What Is It Like to Be a Tree? The Transformative Potential of Virtual Reality

One of the most impressive feature of virtual reality (VR) is that it offers users the possibility to “embody” another self-appearance (i.e., an avatar) from a first-person perspective, allowing one to experience “what it is like” to be another self. Recently, several scholars have proposed that these experiences could be used to facilitate self-knowledge and self-understanding, foster creative expression, develop new skills, and recognize and learn the value of others. A decade ago, researchers at Stanford University described a phenomenon that they labeled the “Proteus effect.” ¹ They found that users' behavior is changed by the the appearance of the embodied avatar, like the Greek god Proteus who could alter his own form at will. For example, they reported that when participants' avatars had a more attractive face than their real one, they tended to stand closer to virtual representations of other people than when the virtual face was less attractive. After this observation, Bailenson's team and other research groups have carried out several experiments to test the effects of the Proteus effect on several forms of stereotypical behaviors within VR, finding for example that the appearance of the avatar can reduce implicit racial bias and promote social behaviors.

But could the transformative potential of VR also hold when virtually embodying another life forms, such as an animal or a plant? One opportunity to answer this question is “Tree” (https://www.treeofficial.com/), a VR project that transforms you into a rainforest tree. A brainchild of Milica Zec and Winslow Turner Porter III, the experience debuted at Sundance Film Festival 2017 New Frontier and was also presented in other prestigious international outlets, such as the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017 and the World Economic Forum this year. The installation is mixed with a physical experience: before the VR simulation starts, users are invited to take a kapok seed and place it in the soil, symbolizing a user's avatar's creation. To become more realistic, the virtual experience integrates several sensorial stimuli, that is, allowing the user to smell the earth and to feel the vibration of the trunk growing from the ground and the heat of the fire as the tree is eventually burned. The transformative message is very clear: by embodying a virtual tree, the destiny of the plant becomes “your” destiny, and the climate changes ceases to be an “abstract” news on the television screen but actually happens to you. This creates a deeper and more emotionally engaging experience that should help people to become more empathetic with the problem of deforestation. Since this is an artistic project, it is too early to say whether this strategy could be really effective in changing citizens'—and especially decision makers'—behavior. However, this installation provides an interesting example of how storytelling and VR could be combined to generate powerful transformative experiences.