VR for Real

Today we took some photographs in the DiV in the FCIEMAS building at Duke. Les Todd, of Duke Photography, had taken the wonderful image of Jessica Riley so we asked him to come again and take some more images of humans interacting in meaningful ways through the mediation of technology.  It's tricky to do.  A few days ago I mentioned that, whenever I looked on line for images of kids learning digitally, they looked liked druggies, blank eyed, expressionless, glazed over, other worldly. So we were after situations where youth really were learning, exploring, having fun.

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My two favorite moments were when seven-year-old Noah was given a great VR painting tool. With the VR wand, he could paint tunnels that, to those wearing the goggles, seemed endless spirals into nothing but gorgeous color. For those of us outside the VR space, the color was great, but we had no perception of depth. So it was fascinating to see people walking around places (the "holes"), or avoiding places (cliffs), or looking as if they were diving in and swimming (they felt like it was almost underwater).

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After two hours of taking photographs of various groups of people in front of different VR spaces, we went out into the atrium and were joined by David and his two-year-old daughter Delphine. Delphine had never seen an iPod before and she was sure it was a cell phone. At first, she couldn't get the concept of earphones . . . then, tentatively, she put one in her ear and this huge smile spread over her face. Her dad (a fine musician himself) was curious about what she was listening to so he put in the other earphone and the two of them were practically giggling together. Fortunately, Les Todd, the photographer, was on hand for that too. After all the complicated lighting in the DiV, suddenly we were in full atrium light and Les snapped as David and Delphine jived on their shared iPod.

Ages of digital learning, or something like that. A really fun afternoon. I'll report back after we have some of the photographs and may post some on this site. (Brett Walters, photographer extraordinaire, documented the shoot with Les Todd of Duke Photography and has posted a few of his shots on this blog. The drawings are all by amazing Noah . . . you should see these in 3-D!)