Can a Simulation Generate Empathy for a Civilization Lost 7,000 Years Ago?
By Krzysztof J. Rechowicz
How can simulations help improve our understanding of the past, present and future? Could simulations help the world become a more accessible place for people of all spectrums (sensory, social, cultural, and educational)?
A team from Gallagher & Associates (G&A) (http://gallagherdesign.com/) and a team from VMASC’s Digital Senses Lab (DSLab) got together to discuss these questions. The impetus for the conversation is an extended reality version of a home in the seven-thousand-year-old Neolithic city of Çatalhöyük in modern day Turkey created by the DSLab. This experience has been designed to engage multiple sensory channels and aims at creating a sense of empathy towards life in that time.
The experience is built around the following narrative:
As you enter the house, you become surrounded by a mix of smells coming from the fire burning inside the room and the sweat and refuse from the outside. The soft sound of neighbors conversing is intertwined with the crackling fire ready to roast the evening meal. The warmth and glow of the fire gives you a welcoming sense of being home as the host offers you to prepare a meal, finish a painting of simply walk around and touch objects on the walls. You see water dripping from an opening in the ceiling and place your hands beneath it to feel the slow drip of water.
After participating in the simulation, the group sat around a recreation of a meal made with ingredients that were thought to be present in Çatalhöyük at the time.
These experiments provide baselines for using extended reality and multi-sensory stimulation in informal learning environments (museums, parks, after school programs, cities, etc.). The goal is to make learning more engaging and seamless and more importantly to make learning accessible to people with learning disabilities, sensory impairment disorders and physical and mental disability. The consensus: we are only now beginning to touch the tip of the iceberg, but it is essential to take off our blinders and embrace the wisdom of multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary exploration. The group also recognized the potential for the use of extended reality to generate insight into how we use our senses to make better understanding of the world which in turn can help us make sense of objects and experiences that happened in the near and deep past.