it's a bit of a different context, but I'm asked explicitly at that point, whether or not the male AI therapist should hit the female therapist and then ask two or three times about that. And I said, no, no. And then yes, So at that point, are there different things that happen if people say yes right away?
[00:29:31.950] David Rosenberg: Yes. There are different things.
[00:29:34.593] Kent Bye: Okay. So it is responding to that.
[00:29:36.897] David Rosenberg: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:38.499] Gabo Arora: Yeah. But I do want to, you know, as a. I have a filmmaking background, and when I hear branching narratives, I get the EBGBs, usually, you know, choose your own adventure and all that stuff. And I've had to think about that in the context of more interactive work. And I think what this has that I really like, too, is there is an emotional journey and there are certain things that everyone gets and I think that's really important when designing for things that are interactive that they aren't too branching. I think a lot of it too is kind of building the confidence and that's why in the beginning with when you get to answer questions about yourself and you get some response. It's more of that sensation that you are being heard, that there is something happening, that you have some agency. And I still think we do try to hit some other points where it's not just about, oh, what would have happened if I went here or there or anywhere? I think most people feel confident that they are still getting the same experience overall, given its emotional sort of objectives. The other thing is that the audio tracks are not the same for each player. So I think that's something that also adds another layer of interactivity with your partner and understanding and listening. So it's more that sensation of creating it. It is also a commentary on AI because it does use voice recognition, but it is about an AI that you're interacting with. So it's like a meta meta thing happening. So I think there's more in terms of like, if we want to be sticklers, I wouldn't anyway say it's some like high flying high tech AI, but I do think it's a very interesting commentary on AI. We chose to use a couple's therapy in the future type vibe, you know.
[00:31:34.246] Kent Bye: Yeah, because they were human actors, I guess I treated them as more human rather than if it was like, say a robot voice or something, I might've reacted a little bit differently in terms of that. But the thrust, I guess, from this piece, you know, as you write in the description is exploring whether or not we should stay together or come apart. And I feel like there are some things at the end that even when I was going through it and imagining myself, cause I wasn't actually doing it with my partner, but if I were doing it with my partner, there's some things that are like, imagine your partner in a bedroom with another person. And then you're at the end, you're kind of like looking at each other's eyes and saying, you know, whether or not you should stay together or apart. And so there's things that I was like, wow, I kind of imagined that certain integrity around my relationship and surrendering some of creative control to have this experience, start to create a shared experience with my partner. And then what types of things are we going in terms of the different ideas and you know, I can understand from the larger perspective of trying to communicate, you know, why we stayed together or why we don't come apart in terms of the context of domestic violence. But I'd be really curious to hear that, you know, what the thinking was at the end in terms of like, Maybe I misheard it because there are parts where I'm repeating different phrases and the other person is hearing different stuff. And then we have this, maybe a mishearing or misunderstanding between some of the things. So there's entirely possible that I either misheard or misremember some of that. But I remember this moment where I was being asked to kind of imagine my intimate partner in a bedroom with another person. And it was just kind of like a weird moment as I was listening to that part. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about how to communicate the larger theme without feeling like you may be potentially transgressing past certain boundaries that I would want to keep in terms of my own relationship.
[00:33:18.506] Gabo Arora: Well, you know, it's artistic and I think people have different reactions to those types of things. I think a lot of it, is trying to kind of make you, not everyone would feel the same way I agree based on that question, But I do think, you know, that particular one, I think it was in The Breaking Up Game, you know, kind of setting the scene that if things do go a certain way, you know, what kind of feelings it provokes and how to manage them in a healthy way. But I think a lot of these things, to me, and David, I'd love, you know, we collaborated on those parts, they really are meant to kind of push us in certain ways that may feel very uncomfortable because we're not just trying. We don't think we can be as effective on the topic and the issue if we don't explore the riskier elements of artistic expression and risk-taking in some ways. Because I think if it was just about domestic violence or intimate partner violence, I don't think people would remember it or resonate with with it or want to do it. And I think some people might not want to do this because obviously it is doing certain things that's provocative. I mean, we're not trying to be naive. It is a provocative piece, but we just feel within the context, it's the best way to kind of get you to confront other deeper and darker issues that come up. I mean, I always refer to James Turrell because I always love how you're able to kind of go through a process and then go into a room and see the sky like you've never seen it because it has this sort of framing. And I think a lot of the stuff in the beginning is purposely there so that when you get to other elements, you kind of start to think, okay, like it's that kind of journey that we thought was very important. But David, did you want to, I know we thought about this a lot. I'd love to get your take on it too.
[00:35:20.728] David Rosenberg: Yeah. I mean, it's also about, There were a few provocations in the piece and it's about what is often the problem with certain provocations in a real relationship is that one answer to those seems to often be a violent act. And that's rarely likely to go well. And I think that we were trying to then frame some of these provocations in a way that makes people consider what a reaction might be or what a better reaction might be. And I think that a lot of people end up being very trapped within a relationship that there could be lots of options for them. There could be, but it's very difficult to find them. And I think one of the things that this piece is trying to do is present something in such a way that maybe other options can be considered.
[00:36:20.764] Nancy Glass: Yeah, I think David and Gabo really have hit Why I in this conversation throughout this gavel and David dark silver, we're always checking in with us around. Is this too far is this going to be to with this negatively impact. You know, and I think there is a part of doing something artistic on a very serious topic that, you know, challenges people. And there's a part of me that wants to challenge my field because I have thought continuously that we don't always allow for these kind of conversations. We're always with this notion of protecting people from an experience that I think oftentimes in reality they're having on a daily basis. And part of the issues that we know from research. is that these type of events can trigger severe and in some cases lethal violence. 2,500 women are killed every year by an intimate partner in the U.S. and a lot of times you'll hear this crime of passion What we know is in about 80% of the cases, there was violence before, you know, an affair was uncovered. So it pushes us to really say, you know, these are the realities. And how would you respond? You know, we have a society justified that, yes, well, he killed his wife, but she was sleeping with someone else. I was so glad that, you know, I'm working with artists that are willing to push it past what oftentimes people's comfort zone.
[00:38:02.857] Kent Bye: I see, so what you're saying, Nancy, I guess to reiterate that is that oftentimes that either lethal or really extreme domestic violence comes in reaction to knowing that there's been a transgression and fidelity within a relationship, someone cheating, or if the relationship ends and then that leads to violence. But what you're saying is that often there's violence leading up to that point, but that by putting this into the creative context of entering that in, it starts to at least put it into people's minds to be able to consider other options other than violence. Is that what you're saying?
[00:38:35.569] Nancy Glass: Exactly. And I think it's important. There's oftentimes what we have found in our research is that either there is a discretion or there is believed to be a discretion. Oftentimes it's not true, but there's believed to be something that's happened that infidelity that has triggered severe violence. And so exactly. And it's rare that it's this notion of crime and passion that someone just lost it and killed their partner or severely injured them. It's often this had been a way of managing their anger and conflict previously, the use of violence. So I think that notion that we have in our society is actually not supported by the evidence.
[00:39:19.709] Kent Bye: OK. Okay. Well, I know that after I saw this piece, I wanted to know like the integrity and which it was being produced because it was like, okay, this is topics that are certainly very sensitive, but after talking to Gabo immediately afterwards, and then having this conversation, I feel like those initial concerns of using this as, you know, a provocative narrative trope as an example. but trying to really have this larger intent to try to shift these either cultural dynamics or to be able to talk about an issue. Like you said, Nancy, that you've see a certain stagnation. And so in some ways you're trying to provoke your own field, which I think is also very interesting in terms of not sure if I would have necessarily known that after watching the experience on its own. But I think after knowing that I see it certainly in a different light. Great. Um, yeah, so just to start to wrap up here, I'm just curious what each of you think is the ultimate potential of this medium and what it might be able to enable.
[00:40:13.997] David Rosenberg: I mean, I think this is set for dark fields. This has been. like an incredibly interesting project for us and the idea of beginning to use immersive audio and some of the other techniques in order to be able to work with partners who are trying to have impact in other ways is really exciting for us. So I mean for us we really hope that we can continue with this particular collaboration but of also thinking in other ways as well, how we can use our work for more documentary or more fact based work. And I think there, this idea of empathy comes up a lot. And I think that, I mean, in this piece, there is this section where this question of why didn't you leave comes up and many different answers are given. And that was extremely powerful for me. It feels that if there's just one thing that you get out of this experience, it's being able to hear those voices say all of the many reasons why it isn't so simple just to leave.
[00:41:27.292] Gabo Arora: Yeah, I mean, for me, you know, I started out, I always get excited to explore the medium as a whole is, I guess, immersive storytelling, but what's so incredible is, you know, I started with 360 video and now I find myself doing stuff that's quite different. And I think just kind of expanding that palette and expanding those possibilities, but the essence of it is really always, the story and the emotion and the empathy that I think this piece does. I do feel very enthralled by the collaboration and learning from different people. And so for me, I think there's just endless amounts going forward if we can bring, especially researchers, And that's where combining my sort of love for new technologies and storytelling and impact, but then combining it with researchers and evaluation and where it's going, I think is a dream, you know, and it is something that I think makes all of this very exciting and merges the arts and sciences in a true way, which is what's really exciting about it.
[00:42:39.230] Nancy Glass: Yeah, I think for me, personally, I'm excited to push my field, maybe make some people angry and upset, because I think that's what we need. I think we need to have really in-depth conversations about how we can integrate technology into our work and into services for survivors. Not saying technology replaces the human interaction, but I think it's a component of services that we can provide and that people should have the choice to have these experiences and that we're not the protectors that women survivors have agency. And these are the conversations I think we need to be having as a community in this field, but also as a large community. And so I would like to continue to try to use storytelling, use audio, use technology to push our field forward. you know, and collect the evidence that says that it's not causing harm and that survivors and people who are impacted by violence, see it as something that is useful. So I think that that's where we want to continue is to collect that information.
[00:43:50.260] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left and said that anyone of you would like to say to the immersive community?
[00:43:57.904] Gabo Arora: Download the app and do it. We'd love for people to check it out more. It should be on there for at least the next month. Most timings, David, I've seen are Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We might add more, but I think it's a really interesting thing to try out. We'd love your feedback and we'd love other people to experience it as much as they can.
[00:44:21.376] David Rosenberg: And I agree with what Gabor just said.
[00:44:25.467] Nancy Glass: I agree with please download it and we welcome feedback from all kinds of perspectives.
[00:44:32.177] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, David Gabbo and Nancy, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast to be able to unpack this experience paradise a little bit more, and very much appreciate all the different provocations that you're not only presenting to the audience and trying to push the field. Cause I think this, this piece does show the visceral power of the medium, spatial audio and yeah. Encourage people to check it out and see for themselves. And yeah, thanks for joining me here on the podcast to unpack it at all a little bit more. So thank you.
[00:44:57.875] David Rosenberg: Thanks a lot, Ken. Thank you.
[00:45:00.774] Kent Bye: Thank you. So that was David Rosenberg. He's one of the artistic directors and sound design for Darkfield and also one of the co-directors of Paradise. Gabor Arora, he's a CEO of LightShed.io and the founding director of the new immersive storytelling and emerging technology program at Johns Hopkins University, also co-director of Paradise, as well as Nancy Glass. She's a professor at Johns Hopkins at the School of Nursing, a clinician and researcher who focuses on prevention and response to violence against women and children, also an executive producer of Paradise. So I've remembered different takeaways about this interview is that first of all, I was able to see this initially at South by Southwest. I did this interview to get a little more context of the intentions of the piece, learned a lot about what they were trying to do and went back again to watch it with my wife. And there was still a lot of gaps between what they said they wanted to do and what my actual experience was in both times, both before and after. For me, I just felt like that there was some provocations provided without resolving them or having the larger context to help digest or unpack or facilitate the larger context. I mean, this conversation for me helped provide a lot of information that wasn't immediately clear. And it's really interesting to see this type of interdisciplinary collaboration between a professor at Johns Hopkins with Nancy Glass who's really trying to be provocative to move forward the conservative aspects of the nursing field who are having this tendency to just blame the woman for not leaving. But I don't know if that was the major takeaway that I had from this. There was a section that David is referring to in terms of the why didn't you leave and giving those answers, but that for me wasn't the big takeaway. It was thrown in amongst all these other things without really understanding how it fit into a larger picture for where I was going in the context of this journey. So I think that there's a lot of different genres that are trying to be blended together here if I just try to understand what those genres are then There's expectations and structures and forms that feature those different genres and I think genre helps both the creator and the audience understand what the larger context of the piece is and This is a piece that I think if it is going to stick with blending together all these genres needs a little bit more Onboarding and off-boarding to really bring home their intended goals for what they set out to do with this piece So the genres that I see are at the baseline a horror genre, because that's Darkfield's background. You have a lot of these elements of this narrative arc that is exploring these different provocations around why you should or should not stay together within the context of a relationship. It then has embedded within that the social dynamics of you and your intimate partner. Because you're doing this with your intimate partner, then there's different interactions that are exploring themes of understanding and communication and misunderstanding and evaluating whether or not you feel trapped within the relationship and providing new opportunities for you to explore options other than violence, I think was the intention. And then the other aspect is there's social impact documentary about domestic violence, trying to explore aspects of empathy and trying to counter different misconceptions to just blame the woman for not leaving by exploring reasons why they may stay. And so all of those things kind of blending together on top of having what I think is multiple audiences of different goals. You have the generalized audience, which is basically anybody in the world that's in a relationship. Then you have a subsection of people who happen to be experiencing domestic violence in the context of the relationship. And then you have the training for people who in the medical profession who are dealing with people who are facing intimate partner violence and needing to understand a larger context so that they know how to deal with these situations. In terms of that social impact in a medical context, I don't think the entertainment context is able to sufficiently convey a lot of the things that Nancy was saying in terms of trying to shift the larger field, trying to improve the quality of care for survivors of partner violence, trying to improve the responses of nurses as clinicians to identify women who are in unsafe relationships, to building empathy and inspiring clinicians to take action to support women. All these things that are more in the context of the medical profession, I'm not convinced that using the arc of an interactive narrative with a partner is able to really convey the information that those professionals would need. I think it needs to be a separate context for a training application that maybe still uses some of the aspects of a narrative, but it feels like there's more provocations here to explore relationship dynamics than there is to do a training application for professional nurses to be able to explore these issues. There's a certain amount of the demographic context that is different for, if you were to design this experience specifically for nurses, I think it would be a completely different experience. They were trying to take these specific elements of domestic violence and try to universalize them into a story that everybody could see for all the different misconceptions and givings that you may have within the context of a relationship. And I think because of that, it starts to be a little bit confusing in terms of what this piece is trying to accomplish. And because they do have such a broad range of different goals, everything from changing the culture and social impacts, to building empathy, to exploring issues of domestic violence and trying to personalize it into a first-person perspective rather than the third-person perspective, I think that's another aspect here of trying to embody people into their own relationship dynamics. But there seems to be a lot of provocations in this piece that are kind of stirring the pot without really resolving them in any way that contextualizes why all these different provocations are happening or to really bring it home. It wasn't immediately clear for me for how all these coherently tied together. It was a little muddled in that sense. Because you're going from one aspect to another you start off by hearing that some AI has established that your intimate partner And you are mismatched. You're not an actual match. There's a value difference between you and your partner So it's already building this for me at least distrust in terms of okay, you're happy having a narrative that is telling me that I shouldn't be with my partner based upon whatever this mismatch of this value score was. And then on top of that, I'm being asked to imagine my wife with another partner in the bedroom, and what's my reaction to that? And then from there, it goes into AI therapists who start to have a domestic violence scene that happens, and they're asking me to consent for a scene of violence to take place, for the man to hit the woman as the woman's hitting the man. And then from there, it starts to go into a little bit more of like documentary style to kind of listen into different couples who have different relationship challenges. And then from there, it has this section that says, why didn't you leave? Why didn't you leave? Why didn't you leave? That is going into a number of different reasons that are legitimate reasons. But it's not contextualizing why there's a polarity there between the shaming asking of the behavior and then all the legitimizing reasons for why didn't leave that is not Provided a larger context for why that's even there and then you sort of go back into having your partner leave the room and come back and so anyway ends up being a sequence of lots of different of these vignettes that for me, don't coherently build together into each other and aren't really actually accomplishing the variety of different goals that they're trying to set out here. It seems like it's stirring the pot and being provocative without really coherently tying it all back together as an experience. So there's a lot of intentions here as I listen to what they're trying to do in terms of broadening awareness of all these things. I don't know that this as a piece is able to communicate all those things effectively. I still think there's a lot of power within the medium of the specialized audio. I just think that, you know, maybe focusing on both the target demographic for who they were trying to reach, but also understanding the differences between training within the context of medical profession versus what is going to be needed for people who are within the broader entertainment context and the general public audience. and how to best communicate these issues for each of those, the social impact aspects, especially because I feel like that needs a little bit more unpacking, either in the context outside of the narrative, in the onboarding or offboarding, or reducing the aspects of trying to make it into a first-person perspective and focusing it more on a third-person perspective that you're able to kind of bear witness to something that's happening outside of yourself, rather than trying to personalize it within your own first-person perspective. playing with the perspective as well as the context as well as the target demographic for me coming into greater clarity and maybe Simplifying it because for me qualitatively. It's not as coherent as it could be So anyway, that's all I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listener-supported podcast, and I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue bringing this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
