Charity Everett wins Nobel Prize of Virtual Worlds

BOSTON - June 3, 2019 - PRLog -- During the 2019 Augmented World Expo Auggie Awards, the Nextant Rising Star Prize was awarded to Charity Everett, a Creative Technologist and storyteller who is exploring the connection between humanity and technology. Her project Go Back Fetch It has revolutionized storytelling in augmented reality by pairing traditional storytelling techniques, bleeding edge technology, history, data visualization, and interactivity to create a fully fleshed out narrative art episodic piece. This project has been featured at MIT, Harvard, and The Institute of Contemporary Art. She is a Fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, as well as a Fellow a the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard.

In response to what she sees in for the potential for VR, Charity commented: "I think the potential of XR is immeasurable, and the surface hasn't even been scratched yet. XR is going to change the way that we perceive the world around us. The concept of reality is going to become more malleable, and with great malleability comes great potential to reshape the world from the ground up. My goals are to contribute to the proliferation of that squishiness, and to do it in a way that entrenches us in cultural understanding and awareness-- while creating projects that are simultaneously engaging and informative."

Go Back Fetch It is broken into two parts- The Project and The Ethos.

Go Back Fetch It The Project
is about the origins of humanity and how we all exist today because of what our shared ancestry was able to accomplish long ago. At its core, what makes us all human is our ability to keep fighting and innovating while ensuring a future for the next generation. That is what our ancestors did hundreds of thousands of years ago, and if they hadn't done it then, and continued to do it throughout all of history, we wouldn't be where we currently are: sitting comfortably at the top of the food chain.

The story of humanity is about living, thriving, coexisting, discovering, loving, improving, and harmonizing through the ages.

This adaptability is epic in proportion and scope- yet integral to understanding human nature. Moving from the dawn of mankind and the blossoming of culture, to the expansion through the land-bridge between continents, to the change from nomadic to agrarian societies, to the rise of civilizations, all of history was born in Africa: the cradle of humanity.

This project embodies the spirit of the Ghanian Adinkra symbol called the Sankofa. It means "Go Back and Fetch It." It tells us the importance of working through our collective past so that we can move into the future. I have decided to take the spirit to heart in all aspects of this project while transcending the subject matter. While I am using the new technology of augmented reality to tell this story, I am interested in returning to the beginnings of major storytelling breakthroughs. The aesthetic draws from early charcoal cave drawings (the first storytelling medium). By presenting it as a shadow play, I can draw from the beginnings of acted out performance. By presenting it as black and white, I return to the origins of film making.

To find out more about Go Back Fetch It and Charity Everett, visit https://www.patreon.com/charityeverett