Beyond Manzanar Video Walkthrough 2017

This video is an 11 minute walkthrough recording of the interactive large projection virtual reality installation created by Tamiko Thiel and Zara Houshmand in 2000.

Video: Edition 1 of 5 + 2 AP, by Tamiko Thiel and Zara Houshmand in 2017.

Beyond Manzanar is a metaphorical landscape that explores political scapegoating of ethnic populations in times of crisis. The historic experiences of Japanese Americans in World War II and the more recent experiences of Iranian Americans during the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis form the basis for a surreal and poetic work contrasting immigrant attempts to achieve the American Dream with the demonization of entire groups as "alien invasives."

In the Beyond Manzanar interactive VR installation, Unlike the isolating, single user experience of a VR headset, you encounter Beyond Manzanar as a monocular (i.e. non-stereo), life-sized large screen projection that fills your peripheral vision. Steering freely through the shifting layers of immersive space with a simple joystick, either alone or with other visitors, your visual, auditory and kinesthetic senses are engaged by to underscore the emotional impact of confinement. In an empathic experience as a prisoner in the Manzanar Internment Camp, your eyes see the passes that lead out of the valley, but when you reach the barbed-wire fence you can go no further. Your only escape is inwards, to inhabit the memories and thoughts of those seen as the "face of the enemy." At the heart of the installation is an image of the garden as a place of cultural refuge.

Website: http://mission-base.com/manzanar/