There’s a thin mattress on a concrete platform bed, a stainless steel washbasin and toilet, a metal door with a slot for food, and four walls rather too close for comfort.
At least, that’s what you can see in a compelling new virtual reality journey built by the Guardian, which replicates the experience of solitary confinement in disturbing detail, complete with unsettling peripheral images, cracks in the walls and the hollow cries of fellow prisoners.
6x9: a virtual experience of solitary confinement aims to highlight the psychological toll on those subjected to such harsh incarceration for between 22 and 24 hours a day. It offers a visceral, interactive experience through a Guardian app on your smartphone and VR goggles or Google Cardboard headset.
Your time in your cell will last nine minutes – not nine days, nine months, or even the nine years and longer experienced by some of those in real life solitary. “Welcome to your cell. You’re going to be here for 23 hours a day,” a voice directs as you move your head to gaze around, taking in the sparse furnishings. You hear the voices of seven people who have spent time in solitary confinement. Working with Solitary Watch, the Guardian interviewed each at length about their experiences.
The purpose of 6x9 is to demonstrate, using immersive journalism, how being in long-term solitary can affect the mind of prisoners held in segregation around the world, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 of them in the United States alone.
This method of storytelling is a highly effective way of highlighting the sensory deprivation that solitary confinement entails.
The cell and its meagre contents were designed in Unity, a game engine, using CGI, or computer-generated imagery, that draws on the stark testimonies of seven former inmates of solitary in California and New York, leading psychologists in the field and footage from real segregation units. You will experience what the prisoners have described experiencing. You will hear their real voices.
VR is fast becoming a popular means of storytelling, already widespread in gaming but on the cusp of breaking through into news media. A report by the Tow Centre of Digital Journalism in 2015 stated: “After decades of research and development, virtual reality appears to be on the cusp of mainstream adoption.”
VR has “exploded over the last year or two”, according to Clint Beharry, of the New York-based Harmony Institute, which researches the science of media. “I guess everyone is saying this is the big year because of the releases of the platforms – [Samsung] Gear VR came out end of last year. This year Oculus [Rift] just came out, HTC Vive is coming soon and [Sony’s] PlayStation VR later this year.”
The New York Times has launched several VR films, including The Displaced, set in a Syrian refugee camp. The American public broadcaster PBS has done likewise, with films including Ebola Outbreak. When the UN launched the VR film Clouds Over Sidra, following a 12-year-old Syrian refugee girl, street donations reportedly doubled.
Nonny de la Peña , a VR pioneer known as “the godmother of immersive journalism”, said: “It is the real, extraordinary sense of being present on scene that creates a visceral connection that is really unique to this medium.” As CEO of the digital reality company Emblematic Group, she believes the power of immersive journalism lies in the way people “really, really deeply engage in the material” compared with how they react to straight text or video.
Sarah Wolozin, director of the Open Documentary Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said VR was “bringing a different kind of knowledge and understanding of the story, because the idea is it transports you somewhere … It is using all of your senses to help you understand the story.”
As technology further develops, it will become more mainstream, she believes. “Right now there is a lot of money being poured into the hardware and there is a big search for content and journalists are exploring it a lot.”
Of the Guardian’s 6x9, she added: “When you ask the question what stories should be told with certain technology, this is definitely one.”
In 6x9, the audio comprises genuine prison sounds from footage shot by PBS for its Frontline documentary Solitary Nation. Haunting screams of fellow prisoners who cannot be seen swell in the ears, along with moaning, shouting, banging, clanging.
After a while, cracks on the grubby white brick walls begin to morph into crazy, crawling patterns. A corner’s-eye glimpse of a ghostly hallucination and the suggestion of an out-of-body experience, with the viewer floating above the cell, mimic some of the well-documented symptoms of prolonged solitary. Graffiti pop up and fade on the walls, spelling out the words hallucination, anxiety, paranoia, self-harm and loss of identity.
6x9 allows users to interact. Gaze at the toilet, and the voice of a former female prisoner will urge: “Every day … take a bath, it’s called a bird bath.” Linger on a book: a thick one is like “hitting the lotto” in solitary, a voice informs. Focusing on a letter awakens the voice of another former inmate, reading aloud from something he had written to his girlfriend. “Dear Shiann … Shiann, I need help … I know my name and what I look like I just don’t know who I am on the inside.”
The full VR experience is available on the Guardian VR app and the Samsung Gear headset or the cheaper Google Cardboard goggles into which you slot a smartphone. The piece can also be viewed through the app by moving the phone around to move the image, often called “magic window”. The 360-degree view of the film can be viewed on a computer or phone.
It can also be experienced at a number of public installations in the US and Europe in coming weeks:
- Collisions, New Orleans, from 26 to 28 April.
- Magnum Foundation, Photography Expanded immersive media lab, New York, from 29 to 30 April.
- Republica, Berlin, from 2 to 4 May.
- Media Convention Berlin, Berlin, from 2 to 4 May.
- The Guardian, London, from 14 to 31 May.
- Sheffield DocFest, Sheffield, from 10 to 15 June.
- Human Rights Watch film festival, New York, from 10 to 19 June.
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