The Choice: compassion instead of empathy. Interview with Joanna Popińska

I wanted for the audience experiencing The Choice to sense the physicality of their interlocutor and to feel the speaker’s presence as real. In the first phase of testing, we managed to produce a hologram, a ghost, reminiscent of Leia in Star Wars. However, this could evoke unwanted connotations, such as speaking to someone who has died – and I wanted to remove the stigma of a life-threatening procedure from abortion.

Izabella Adamczewska-Baranowska: You decided to create The Choice at a time when Poles marched in Black Protests.

Joanna Popińska: I was already living in Canada, but I was scared anyway. Canadians frequently asked me what was happening in Poland, and for them even the so-called abortion compromise – one that PiS politicians sought to repudiate – did not constitute a meaningful agreement at all. What became an ultimate spark for me, however, was a conversation with a Canadian woman about a friend of mine from Poland. As we discussed my friend’s difficult life situation, the woman asked aloud why she would not simply terminate the pregnancy. We were sitting in a cafe, and my immediate reaction was to ask her to speak more quietly. That instinctive response made me think: why did this conversation cause me so much anxiety? After all, we were not doing anything wrong. I began to realise that fear was intensifying and would likely continue to do so, which led me to consider what I could do to ensure that my voice on this matter was heard. Drawing on my training as a sociologist, I analysed the public debate surrounding abortion, focusing on how conflict shapes language and on the arguments advanced by both sides. Contrary to common assumptions, I found that attitudes towards abortion do not always reflect a person’s social or religious beliefs. This is also what many reproductive rights activists point out: when individuals – or someone close to them, for instance a family member – are confronted with a decision regarding an abortion, ideological positions frequently lose their force, as personal choice always takes precedence over belief. I therefore felt it was important to try to engage those who have never experienced an unwanted or high-risk pregnancy.

And VR makes that possible.

Virtual reality enables something truly extraordinary: the viewer’s presence within a constructed world. I like to compare this experience to dreaming. Although we know we are asleep, we experience dreams with striking realism, and we can frequently remember them upon waking up, as though they had actually happened – VR operates in much the same way. And when it comes to extinguishing conflict and challenging stereotypes, the best way is to make dialogue possible isn’t it? A lecture is not the same, because it creates distance. Spatial relations are really powerful! For instance, when a friend comes to discuss a personal problem, I sit opposite her to establish the most direct connection. I sought to recreate similar conditions in a VR experience in which the viewer listens to a stranger. By combining presence with proxemics, I developed an experience based on intimate distance – one that fosters psychological and emotional closeness. After two years of distributing the first part of The Choice, I am confident that this approach is effective. The viewer sits opposite my protagonist and experiences the encounter as a real act of listening to her telling a story and being able to decide what question will be asked. I wanted it to be different from an exchange with a chatbot that merely assembles random responses from a database. The user should feel that they really “activate” the conversation and guide it.

One of the first associations that came to my mind as I was experiencing The Choice was the Human Library, one of the most widely used methods of contemporary anti-discriminatory education. It involves arranging a situation in which in which you “borrow” a person and their story in much the same way as you borrow a book from a library. You sit opposite, listen to them, ask questions, and, through this encounter, cease to perceive the other person as a threatening or unsettling – because unfamiliar – Other. The Choice seeks to normalise abortion and to challenge its stigmatisation.

Yes, my primary objective was to establish an emotional connection.

In your interview with Monika Górska-Olesińska for Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, you opt for compassion, not empathy. How do you understand the difference between the two?

Chris Milk’s assertion that VR functions as an “empathy machine” is frequently cited: as a  user, you become a protagonist in the story, engage your own body, and are therefore more inclined to empathise with another person. For a moment, I thought of The Choice in precisely this way: as an experience would make it possible to realise what it is like to face an unwanted or high-risk pregnancy. You are holding a pregnancy test in your hand: how do you feel?

When I first began working with VR, I thought that when designing an experience you had to assign the viewer a clearly defined role: indicate who they were supposed to be in it. And then I read an article about a VR project in which the user adopts the role of a homeless person. The author was sharply critical of this idea, arguing that that in a few minutes, sitting comfortably in an armchair, in a warm flat, and knowing that you have a place to sleep, you will not learn what it is like to be homeless. 

In Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab, a seven-minute experience was designed, entitled Becoming Homeless, but it is not what you mean, is it?

I cannot remember the title. Adopting the perspective of another person is usually taken for granted in VR, and that is why this struck me so strongly. I started to think about it. There is a project by Asad J. Malik…

Terminal 3, where the viewer becomes a border guard.

Yes, the participant interrogates a person attempting to cross a border and must ultimately decide whether to grant or deny entry. Malik incorporated recordings of real immigrants into his work. In that experience, assuming the perspective of the border guard leads the viewer realise the extent of their ignorance about the individual whose fate they are determining. That made sense, but was my initial idea a good one? 

You could have started like: you are doctor Chazan…

The crucial step was recognising that my model recipient was an anti-choice individual who did not really understand the emotional complexity involved in a decision about abortion. Once this became clear, I realised that I could not impose any predefined role on the user, but instead needed to make it possible for them to enter a dialogue with their own identity. 

So what you are after is empathy understood as “emotions that are not our own”. In Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do, Jeremy Bailenson describes an experiment in which participants assume the perspective of a cow in a slaughterhouse, experiencing being prodded and electrocuted. Sceptical about this publication, Michał Matuszewski offered an ironic observation in the context of this example: neither the author nor the project’s creator had ever concealed the fact that they liked steaks and burgers.

Interestingly enough, such ethical concerns about walking in somebody else’s shoes have long been debated in the context of undercover journalism – an analogue precursor to immersive journalism. It often relies on paratheatrical strategies, including simulation of class, sex/gender, or racial identity. These issues are critically examined by Alisha Gaines in Black for a Day: White Fantasies of Race and Empathy, where she discusses e.g. Howard Griffin and his canonical non-fiction work Black Like Me. A comparable dilemma emerges in relation to the work of Günter Wallraff: why was it necessary for him to impersonate a Turkish Gastarbeiter? Could not a “real” Ali have been allowed to speak for himself?

Yes, exactly. 

In the course of preparing The Choice, you conducted six interviews – with five women and one man. The experience itself comprises three parts. Do you intend to incorporate the remaining two stories, or do you consider the project to be complete?

There will be no further episodes. The three parts already encompass a range of motivations, and I do not need additional nuance to open a meaningful discussion. In my view, the three interviews that comprise The Choice form a coherent and complete whole.

How did you select your protagonists? You aimed to present different motivations, correct? The experience begins with medical reasons, then moves to a couple who do not wish to have children, and finally to a young woman whose economic situation makes raising a child impossible.

I spoke with many women in the course of my research. Elizabeth was the first one to contact me: she called me directly from an abortion clinic where she had just had the procedure. I also met a seventeen-year-old woman who told me she was homeless and simply did not feel prepared to raise a child. As I analysed the Canadian cases we had filmed during this period, I came to see that they represented the world as it “should be”: personal choice, individual moral reflection, and concrete life circumstances. These factors, however, become secondary when one starts speaking to an anti-choice person. I therefore decided to depict a world in which decisions are made on our behalf, and where the system determines our personal situation – precisely the scenario we feared in Poland, and one that was already unfolding in many states in the United States.

Kristen’s “health-related” case, which became the focus of the first episode, came to me largely by chance. My aim – and the reason for focusing on the United States – was to show situations in which decisions are made by the system rather than by individuals themselves, and that system puts obstacles in one’s way. This is how I encountered Kristen, whose story elicits a powerful emotional response due to the scale and seriousness of medical complications.

When making The Choice, I was primarily thinking about the Polish audience. I believed that this particular motivation would be the most accessible to them and invite them to engage into this sort of a dialogue. I posted a call on social media seeking individuals in the United States who would be willing to share their stories with us. That was before Roe v. Wade was overturned. Kristen responded, her story truly absolutely shocking. Then, we recorded an interview with Makayla from San Antonio. I also wanted to incorporate a male perspective, hence Leigh and Dan appear together in the closing episode – we had recorded both their interviews earlier in Canada. They were filmed separately, which is unfortunately perceptible in the final result. Additionally, it turned out that their view on the situation differed.

They split up, didn’t they?

Yes, they did. In fact, this is where questions of editing ethics come into play. While reviewing the recordings of Leigh and Dan, I perceived the same tension that you did as a viewer. At the time, however, they were not yet aware of it themselves. In the editing process, I was careful not to show too much of what would go beyond the protagonists’ intentions or place undue emphasis on that dimension of their relationship.

I asked about further episodes because expanding The Choice into a triptych alters the nature of the experience. Adding even more voices could produce a polyphonic, choral effect. Svetlana Alexievich employs a similar strategy in her work, moving from individual experience towards a universal perspective. Obviously, it is much easier for someone who works primarily through language.

What you are referring to might be described as an effect of scale. Mosaic structures of this kind enhance credibility and produce the illusion of a comprehensive, coherent whole. However, I am not interested in testimony as documentalists typically understand it. My primary objective is to simulate a direct conversation and to make the viewer feel as though they genuinely know the protagonist. Introducing multiple additional stories would dilute this effect.

The testimonies you collect are in fact microherstories. Your sociological training has clearly been an asset here – after all, this is precisely how social archives are created. For me, engaging with analyses of Poland’s “black” media discourse – radical and polarised – was particularly revealing. Microherstories provide a totally different perspective. In this sense, The Choice bears similarities to abortion storytelling initiatives that probably inspired you: Aborcyjny Dream Team in Poland, Shout Your Abortion in the USA, and In Her Shoes in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Poland…

When I began working on The Choice, abortion storytelling was still relatively rare. There might have been some isolated accounts here and there, but they were nowhere near the volume of personal testimonies we see today. In Poland, public coming-outs were only just emerging – Natalia Przybysz was among the first to speak openly about her abortion, followed later by other public figures. I remain somewhat ambivalent about abortion storytelling as a practice, because many such confessions appear heavily edited, which can make them feel rehearsed and unnatural. When an experience is narrated repeatedly, the story inevitably changes, and its spontaneity is lost. Although this is a natural process, such narratives may in fact reinforce scepticism among those who are already unconvinced. This is why I wanted so much to select for The Choice individuals who had never spoken publicly about abortion before. I approached each interview with five pages of questions – I asked, probed, and we went deep into these conversations in order to uncover something essential. Each time, it was a process, not a presentation of a statement prepared in advance. I think you can see the protagonists gradually accessing deeply embedded emotions as the dialogue progresses. That, too, reinforces the sense of realism.

Your search for the protagonists of The Choice in Poland proved unsuccessful. I recall that in 2006 Marta Dzido, a writer, published a mini-novel, Ślad po mamie [Traces of Mum], which would now be classified as autofiction. The publisher, Ha!Art, promoted it as the first Polish novel to address abortion, and Dzido briefly became the public face of the pro-choice movement.

A small number of women responded, but each of them imposed the same condition: they wanted their faces covered, as on television. While I fully understood the need for privacy, I was looking for a very specific effect. You cannot create an illusion of closeness with someone who does not show their face. I wanted the viewer to feel that the person sitting in front of them was flesh and blood, not an actress, someone pretending to be another person, or an anonymous individual. 

Correct me, if I’m wrong, but it seems to me, based on our conversation so far, that you are sceptical about activism.

I take a rather critical view of activism: if it only reaches those who are already convinced, it misses the point. While working on The Choice, I set myself an intentionally high bar (and I say this ironically): if even a single viewer were to reconsider their position, the project would have achieved its aim. On our modest scale, we succeeded. Throughout the production process, Tom and I – partners in life as well as in work – received a significant volume of hate mail and were labelled on Twitter as murderers of children. Many audience members attended our shows expressly to confront us. And yet once they removed their headsets, they were silent. In Canada, a man connected to the milieu of Palmer Luckey – the inventor of Oculus and a central figure in the democratisation of VR, now aligned with Donald Trump – came to see The Choice. He praised the project as remarkable and urged others to see it, too. Earlier, though, he had suggested, without a pinch of irony, that we should show abortion in VR as seen “from the inside” – he even drew his wife and daughter into the comment. After experiencing the work, he remained silent for a long time and then apologised to us.

Is this activism? How can we bring about social change? Consider what happened with the women’s strike protests: no one managed to harness that energy. The potential was enormous, yet we still have not moved forward. I do not really know how to do it. I also believe that our audience is not the same as that of Aborcyjny Dream Team. Persuading people with differing attitudes requires different modes of communication. But yes, I am sceptical about the very possibility of change in various areas of our socio-political life. Still, I believe we must continue to act and, in doing so, combine a range of different methods.

In an interview with Wyborcza, you mention a specific case: “I was deeply moved by a man who called me a few weeks after watching The Choice to thank me for the film. His partner had to undergo the procedure for medical reasons. Because of the film, he became aware of how she felt and realised that his presence during the procedure was important to her. Just a few weeks earlier, he had been convinced that abortion was wrong.” That is moving – it means that people don’t talk to each other at all! The man had to take part in a VR experience and listen to a stranger in order to understand his own partner!

And this is precisely the point… It is not merely about raising awareness, but also about opening the door to shifts in attitudes and in behaviour.

Also, The Choice makes me think about the future of the interview as a journalistic genre. Much contemporary debate centres on the performative turn, which privileges experience – mediated, but creating the perceptual illusion of no mediation. This effect emerges through reduced distance, combined with interactivity and agency, all of which are exactly what you designed in The Choice experience. As a result, the role of the user remains deliberately ambiguous – they are not only a witness, but also positioned as the person asking the questions.

I did not think about The Choice in those terms. In Reich of Ashes, our next project about the Holocaust, we also draw on testimonies, this time from survivors, but interviews account for only around 30 per cent of the work. The USC Shoah Foundation created Dimensions in Testimony – for several decades, they have been conducting interviews with survivors to document the Holocaust...

The first interactive testimony was recorded in 2014 with Pinchas Gutter. Stephen Smith, head of the USC Shoah Foundation, explained that the objective is to make possible at least apparent contact with individuals with whom actual conversation will soon no longer be possible.

Yes, there is also the iTestimony project, based on these recordings. Unlike in The Choice, the holographic figures tell the story by “responding to” questions defined by users. Artificial intelligence reads the intention and selects from an extensive database what it determines to be the most suitable answer to the question. However, the phrasing of these statements does not always perfectly correspond to the questions asked. When I tested this feature, I quickly began to feel that it was artificial. I caught myself wondering who I actually was in this project and who the person I was talking to was. It seemed unethical to me, because individuals are in a way turned into “virtual bots”. Still, I highly appreciate the value of the project – as documentation and as a tool for historians who know what questions to ask. From a narrative perspective, though, the viewer/participant soon realises that they do not really know what to ask.

When we started working on The Choice, such solutions were not yet available. I was thinking about something else: determining how much of the material recorded with Kristen should be used. These are hours of recordings and a lot of threads. As the experience continued to expand, I realised it began to resemble a kind of video Wikipedia. The protagonist responds and the conversation branches out, but as a user I gradually become disoriented and the emotional intensity dissipates. Ultimately, we retained interactivity, i.e. the ability to decide which question to ask, but in designing the conversation, it was crucial to set out what we called the critical path. Directing an interview involves imposing structure on the story, planning its rhythm, and determining the location of its climax.

In your doctoral thesis, you called The Choice an “interactive creative document”, which implies that such an experience is not “pure” non-fiction. Indeed, it is a simulation and a staged experience. Come to think of it, creativity is overlooked in other contexts, too – the creative role of the interviewee is frequently neglected even in discussions of the interview as a journalistic genre.

It was particularly interesting to talk to two users who, after experiencing The Choice, told me that they would not have asked one of the questions because it felt too personal to them. I realised that this was the strength of the project: in real life, you might not dare to ask certain questions, but within the VR experience, someone asks them on your behalf.

Editing is, of course, necessary, and it constitutes a form of interference with reality, but I am careful not to cross the line, because projects of this kind are grounded in trust. The way I directed this conversation probably reveals my own views, but it is impossible to avoid taking a certain perspective, isn’t it? The very decision of when to turn on the camera, let alone how to edit the material, is a subjective one and cannot be eliminated. 

In The Choice, you seek to achieve a sense of realism. To make immersion possible, you and Tom employed a distinctive filming technique that combines volumetric capture with stereoscopic imaging. At the same time, the experience is situated within an otherwise empty space, punctuated only by drawings that emerge during the conversation. What motivated this design choice? I assume it was intended to minimise sensory distraction, so that the viewer could concentrate fully on the person they are listening to.

I wanted for the audience experiencing The Choice to sense the physicality of their interlocutor and to feel the speaker’s presence as real. In the first phase of testing, we managed to produce a hologram, a ghost, reminiscent of Leia in Star Wars. This could evoke unwanted connotations, such as speaking to someone who has died – and I wanted to remove the stigma of a life-threatening procedure from abortion. 

Tom came up with the idea of combining two techniques: volumetric capture and stereoscopic imaging. Volumetric capture records an object together with data about its spatiality and volume, thanks to which it can be situated within a virtual environment, in what is called a game engine. As a result, the object, or person, appears to be right next to us in VR. On its own, however, volumetric capture produces a ghost-like or holographic effect – both the spatial qualities of the object and its texture and skin are slightly less realistic. This, and several other shortcomings can be resolved thanks to stereoscopy. Integrating these two techniques is far from straightforward, though. We spent two years developing the filming technology itself and designing a camera system capable of capturing images in this manner. The result is that the viewer feels as if they are standing face to face with a real person, maintaining a sense of naturalness and realism. 

This is not hyperrealism, though. There are certain imperfections, such as blurring in volumetric capture, which is a consequence of the filming method. We decided that such flaws were desirable, because they help to avoid the uncanny valley effect. I don’t like hyperrealism, it evokes a deeply unsettling feeling.

Also, we worked on developing mobile technology that would allow us to film people in their own homes. Given the intimacy of the subject matter, I was reluctant to conduct the interviews in a studio environment. Although we ultimately did end up working in a studio, we managed to maintain an atmosphere of privacy. Paradoxically, this was possible because we had no funding, so we couldn’t afford to hire a crew – the two of us did all the filming. A difficult subject requires trust not only between the director and the person being filmed, but above all within the crew. 

As for the black background: I once watched a VR project about transgender people that also involved simulating a conversation.

Do you mean Made This Way: Redefining Masculinity, which premiered in Venice seven years ago? 

Yes. The places where these people lived, for instance the interiors of their flats, were incorporated as backgrounds. As I was listening to one of the conversations, my attention was drawn to a desk with a notebook lying on it. I felt an overwhelming urge to reach for that notebook, because I felt that it must contain something that would add to the story being told. I also found myself overly focused on scanning the surroundings, driven by a habitual search for meaningful context. This prompted me to analyse the literature on virtual storytelling, and led me to conclude that distracting the viewer was ultimately detrimental. I also didn’t want the users of The Choice to judge the protagonists or draw conclusions about their everyday lives. Whether their homes are tidy or messy, and what books sit on their shelves, is irrelevant to the story. That is why I only recorded individuals speaking about their experiences and placed them within a black space.

In my doctoral thesis, I also wrote about another experience, namely Testimony. It comprises a series of interviews with survivors of sexual violence. After you put on a headset, you get to see “bubbles” with photographs of the protagonists. Interaction is controlled with your eyes – if you stare intently at a selected photograph, the bubble moves closer to you and the story begins. When I took part in this experience, I started listening to the story of the person I had chosen, but then wanted to give myself some “space” and turned away for a moment, which immediately broke the connection. I don’t like this mode of interaction. Staring intrusively at someone can itself be a form of violence. People need space: to think, to be able to disengage and drift away, to look elsewhere. 

My reflections on Testimony inspired me to design The Choice experience in such a way that the viewer’s attention is focused on the person with whom an illusion of direct contact is established, while the surroundings are not distracting. At the same time, the introduction of illustrations allowed me to signal gently to the viewer that they can look away, look around, and do not have to stare intently into the eyes of the interlocutor. The next step was to employ these illustrations in a way that would strengthen the emotional bond with the protagonist, while simultaneously opening up space for interpretation.  

On The Choice website, Zoe Roellin discusses the illustrations. She created them using Quill software, drawing in VR goggles and using the controller as a brush. Thanks to that, the images have the quality of hand-drawn pictures, evoking associations with childhood and simplicity. Importantly, the visual interpretation emerges in real time, during the experience itself.

The idea was to illustrate the protagonist’s thought process – this world is not realistic, as it belongs to the realm of dreams.  Once we had mapped out the emotional landscape of the conversation, Janal Bechthold composed the music. I sought to coordinate it so that either the imagery or the sound would dominate at the right moments in the story.  

I watched all parts of The Choice at the ART VR festival in Prague, and I have some reflections on how such an experience might be arranged. There were several stations in the room, and users were not isolated from one another. At times, sounds from the real world disrupted my immersion and distracted me. The Choice is the kind of experience that really needs intimacy. 

Ideally, The Choice would be experienced at home, in one’s own private space. Unfortunately, VR distribution presents many challenges, and what happens at festivals is not entirely under the creators’ control. Besides, there are many works to watch during such events, whereas difficult subject matter demands reflection and a moment of pause. When we presented The Choice at the SXSW festival, one user kept her headset on for a long time. I approached her to ask if everything was alright, and she replied that she did not yet want to rejoin other people, as she needed time to cry. Naturally, we gave her that space. Kristen accompanied us at that event and spoke to the audience after the screening. The festival experience with The Choice taught me an important lesson, which is why we are now designing Reich of Ashes as an installation, carefully considering the stages of entering the story and gently exiting it. 

We want the onboarding and offboarding to function as integral components of the experience. The aim is not to depend on the festival presenting the project or on volunteers tasked with “servicing” the individual works. Often, festivals lack the time or capacity to become sufficiently familiar with each project to train their volunteers in the nuances of each of even a few dozen experiences presented at a single event. For this reason, from the very beginning we have conceived Reich of Ashes so that the introduction to the subject – first grounding the participant in the physical space of the installation, then in the historical context – is part of the narrative. Only then do we gradually immerse the viewer in the more intense, emotional layer of the story. Offboarding, or leaving the experience, is likewise designed to unfold gradually, allowing the viewer time to regain composure and reflect. 

The project is intended not only for festivals, but also for presentation in schools, which is why taking care of the participants’ wellbeing is such a crucial consideration.

Great. I believe that the potential of VR in school education remains largely untapped, and the same applies to journalism. I followed with interest the American and British projects that began to emerge ten years ago. In 2015, The New York Times produced The Displaced, in which users become guests in the lives of Oleg, Hana and Chuola, three immigrant children. A year later, The Guardian released 6×9, a VR simulation of the experience of solitary confinement in prison.

I really like this project.

It makes excellent use of the language of VR, space and presence. Formally, it is very simple, telling a story that feels familiar from other media such as films, books, and documentaries. But it was only the “physical” experience of being inside a cramped, bare cell, combined with the voices and memories of people sentenced to solitary confinement, that showed me what it might feel like. 

In Poland, the potential of VR is completely ignored. And yet it could be used to show, for example, the realities of the war in Ukraine, offering new opportunities for emotional engagement with the audience. 

During the third edition of the VR section at the Krakow Film Festival, which I curate, we presented Shelter, a film about Ukraine [directed by Sjors Swierstra from the Netherlands and Ivanna Khitsinska from Ukraine – ed.]. It was very well received. There are still very few VR productions in Poland, because there is no funding for them and access to equipment is limited. Moreover, virtual reality is still rarely perceived as a space for artistic activity, not just entertainment. The situation is even more challenging in the field of journalism. While VR has become democratic in terms of hardware – you can buy a headset at relatively low cost – the production process continues to be complex, time-consuming and expensive.