Elaine Hoey

The Weight of Water is an extraordinary immersive animation that fuses virtual reality and gaming technology to address the ongoing global refugee crisis.

For each viewer – one-at-a-time and for 8 minutes - that crisis is no longer an abstraction, an item on the news or a front-page photo. Instead, it becomes a lived experience, collapsing the distance that normally protects us from the impact of such events and making us ‘witnesses’ rather than safely detached spectators. Wearing a virtual-reality headset, each viewer joins refugees on a boat and is both observer and fellow-traveler as they undertake a treacherous journey. Words, sound and images create a sensory field that enacts the perils of seeking asylum in Europe, offering us increased understanding of these traumatic and grim experiences.