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In a powerful moment, Dr. Ruha Benjamin shares her experience with our VR project, describing how it allows people to see Gaza through the eyes of its people not just as an observer, but as if you are there.  “The kids are looking at you eye to eye… you’re standing over the shoulder of a teenager reciting poetry… you’re riding alongside a little boy on a skateboard at the beach.”

Discover how businesses are using virtual assistants to cut costs, improve productivity, and stay flexible in a fast-changing market.

The Phoenix of Gaza XR is a virtual gateway to pre-destruction Gaza. Open to the entire Yale community December 3–6, this extended reality project features hundreds of videos and images of daily activities in Gaza taken with a 360-degree camera.

When 29-year-old Naim Aburaddi got started on his PhD project in media studies at CU Boulder a few years ago, he decided to capture images of the good times people had in his native Gaza: kids doing flips in the sand at the beach, men dancing while being balanced on other people’s shoulders at weddings, people relaxing in a bathhouse built during the Ottoman empire.

Naim Aburaddi grew up in Gaza but left to pursue his education in the U.S. Years ago, feeling homesick, he crafted an idea to use technology so he could once again walk in the streets, attend a party, go to the beach — and share that experience with others, too.

For many of us, virtual reality experiences are few and far between. And the ones we encounter typically involve gaming. But for two Palestinian artists, virtual reality means more than entertainment — it’s cultural preservation. Their project, titled “Phoenix of Gaza XR”, is currently making its way across a handful of Massachusetts universities, and will tour across the country, in a series of exhibitions, many of which are open to the public. GBH’s Kate Dellis has the story.

Success to many is an air-conditioned room, an ocean view, and unlimited amenities and possessions. Eighteen-year-old Naim Abu Radi of Gaza, however, has a much more modest vision of success. He lives in a small rundown cottage where his desk is a repurposed child’s bed, his light a hodgepodge of broken refrigerator parts, plastic nylon and draped cloth.