Carne y Arena by Alejandro González Iñárritu: Subordinating VR Technology to Refugee’s Human Condition.

 
Presenter: Hudson Moura
Registration Number: 077
Institution: Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
Abstract: Carne y Arena by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu is an immersive mixed reality installation that allows visitors to walk barefoot across a beautiful sand desert while experiencing violent incidents by crossing the Mexican–U.S. border with illegal immigrants. Later, the visitors realize that they witnessed real-life accounts, which they can hear displayed in videos at the exhibit’s end. Thus, the visitors can get a better sense and understanding of refugees’ traumatic and powerless experiences.

 

The installation comprises three different rooms, a waiting (cold) room filled with authentic immigrant shoes, the actual six-minute VR experience, and a wall displaying the refugees’ video portrays. The waiting room is freezing like the rooms migrants stay in if the border patrol captures them. To feel the refugees’ vulnerability, the visitor needs to leave behind all their possessions, including their shoes and socks, before entering the VR area. 

 

Carne y Arena’s mixed reality combines VR performance with physical components turning it into a multisensory and bodily immersive experience (Jerald 2015; Kors et al. 2016; Lanier 2017; Uricchio 2018; Raessens 2019). While the VR headset creates a 3D virtual world, the installation considers the visitor’s body to invest it, embed it, and inhabit it with physical reactions and emotions provoked by the wind, temperature (heat and cold), ground texture, etc. Thus, sound, smell, touch, and sight operate at once, enhancing refugee’s storytelling. Another crucial component is the documentarian aspect. Engaging real-life stories through VR assist visitor’s recognition of characters’ traumatic experiences and their emotional reactions.

 

According to Iñárritu, he intended to subordinate technology to the human condition. “I despise technology,” says the filmmaker. According to him, technology does mean nothing unless it can reveal or denounce a human’s situation. Therefore, technology must be subordinated to humans, to humanity, and to the arts. However, has the film lost the power to engage the viewers emotionally? Can virtual reality simulate refugee’s dispossession (the sense of the self) while alleviating society’s consciousness?

Bio: Hudson Moura is a lecturer on film, new media, and global justice at the Department of Politics and Public Administration and an associate faculty at the Immigration and Settlement Studies Program at Yeates School of Graduate Studies at Ryerson University. His scholarly work has been presented at numerous international conferences and published in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Currently, he is writing a book on refugees in films. As a documentarian, his films portray artists, writers, and culture. He served as a film programmer for several film festivals in Toronto. He has also facilitated numerous hands-on workshops on documentary, mobile filming, and video editing in universities and film festivals. He is a member of the Betinho Project Group, which aims to promote human rights, food security, and participatory democratic processes. He chairs the Interactive Narratives and Interculturality on Film and Media Research Group, focusing on the politics of race, migration, gender, and minorities (Indigenous, Black, anti-racist trans- feminist and queer) related to technology, media, and digital practices. (http://www.hudsonmoura.net)

Making a Digital Human: Will Smith, Visual Effects, and Post-Racial Ideology.

Presenter: Tanine Allison
Registration Number: 026
Institution: Emory University, Georgia, USA
Abstract: Gemini Man, a 2019 action film directed by Ang Lee and starring Will Smith, arguably created the most sophisticated fully computer-generated digital human to date. Notably—and for the first time—this CG main character is Black. The film tells the story of an assassin (played by Smith) confronting his own younger self, a clone who has been raised as an ultimate killing machine. To create the clone, the production pioneered new digital visual effects processes, including new techniques for the subsurface shading of skin, the procedural generation of pores, and the naturalistic simulation of eyes (specifically the conjunctiva) and lips (to produce a slight stickiness as they open). Although Gemini Man’s production and promotional materials do not explicitly address Will Smith’s racial identity—and the producers had originally imagined a white actor in the main role—it is clear that race was something that they had to address in the creation of Will Smith’s digital double. As the most famous and well-paid actors in Hollywood are white, so too are the digital doubles created for them, whether for CG stunt work or for de-aged flashback scenes. A few examples of digitally created/altered African Americans precede Will Smith in Gemini Man—such as the de-aging work done for Samuel L. Jackson in Captain Marvel (2019)—but this marks the most extensive visual effects work to create a Black digital human to date (discounting CG aliens played by Black actors, such as some Na’vi characters in Avatar). As such, the production confronted new technical issues, like needing to calculate the impact of melanin on the reflection of light in various layers of the skin and the way that digital facial hair, such as the clone’s peach fuzz, would look on an African American digital face. This paper contextualizes Gemini Man in our present moment amidst a national uprising about racial injustice. The production of a young, digital Will Smith begun several years ago, reflects post-racial ideology, following a longstanding practice of choosing to ignore or downplay Will Smith’s racial identity. Accordingly, the production literature, reviews, and audience responses typically do not address race directly. Yet, the themes of the film mirror the behind-the-scenes technologies in interesting ways, opening up the possibility of a timely reflection on the value of Black life and its digital simulation.

Bio: Tanine Allison is an Associate Professor of Film and Media at Emory University, where she teaches courses on film, video games, television, and digital media. Dr. Allison is the author of Destructive Sublime: World War II in American Film and Media (Rutgers University Press, 2018), which explores the aesthetics of combat sequences in WWII films and video games. Her essays on motion capture, race, war media, and digital visual effects have appeared in New Review of Film and Television Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Film and Television, and a number of other journals and anthologies. She is currently writing a book about motion capture and digital performance in film, animation, and video games.