Hi, everybody.
My name is Danielle Olson, and
I'm a fourth year PhD candidate
at the MIT Computer Science
and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory.
I also work as a research
assistant for the MIT Center
for Advanced Virtuality,
directed by professor Fox
Harrell.
Today it's my pleasure to be
joined by Karim Ben Khalifa,
for MIT CAST 3 Questions series.
All right, so I would
love for you to just give
an introduction to the
audience of who you are
and where your
work has taken you.
So I am in Berlin.
My name is Karim Ben Khalifa.
This is my base here.
And I've been a war
correspondent for about 15,
18 years, depending on how
you see that at the end.
And I've done a project
called The Enemy, which
started developing when I
was at Open Doc Lab at MIT,
and then worked with
Professor Fox Harrell and CAST
to develop that further.
That became a full-blown
experience after.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- You're too close to
really [INAUDIBLE]..
- The Enemy was born
out of my frustration.
As a photojournalist
and war correspondent
for almost 20 years, I
have photographed conflicts
and witnessed the consequences
of huge geopolitical shifts.
When I became a
father, I simply knew
I could not keep working
on the front lines.
Yet I was not done trying
to understand wars.
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
- My friends in Israel, when
they know I'm heading for Gaza,
couldn't help themselves but to
wish me luck and to stay safe.
They believe a lot of people
in Gaza are irrational.
Also, when I spend
weeks working in Gaza,
and I'm about to
return to Israel,
my Palestinian
friends are telling me
the exact same thing--
be careful there.
The project is rooted
in my experience
as a war photographer, going
from one side of the front line
to the other and finding that
the fighters' dreams, hopes,
and nightmares are
often more similar
than they are different.
So there is a bigger
story than the war itself.
And this is the one I
want to explore and share.
For The Enemy, I am using
the latest technologies
and virtual augmented realities
so you can engage directly
with the combatants and meet
them, hear them, and feel them
the way I did.
In many parts of our world,
you create an enemy as a kid
without having met your enemy,
because the society around you
has created an
enemy in the other.
So the question is, could it be
you if I was on the other side?
[END PLAYBACK]
So I guess to start
the conversation,
I would love to just ask
you what brought you to MIT,
and how did your
experience collaborating
with professor Fox Harrell
and the MIT community
impact your work?
Well, I was invited at MIT
by William Uricchio and Sarah
Wolozin at the Open
Doc Lab, so this
that was my first introduction.
And then from there,
everything took kind of sense,
even though now, looking
back, I could see
how transformative it's been.
I think the first thing and
the most important thing
for me has been the ability to
break all the walls that I had
constructed around
my work and how
I was looking at storytelling.
And then being in an environment
where everything is challenged,
whatever is the status
quo is challenged,
have me challenge my own
journalism, and then with this,
using new technologies.
But most importantly-- new
technologies are there,
and they keep evolving,
but what was I
guess the richest part of
all was my collaboration
with Professor Fox Harrell.
And in that sense,
as a journalist
and him as a scientist, we
have different sets of ethics.
And it was so interesting
to share those and see
how science works and
how a journalist works
and what we can do, on one
side, and what we can't, and
in finding a bridge in between
in order to do something
that had not been done so far.
And this had profoundly
changed the work, my ability
to really push the boundaries
further and then learn
a great deal on the process.
It's been about, I
think, six or seven years
since we first met through
Fox's Advanced Identity
Representation course.
And I remember just being struck
by the lineage of the Enemy
project, from it being sort
of a photo exhibit, all
the way to becoming a virtual
reality exhibition and an AR
app.
Could you share a
little bit about--
you said something along
the lines of stories
or how you make sense of
the world and experiences
or how are how we remember them.
Could you share how
these different media
forms have influence, how
you tell the story over time?
It influences in a lot of ways.
When you're a photojournalist
and you do a photo story,
you already have a
distribution in place.
You work for magazines,
the magazines
have their own distribution.
There's a lot you don't
need to think about.
And as a war
correspondent, you really
try to concentrate on
the story you're doing,
knowing you have the
magazines behind you.
But as you evolve and as you
start thinking differently
about your own
work, it is always
important to use the best
medium for the best audience.
And so in that sense,
where I was medium-based
for a long time, I am not
a medium-based anymore,
and I think the big
transformation is there.
The way I'm thinking
is, what is the issue
that I want to cover that I
think needs to be put in light?
And then once I've
got an issue, I
wonder who should
listen to that issue
in order to have an impact.
Who are the best audiences that
should be confronted to this?
And sometimes it might
be the local people,
and sometimes there
might be stakeholders.
And those are
different strategies,
in order to get to one
place or the other one.
And so I think in that sense,
thinking, what is my project,
who's my audience,
and then finally,
what is the best medium
to reach that audience?
So if you do--
it completely transformed my way
of thinking about my own work,
in that sense that my
audience comes first.
I'm audience-centered now.
And then the medium comes only
after finding what is the best
medium for that audience.
That's a great segue to
my next question for you
in talking about the audience
and how they receive your work.
So my next question
is, can you tell us
a little bit about the impact
of The Enemy Virtual Reality
Exhibition and the
augmented reality app?
And more specifically,
maybe you could
share some of the feedback
you've received from those
who have experienced The Enemy.
Yeah.
I mean, you talked about
the experience before.
I wasn't aware I was
doing an experience.
VR was creating the experience.
I wasn't creating
the experience,
I was just filling
up the blocks inside,
and the medium in itself
is way more experiential.
So in that sense, it is
always very important
to focus on what is
that you want to say
and how you want
to put it through.
And having different
experiences in different places
with different audiences
is always really--
so when it comes to the
impact, as a journalist,
I've never been asked
if I have an impact.
As a human being, I've
wanted to have one.
And so this is a marker
that I've put out there
in trying to do it, because
it's becoming experiential,
because the work has become,
through VR and through walking
the 300-meter square
and meeting the people
and having the choice to
work in different places.
And it's not a VR with a
joystick in that sense.
It's really you
physically moving.
I think this is what
creates the experience.
And the experience is what
eventually creates the impact.
I mean, the feedbacks I had from
my audience were always more,
this is an experience.
They remember it, and they
spoke about it as an experience,
as a meeting they
had with fighters,
while they didn't really
have those meetings.
But everything that was in
place here within the work
was simulating that meeting.
And I think it creates--
when you have your own choice,
when you can navigate to left,
right, listen to the people,
they look at you directly
in the eye, it creates a
different level of experience,
and then, therefore, a
different kind of impact.
And impact is different
things for different people.
I think when you cover wars
and enemies the way I do,
the ultimate impact would
be to stop that war.
But that's a bit too ambitious.
I would call my
work being much more
of a journalistic intervention.
Journalism is something that
needs to bring you information
that you didn't have, in order
to make a better decision.
I call it an intervention,
because people go 50 minutes
into this VR experience,
and within the 50 minutes,
they've almost forgotten
they are in VR.
So once they reach back
life as they knew it before,
they've been charged with this.
They've been charged
with the experience.
And I think it does change
a sense of the perspective.
It's a seed that you put.
But it's hard to tell
if that seed's going
to bring the largest and highest
oak you've seen in your life,
or if it just stays there
and never really sprouts.
So in that sense, it's
hard to really [INAUDIBLE]..
But we've done a few interviews
with users and especially
interactive, where we could
show you now perhaps what
one of the users had
to say about The Enemy
walking out of this.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
[END PLAYBACK]
You see, this is really what
I'm talking about, a seed.
Walking out of this,
he was really surprised
to have encountered his
enemy and to see similarities
with his enemy.
In order to kill, you
need to dehumanize.
And my work was really
about rehumanizing
and trying to rehumanize
the other and finding not--
not working on the
differences, but what
is similar in between them
and their basic humanity.
Yes, you face killers.
Yes, you face
people who have been
involved in very violent acts.
But at the same time, they
still have always some parts
and somewhere some humanity.
And if you want
to make peace, you
need to reconcile with
that humanity in your enemy
to start with, and then
fix everything then after.
So I think that's
the first step.
We can see, as a matter
of fact, an Israeli who's
going to be drafted and go a
few months later in the army.
So this was an intervention,
because he realized something
about his enemy he wouldn't
have realized otherwise.
Thank you so much
for sharing that.
On that same thread of
planting seeds and watching
them grow within
your audiences, I'd
love to know what
projects are you currently
or looking forward
to working on next?
So let's back up just a second.
It wasn't that long ago.
What is the story
I want to do, who's
the audience I want
to engage with,
and what is the best
medium to reach them?
So I'd gone to Congo
in 2015 for The Enemy.
I went to see the mines.
And I went to see a goldmine
where people were scratching
with their hands to the ground.
It's really a part of
the hill was torn apart.
And I photographed there, and
I photographed with my iPhone.
And suddenly it
struck me that I was
using the minerals they were
mining, and it was in my phone.
And I was using them
to photograph them.
So I started thinking, I need
to do something about that.
It's an old story.
We know within our electronics
we have so many rare earth
minerals, and they
come from countries
that sometimes are problematic.
And the DRC is
definitely problematic.
And so I'm trying to create
a link between what's
happening in Congo and you
having a phone in your hands.
And I'm using augmented reality.
You're going to be
able to visit all
the parts and the
components of your phone
and see where those minerals are
exactly located in your phone
and why we're using
them, and definitely
why they're indispensable.
And then from there, we're
going to be trickling down back
to the mine, where
we realize, what
is the reality on the ground
for the miners that are working?
They're often dying in
our horrendous conditions,
human rights abuse,
workers abuse,
if not armed groups taking
over some parts in some mines
and then financing
their own fights
with the benefit of the mine.
As somebody who worked
in computer science,
I'm struck by how
much ethics have
come into the conversation in
research circles and industry
circles.
But I think taking a step
back and being really critical
about the tools with which
we tackle these issues is
incredibly powerful.
So I look forward
to seeing that work.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, it's really trying to
wake a younger generation
that are using, natively, those
electronics and then reminding
them of those people that
are mining those minerals.
And it doesn't have
to be that bloody.
It doesn't have to
carry so much injustice.
I'm looking at my
phone as something
that enables injustice.
That's not the way
we look at our phone.
It's the way we want to
look at our electronics.
But they do, as of today,
and us as a consumer
can request to stop this.
We have the right to not
have blood in our phones.
And we should, in that sense--
this is where my work
is going, and this
is what I'm going to be
proposing to the audience
within the work is to also have
the sense of vengeance and say,
I don't like that, and
I want to do something.
And we propose them
to do something--
impact again.
Thank you so much, Karim,
for taking the time
to talk to our community today.
I'd love to pass it back to
Catherine to close the series,
and I appreciate everyone
who joined us on this webinar
today.
Thank you, Danielle.
Thank you, Karim.
This was a great conversation.
Thanks to everyone who joined
us online, our audience.
Please join us next
week for three questions
with Jay Scheib and Rian Flynn.
And visit art stop
Arts.MIT.edu anywhere
for a wide range of arts
activities, online exhibitions,
performances,
research, and more.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
Thank you very much.
See you, from Berlin.
Thank you.
