[This story from Wired raises a host of important issues regarding the design and use of intense presence experiences. The original version includes an additional image and a 1:40 minute trailer for The Last Moments. –Matthew]
[Image: A still from The Last Moments. The Dignitas nurse holds out the cup containing the lethal drug. Avril Furness]
I ‘died’ in virtual reality at the assisted suicide clinic Dignitas
The Last Moments experience simulates death in the Swiss clinic
By Rowland Manthorpe
24 March 2017
Last week, I died in virtual reality. To be precise, I killed myself by consenting to an assisted suicide at the Swiss clinic Dignitas. As I lay on the hospital-style bed, a nurse carried in a small plastic glass: water laced with a lethal dose of pentobarbital. “Any last words?” she asked the blonde woman rubbing my leg at the end of the bed.
“Have a safe journey my love,” my virtual partner told me, through tears. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
The room was bare but homely. Behind me, sunlight drifted over green Swiss countryside. In front of me, I could see the glass, a pink straw bent with incongruous cheerfulness over its lip. The nurse held it up. “Are you sure you wish to drink this?” she asked. “You will sleep and you will die?”
Suddenly, on the screen, text flashed up: “Death, is it your right to choose?” It was an ethical question, but it felt like a real choice. I focused my gaze on “Yes.” In that moment, it seemed as if I was opting to die.
The nurse handed me the glass: “Take this and drink it all.” In my ears, I heard the sound of swallowing. My partner leaned forward. “I love you very very much,” she said. Then she began to cry.
Inside the headset, I felt a tear roll down my cheek.
Avril Furness came to recreate an assisted suicide film thanks to Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. A former advertising creative, Furness was interested in becoming a filmmaker. She had written a Black Mirror-esque script about a dystopian future with a “one-in-one-out policy,” where, to have children, couples must convince one of their relatives to kill themselves. To research the subject, she went to an exhibition at Bristol Museum. Here, she found a full-scale model inspired by the room in Dignitas, where, since 1998, 310 Britons had travelled to end their lives.
Sitting on the “Ikea-looking couch”, listening to recorded testimonials from people who had died, Furness was spellbound. “Everything was just so bleak and ordinary,” she says. “I imagined how I’d feel if this was the last space I’d ever see.” Her fictional dystopia seemed thin and false in comparison to this real-life drama. And then a thought came to her: using virtual reality, she could show people what it was like by putting them in the shoes of a person undergoing an assisted suicide.
At first, Dignitas was against the idea. “They said the film was voyeuristic and looking for shock value,” Furness recalls. But eventually, after making revisions to the script, she won them round. She got permission from the Bristol Museum to use its space, then cast two actors and started rehearsing. And so began the work of falsification.
In its own marketing, VR presents itself as an exact replica of reality. Those making it know better: to them, it is, like any art form, a deliberate illusion, which can be broken at any time. By placing the 3D camera on top of a headless mannequin, Furness was able to film from the point of view of the protagonist, giving the viewer the impression of gazing out of his eyes. But some elements of reality were simply too real to be effective.
“We were thinking about creating things like blinks,” Furness says. “What would that look like, would that throw the viewer out, or could we add visual effects. In the end, we decided to keep it simple.” At times, The Last Moments, as the film is called, could be even simpler: at one point the protagonist talks, revealing his identity (and gender) in a way that feels unnecessary. But other touches are ingenious. Throughout the film, you can hear your own breathing – and it is through the sound of breathing that the 3D element of The Last Moments introduces itself.
The experience begins with a short 2D clip explaining the scenario – an echo of the way that, in early cinema, films often began with a still photograph. After about a minute you jump into the scene: and, immediately, the first sound you hear is your breath. At the start, it’s barely noticeable: you are immediately engaged by your partner, talking about the bitter taste of the poison, joking, bravely, about the Swiss chocolate you’ll get afterwards to wash away the taste. But on repeated viewings the effectiveness of this simple trick becomes clear. It is a gentle, insistent reminder that you are labouring in a body that no longer wants to survive.
The comparison with a traditional documentary is revealing. In the BBC 2 film How To Die: Simon’s Choice, the filmmaker Rowan Deacon followed motor neurone disease patient Simon Binner as he travelled to take his own life at the Eternal Spirit centre in Basel, Switzerland. The film lasted an hour and a half and, inevitably, much of that time was spent getting to know Binner and his family. This is how documentary-making works: you spend time with your subject, building an emotional connection, before finally leading the viewer to a point they weren’t expecting.
The Last Moments shortcuts that process, putting the viewer inside the protagonist’s head. Who is this man? How did he get there? These questions are never answered, and, at least on first viewing, it never occurs to ask. We see through his eyes, so we accept the situation as given. Identification takes place without the need for backstory. Such is its immediacy, the characters are never even given names.
Despite the initial objections, Digitas was so pleased with The Last Moments that it asked Furness if it could use the film as marketing. She turned it down. “I didn’t want to sell the moment,” she says. “I wanted to tell a story that might become a truth.”
The Last Moments is a very good story – although not of a kind any storyteller would recognise. There is, for example, very little in the way of characterisation. It was, in the manner of its telling, more like immersive theatre (Furness even used set designers from the immersive theatre company Punchdrunk.) In this regard, it feels like a step towards the kind of theatrical production VR needs to succeed artistically.
Does that mean The Last Moments is a truth? It felt like one, but sensation is a misleading guide in matters of truth and falsehood. And while the film never seemed manipulative, it was disconcerting how directly and quickly its effects took hold. Could any subject be presented in this way? Without context, aren’t viewers subject to unacceptable levels of influence? Furness, too, worries about this – and for that reason, the film isn’t available online.
“It is finishing on the festival circuit but I’m a little dubious about making the film available online without the necessary context and framework,” she explains. “It’s important to introduce context upfront, allow the viewer to experience the film, and then provide an ‘after-care’ environment for people to decompress and potentially hold debates around what they’ve just witnessed.” If she does release the film, she’d like to make a special app to present it appropriately. “You have the audience in the palm of your hand as a VR filmmaker, which is a great responsibility and not to be taken lightly!”
More than four years after the arrival of the first mass-market headset, VR is still working out what, precisely, it is for. The Last Moments provides one answer – but its success raises deep and difficult questions about ethics. Let’s hope everyone understands them as well as Furness.
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