Based on actual footage recorded on mobile phones, Use of Force drops you into a crowd witnessing the last moments of Mexican migrant Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, who in 2010 was tasered and beaten to death by US border patrol agents.
You can’t intervene, you can’t influence events, you’re just sent into virtual reality to watch a re-enactment of the man’s death. Like No Russian, kind of (provided you played the level as a “bystander”), only without the cynicism.
It’s the work of Nonny de la Peña, a journalist, and the point isn’t to interact, it’s to experience something like this, something you’d normally only see on TV or in a newspaper, first-hand.
This immersive documentary plans to highlight and create awareness of the dehumanization of migrants on our borders using a revolutionary immersive nonfiction story that employs gaming and virtual reality technologies to tell the narrative. By putting the audience on scene at the harrowing night of Hernandez Rojas death, Use of Force Protocol will provide a deeper understanding of what’s happening on our borders.
You can see a video of Use of Force in action, taken by Motherboard’s Christopher Malmo, below.
Virtual Reality Turns a Horrific Taser Death Into Immersive Journalism [Motherboard]
Comments
5 responses to “VR Project Makes You Watch As A Man Is Beaten To Death”
Did his legs really clip into the ground? Or punches miss him?
No but he did really float on air.
You 2 could be describing every game released by EA in the last decade
Very interesting take on reporting events. I appreciate what appears to be the ability to cycle through onlookers’ perspectives. Utilising the audio captured during the crime is a haunting touch.
It’s disappointing that cultural perception of technical limitations will lead to the kinds of comments seen above; sad to see divertive humour attempt to decrease the gravity of this project.
Read: A human died. Have some damn respect and stop prancing like a troop of fools.
This piece is meant to be about immersion into the scene, how are people meant to be fully immersed into something that resembles a ps2 era game? If the things I mentioned take you out of the situation and you have to imagine those limitations weren’t there then in some aspects it’s failing at what it’s setting out to do.
The real footage incident that is shown on her website if anything is more immersive.