Raelen Green ('28) is an XR Specialist. She is majoring in Digital Media Studies and is from Ithaca, NY. She is passionate about 3D modeling and environment design for XR. In addition to working at Studio X, she is a part of the URochester Track and Field team and the Sustainability Office's Team Green. In her free time, she enjoys drawing, playing video games, and hiking.
As humans, when we experience uncertainty or stressful situations, we often turn to the internet or physical activity to quell that fear. Whether it's playing a game with friends or doomscrolling the internet and drowning our sadness in instagram reels, we seek to find an escape from our current situation. Not because they fix anything but rather provide us with the relief our brains are hunting for. These moments are characterized by engagement rather than resolutions; they allow us to momentarily disconnect from the world and escape to our comfort zone.
The internet has fundamentally trained us to consume emotions rather than experience them; the process of scrolling through eye-catching short form content, polarizing political statements, and heartbreaking penguin videos has forced users to switch feelings with each swipe, building an emotional callus through constant, detached unprocessed emotions.
If you have ever gone camping and thought about it, you might realize it's one of the weirdest activities ever. Why would you ever willingly abstain yourself of modern comforts to be in the middle of nowhere, perpetually bored? While I am indifferent to it, I can understand the connection we feel to nature that cannot be replicated. That being said, it's possible that in the future, we could have the same camping atmosphere within Virtual Reality.
As we advance in technology, this question is no longer just a fictional thought but is increasingly seen as a serious debate. In Reality+, philosopher David Chalmers argues that virtual worlds are neither fake nor any less real than our reality. He says, “Simulations are not illusions. Virtual worlds are real. Virtual objects really exist.” According to Chalmers, the big mistake many people make is assuming that, because virtual objects are digital, they are somehow less real and therefore just fake.
From entertainment to surgical training, virtual reality is being implemented in numerous innovative ways. As virtual reality headsets become more and more advanced, they gain the potential to become an everyday part of our lives. Some, like researchers Slater and Sanchez-Vivez, speculate that VR could become as essential as a smartphone. However, not everyone can experience virtual reality equally.
The River Campus Libraries (RCL) is pleased to announce a 7th round of Zero Cost Heroes (ZCH).
Psychologists have been studying Virtual Reality for over 3 decades, but the past five years have been prolific, producing over half of all experimental work on the topic. In addition, over the past five years, over 20 million VR headsets have been sold in the United States. In this talk, I discuss how research helps us understand what the medium is good for (and what it is not good for).
The lecture will focus on the genesis of Maya: The Birth of a Superhero and beyond. Basu will trace her background and evolving artistic journey. The artist will discuss what it means to be a creator and explore expanded, intersectional, interactive storytelling with a focus on ‘acts’ of change and resistance-based practices. The lecture will end with a Q&A session.
About Poulomi
