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Virtual reality started for me

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in sort of an unusual place.

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It was the 1970s,

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I got into the field very young,

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I was 7-years-old.

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And the tool that I used 
to access virtual reality

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was an Evel Knievel stunt cycle.

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This is a commercial for 
that particular item:

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Commercial: "What a jump!

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Evel's riding the amazing stunt cycle.

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That jiro-power sends him 
over 100 feet at top speed."

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Chris Milk: So this was my joy back then.

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I rode this motorcycle everywhere,

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and I was there with Evel Knievel:

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we jumped the Snake River Canyon together.

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I wanted the rocket,

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I never got the rocket.

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I only got the motorcycle.

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I felt so connected to this world,

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I didn't want to be 
a storyteller when I grew up,

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I wanted to be stuntman.

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I was there, Evel Knievel was my friend,

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I had so much empathy for him.

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But, it didn't work out.

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I went to art school.

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I started making music videos.

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And this is one of the early
music videos that I made:

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Music: "Before the day you die,
you gon' touch the sky."

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Chris Milk: You may notice 
some slight similarities here.

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(Laughter)

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And I got that rocket.

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(Laughter)

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So, now I'm a filmmaker,

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or, the beginning of a filmmaker,

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and I started using the tools that are
available to me as a filmmaker

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to try to tell the most compelling stories


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that I can to an audience.

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And film is this incredible medium
that allows us to feel empathy

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for people that are very different than us

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and worlds completely foreign 
from our own.

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Unfortunately, Evel Knievel didn't feel
the same empathy for us

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that we felt for him,

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and he sued us for this video

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(Laughter)

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shortly thereafter.

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On the upside,

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the man that I worshiped as a child,

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the man that I wanted 
to become as an adult,

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I was finally able to get his autograph.

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(Applause)

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Let's talk about film now.

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Film, it's an incredible medium,

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but essentially, it's the same
now as it was then.

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It's a group of rectangles that are
played in a sequence.

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And we've done incredible things
with those rectangles.

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But, I started thinking about

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is there a way that I can use modern
and developing technologies

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to tell stories in different ways

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and tell different kinds of stories

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that maybe I couldn't tell using
the traditional tools of filmmaking

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that we've been using for 100 years.

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So, I started experiementing

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and what I was trying to do was

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to build the ultimate empathy machine.

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And here's one of the early experiments:

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Chris Milk: So this is called
"The Wilderness Downtown",

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it was a collaboration with Arcade Fire.

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It asked you to put in the address
where you grew up at the beginning of it.

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It's a website.

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And out of it starts growing 
these little boxes

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with different browser windows.

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And you see this teenager 
running down a street,

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and then you see Google Street View
and Google Maps imagery

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and you realize the street
he's running down is yours.

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And when he stops in front of a house,

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he's stops in front of your house.

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And this was great, and I saw people 
having an even deeper emotional reaction

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to this than the things that 
I had made in rectangles.

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And I'm essentially taking 
a piece of your history

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and putting it inside 
the framing of the story.

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But then I started thinking,

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"Okay, well that's a part of you.

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But, how do I put all of you
inside of the frame?"

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So to do that, I started
making art installations.

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And this is one called 
"The Treachery of Sanctuary."

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It's a triptych, I'm going to show
you the third panel.

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So now I've got you inside of the frame,

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and I saw people having even more
visceral emotional reactions

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to this work than the previous one.

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But then I started thinking about frames,

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and what do they represent.

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And a frame is just a window.

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I mean, all the media that we watch


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-- television, cinema --

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they're these windows into 
these other worlds.

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And I thought, "Well, great. 
I got you in a frame.

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But I don't want you in the frame,

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I don't want you in a window,

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I want you through the window,

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I want you on the other side,

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in the world, inhabiting the world."

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So that leads me back to virtual reality.

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Let's talk about virtual reality.

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Unfortunately, "Talking about 
virtual reality

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is like dancing about architecture."

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And this is actually someone dancing
about architecture in virtual reality.

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(Laughter)

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So, it's difficult to explain.

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Why is difficult to explain?

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It's because it's a very 
experiential medium.

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You feel your way inside of it.

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It's a machine, but inside of it,

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it feels like real-life,

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it feels like truth.

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And you feel present in the world
that you're inside

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and you feel present with the people
that you're inside of it with.


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So, I'm going to show you a demo
of virtual reality film:

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a full-screeen version of
all the information

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that we capture when
we shoot virtual reality.

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So we're shooting in every direction.

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This is a camera system that we built

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that has 3D cameras that look
at every direction

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and binaural microphones
that face in very direction.

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We take this and we build, basically,


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a sphere of a world that you inhabit.

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So what I'm going to show you
is not a view into the world,

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it's basically the whole world
stretched into a rectangle.

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So this film is called 
"Clouds over Sidra."

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And it was made in conjunction with 
our virtual reality company called VRSE.

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and the United Nations,

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and a co-collaborator named Gabo Arora.

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And we went to a Syrian refugee camp
in Jordan in December

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and shot the story of a 12-year-old
girl there named Sidra.

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And her and her family fled Syria
through the desert into Jordan

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and she's been living in this
camp for the last year and a half.

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Video: "My name is Sidra,


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I am 12-years-old.

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I am in the fifth grade.

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I am from Syria in the Daraa province
in (?).

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I have lived here in 
the Zaatari camp in Jordan

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for the last year and a half.

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I have a big family:

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three brothers, one is a baby.

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He cries a lot.

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I asked my father if 
I cried when I was a baby,

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and he says I did not.

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I think I was a stronger baby
than my brother."

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Chris Milk: So, when you're inside
of the headset.

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you're not seeing it like this.

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You're looking around through this world.

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You'll notice you see full
360 degrees in all directions.

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And when you're sitting there
in her room, watching her,

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you're not watching it through
a television screen,

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you're not watching it through a window,

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you're sitting there with her.

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When you look down, you're sitting
on the same ground

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that she's sitting on.

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And because of that,

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you feel her humanity in a deeper way.

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You empathize with her in a deeper way.

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And I think that we can change
minds with this machine.

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And we've already started
to try to change a few.

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So we took this film to the
World Economic Forum

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in Davos in January.

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And we showed it to a group of people

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whose decisions affect the lives
of millions of people.

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And these are people who might
not otherwise be sitting

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in a tent in a refugee camp in Jordan.

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But, in January, one afternoon
in Switzerland,

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they suddenly all found themselves there.

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(Applause)

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And they were affected by it.

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So we're going to make more of them.

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We're working with the 
United Nations right now.

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to shoot a whole series of these films.

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We just finished shooting
a story in Liberia.

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And now, we're going to shoot
a story in India.

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And we're taking these films,

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and we're showing them 
at the United Nations

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to people that work there and people
who are visiting there.

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And we're showing 
them to the people

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that can actually change the lives
of the people inside the film.

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And that's where I think we just
start to scratch the surface

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of the true power of virtual reality.

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It's not a video game peripheral.

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It connects humans
to other humans in a profound way

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that I've never seen before 
in any other form of media.

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And it can change people's
perception of each other.

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And that's how I think 
virtual reality has the potential

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to actually change the world.

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So, it's a machine.

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But through this machine,

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we become more compassionate,

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we become more empathetic,

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and we become more connected.

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And ultimately, we become more human.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)