I kept thinking about the situation of the CBOW as being rooted in an adult’s gaze – the way in which an adult could look at this child and see an enemy instead of a child. The idea of eye contact became my starting point. This was partly inspired by how I could force the player to only look at the child in the mobile game, but also by the idea that the way to remove the stigma surrounding the CBOW would be to enable people to see the child and recognise it as a person instead of reducing the child to a personification of its father’s genes. I wanted a way to create physical presence – that we would feel the child. 

I also liked the idea of the gaze, as the core of my question concerns our way of looking – how we judge and objectify. The children’s body language is also important. These children are often traumatised and do not understand why they are being abused. They are not able to explain their predicament in words, and this also means that body language is their main way of communicating their situation. I hoped to capture this in VR.

I found it important to include a young child in the VR experience to communicate how current the issue still is. It was also important to allow the main protagonist – the CBOW – to be present and involved in communicating their story. I wanted to facilitate a meeting between a CBOW and the participant, instead of just telling a story about them. 

I planned to use volumetric capture to attempt to faithfully recreate the child’s gaze and body language, and ideally to provide eye contact with the child. This would be a very emotionally charged interaction. It would also present the child with dignity, introducing the child as a fellow human being, meeting the player’s gaze, face to face.

Although the young children would not be able to explain their situation, I still wanted the children to have a voice. One way of doing this was to introduce an older CBOW from an earlier conflict. This gave me the idea to introduce one of the Norwegian Lebensborn women to function as a spokesperson for the child. These women could also represent a kind of grandmother figure in the VR experience. This tableau with three generations of women became the centre of the VR experience.

The local community was introduced as a circle of shadows encircling the group of women and the story of the father as a cut scene. The participant would be able to watch the conversation, meet the gaze of the child and move to listen to the voices of the community.

Study the description of Concept 1 “The Meeting” under the cloche on the kitchen table.