![]() VK: We’re aiming to develop the concepts in my book, “2100,” into a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, an open virtual world where people are tasked with creating new ways to protect our cities against climate change threats. ![]() KF: How are you using virtual reality in your work right now? It’s almost a cliché now, but it has been called an empathy machine and for me that’s really what links it with climate. The immersive nature of the medium impacts all of your senses and overwhelms the physical space around you. For instance, Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab found that if a person has a VR experience of cutting down a tree-feels the chainsaw vibrate, hears the tree crash-that person is much more likely to conserve paper. I have been called an eco-futurist, but really, my whole aim is: how can I reach people? VR is a powerful tool for that. I did it and it was incredible, how real it felt. They had us walk a simulated gangplank 200 feet above the city and then asked everyone to jump down, and a lot of people couldn’t do it, even though they were really just in an office. But in 2016, we teamed up with the Glimpse Group, a virtual and augmented reality platform company, and they put part of our New York case study from the book into VR. Vanessa Keith: Well, I’ve always been interested in new technologies and modes of representation. ![]() Kristen French: What drew you to work in Virtual Reality? The interview has been edited for length and clarity. It recalls the iconic futuristic noir of Blade Runner, only with far more plant life. A trailer for it, narrated by a guide named Violet, shows a city enveloped in fog, gloom and neon, populated by flying taxis, glittering high rises, and dreamy gardens and parks. Keith has taught architecture, urban, and interior design studios for 15 years at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Pratt Institute, and the City College of New York. Keith is especially interested in design-oriented solutions to climate change and is currently building a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) and open virtual world that develops concepts from her book “ 2100 A Dystopian Utopia: The City After Climate Change.” Published in 2017 by the late Michael Sorkin’s Terreform, the publishing arm of a nonprofit architecture and urban think-tank focused on ecological design, Keith’s book re-imagines 14 cities around the world employing emerging tech and other innovation approaches to tackle the climate crisis. Keith is hoping to do a beta release of the game within a year that includes virtual renderings of New York City and Moscow. To answer these questions we spoke with Vanessa Keith, a registered architect and the principal of StudioTEKA, an award-winning design firm based in Brooklyn that she founded in 2003. But how does it work, and what kinds of VR experiences can most effectively reach the largest numbers of people and have the most impact? Where can these VR experiences be delivered to people? Is VR just a communication tool or can it be something more? In fact, a substantial body of research from the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab has shown that using virtual reality to change human behavior works. Some of them are now pinning their hopes on virtual reality (VR) to get the message across. But while the urgency of the message is growing in the public sphere, scientists, journalists, artists and creators have still so far struggled to communicate it effectively to large numbers of global citizens. To bring the Earth back from the brink will demand powerful collective action, the authors of the report wrote. released a dire climate report, the first since 2018, that warned of accelerated warming of the planet and splashed code red alert headlines across the world. ![]() Keith hopes to use virtual reality to get people to internalize what a changing climate looks like.
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