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Virtual reality started for me
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:
I was seven years old.

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And the tool that I used 
to access virtual reality

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was the Evel Knievel stunt cycle.

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This is a commercial for 
that particular item:

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(Video) Voice-over: What a jump!

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Evel's riding the amazing stunt cycle.

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That gyro-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; we 
jumped the Snake River Canyon together.

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I wanted the rocket.

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I never got the rocket,
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, 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. (Laughter)

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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: "Touch the Sky" by Kanye West)

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CM: 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,
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
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,

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Evel Knievel did not feel the same 
empathy for us 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, the man 
that I worshipped 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 experimenting,

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and what I was trying to do was
to build the ultimate empathy machine.

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And here's one of the early experiments:

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(Music)

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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 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,
he 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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(Music)

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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,
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 --
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,
I don't want you in the window,

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I want you through the window,
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,


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talking about virtual reality
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.
Why is it difficult to explain?

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It's difficult 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,
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 a 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
in 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,
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 she 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) Sidra: 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, Inkhil City.

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I have lived here in the Zaatari camp
in Jordan 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 and he says I did not.

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I think I was a stronger baby
than my brother.

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CM: 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,
you're sitting there with her.

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

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be sitting 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
that 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 of the films.

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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

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virtual reality has the potential
to actually change the world.

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So, it's a machine,

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but through this machine
we become more compassionate,

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we become more empathetic,
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)