{"id":4558,"date":"2016-10-30T14:37:31","date_gmt":"2016-10-30T13:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/themes.89elements.com\/definity-data\/?p=4558"},"modified":"2019-12-19T18:43:51","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T17:43:51","slug":"the-new-york-times-meeting-the-other-face-to-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lucidrealities.studio\/index.php\/2016\/10\/30\/the-new-york-times-meeting-the-other-face-to-face\/","title":{"rendered":"The New York Times | Meeting \u2018the Other\u2019 Face to Face"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"CAMBRIDGE, Mass. \u2014 Sitting in a conference room at a hotel near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here, I slip on large headphones and an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and wriggle into the straps of a backpack, weighed down with a computer and a battery. It feels as if I were getting ready for a spacewalk or a deep-sea dive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. \u2014 Sitting in a conference room at a hotel near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here, I slip on large headphones and an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and wriggle into the straps of a backpack, weighed down with a computer and a battery. It feels as if I were getting ready for a spacewalk or a deep-sea dive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Enemy,\u201d underway at M.I.T., is the result of a collaboration between Mr. Ben Khelifa and Fox Harrell, an associate professor of digital media.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The work grows out of more than half a century of collaborations between the world of art and the worlds of science and technology, spurred by pioneers like Experiments in Art and Technology, begun in 1967 by the Bell Labs engineers Billy Kl\u00fcver and Fred Waldhauer and the artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman. M.I.T. has been at the forefront of such cross-pollination, which has taken off at schools around the world in recent years.<\/p>\n

In an interview before I experienced the virtual reality environment, Mr. Ben Khelifa, 44, said the idea emerged from a frustration that deepened over almost 20 years he spent as a photojournalist covering strife \u2014 often entrenched, interminable warfare \u2014 mostly in the Middle East. \u201cBeing a Tunisian growing up in Belgium, I think I always felt like I was wearing two different kinds of shoes,\u201d he said. \u201cIn Iraq and Afghanistan, I could sometimes see things about fighters on both sides of the conflict that some other Europeans couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

What he saw there was a culture of warfare that often perpetuated itself through misunderstanding and misinformation, with no mechanism for those of opposing sects or political forces to gain a sense of the enemy as a fellow human being. \u201cI began to think, \u2018I\u2019m meeting the same people over and over again,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m seeing people I knew as kids, and now they\u2019re grown-up fighters, in power, fighting the same fight. And you start to think about your work in terms of: \u2018Am I helping to change anything? Am I having any impact?\u2019 \u201d He added: \u201cI thought of myself as a war illustrator. I started calling myself that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the last two years, as a visiting artist at the university\u2019s Center for Art, Science and Technology, he transformed what he initially conceived of as an unconventional photo and testimonial project involving fighters into a far more unconventional way of hearing and seeing his subjects, hoping to be able to engender a form of empathy beyond the reach of traditional documentary film. He interviewed Mr. Khaled in Gaza and Mr. Peled in Tel Aviv, asking them the same six questions \u2014 basic ones like \u201cWho\u2019s your enemy and why?\u201d; \u201cWhat is peace for you?\u201d; \u201cHave you ever killed one of your enemies?\u201d; \u201cWhere do you see yourself in 20 years?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he and a small crew captured three-dimensional scans of the men and photographed them from multiple angles. (He later repeated this process in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is expanding the project to El Salvador, which is being decimated by gang violence.)<\/p>\n

\"\"
The photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa, left, and Fox Harrell, an associate professor of digital media at M.I.T., collaborated on the virtual reality project \u201cThe Enemy.\u201d \u00a9 Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With help from several technology and digital media companies and funding from a collection of prominent foundations, he began to build avatars of his interviewees and ways for them to move and respond inside a virtual world so realistic it makes even a 3-D movie seem like an artifact from the distant past. Mr. Harrell describes it as \u201clong-form journalism in a totally new form.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt should have a kind of lush imaginative vitality to it \u2014 a kind of lyricism,\u201d he said of the effect that he and Mr. Ben Khelifa have been working to achieve, polishing the project with the help of test viewers since introducing it to mainstream audiences in 2015 at the Tribeca Film Festival. He added: \u201cYou have something here you don\u2019t have in any other form of journalism: body language.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, indeed, inside the world they have made, the power comes from the feeling of listening to the interviewees speak (you hear Mr. Ben Khelifa\u2019s disembodied voice asking the questions, and the men\u2019s voices answer, overlaid by the voice of an interpreter) as your body viscerally senses a person standing a few feet away from you, his eyes following yours as he talks, his chest rising and falling as he breathes. I listened intently and immediately felt compelled, out of basic politeness, to remain in front of one interviewee until he had finished answering all of his questions before crossing the room to the other man. I could have sworn the 37 minutes that Mr. Ben Khelifa told me I had been inside the world, listening to the first two enemies and then to those from Congo, was no more than 15.<\/p>\n

Sofia Ayala, an M.I.T. sophomore, tested the project after I did and emerged \u2014 as I did \u2014 with a mesmerized flush on her face, a feeling of meeting someone not really there. \u201cIt makes it feel so much more personal than just reading about these things online,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen someone\u2019s right there talking to you, you want to listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Mr. Ben Khelifa hopes the project will eventually reach large audiences in the way documentary films do now, he said his target audience was \u201creally the next generation of fighters from wherever we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many places I\u2019ve been, you\u2019re given your enemy when you\u2019re born,\u201d he said. \u201cYou grow up with this \u2018other\u2019 always out there. The best we can hope is that the \u2018other\u2019 will now be able to come into the same room with you for a while, where you can listen to him, and see him face to face.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. \u2014 Sitting in a conference room at a hotel near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here, I slip on large … <\/p>\n

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