She shares...

In immersive journalism, in general, you don't see VR as an entertainment tool.

So you don't put on the headset to play games or see a very enjoyable piece.

But you might sometimes put into the story of a refugee camp or be in the middle of bombing in Syria.

So it's not always something that you enjoy, but you can use this As an empathy tool to put people to experience a story that they normally see on TV, but in VR, they are in the middle of the story, so they can feel it with their whole body and senses.

Marjan shares, It holds

this strange tension between immersion and disconnection.

So VR can create incredibly powerful experiences.

I'm curious if we could start out by you sharing some of your inspiration for using this technology and what you've discovered in your research so far.

Absolutely.

I've always been drawn to the idea of empathy, not just in theory, but truly in understanding someone else's lived experience.

Growing up in the Middle East, I did not have access to the kind of immersive technologies that we have today.

But I'm always incredibly curious.

I wanted to know how people from different parts of the world saw things, how they live, what they felt, and what shaped their world.

So when I moved to the US to pursue my MFA, I was finally able to explore tools like virtual augmented reality.

What observations have you seen with how people relate then to the physical space?