“The meeting” is the concept idea that started this project in 2018, and was based on the technical VR affordances at that time. The idea was to make the plight of Children Born of War (CBOW) personal to the participant by utilizing the immersion available through the VR medium. 

It is hard to discuss the challenging context leading to the objectification of CBOW. One reason is the strong emotions that are typically connected with the topics pertaining to conflict and enemies. Discussions quickly turn to the guilt of the parents and the hate towards the enemy rather than the situation for the child. The topic of war and conflict overshadows the individual fates of these children.

Another challenge is the child’s lack of language and understanding. These children are typically very young during the aftermath of the occupation, when a traumatized population works to process their trauma. They are at an age where they are unable to articulate what they are experiencing. In addition, the CBOW will often be traumatized and thus even less able to verbalize their experiences or feelings.

These children have few forms of communication available to them. Their most important communication happens through their body language — something that the VR medium should be able to communicate. Capturing the body language of a CBOW volumetrically could be a way to communicate in a non-verbal way how these children feel. The idea was supported by Prof. Dr. Ingvill Ødegaard, who told me that CBOW researchers in Rwanda were able to pick out the CBOW in a group of children just by studying their body language. 

Another way of presenting the situation of the CBOW child, attempting to give it a voice, is to include an adult CBOW in the VR experience who can explain what it entails to be seen as a symbol of the enemy. The Norwegian Lebensborn children are now in their late seventies and have a profound understanding of the situation for CBOW both after World War II and in current conflict zones. A potential CBOW for the basis of the adult character in the VR experience was Jorunn Skoglund (drawing).

Lastly, the mother of the child will need to be present in the VR experience because the CBOW will be under age. This creates a new complexity, as mothers of CBOW often have complicated relationships to their child. Some see the children as the living proof of shameful contact with the enemy and as the reason that the mothers are denied acceptance in their communities. The existence of the child reduces their chances for a safe, loving marriage and stable employment. According to Prof. Dr. Ødegaard, this is true of mothers of CBOW children no matter whether the child was conceived through voluntary contact with the enemy or through rape (Mochmann 2017). 

The experience is centred around a conversation between an adult CBOW and amother. The adult CBOW has two roles, both explaining the situation of the young child to the mother and also as a kind of grandmother figure who can to understand and empathize with the mother’s difficult situation. 

This triangle structure of grandmother/child/mother is intended to create a safe setting for a fruitful conversation between the adults that would inform the participant about the complexities connected to the situation of  CBOWs and their mothers. The child will be present in the scene and the participant can observe its body language. This is to give the participant the opportunity to feel as though they are meeting the child.

Two other important characters need to be presented when discussing CBOW. The local community plays a central role because of its dehumanization and ostracization of the child. This community is presented as a collection of large, grey shadows encircling the conversation, giving a whispering backdrop to the scene. If the participant moves towards the community, they hears snippets of comments about the child and mother and stories about events that had happened as described from the locals’ points of view.

The father is also an important character. He is the missing father figure in the child's life. Norwegian CBOW Tove-Laila Strand told me how she longed for her father to come and rescue her from her mother and step-father. She was the result of a consentual relationship, but grew up without the protective, biological father figure that other children had. However, a CBOW conceived by rape might also long for the protection of a biological father.

The fathers are also part of the enemy force that has occupied and oppressed the local community. The locals are victims of war and understandably need to heal from the wounds inflicted on them by the occupation. This aspect needs to be included, but in a way that won't overshadow the main topic of the experience — the situation for the child. Thus, the father, the enemy and the conflict would not be included in the scene or presented visually, but the information will instead be placed in a cut-scene, interrupting the conversation of the women. The cut-scene uses lighting, voiceover and a dynamic sound design to create a scene with shadows and silhouettes which present both the light and dark aspects of the father figure. 

Feeling present. The idea of the look — of eyes — is central to this concept. An aim of the experience is to be able to create eye contact between the participant and the child — to let the child look the participant directly in the eye, challenging the participant to care and become personally involved. At the time of the development process, the possibility of creating eye contact in VR by tracking the position of the headset or the participant’s eyes was emerging.

It was deemed feasible to let the eyes of the child follow the participant for a short while, although it would require animation of the child character and be challenging to achieve. However, the surprising effect of the child suddenly looking straight at the participant before slowly looking away is important in order to make the participant more personally involved in the experience. This contact signals to the participant that their presence is important to the child.

Another way of making the participant feel more present in the experience is to make the audio-visual environment respond directly to signals from the participant’s body. The experience will measure the participant’s pulse and include its varying rhythm as a discrete part of the sound design. A finger monitor that can recognize sweat and stress is included so that the participant’s reactions can be visualized through variations in lighting and sound design. (This functionality would, however, limit the distribution of the experience to venues like festivals or exhibitions due to the added complexity of the sensors.)

The participant can glides slowly around the scene using the joystick control. The movement is limited to circling the women and child, or to approaching the dark silhouettes surrounding the space to listen to their whispers.

The participant does not have a visual representation in the experience. An avatar body would probably be distracting and not add anything to the topic, and might even hinder a sense of presence if the participant didn’t identify with their appearance.

Artistic style. “The meeting” is a VR experience in greys and muted colours. The mood is sombre, but not oppressive. The scene is  relatively bare — a light grey floor and simple steel chairs with wooden seats and backs. 

The clothing of the three persons in the conversation is neutral, but clearly individualistic and signalling their cultural belonging and identity. The mood is intimate, comfortable. The setting gives the impression of giving a trustworthy presentation of the characters.

The two women are initially seen from the side, facing each other. The child plays on the floor in front of them, closer to the participant but still in close proximity to its mother. The child plays with what appears to be its favourite toy — the only other item in what is otherwise a quite sterile environment. The toy serves as a reminder of the playful surroundings that should ideally be a child’s natural environment.

The representation of the women and child is slightly pixelated and the video appears a bit glitchy — clearly showing that the conversation has been captured by photogrammetry. It is, however, clear that this is the capture of real conversation and real people. 

The setting of the conversation is a circular floor surface with a diameter of approximately 20 meters. The participant stands about six meters from the child and women when the experience starts. The scene is well lit, but there is no ceiling. The grey fades into black approximately ten meters above the participant’s head.

The edge of this circle is not a wall, but filled with a row of two-dimensional, dark grey figures that have a symbolic likeness to humans. In appearance they are somewhat like pawns in chess, although they are hovering, spectral, ghost-like figures. 

These figures are all identical. They are passive, inert. They feel like a constant presence that can only be accepted. The figures are about three meters tall and seem to merge with the floor and have an inevitability about them.

The cut-scene presenting the perspective of the father is like being in the midst of a thunderstorm — dark with flashing lights as the idea of the enemy is presented — and then a cooler grey fog descends when the voiceover explains about the different father figures of CBOW. This ‘cloud‘ is presented in the space otherwise occupied by the women and child, with the shadows of the community still in place. 

The last scene is an epilogue — only the grey floor and the dark sky is left, and more generalized information about CBOW is presented as text and voice-over to complete the presentation of the topic and the othering and symbolic violence that lies at the root of the CBOW’s difficult situation.