Abstract: The pursuit of increasingly immersive simulations of three-dimensional space has naturally led to reproductions of existing physical spaces, including notable heritage sites, in virtual reality. The recent, well-publicised vandalism of such sites in Syria and Iraq prompts some urgent considerations: What is the mnemonic potential of these heritage site simulacra? What role might they perform in transforming our means of preserving and protecting memory? In responding to these, this article embraces Van House’s (2008, p.295) call for cultural memory studies “to remind and inspire designers of what is possible and useful” with developing technologies. A comparative content analysis explores several different approaches to simulating space – computer-generated recreations, ‘photo spheres’ and 360° footage – as presented by two, free phone-based virtual reality software: EON Reality’s (2014a) EON Experience VR and Idea Studio’s (2015) UNICEF360°. This article unpacks how the confluence of decisions made regarding visual, interface and content design ultimately shape the mnemonic potential of each demonstration. Additionally, it speculates on the promising avenues embodiment and interactivity present for enriching mnemonic effect. As phone-based virtual reality, these heritage site simulacra seemingly transcend physical, temporal, financial and risk-related obstacles rendering the original sites inaccessible. The article considers this apparent proliferation of ‘accessibility’ and its possibilities in augmenting existing practices mobilised against attempts to erase memory – memoricide.
One of the Bamiyan Buddhas, before (left) and after (right) it was destroyed in March 2001.
The Bamiyan Buddhas – a pair of sixth-century statues carved into a sandstone cliff in Afghanistan’s Hazarajat region – were dynamited in March 2001 by the then-ruling Taliban (UNESCO, n.d.-a) (fig.1). Envoys justified this extreme vandalism as a response to proposed foreign funding for their preservation, a scandalous agenda when famine afflicted millions of Afghanis (Crossette, 2001). This rhetoric was perceived as a smokescreen, however. The ancient artworks had allegedly been deemed “idolatrous” (Crossette, 2001; Reuters, 2015). Thus, their destruction appears memoricidal in nature – a deliberate attempt to restrict memory by eliminating its supportive structures in the material cultural landscape.
Debate post-Taliban focuses on how the remaining site should be handled (Janowski, 2011; Kakissis, 2011): Should the statues be reconstructed? Or should the site linger untouched as a solemn reminder of past oppression? On 7 June 2015 three-dimensional (3D) holograms filled the empty niche cavities with the Buddha forms once more (Reuters, 2015) (fig. 2). These holographic images offer a different avenue for ‘reconstruction’, one that preserves the statues’ likenesses while still exposing the damaged cliff-side through their spectral quality. This technological intervention simultaneously met the need for memorialising both Afghanistan’s ancient and recent histories. The Bamiyan Buddha holograms encapsulate the transformative prospects emerging technologies have for augmenting existing memory practices. What might be the mnemonic potential of other emerging technologies then?
Figure 2: The hologram reconstruction of one of the Bamiyan Buddhas.
This article beings to explore this with regard to virtual reality. Nancy Van House (2008, p.295) argues cultural memory studies must “remind and inspire designers of what is possible and useful” with developing technologies. However, it is equally important to be mindful of the decision-making that shapes both technological design and use (Van House, 2008, p.302). As Marita Sturken (2008, p.75) notes: “cultural and individual memory are constantly produced through, and mediated by, the technologies of memory.” I embrace Van House’s purpose by analysing heritage site simulacra in phone-based virtual reality apps. I consider the ways technical and content design choices demonstrated within EON Reality’s (2014a) EON Experience VR and Idea Studio’s (2015) UNICEF360° apps influence their mnemonic possibilities. What is the mnemonic potential of such simulations experienced in virtual reality? Can they meet the need of resisting memoricide in ways standard mnemotechnics of heritage protection cannot?
Memoricide
On 26 February 2015 the ransacking of Mosul’s cultural institutions – namely its central library and museum – made headlines (Shaheen, 2015). Videos had emerged seemingly depicting the museum’s collection being decimated under sledgehammer and drill (Al Jazeera, 2015a). The targeted artefacts were reportedly statues dating back to the ancient Assyrian and Akkadian civilisations, heritage significant to Iraq’s contemporary Assyrian and Yazidi minorities (Shaheen, 2015). The perpetrators were Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)[1], armed insurgents that have occupied the northern Iraqi city since 10 June 2014 (al-Sahly, 2015). The assault on Mosul’s museum is indicative of ISIS’s apparent campaign against material cultural landscapes deemed incompatible with the group’s ideological agenda.
This has extended to ISIS’s Syrian frontline, specifically the conquest and subsequent struggle over Palmyra: the monumental ruins of a Roman city (UNESCO, n.d.-b). Since 1980 it has been listed as a protected World Heritage site by the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (UNESCO, n.d.-b). ISIS’s occupation was lifted by Syria’s armed forces on 27 May 2016 (McNeill, 2016). Significant memoricidal damage had been inflicted upon the site, however. Satellite images confirmed long before liberation that the Temple of Bel – an ancient place-of-worship for the Mesopotamian god Bel – had been detonated alongside the Temple of Baalshamin, the triumphal arch and several ancient tombs (Al Jazeera, 2015b; Shaheen et al., 2015).
The Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas has been framed as the “precedent” for ISIS’s cultural cleansing (Behzad and Qarizadah, 2015). The timing of the holographic display, while the protracted Syrian and Iraqi crises wage on, invites these connections. Memoricide, however, is a phenomenon that defies religious and cultural specificity. More nuanced public discourse has noted its practice across multiple time periods from the Reformation’s iconoclasm to the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Asfour and Scott, 2015; Graham-Harrison, 2015). It is a practice familiar to the founding, and some ongoing policies, of settler-colonial states as well. Physical and social space is re-named, re-settled and re-constructed in a process cast as ‘redemptive’ by the pioneering discourse of colonisation (Said, 1992, p.13).
This indicates that physical memoricide has much broader scope than the destruction of notable structures and monuments. It can include the deliberate removal of less distinctive structures such as residential geography. It also refers to the physical displacement of populations, uprooted ‘social worlds’ that imbued the material cultural landscape with meaning. The displacement of 700,000 Palestinians and destruction of over 500 villages during the First Arab-Israeli War (al-nakba – ‘the catastrophe’ in Arabic) has seen Israel accused of such physical memoricide (Masalha, 2012, pp.2-3, 89; Pappé, 2006, pp.230-235). Physical memoricide is not solely a set of destructive acts though. It is reconstructive, configuring the material cultural landscape in ways that delimit new conditions of belonging for those within it.
Thus, memoricide is also discursive – the replacement of place-names; strategic use (or even absence) of sign-posting about spatial history; re-signification of appropriated structures; the ‘lost’ content contained in documents, depicted in artwork and embodied by structures. It is inherently concerned with the policing of available meaning. Finally, further research into memoricide as disciplinary power is urged. Woodcock’s (2014) look at the social silencing of female Albanian political prisoners and their traumas suggests how surveillance (both online and communally), censorship and social pressure can functionally curtail the spread of memory by conditioning modes of thought and behaviour.
The phenomenon of memoricide encompasses a range of strategies – physical, discursive and disciplinary – that delimit the possibilities of memory. This article’s primary focus will be on the potential of heritage site simulacra in virtual reality to resist specifically forms of physical and discursive memoricide. Thus, even speculatively, it will not provide an exhaustive account of how this phenomenon can be nullified. Therefore it is hoped the analysis here inspires greater interest in emerging technologies and their transformative impacts on existing memory practices.
Virtual Reality: Emerging Technology?
Historical narratives often resist the notion that virtual reality is a ‘new’ or ‘emerging’ technology. Melanie Chan (2014, p.6) explicitly challenges this by presenting it “as part of a long but not unbroken historical trajectory”. Chan’s (2014, p.35) account imbues virtual reality with elastic scope, extending its reach to meditative practices, incantations, dream-states and the use of hallucinogenic substances to explore so-called “alternative realities”. Jason Jerald (2016, p.15), meanwhile, connects virtual reality to ancient origins. ‘Magical illusion’ was a source of entertainment and propaganda in civilisations as diverse as the Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, Chaldeans and Romans (Jerald, 2016, p.15). Morton Heilig (cited Hamit, 1993, p.57), designer of early head-mounted displays (HMDs), similarly observes: “When anything new comes along, everyone, like a child discovering the world, thinks that they’ve invented it, but you scratch a little and you find a caveman scratching on a wall is creating virtual reality in a sense.” Jerald (2016, p.15) continues: “…the core goals of creating the illusion of conveying that which is not actually present and capturing our imaginations remain the same.” It is our means of implementing it that have changed.
Typological constructs embed virtual reality within broader traditions of invention and experimentation. Jerald (2016, pp.15-16), for instance, traces a typological line connecting Google Cardboard – a cheaper virtual reality HMD peripheral assembled from cardboard that uses an inserted smart phone to display the imagery – with the portable stereoscopes of the 1800s. These established continuities can be perceived as attempts to legitimise virtual reality at a time where the introduction of other, seemingly immersive, technologies quickly peaked and faded across several industries. Most notably, stereoscopic ‘3D’ cinema/television and motion-sensing as the primary interface in video games. Both these technologies have become constitutive components of broader virtual reality experiences. Conversely these narratives generally note that the millennial turn saw diminished interest in virtual reality (Chan, 2014, p.4). The 1990s was a boom period for commercial products but the technology could not keep pace with hyperbolic expectations (Buick, 2002, p.110). A so-called “VR Winter” ensued until the more recent commercial resurgence with a sizable HMD periphery market for smart phones as well as the release of PlayStation VR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift (Jerald, 2016, p.27). Thus these typologies establish a legacy that enables contemporary virtual reality to distinguish itself from past failures.
Figure 3: The Link Trainer.
The breadth of inventive traditions incorporated into these narratives also signal virtual reality is about more than sight and sound. As Mark Hansen (2004) argues, virtual reality is experienced through the body. It follows that designers try to stimulate as full a sensory range as possible in pursuit of more convincing simulations. These pursuits have had real-world applicability. Edwin Link built “a fuselage-like device with a cockpit and controls that produced the motions and sensations of flying” (Jerald, 2016, p.19). This was the world’s first mechanical flight simulator (fig.3) and a direct precursor to the advanced pilot and astronaut training systems used today (Jerald, 2016, p.19). These inventions enable trainees to habitualise themselves to the physical conditions of flying – highlighting the primacy of touch. This branch of simulation has seen uptake by other vehicle-related arenas like the automobile industry and military (Chan, 2014, pp.3-4).
These innovations also extend to other senses. Heilig designed head-mounted and ‘world-fixed’ displays in the 1950s that aimed to engage smell (Jerald, 2016, pp.20-21). His HMD patent mentions “air discharge nozzles” intended to simulate scents and breezes (Heilig, 1960). The ‘Sensorama’, meanwhile, was an “immersive film” cabinet, not unlike those found in video game arcades, that manipulated somatic and olfactory senses with “seat tilting, vibrations, smell, and wind” (Heilig cited Jerald, 2016, pp.20-21). The first operational peripherals that tracked and utilised bodily movements as interface emerged in the 1960s. The Philco Corporation developed the first HMD that tracked movements in 1961 (Jerald, 2016, p.21). IBM soon followed with a patent for a glove input device that recognised finger positions (Jerald, 2016, p.21). VPL Research proceeded to build the Dataglove for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), featuring optical flex sensors that detect finger movements and tactile vibrator feedback that use cues “to simulate object contact, hardness and surface texture” (Zimmerman et al., 1987, p.190). The glove input device became a commercially available virtual reality product – see Mattel’s Power Glove peripheral for the Nintendo Entertainment System – in the late 1980s and 1990s (Jerald, 2016, p.21). The 2000s witnessed Nintendo’s popular Wii game console, along with Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s Move peripherals, reposition the gamer-as-controller with their movements used to interface with software.
This brief survey demonstrates that the pursuit of ever-increasingly realistic visuals remains only one aspect of virtual reality development. ‘Embodiment’ is of central concern in design. Chan (2014, pp.1-2) asserts that “embodiment is a fundamental aspect of immersion in virtual reality rather than something to be transcended.” Ivan Sutherland (1965, p.508) located embodiment at the forefront of what they envisioned as virtual reality’s apotheosis – a computer that can manipulate matter with all the inherent consequences of physical reality. There has been greater emphasis placed on ‘human-centered design’ since the millennial bust (Jerald, 2016, p.27). That is, design that more effectively responds to the ways in which humans naturally perceive and interact with reality. Disembodiment not only hinders convincing virtual reality experiences. It can also leave users feeling nauseous. Human-centered design must not rely on assumptions that the user is normatively able-bodied, however. Our embodied experiences are shaped by our bodily circumstances. The assumed neutrality of technological research and development can disguise how a reliance on normative thought can result in exclusion. How can virtual reality be developed in ways that do not exclude those of differing capacities for sight, sound, mobility and touch from its experiences? This needs to be an integral concern for any approach labelled ‘human-centered design’.
There is no single way of ‘doing’ virtual reality. Rather it is a created experience being explored through multiple inventive trends. This article deals with an emerging coalescence within this broader phenomenon of innovation, a particular virtual reality product appearing across several commercial industries simultaneously. That is, virtual reality that uses the HMD to immerse the user ‘within’ the image – whether it be computer-generated imagery (CGI) or captured real-world content. This article is particularly interested in this product as it manifests in phone-based virtual reality software.
Virtual Environments and Augmented Virtuality
EON Experience VR and UNICEF360° are both apps available on iOS and Android. The former, developed by EON Reality, hosts numerous virtual reality demonstrations. Several heritage site simulacra are among these, presenting different technical and content design choices with various strengths and weaknesses. It should be noted that these are demonstrations. EON Reality is actively exploring heritage site simulacra as part of their mission statement to develop means of “knowledge transfer for industry, education, and edutainment” through virtual reality (EON Reality, 2014b). The ‘EON World Heritage Initiative’ “empowers nations to preserve their cultural artefacts and historical sites for future generations and bring these sites into classrooms and homes” (EON Reality, 2014b). These demonstrations are taken as insights into how the Initiative is approaching this purpose without assuming that they are indicative of the final product’s quality.
The heritage site simulacra offered can be split into two categories: computer-generated site replicas and 360° ‘photo spheres’. The former fits Jerald’s (2016, p.30) definition of “true virtual environments”: spaces “artificially created without capturing any content from the real world.” The famous megalithic site Stonehenge, with its prehistorically arranged circles of upright stones (menhir), and Machu Picchu, the terraced Incan city nestled between the Peruvian Andes and Amazon Basin, are recreated entirely using computer-generated imagery (CGI) (UNESCO, n.d.-c; UNESCO, n.d.-d). ‘Egypt 360°’, meanwhile, uses 360° photo spheres to survey Egyptian heritage sites including the Courtyard of Ramses II, the Temple of Luxor, and Valley of the Kings. This approach matches what Jerald (2016, p.30) terms “augmented virtuality”, whereby captured “real-world content” is converted into virtual reality.
Meanwhile UNICEF360° hosts several virtual reality documentaries that, while not heritage site simulacra themselves, present a possible alternative approach to reproducing existing space. The app was developed by Idea Studio in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) (UNICEF, 2016). Content analysis will focus on the ‘Clouds over Sidra’ documentary. The titular Sidra is a twelve-year-old girl currently living with 84,000 other Syrian refugees in Jordan’s Za’atari camp (Idea Studio, 2015). It uses 360° footage to locate the user ‘in’ Za’atari as it briefly explores the camp’s facilities and communities. While not a heritage site simulacrum ‘Clouds over Sidra’ provides a compelling example of how footage can be rendered in virtual reality to capture and preserve other places and social-worlds. I will consider how this ‘augmented virtuality’ approach can be put to mnemonic use as well.
Figure 4: Chris Milk of VRSE presenting “Clouds Over Sidra” at TED.
Heritage Site Simulacra
The Stonehenge and Machu Picchu experiences recreate these heritage spaces using CGI. Mirzoeff (1999, p.30) argues that “unlike photography and film which attest to the necessary presence of some exterior reality, the pixelated image reminds us of its necessary artificiality and absence.” Heim (1995, p.70), similarly, argues that CGI does not (re)present again that which is absent (or present somewhere else). Rather “simulated entities are taken to be real in a fundamentally different way” (Chan, 2014, p.43). The simulacrum’s inherent artificiality, in both EON demonstrations, cannot be disguised by the low detailed texturing or inorganically straight-edged architecture. This visual approach, without incorporating captured content from the original site, necessarily generates scepticism about the depiction’s accuracy. Do the ‘3D’ models of Stonehenge and Machu Picchu misrepresent the finer details of erosion, architectural style or artistic intricacies? Do the layouts accurately map to that of the original sites?
As examples of augmented virtuality, both ‘Egypt 360°’ and ‘Clouds over Sidra’ use captured real-world content. Thus, in terms of visual accuracy, their representations acquire superficial trustworthiness. ‘Egypt 360°’ has the user cycle through a collection of 360° photographs that immerse from every direction. The demonstration includes nine different spheres in total, each capturing a historic Egyptian site. The imagery is more ‘convincing’ than that of the CGI Stonehenge and Machu Picchu – but there is a drawback. The images capture other human figures about the sites – presumably tourists, guides, or locals – that remain motionless. The contrast between their immobility and the user’s tracked head movements results in a surreal feeling of being ‘frozen in time’.
Unlike the lifeless photo spheres, footage sustains the illusion that the user is within a living social space – as witnessed in ‘Clouds over Sidra’ (fig.4). As refugees react to the camera – like the groups of children encircling it or young men glancing over their shoulders as they play video games– it momentarily feels they are reacting to the user’s presence. This impression is enhanced by stereoscopic imaging eliminating the flatness of televisual images. Heritage site simulacra may not use direct, illusory human interactions like these moments. But even the indirect presence of moving figures leads to a more convincing simulacrum. Additionally, motion is an environmental aspect – grass and trees sway and water ripples, for instance. This form of augmented virtuality seems a promising visual approach for heritage site simulacra in phone-based virtual reality software – especially given the platform’s relative disadvantage in running high-end CGI displays compared to personal computers and premium gaming consoles.
However it is important to remember that augmented virtuality remains a carefully mediated experience. There is obvious adherence to documentary conventions and editing, ‘scenes’ that have been chosen from a larger whole and framed by the accompanying voiceover. But awareness of its constructedness must extend beyond the narrative aspects to its immersive dimension. The convergence of 360° footage, stereoscopic imaging and head-tracking technology means the experience transcends what is possible by the clearly bounded and flat televisual image. We no longer wonder what is just out of frame within any given shot. This will inevitably bestow ‘authenticity’ to the depictions captured. It is tempting to perceive these depictions of space as ‘truth’, as space as it definitively is, in contrast to inevitable scepticism surrounding CGI. But the medium should still be approached with critical caution, not be taken as innately authentic in its representations.
CGI has advanced significantly since Heim and Mirzoeff provided their insights, and EON’s simulacra are not representative of its quality. Though the ‘pixelated image’ may have reached persuasive levels of realism, this alone is not sufficient. Embodiment, as mentioned, is integral to the experience (Chan, 2014, pp.1-2). The conventional form of phone-based virtual reality apps and their associated HMD peripherals are quite restrictive in simulating embodiment. Typically, it is limited to head movements being tracked and reproduced in virtual reality near instantaneously. Head tracking functionality is essential as it provides that immersion ‘beyond the frame’, of being ‘in’ the depicted space. Head movements – looking up, down, left, and right – and shifting the shoulders (or turning the whole body on-the-spot) produce the expected shift in visual display to align with the new perspective. Any delay would be disorienting, causing noticeable disconnect between visual information received and the felt physical positioning of the user’s body. Each demonstration analysed here executed this function smoothly.
Figure 5: Eon Reality’s Stonehenge.
Embodiment ends with head tracking technology though. There is no motion-sensing or controller that enables further interactivity via body gesture. Touch cannot be simulated as there is no means for haptic feedback. Rather both EON demonstrations feature ‘held-gaze’ interactivity. Floating icons within the space – yellow medallions in the computer-generated simulacra; globes containing glimpses of the next imagery for the spheres – triggers ‘movement’ when held at centre-view. The user follows a predetermined route in the Stonehenge (fig.5) and Machu Picchu experiences, moving through 3D space to the next fixed position. This design choice preserves immersion by never cutting to the next position. The movement itself, however, highlights the issue of disembodiment – while the app visually communicates movement, without haptic feedback the feeling of movement is non-existent. It does enable the user to be positioned unrealistically to illustrate a point though, such as being elevated above Machu Picchu to highlight the scope of its terraced design.
The photo sphere, by comparison, unavoidably breaks space’s seamlessness in transitioning between fixed viewpoints. The held-gaze triggers a zoom-in effect teleporting the user into the next sphere – a disorienting experience with the unpleasant sensation of having your eyes forcibly crossed. While a consequence of using still photographs, it does undercut any sense of spatial continuity. If the photo sphere approach were to replicate single sites, the placement of the movement-triggers would need to be strategically aligned to convey logical spatial progression. ‘Clouds over Sidra’ adopts a similar scene structure that naturally fragments the sense of space. It also uses fixed positions within each scene. It avoids drawing attention to the user’s disembodied state by remaining stationary. Nevertheless the user remains conscious of their ethereal state. The asphalt field the girls play football on appears damp with puddles. This, combined with the overcast sky, makes the place seem cold and wet. Temperature, of course, cannot be simulated. Nor can the smell of food as the user visits the makeshift bakery in Za’atari.
The effectiveness of heritage site simulacra as anti-memoricide can be enhanced with increased user interactive agency. Resisting physical memoricide requires virtual reality to simulate space that the user can freely investigate. Otherwise all that is being preserved are images, a vital task already handled by flat photographs and film. This presents one significant advantage virtual environments have over augmented virtuality as the former has superior flexibility in crafting interactive dimensions. 360° photographs cannot be internally navigated. Hence the reliance upon fixed positions that inevitably occlude as much as they reveal. 360° footage, on the other hand, would need to be meticulous in its navigation through captured space. Even then mobility positions the user as a passive observer, their progression controlled by the designer. Moreover, the fixed route determines what is seen and may, unintentionally, leave details unseen no matter how careful the shooting is. Therefore while augmented virtuality may have a visual edge in preserving the site’s appearance, virtual environments have an edge in preserving space with their greater capacity for interactivity. That said, this requires developers for phone-based software to conceive of ways to introduce this dimension.
Jerald (2016, p.30) notes the “reality system”, as intermediary between user and computer, must “effectively communicate the application content to and from the user in an intuitive way as if the user is interacting with the real world”. Thus, ideally, the intermediary obscures its presence as much as possible (Jerald, 2016, p.30). This aspiration invites discussion of ‘hyperreality’, whereby the real has been supplanted by, or become indistinguishable from, the simulated (Baudrillard, 1994, p2-3). Dystopian science fiction, such as The Matrix (Wachowski and Wachowski 1999) and eXistenZ (Cronenberg 1999), has continuously reaffirmed this connection, though each instance features an imperceptible intermediary and engages complete embodiment. Phone-based virtual reality in its current forms simply is not capable of this. The user, to varying degrees, moves beyond the visual frame. The necessarily restrictive interactivity and absent non-visual sensory stimuli imposes different frames – disembodiment and passivity – that maintains awareness of the space’s inherent artificiality. To describe these experiences, even others that address the visual issues only, in terms of the hyperreal would be hyperbolic.
What Should (and Should Not) Be Remembered
Each new position in EON’s demonstrations automatically triggers a computerised voiceover. This narration specifies an architectural feature or site, highlighted by a textbox label, and conveys presumed historical or archaeological knowledge about it. There are no means of verifying what sources are used to build this content. The computerised oration can also be difficult to understand. It lacks the natural sense of rhythm and pronunciation a recorded voiceover would provide. This is especially true with ‘Egypt 360°’. Unlike the CGI demonstrations, there is no ‘normal mode’ (i.e. not virtual reality) with textboxes to rely upon. Its narration is consequently left indecipherable at points.
This discursive framing exhibits significant content design choices – what gets emphasised, how it gets emphasised and, conversely, what does not. The ‘North Station Stone’, part of the Stonehenge simulacrum, is illustrative. Upon reaching this feature, the user is told that it affirms the theory that the site follows a “geometric plan”. The counter-theory that its positioning was “astronomically determined” is explicitly dismissed in the process – even despite UNESCO’s (n.d.-c) inscription remaining open to this notion. Other forms of knowledge may simply be omitted. Without access to extra-textual resources, the choices made in what information is presented acquire great potential in shaping how we view the subject matter. It also, provocatively, leaves these simulacra vulnerable to furthering memoricide by deliberately silencing certain histories.
The chosen subject matter – the heritage site itself – leans into pre-established notions of what should and should not be remembered. The sites already exist as specially demarcated ‘heritage’ sites within their domestic contexts. This means these sites, and the histories attached them, have been determined to be worth preserving. They have legacies of being valued for the knowledge and memory they embody. Moreover, both Machu Picchu and Stonehenge are listed by UNESCO as World Heritage sites (n.d.-c; n.d.-d). Successful submissions for World Heritage listing must satisfy certain criteria exemplifying worth (UNESCO, n.d.-e). This establishes an esteemed ‘canon’ for humanity’s cultural past. These sites, due to legacies of attributed value, therefore tend to be recognisable – and become attractive places to visit!
It makes sense developers would use familiar heritage sites as source material for simulacra. That familiarity often sees these spaces become tourist destinations – an impulse developers seek to capitalise on in drawing attention to their product. They even couch virtual experiences in terms reminiscent of virtual tourism discourse: “travel to”, “visit the”, “experience what it is like” etc. However, this risks re-perpetuating existing issues with standard means of ‘heritage site’ demarcation and protection. These means, unintentionally or unavoidably, canonise certain forms of historic material culture above others. UNESCO’s World Heritage criteria, for example, seemingly privileges sites that present (determined to be) ‘significant’ developments in architectural style and practice. Monumental architecture, in particular, is disproportionately represented. But there remain other historic relationships with space that were ‘less material’ – at least to such an overt degree. Indigenous cultures in Australia produced unique art forms – rock paintings, for instance – but their relationship with space was materially realised in different ways. These cultures lack a rooted tradition of monumental construction. Yet these chapters in human history are no less important for it. It remains to be seen whether the ‘heritage site’ model – and by extension simulacra in virtual reality – can effectively meet this mnemonic need without an ongoing “living cultural landscape” present (see: Kakadu and Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Parks) (UNESCO, 2013, pp.127, 306).
The choice of heritage site simulacra also restricts virtual reality’s ability to contest other forms of physical memoricide. ‘Clouds over Sidra’ demonstrates how augmented virtuality, especially 360° footage, can compellingly capture snapshots of social-worlds and at-risk, non-protected spaces (e.g. villages and towns). The prospects of such projects being green-lit, however, depend on interrelated considerations such as marketability, funding, audience and profitability. It also requires fortune in pre-empting memoricidal acts against specific communities.
Accessibility
Accessibility is the drawcard for virtual reality especially vis a vis physical space. Chan (2014, pp.1-2) observes that, during the 1980s and 1990s, virtual reality was envisioned as a means of transcending physical embodiment. This has shifted as developers now seek to simulate fuller embodied experiences. I propose it is physical space that virtual reality potentially transcends, and where its prospects for anti-memoricide are most promising. EON Reality (2014b) claim their intent is to “bring these sites into classrooms and homes”. The site itself, rather than user, is unshackled from its physical anchor. It is replicated and proliferated, becoming as numerous as the amount of software installs. Phone-based software, in particular, carries tremendous capacity for proliferation given the immense user install base. The mass circulation of heritage site simulacra, then, could be an effective tool in expanding the conditions for memory in the face of physical memoricide.
Virtual reality theoretically transcends physical, temporal, financial, and risk-related obstacles that prevent access to the original sites – such as the need to travel with its inherent costs and time investment. Furthermore, the platform’s portability enables access to virtual reality experiences without relying on ‘fixed’ real-world positions –lounge room, desktop computer, museum exhibit and so forth. As Nick Harkaway (2012) notes mobile phones are ever-present access points (portals) to digital environments. They reduce locational determinism compared to other, more expensive virtual reality platforms.
This optimistic view is tempered by a few issues. Chan (2014, p.18) urges caution in approaching universalistic claims about technological development and its impacts: “whilst computer scientists are fantasizing about artificial intelligence and virtual reality, a large part of the population on this planet are concerned with surviving…” This highlights the influence privilege has on notions of ‘accessibility’ and ‘affordability’. Smart phones may seem ubiquitous. They are not, however, universal. Even interventions into the phone-based HMD market – like the cheaper Google Cardboard – should not be assumed to universally impact on affordability. There is a ‘digital divide’ and it is important to realise that this does not solely refer to disparate ownership and/or access to digital technologies (Chan, 2014, pp.17-18). It also describes the disparity in ‘digital literacy’: the comprehension of how to effectively use digital technology (Chan, 2014, pp.17-18). The constant release of new phone models and the congested HMD market, where finding the peripheral best-suited to a particular phone model can be difficult, means that literacy can impact accessibility even in places of financial privilege.
Conclusion
My intent is not to suggest that heritage site simulacra ought to supplant the real. This is not the goal of addressing shortcomings in embodiment and visual design identified. The goal is to enhance mnemonic effectiveness in the face of, specifically, physical memoricide. The notion heritage site simulacra could substitute for the original site belongs to virtual tourism discourse and hyperbolism regarding hyperreality. Furthermore, the production and spread of simulacra – a key attribute of phone-based software’s mnemonic potential – does not mean memoricide has been averted. The physical destruction of material cultural landscapes still has often permanent consequences as well as harmful effects on populations that invest in them. Physical memoricide throughout history tends to be concerned with how space is experienced, what it signifies and to whom it signifies. It is the physical context of the original sites themselves where memoricidal impact is felt strongest. The virtual dislocation of space achieves little in resisting memoricide on this front.
It does, in concert with other memory practices, help sustain the conditions for memory beyond that context. Virtual environments, while handicapped at the first by the pixelated image, do offer greater interactive flexibility. As virtual reality hardware for phones develops it is not inconceivable that users could wander through simulacra at their leisure, ‘preserving’ these spaces in ways non-immersive media cannot. They also enable developers to ‘restore’ sites imaginatively (with reliance upon research and primary sources). This is particularly interesting for sites with ‘layered history’ as well as those defaced or destroyed. EON Reality (2014b) recognise this use for virtual environments though have yet to implement it in EON Experience VR.
Augmented virtuality, meanwhile, enhances conventional methods of visual documentation. It creates the illusion of ‘entering’ the image and, especially with footage, can provide powerful glimpses of at-risk or even former social-worlds. Augmented virtuality, then, complements other memory practices (documentaries, oral history, testimonies etc.) in combating this type of physical memoricide. It can also be effective in capturing aspects of space as it once was – imagery taken from the original sites rendered in a way that is somewhere between the flat image and being there in-person. Though, as always, choices made in the production of knowledge must be interrogated lest heritage site simulacra become an effective tool for silencing as much as it reveals. It is essential that these experiences are treated as constructions that reach us as the result of a confluence of choices made at various points in both technical and content design.
References
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Notes
[1] I have chosen to use this acronym designation as it is anecdotally the most familiar. Islamic State (IS), Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as well as the Arabic designation ‘Daesh’ are also used to reference this movement.
AUTHOR BIO: Scott Webster is a PhD candidate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. His research explores the intersections of memory, space and technology, and their potential to augment existing mnemonic practices – in particular those resisting the deliberate erasure of memory. He currently cohosts two scholarly pop culture podcasts: Trope Watchers – On Pop Culture and Why It Matters and A Clash of Critics – A Scholarly Podcast about Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire. His research interests include cultural studies, critical race studies and postcolonial theory, gender studies and memory studies.
