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Longtime Toronto resident Janet Rodriguez had never tried on a virtual reality (VR) set before walking up to the booths temporarily set up at Nathan Phillips Square Tuesday — but her first experience brought tears to her eyes.
“It moves you,” she said. “So deeply.”
Biidaaban: First Light showcases Toronto like no one has ever seen before. The virtual reality experience displays a future where nature has completely taken over the city.
Coverage of virtual reality on Globalnews.ca:
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Virtual reality set shows an Indigenous Toronto overcome by nature -
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It takes users through three locations.
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Nathan Phillips Square is flooded, with City Hall merged with fauna, and a woman can be seen using her hands to dig through soil to grow vegetation. It also goes underground to Osgood subways station, where plants and vines are growing through concrete. The user also stands at the edge of a building across the city square, looking over at a skyline that’s even more jagged because of the crumbling infrastructure.
The virtual reality film runs eight minutes and was produced by the National Film Board of Canada in collaboration with the City of Toronto.
But the entire purpose of the futuristic and nature-filled Toronto setting is to bring Indigenous culture to an urban setting.
“We think of Indigenous places as far away, in remote places, on reserves — but actually half of Canada’s Indigenous population lives in cities,” said Anishinaabe artist Lisa Jackson, who created the project.
“It was based on my thinking that cities are as Indigenous as anywhere else. So let’s bring those languages and those ideas back and center them back into the city and reclaim the city square.”
It’s Toronto like you’ve never seen before.
A virtual reality experience set up in the middle of Nathan Phillips Square gives people the chance to look at the city if it was overcome by nature.
We’ll take you there on @globalnewsto at 5:30 pm. pic.twitter.com/EbuwtLuTZU
— Kamil Karamali (@KamilKaramali) September 18, 2018
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The film is narrated in three Indigenous languages: Wendat, Mohawk and Ojibway, with English translations.
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