Meta has revealed a virtual “Afrofuturistic world” as part of their celebrations of black history month, allowing users to experience racism virtually while wearing the company’s Oculus headsets.
The virtual “I Am A Man” tour, designed by artist Gabe Gault, is an “immersive experience… that pays homage to Dr. King, Rosa Parks, the Tuskegee Airmen and more,” Meta explains.
“You can go to a museum, you can see artifacts, you can see writings of old history, but it’s one thing to see those visually, and I think it’s another to kind of be in a 3D environment created around that,” Gault said, who describes himself as “a Black American,” who is “re-appropriating, breaking down, and repurposing Colonial influences in order to celebrate Culture.”
“For this exhibit, I just want you to be able to experience that moment of black history that you learn growing up,” Gault continued. “You see it in books, you hear about it, you see old footage, but this is now an opportunity to be able to truly interact with it, and it’s an homage, it’s something that we can jump into this world in Black History Month and pay respects.”
Step into the virtual Afrofuturistic world created by Gabe Gault and see how the metaverse can be a living museum to showcase Black history. pic.twitter.com/6X1oJCUAm5
— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) February 22, 2022
In a discussion around the Afrofuturistic virtual world from Meta, black commentators discussed the importance of having black representation in the virtual space.
“We are literally making history right now,” said Danielle Young, a journalist. “We tend to be left out of the tech culture a lot of the times [sic], and that ain’t right,” adding that she saw technology as “scary,” but that the virtual experience created by Gault “empowered” her.
“What if the world that Marcus Garvey wanted to see was built in the metaverse,” asked Jay Ellis, an actor who stars in HBO’s Insecure. “For me, when I think of storytelling, I think about the barriers that have always been there, and the stories we haven’t been able to tell. And now it seems like there are no barriers in this world.”
Ime Archibong, the Head of New Product Experimentation at Meta, further highlighted getting black people into tech spaces. “If you were to rewind back to the 90s, when the information superhighway was being talked about, not a lot of us were sitting around those tables… And now we’re sitting here at this interesting moment where everyone is talking about the metaverse.”
“The real power of tech is not in the tech itself,” Archibong added. “It’s in the peoples’s hands who are touching it and making it.”
