[This is the second of two related stories being posted today about the use of presence by people whose lives have been upended by tragedy and who are seeking action from leaders and legislators. The story is from The Times of Israel, where the original includes a second image and two videos. –Matthew]
[Image: A screenshot from a virtual reality scene called ‘Shlomi’s Glasses,’ created by the family of hostage Shlomi Ziv to portray the experience of hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023]
Hoping to jar world leaders, hostage’s cousin rebuilds captivity in virtual reality
‘Shlomi’s Glasses,’ a six-minute experience created by family of Supernova security guard Shlomi Ziv, is meant to add emotional heft to campaign for hostages’ release
By Jessica Steinberg
February 15, 2024
It’s been more than four months since security guard Shlomi Ziv was taken hostage from the Supernova desert rave by Hamas terrorists, who also murdered his wife’s cousin, Aviv Eliyahu, the party’s security director, along with another friend and security guard, Jake (Kobi) Marlow.
Little is known about Ziv’s last moments before he was abducted, only that he told partygoers to relax and stay calm.
Now he is one of the 117 male hostages still held in Gaza. Unlike the captive women, children and elderly, “it’s harder to identify with a 40-year-old man,” said Ziv’s cousin, Liat Ariel. “The stories of these men aren’t being told.”
To help people identify with his plight, Ariel is telling Ziv’s story with “Shlomi’s Glasses,” an original virtual reality experience that lets viewers experience six minutes of captivity.
Ariel, working with VR company Avris Technologies, created scenes of the Supernova, using video footage from partygoers’ phones and GoPros and then building scenes with actors, to show what it felt like to be at the party and then suddenly be kidnapped and taken into Gaza.
“We wanted to try and create the cognitive dissonance of something fun like a party and the opposite scene of a hostage,” said Ariel. “We wanted to tell the entire story that happened there, which can be reimagined for other places in the world, like Burning Man in the US.”
At the family home in Nahariya, Ziv is depended on to help care for his sick father. Ziv and his wife live in Elkosh, a nearby moshav.
“His family won’t function without him,” Ariel said.
A doctoral candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the philosophy of education, Ariel researches fake news and disinformation and how it affects democracy, including how human emotions play into the absorption of news.
“People do not listen to facts, they listen to their inner gut feelings, to what we call ‘truthiness,’” said Ariel.
Her research led Ariel first to suggest to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum that they create a virtual reality experience about the plight of the abducted.
It took two months to create the first version of the virtual reality experience, but when Ariel first brought it to the Knesset to show to politicians, she found that the experience wasn’t strong enough.
“People like [war cabinet member Benny] Gantz watched it, quietly, seriously, but they weren’t struck by it,” she said. “We needed another version, with tunnels and recordings of what it’s like in there.”
The VR experience is meant to reach world leaders and international humanitarian organizations such as the United Nations and the Red Cross.
The first set of videos was created with funding from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, and the Ziv family is currently crowdfunding additional money in order to film and create a stronger set of scenes.
“We want to harness their emotions and have them experience it,” she said. “That’s stronger than reading or hearing about the hostages. It literally affects the body.”