[This story in Stuff (sponsored by Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington) summarizes important concerns about bias in the creation of digital humans raised by writer, visual effects designer, and researcher Raqi Syed. For more about her work, including a 3:13 minute video (also available on YouTube), follow the link in the story and visit her website. –Matthew]
Finding virtue in the virtual: Who gets to be a digital human?
“The story our most enduring myths tell us is that a great white man will fall from the sky and save us,” says senior lecturer Raqi Syed of Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
“Such stories offer audiences very little agency. For meaningful change to happen, we must re-evaluate our ideas not only of greatness, but who we perceive as embodying greatness.”
Syed, a writer, visual effects designer, and researcher, studies the inherent bias and racism that is reflected across the spectrum of visual effects in global popular culture. She is particularly interested in how the digital human encapsulates these concerns.
“The idea of a virtual human is something that scientists have been thinking about for a long time and it means different things to different people – a virtual assistant, a stunt double, or a character in a video game. Increasingly, the digital human is a vehicle for storytelling.”
In this context, Syed believes the key question to ask is: Who gets to be a digital human?
“The visual effects industry is interested in the physically accurate representation of the digital human – for example, its hair, skin, and performance. But the sort of person who is represented as a digital human is almost always white and male.
“The algorithms used to create the ‘traditional’ digital human are centred around white Caucasian skin and straight hair. When we try to create a Black or Brown digital human, we are likely to end up with something that’s fundamentally incorrect,” she says.
Storytelling is an important tool because it enables people to make sense of their world. “Initially, in my lighting class, we would buy digital assets from online marketplaces and light those. But then I started working with the students to create digital humans of themselves and to think like performers and cinematographers.
“The results were spectacular because students are far more invested in a story world they can inhabit. The digital human becomes a vehicle for autobiography and memoir.”
Syed believes that while the visual effects industry can’t be described as anti-racist yet, change is coming.
“After George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter movement, I started wondering what anti-racist visual effects might be. What are the anti-racist critical aesthetics of visual effects? Are the tools that we use equitable? How do we work across different disciplines within visual effects to enact that change quickly?
“We are experiencing a more vocal call for change in the industry, but current power structures need to be dismantled. It’s exciting to see more early-career artists hungry for this change. There’s an army of designers who work below the line in VFX—we can make meaningful change by enacting equity and diversity here, which will flow up into the studio system,” she says.
“The current generation is more active about advocating for change. They know the craft but they also embody the stance of a critical visual effects designer. The future of storytelling and visual effects must be anti-racist.”
To find out more about world-leading research, go to Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington’s website: wgtn.ac.nz/wellington
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