2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW)

The Imaginations of Daily Life in VR:

Rebuilding Lost Homes through Animated Memories

ChunNing (Maggie) Guo*

Associate Professor, Art School, Renmin University of China

ABSTRACT interviews in a hyper-realistic manner (reference to Jean

Baudrillard)[3]; the immersive experiences are testimonies of a
Although Virtual Reality (VR) is often used as an independent new daily living spaces, demonstrating the potential of animated
technology-oriented medium, this paper hopes to strip it of its
memories and VR imagination.
high-tech dimensions and present it as a new form of memory and
The 360 degrees of the interview thus becomes a container of
imagination, in particular as a rebuilding power from the
memory, constructing a new “chronotope”. Russian literary
perspective of daily lives. To borrow M.M. Bakhtin’s literature
scholar M.M. Bakhtin used “chronotope” as a central element in
terminology VR as a digital panorama can also be regarded as a
his theory of meaning in language and literature [4]. This paper
new chronotope based on cultural memory, which renews
regards chronotope as something which can be interpreted as a
traditional methods of interviewing and documenting. This paper
new method for VR narration. Chronotope can construct sensible
explores VR artwork as a cross-disciplinary platform for
characters in a structurally functioning field.
researching imaging anthropology, immersive news reporting,
The VR Film Grenfell: Our Home commissioned by Channel 4,
social criticism, memory studies and public engagements. The VR
is one such pioneering production which engages social
film Grenfell: Our Home, commissioned by Channel 4, is one
collaborations on reconstructing lost homes through a new form
such new VR production based on collaborations between mass
of interviews and memory narration (See Fig.1). The fire of
media, social psychologists and animation artists. This VR
Grenfell is considered to be one of the worst fires in the history of
artwork audio-visualizes the daily lives of Grenfell Tower
the entire UK, and 72 people lost their lives in the tragedy. Rather
residents before the terrible fire in London in 2017. More
than focusing only on the fire itself, Grenfell: Our Home shines a
meaningfully, this VR work reconstructs the building as a cultural
light on life inside Grenfell before this terrible incident in 2017 in
community through selected interview samples, and demonstrates
London.
the potential of new creation, as well as the courage and desire of
rebuilding a future home and life.

Keywords: Daily Lives, Imagination, VR, Animated Memory,

Interview, Chronotope

Index Terms: H.5.1. [Information Interfaces and Presentation]:

Multimedia Information Systems – Artificial, augmented and
virtual realities;

1. INTRODUCTION
Although VR is often used as an independent technology-
oriented medium, this paper hopes to strip it of its high-tech
veneer and demonstrate it as a new form of documentation, in
Fig. 1: Grenfell: Our Home enables viewers to re-visit and re-
particular as a new device with which to research cultural
imagine this 24-story Tower before the terrible fire.
imagination and animated memories.
Referencing the memory theories of Jan Assmann and Aleida
Assmann, memory is the productive force for creating images,
This paper analyzes how VR can be a new chronotope of
especially from traumatic memory [1] [2]. With more than 30
imagination and memories through the following three aspects:
years of experimentation, Virtual Reality (VR) has become an 1: Animated Memories as a new chronotope of storytelling;
artistic device to re-examine traumatic events in a 360 degree 2: VR Interviews offering closer experience to the interviewees
landscape as well as a way to demonstrate the power of audio- both physically and mentally;
visualization of the narration, adding a touchable dimension to 3: VR as a form of public engagement and collaborative
memory-telling. anthropology.
One of the most notable phenomena in VR memory-telling is
how interviewing has become a new form and theme for Grenfell: Our Home reveals that the potential of VR can not
reconstructing narration and refreshing the imagination of public only be a channel to connect cross-disciplinary research, but can
events. As a new immersive VR experience, an interview becomes also expand the boundaries of studies on the five senses while
refreshing existing concepts of cultural cognition(See Fig.2).
interviewing, transformed from a noun to a verb through animated
process, which offers participants a way to return to the site of the

* mguo@vfs.com

978-1-7281-6532-5/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE 177

DOI 10.1109/VRW50115.2020.00039

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Fig. 2: VR can be a new platform to connect inter-disciplinary
research and studies on multiple senses.
2. ANIMATED MEMORIES AS A NEW CHRONOTOPE OF
STORYTELLING
If Grenfell: Our Home is shown linearly as a film, the work
lasts 15 minutes and 30 seconds. However, as a VR work
Grenfell: Our Home offers more possibilities to experience the
multi-layers of animated memories.
First of all, this work virtually presented Grenfell, the 24-story
residential tower block in North Kensington of London, before the
terrible fire on the 14th of June, 2017. At that time, this innovative
tower with 127 flats and 227 bedrooms enjoyed beautiful the blue
sky as a background and cheerful sounds from birds flying by
Grenfell's top floor (See Fig.3)
Fig. 3: Grenfell: Our Home virtually presents this tower block before
the fire tragedy in 2017.
Secondly, this VR work constructs an audio-visual landscape
of memories of Grenfell as a home. Among the thousands of
residents in this tower, the VR production team selected five
groups of interviewees to speak as representatives of the survivors
and to recall their home at Grenfell. There are four couples and
one individual lady, made up of different ages, races, nationalities,
professionals, religions, and cultural backgrounds.
These interviewees offered a dynamic process of
remembrance, revisiting, reimagining, and rebuilding their homes.
Apart from Lilian, a single woman refugee from Africa, the other
interviewees are couples: Andreia & Marcio, Fatima & Miguel,
Tiago & Ines, and Corinne & Jason (See Fig.4). During their
narration of their memories about Grenfell as a home, the VR
production reconstructs the time and space through an animated
process as a new chronotope.
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Fig.4: Grenfell: Our Home offered a dynamic process of
remembrance, revisiting, reimagining, and rebuilding through
animated memories.
2.2 REMEMBRANCE: THE FIRST IMPRESSION OF OUR HOME
Through the use of panorama perspectives, Grenfell: Our
Home demonstrates that all the interviewees have strong feelings
about their first experiences walking into their apartments, and
explains why they choose the space not only as a place to stay but
also to call home.
The first impression of the space is extracted from interviews,
and these impressions are composed of vivid keywords, such as:
bright windows, big spaces, beauty, feelings of safty, etc. In
particular, Andreia & Marcio, who mentioned their first
impression in conjunction with their imagined potential for their
apartment in Grenfell, stating that it would be a wonderful home
with bright windows and green plants.
Andreia recounted: “I like it, I think I cannot find any spacious
flat like this one.” Marcio recalled: “This is a very big space,
though nothing inside, the bright low window gives beautiful
imagination of when this room would be filled with green plants.”
The VR work presented the discourse of Andreia & Marcio, the
male and female owners through an animated process, providing
an interlacing of the relationship between the first impression of
the unfurnished room and their imagination of the finished room
full of beautiful flowers (See Fig.5) .
Fig.5: The bright low window inspired the couple to fill the room
with green plants.
For the second couple, Corinne & Jason, the apartment
immediately gave them a feeling that it would be a long-lasting
living space. They think this will be their home at London, which
means a place that “can be truly decorated according to your own
preferences, and you don't have to worry about being told by the
landlord to move out next month when renting a house.”

All the interviewees constructed a special memory-telling
through VR time-space landscape, the lights from the big
windows in their memories also outline the “phantom” of their
beautiful living room and green plants, building more sympathy
for their lost home.
2.1 REVISITING AND REIMAGINING：A DIALOGUE BETWEEN
“ME” AND LONDON
Grenfell: Our Home shows the building from the outside to the
inside. During the VR presentation, the building which had been
destroyed by the fire reappears in its previous appearance.
It not only encourages users of VR to re-visit the families’ flats
in Grenfell, but also give people the chance to stand in the
elevator, listening to the chatter of residents, and to overlook
London from the top floor of the building.
These VR re-visitations inspire curiosity and imagination about
the surrounding environment of the building. New VR forms also
motivate people to explore their deeper understanding of the city
and its multi-cultural background. From the interviews, the
building is not only a home for the residents, but also offers a very
distinctive public space. Each flat as an element of Grenfell Tower
is not only a unit of space, the flat as a home also constructs a
memory of the organism expressed through architecture.
Through the sound-landscapes of the VR, many interviewees
proudly mentioned overlooking London from the top floor of the
building, and their descriptions about the top floor view include:
“You can see whole blocks of London，”
“A whole landscape, on the top floor of this building.”
“London city around you,”
“A sense of freedom, nothing in your way.”
This VR work highlights the elevator in Grenfell as a public
arena filled with communication especially through animated
presentation. The interviewees mentioned, “hear[ing] 5 different
languages, from the UK, Africa, Iran, Asia or Italy”. VR presents
a unique soundscape which includes different languages in a
slowly ascending black space. Users in VR can experience the
feeling of floating in the lift as a time-tunnel, seeing surroundings
composed of photos (See Fig.6). They are the residents of
Grenfell, and some of them are close friends of these
interviewees. Most of them may be normal neighbors that only
have a chance to interact when taking the lift in their daily lives.
Some of them were injured in the fire, and some of them lost their
life, their voices never to be seen or heard again. In this way,
through revisiting and re-imagination, VR re-constructs the lift as
a black “monument”. People are reminded to never forget these
innocent people who lost their homes and lives in this tragic fire.
Fig.6: Grenfell: Our Home virtually presents the elevator as a public
arena filled with communication and as an ascending
monument.
2.3 REBUILDING A LOST HOME: REMEMBERING THE FUTURE
The remembrance, revisiting, and re-imagination of Grenfell in
this VR production gathers more power to call on the rebuilding
of a lost home. VR as a new chronotope of storytelling, composes
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individual and collective memories from the thousands of
residents, demonstrating their hopes of rebuilding their home.
This VR production has already helped them to visualize their
homes. This paper refers it as “remembering the future”,
borrowing the concept from Italian composer and scholar Luciano
Berio [5]. In Berio’s book based on his Norton Lectures at
Harvard University, “remembering the future” is a promise to
experience that space and time as not merely a linear presentation.
While in Grenfell: Our Home, this artistic VR creation speaks on
behalf of the people who lost their homes in the fire that there
should be a promise for all of the lost homes to be rebuilt and their
lives to be improved.
Among many benefits of this VR format, the focus of rebuilding
is the most meaningful and attractive. Compared to most news
and reports surrounding this terrible event, Channel 4’s VR
production does not directly ask questions about why the fire
happened or who is to blame, but it gives the microphone and
shots to the normal residents who called Grenfell Tower their
home. This is done through the new method of interviewing using
VR, offering the users the opportunity to experience daily life in
Grenfell. Thus people will naturally care about what might happen
next to these people who lost their homes and how the viewers
can help and participate in the rebuilding as members of the
global village, .
In this way, VR as a new chronotope, is not only a more
powerful storytelling form, but also offers intimate and empathetic
feelings to the interviewees of the events through the exploration
of animated memories.
3. VR INTERVIEW AS A NEW COMPOSITION OF EMPATHY
The interview often directly provides time, place, characters
and discourse. It is important to realize that in VR, interviewees
and speakers as well as time and space have the prospect of being
visually re-established.
The 360 degrees of the interview in Grenfell: Our Home thus
becomes a container of the narration of touching the past and the
future, as well as a device to evoke empathy.
The intimate nature of interviewing using VR offers users the
chance to feel a stronger connection by wandering around the
interviewee’s living rooms, gazing at the photos on their walls,
smelling red flowers and listening to birds passing by the bright
windows. In this way, the participants of VR are not only
physically closer to the interviewees, but also mentally
transformed into a third-party member of the conversations, even
sometimes feeling themselves to be members of this home when
they virtually walk through in the living rooms and bedrooms.
3.1 PARTICIPATING IN A VR INTERVIEW：BE CLOSER AND
MORE INTIMATE
Interviews can provide materials and methods to create a
feeling of intimacy and empathy. As a new immersive experience,
an ‘interview’ becomes ‘interviewing’, transitioning from a noun
to a verb through animation in progress, which offers participants
a way to return to the site of the interviews in a hyper-realistic
manner and the immersive experiences are the process of the
exposure to memories, demonstrating the potential of VR
engaging in daily lives and public issues.
Lilian, as the fourth Interviewee in Grenfell: Our Home
highlights how VR interviews can reveal multiple layers of
traumatic memories and in some way act as digital archiving to
make up for the loss of the painful experiences in life.
Lilian is a refugee from Africa. She hopes that her home is not
only be a place to live, but also acts as a space for portraying her
own cultural identity and past memories. She decorates her home
with African sculptures and photos from her original home of
Uganda.
During the interview, Lilian mentioned that she used to have a
daughter named Elizabeth, howerver, she lost her only daughter in
Uganda. After moving into Grenfell, Lilian hung the last photo of
her daughter on the wall of her living room. The baby in this
photo is the only imaging connection between her and her
daughter (See Fig.7).
Fig.7: Lilian mentioned mentioned that her home was destroyed in
the fire, and the only photo of the daughter burned to ash in
the sea of fire.
For Lilian, this fire in Grenfell brought about the loss of her
lose her daughter again. She never thought she might lose the final
photo of her Elizabeth but this fire burned away her new home in
London and the only image of her daughter. In a physical sense,
Lilian did lose the final photo of her daughter, however thanks to
the VR reconstruction, the image of Elizabeth was recovered and
represented on the wall of Lilian’s living room again (See Fig.8)!
Therefore, VR is not only a new digital archival documentary for
lost materials, but also a form of art therapy for the residents who
suffered traumatic memories.
Fig.8: Through VR reconstruction, the image of Elizabeth was
recovered and represented.
3.2 UNITE VIA VR INTERVIEWS：BE AT PEACE AND
CONNECTED
The new way of VR interviews can not only close the distance
between the viewers and interviewees, but also connect the
interviewees. Through exploring common memories about home
and their lives, the process of interviewing as a platform of unity,
the home owners have become more at peace about what they lost
and thankful for treasures that they still have, with more
confidence to rebuild their lost homes.
During the process of recalling the first impression of their
home, re-visiting and re-imagining their decorations in their living
rooms and bedrooms, VR users can feel the notable changes of the
interviewees, especially in the couple Andreia & Marcio. Their
body language (facial expressions and gestures) changed from sad
expressions to gradual smiles on their faces, the couple also
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grabbed each other’s hands and sat closer when they finally made
the promise to rebuild their home (See Fig.9).
Fig.9: Body language, including facial expressions and gestures
notably changed during VR interviews.
The turning point is the when they mentioned green plants at
the same time. They liked green plants very much. Even when the
house had not been renovated yet, the room was already full of
green plants in their minds.
They both developed a love of growing plants. In VR, when the
couple memorized their habit of taking care of plants, the walls of
their apartment are literally drawn around you as they describe a
space filled with positive energy and you soon find yourself
immersed in a dense urban jungle quite unlike what you might
have imagined the place to be like.
The beautiful flowers among the green plants is a metaphor of
first daughter. They welcomed their first daughter home to this
peaceful place with fresh smells from the plants (See Fig.10).
When they recalled these plants and their daughter in this room
smiles blossomed on the couple’s face. The descriptions of the
space by the homeowners reflect their emotional needs for living
in a home.
Fig.10: The beautiful flowers among the green plants is a metaphor
of first daughter of Andreia & Marcio.
It makes it all the more hard-hitting when the inevitable stories
about the fire arrive. But Andreia & Marcio vowed that they will
rebuild their home with even more green plants.
The empathy and connection offered by VR may be partly
contributed to its successful use of black and blank space to be
filled using imagination. During the interview, the users of VR
can watch the visual parts of couples talking, or they can also just
wander through the blank space and randomly feel the surprise of
finding small decorations, or sometimes just casually practice
mind-walking.
VR is also a demonstration of a successful “echo” from
beginning to end. This VR work begins and ends with a black
background (See Fig.11). In the darkness, everything is
nothingness, as the interviewees recalled after the fire, “I felt so
sad as I lost everything, then I blamed myself for thinking like
this, I have the most important thing; life, I have everything.”
Fig.11: Grenfell: Our Home begins and ends with a black
background, leaving more space for imagination and
rethinking.
VR provides a special experience of wandering in empty space
while having more chance to rethink the meaning of life. The
black background in Grenfell: Our Home is like a building with
an open lens that propels a stretch of perspective.
Reference to drama scholar Peter Brook's The Empty Space,
empty is precisely the beginning of a new possibility [6]. In
Buddhism, Formation（成 Chéng）, Living（住 Zhù）,
Ruin（坏 Huài）, and Empty（空Kōng） describe a structure of
catastrophe and reincarnation in life (See Fig.12). There is a
saying in Buddhism, “Nothing in the world is an eternal resident.
[7]” The process of changing to ruin or negative not only belongs
to Buddhists but may also be applied to all material changes.
Fig.12: The process of changing to “ruin” (坏Huài) not only belongs
to Buddhists but may also be applied to all material changes.
The final part of this experience for the users is walking in the
emptiness and darkness, leaving more space for to the public to
deeply re-examine this fire and concentrate to the reconstruction
of homes and lives.
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4. CONCLUSION
VR is not only a new panoramic perspective reflecting an
individual event, it is also a collaborative platform for participants
to engage with public issues.
It is noticeable that especially since 2016, the main mass media
has adjusted their news report form according to the popularity of
VR technology and artistic potential.
In 2016, the VR work 6x9: Explore Solitary Confinement in 360
degrees was released by the Guardian as a free mobile app, telling
the stories of the psychological damage that can ensue from
isolation in prison [8]. In 2017, based on real interview, VR After
Solitary was produced by PBS, offering the public the chance to
know more about how Kenny Moore struggled 20 years to adjust
to life outside of prison [9]. In 2018, Aardamn and BBC released
their first VR experience, We Wait. Based on accounts gathered by
BBC News and bought to life by Aardman, the animated virtual
experience tells the real stories of refugees, and places users at the
heart of the story [10].
All these VR productions are freely shared and have won
international awards at festivals and exhibitions. The traditional
large-scale films and animation festivals mostly open new
categories for VR works and offer more funding to VR start-up
studios.
These VR collaborations not only improve mass media and the
film industry, but also connect more inter-disciplinary artistic
creations and academic research.
Among the transformation of new media productions, Channel
4 is a trend setter. Though it is not the first one to develop VR
creations, it has the advantage of experimenting with a new form
of interview by exploring animated memories.
Since collaborating with Aardman in the 1970s, Channel 4 has
produced a series of successful interviews via clay (stop motion)
animation. From the animated conversations to VR platform,
Channel 4 has experienced three stages to push public
engagements through technical tests and artistic experimentation
(See Fig.13,14).
Fig.13: The first stage of art-tech experiments by Channel 4: The
animated series production of Conversation Pieces, Animated
Conversations, and Lip Synch.
Fig.14: The second stage of art-tech experiments by Channel 4:
Animate! was founded in 2007, more than 100 animators,
filmmakers and artists created extraordinary and award-winning
work.
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David Wise, Parable’s CEO and the executive producer of the
production, said, “Virtual Reality is often described as ‘the
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Grenfell: Our Home has also been released on social media and
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There are also plans to enable people in the Grenfell community
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The fire of Grenfell Tower was a national tragedy, this VR work
focuses on the past memory as a new force to rebuild a lost home
and re-examines the tragic event through multiple perspectives.
Though the fire destroyed the home of the interviewees, they
still have a chance to revisit their lost home. VR interviews and
animated memory in the new chronotope demonstrates VR as the
power of new creation, calling on the courage and desire of
rebuilding a home and life in the future.

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