In the botanical garden, the Dresden Frauenkirche or in familiar places: Virtual reality enables old people to travel new and old. Does that also help against loneliness and forgetting? About opportunities, side effects and ethical issues.
Amanda Pasternak likes to tell about the day when she was in the Dresden Frauenkirche. At 90 years of age, she still went up to the roof. Ten years later, in May 2019, she visited the building again: a choir in front of the altar, wooden benches to the right and left, and the painted dome above. Actually, however, the 100-year-old is sitting in a wheelchair in the Düsseldorf old people’s and care facility Luisenheim that day. VR glasses sit in the wrinkled face of the resident, and her head almost disappears underneath. VR stands for “Virtual Reality”: a three-dimensional reality that you can immerse yourself in with the help of special glasses. When Pasternak looks through these glasses, she can look around the Frauenkirche as if she were there.