On 24 October, we were lucky enough to host a talk with Oscar Raby who came to discuss Assent, his virtual reality documentary project as part of the i-Docs Festival. DCRC Research Fellow Jess Linington, wrote a write-up of the talk.


In 1973, while enlisted in the Chilean Army, Oscar Raby’s father witnessed the execution of a group of prisoners captured by the military regime in Chile. Raby, a multimedia designer and visual artist, turned to the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset to tell his father’s story in Assent. This immersive autobiographical documentary experience, developed using the Unity engine, puts the user in his father’s footsteps as he walks to the place where the execution happened.


In his talk, Oscar provided the context needed to understand what pushed him to create this work; from his history as a ‘starving artist’ in Chile, putting on public performances as part of a collective, to his Masters degree in interactive media at RMIT. His personal and professional life often intertwining, it became obvious why it has taken him 20 years since his initial conversation with his father to tell the story of Assent. Read the full write-up of the talk on the DCRC website…. Read the full write-up on the DCRC website.