Even though our hand-in date was June 2nd, and the final crits for the VR experience were on 22nd May, Ana wanted all of our sound assets and music sent to her by the 16th of May. I felt that this was fair, as this ensured she would have enough time to properly insert all of the sounds into the game in time for the crit, which in turn meant that there would hopefully only be small tasks to work on before the hand-in. This would’ve also been useful for her as we have not heard from the other VR student for the entirety of the process.

In the end, the process ended up being more collaborative between the sound artists than we originally had planned. We all had individual roles originally, however they tended to merge over time as different group members put in different amounts of work. This was helpful when it came to aspects such as foley, as the collaborative process in this instance was good for getting different ideas on how to make different sounds. When it comes to background music and recurring motifs, which had originally all been my responsibility, other group members also put music forward so as to not put all the burden on me for this responsibility, which was useful as there is a lot of music needed for the kind of experience we have made.

Just after our deadline for handing in sounds to Ana, she sent us some of the scenes she’d been working on for the experience. This was interesting, as I hadn’t seen too much of what she’d been working on since the first crit:

My music was mainly used in the Design School level of the experience (the experience is split into three levels once you make it into the lift – Screen School, Design School and Media School). There was a lot more music making involved in the creation of the project than I would’ve initially anticipated, so I’m thankful other members stepped up to help.

The design of the experience certainly leans into a more surreal aesthetic than I had originally imagined, but I think it’s overwhelming in a good way. It gets across the stressful aspects of the student experience and pokes fun at the university.

As artists in the 21st century, we need to take our carbon footprint into account when making our work to preserve the planet for future generations. I’ve previously heard about the immense amount of environmental resources that gaming requires, and I wanted to take a more detailed look at what this means for the VR industry, and hopefully try to find examples of companies attempting to work sustainably.

Having done some thinking and research, there are multiple ways in which VR can be harmful to the environment. Most advanced VR hardware is made from plastic, which in turn is usually is made from fossil fuels, and the process of turning the fossil fuels into plastic is also very resource intensive. There’s also the question of waste, after the technology has passed its prime and people move on to the next most advanced option. Whilst the hardware at the moment is generally of a good quality and built to last, this might not be the case in the future as the technology becomes more readily accessible, and we might see something akin to smartphones in recent years, where products gradually deteriorate over quite a short amount of time, creating a lot of ‘digital waste’. There are products such as Google Cardboard which aim to be a more sustainable way of accessing VR, however these really aren’t very advanced and require a smartphone.

According to a 2019 peer-reviewed study(1) on the environmental impacts of gaming, 24 megatons of carbon dioxide are made each year from the US alone when it comes to energy use. This doesn’t even take into account the other factors I mentioned in the paragraph above.

When researching companies that are trying to do something about the impact on the planet from VR and gaming, I could find surprisingly few examples. There were a few articles about certain industries moving a few operations over to VR to reduce carbon emissions (such as aerospace, car manufacturing and oil), but not any statements from companies that are leading the VR revolution on how they might pledge to keep their impact low. Also, from the industries I’ve found that do use it, it seems more like virtue signalling than meaningful change. Hopefully time will change this, but I’m not so sure.

Ultimately, I don’t think there’s enough being done to make sure that the VR industry is sustainable. Then again, the same can be said for most industries.

References

1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40869-019-00084-2

Recently, we had a couple of lectures from Serra, who teaches the VR course. I found the topics she covered very engaging, and one thing she brought up which gave me food for thought was the idea of the ‘Digital Twin’, which is a concept being brought very much into the near future by companies such as Meta:

As someone who’s grown up with social media since the age of 11 (and even then as a younger child I was still on sites that let you create an online alter-ego like Club Penguin and Bin Weevils), I am very used to having a digital version of myself online, for anyone to see. It’s something that I only really thought about the consequences of long after I was given access to these kinds of sites as a young child, and to be honest I really wish I had not been given access to them until I was a lot older. There’s a strange sort of relationship that a lot of people of my generation seem to have with their digital lives – they already feel like an extension of reality, like a whole different world where we have to present ourselves in a completely different manner. In my experience, this has led to me feeling terribly unsure about who I really am, what I like and dislike, etc. This is most likely due to the sheer abundance of information and opinion that is spewed out at social media users on a daily basis. Whilst there has been good that has come from this technology, I feel as though we are losing sense of ourselves already.

That’s why I’m quite terrified for concepts such as the Metaverse to become reality. I already feel uncomfortable with the digital version of myself as it is, and I have made great effort in recent months to try and mentally detach myself from it. I do not want my life to rely on this completely fake reality where I have a bad-looking caricature of myself being the only representation that most people see of my thoughts and my body. Especially when this caricature is owned by Mark Zuckerberg.

I remember watching the documentary ‘Life 2.0’ a few years ago, which was about a site called Second Life which in many ways is a precursor to the Metaverse. People would spend hours and hours every day on this site, looking at their alter-ego, maybe trying to escape their day-to-day life. I remember thinking then, that it was a bit strange and lonely. In my opinion, concepts such as these should not become part of mainstream culture.

Maybe this is why I’ve had some trouble engaging with this unit so far. All in all, I am not very interested in VR at all, and I believe people should seek real life experiences. I understand there can be some educational uses (e.g. learning how to perform surgery, etc.) but other than this, I really fail to see the excitement in it. This isn’t to say I’m right and everybody else is wrong, but the digital world is something I personally try to stay away from as much as possible (with not much success).