The Japanese city’s nascent technology sector is helping tackle some of its most critical challenges
WOR D S C R A IG B RIGHT
18
I
feel nothing as the huge girder swinging ominously in front of me smashes into my chest, knocking me off my precarious position atop a high-rise construction site. My body spins as I plummet towards the ground before the concrete greets me with an unforgiving jolt and my world turns a grim shade of red. Mere seconds earlier, I had been edging along a
steel beam, arms outstretched to keep my balance. Now, I am little more than a crumpled mass of regret at the base of a half-built tower, wondering aloud – as I remove the virtual reality headset – what I could have done to avoid my grisly fate. “There’s no way to avoid it,” says Steven Boura, a
designer at technology firm BeRise that developed the unwinnable scenario I had just predictably failed. “This is only to prepare your mind, and instil in you the notion that, if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do, bad things are going to happen.” The scenario is one of many interactive safety
instruction exercises developed by the company, which is based in Hiroshima on Japan’s Honshu Island. The idea is that a virtual reality experience is more likely to stick with you than a traditional safety briefing. When it’s not pushing you off a great height without a safety harness, BeRise is having you electrocute yourself while trying to fix an electrical box, or accidentally mowing down fellow factory workers while driving a forklift – accompanied by an inappropriately rewarding “squish” sound effect. “We’re trying to make it a little bit more fun, just something that will keep it in your mind and not be forgotten,” says Boura. The macabre nature of its work aside, BeRise is one of
many promising nascent technology firms that have cropped up in Hiroshima prefecture in recent years. Like many regions in Japan, Hiroshima is facing a number of social challenges, from an ageing society and limited workforce to natural disasters. The government is looking to its small but growing technology sector to help address them, but the task is not without its uphill struggles.
AP RIL 20 19
TEAMLAB (TEAMLAB IS REPRESENTED BY PACE GALLERY)
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