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Blackout uses glitches to bring a modicum of empathy to VR
The common conceit associated with virtual reality filmmaking is that the technology gives you a profound insight into the lives of others. More spatial depth, the theory goes, is correlated with more emotional depth. Welcome to the magical empathy machine! This sort of technological determinism is almost always bunk, but that does not mean VR filmmaking cannot be used as a means to those ends. Blackout, a virtual reality documentary by the creative studio Specular, is the latest work that attempts to use VR as a tool for understanding others, yet it stands out because it seems at least partially…