Who would have thought that people could view an animal’s experience from their eyes in their habitat through VR digital technologies? With growing climate crisis
threatening animals and mammals alike, Janmejay Singh, a young VR champion has used it for educating people on the hazards of plastics in the habitats of whales.

Having worked for a decade as a visual storyteller and a campaigner for social and climate justice, I found myself at a point of transition, where the old
systems of communications were transforming through social networks, ubiquitous digitaltechnologies were blossoming and the voice of citizens taking a much
biggerstage in an increasingly connected world. And in a world increasinglythreatened by climate change and environmental degradation.
What does the future of storytellinglook like? In the middle of my filmmaking adventures, I stumbled across an experience in a virtual reality(VR) headset
that, quite literally,opened my eyes to the possibilities. Fittingly, it was an adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, created by Mika Johnson, my tutor and
mentor, and was a project that brought the surreal world of his character Gregor Samsa from the story to life. Virtual Reality, like many technologies, has
its roots in the military and was used for simulations such as the Link Trainer, a head mounted device with two screens and a control system that simulates
airplane controls, used in World War II to train pilots quicker. However, it rapidly grew and while there were smaller scale models used for entertainment,
as a technology it blossomed in the 2000s, with award- winning work using it to bring people to an understanding of the horrors of war, poverty and violence.

In 2023, the technology had progressed to the point that we could use it in new and exciting ways, and that translated to Whale Fall — an interactive Virtual
Reality experience that takes the participants to the depths of the ocean, where they can see a whale, trapped in a discarded fishing net, surrounded by plastic,
fall to the ocean surface, and then the participant can move around the whale and clear the trash to allow the whale to decompose and the ecosystem to bloom.
.https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=aUhCKM6XZnA

The Whale Fall project was developed by Riya Mahajan, Armelle Mihailescu, Selin Öztürk and me, four students of
the Royal College of Art in London. We were lucky to have the Whale and Dolphin Conservation join us as a partner for help with the research, and to get support
from Ocean Alliance which shared with us their entire library of whale songs going back to the 1970s and done by the legendary Roger Payne.

Since we developed the project, it has been showcased to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, seen through a Virtual Reality headset that makes
VR work. How is it different from watching something on a screen? It comes from a few unique strengths – the power of digital embodiment, and place and plausibility
illusion.

Quite simply, VR can teleport the audience, letting them really think and feel like they are in a new place. This makes VR over 70% higher in retention
and up to 40% higher in emotional impact, which is crucial for engaging people worldwide in an immediate realization of the effects of ocean pollution, beyond
merely telling the story.

We witnessed the effectiveness for ourselves when some of our audiences got back to us and told us they had stopped using plastic straws because they were
affected by seeing the plastic floating deep in the ocean “with their own eyes.”
Our journey continues now, and we are in the process of expanding our idea into the “Deep Dive XR” initiative, which harnesses the power of eXtended Reality
technologies (VR, AR, Mixed Reality, Immersive Films) for climate education.

This allows the audience to be able to fly as a bird, burrow in the ground, witness the world through the eyes of an ant (or an elephant), all within the
dimensions of the headset. XR opens up a universe of possibilities, and our initiative has been recognised for its potential through the Terra Carta Design
Lab, led by King Charles and Sir Jony Ive (of iPhone design fame), with the Sustainable Markets Initiative.

Through this initiative we seek to reach across the world, and bring the power of XR to secondary and higher education globally. The goal is to bring
scientific thought with intuitive creativity to make learning seamless and powerful. DeepDive XR can be seen at the Terra Carta Design Lab.

The technology is an interesting challenge as we move ahead. With its widespread adoption, the key here is to determine who creates in this space,
what they promote, what the safeguards are, and how it can be used wisely. We are just discovering the incredible and vast new world of eXtended Reality,
with the hope and intent of shaping the future into a brighter version of what it is today. And connecting us in an immediate way to the environment around
us, and its endangerment, which we can no longer afford to ignore.