Tiffany Duong, Aya Walraven, and Dr. Louise Edwards have come together to create Three Otters Media (TOM), which leverages virtual reality and immersive technologies to amplify the benefits of connecting with nature while reducing environmental externalities from travel. With Flag #32 in hand, TOM heads to Antarctica with the goal of creating a science-based digital world to help people connect to the world’s final frontier and understand why it matters to the stability of the planet without having to travel here. 

While on expedition they will use firsthand experience and the strategic collection of assets—videos, images, and sounds—to craft an immersive experience that addresses critical environmental challenges experienced in the Antarctic region, such as the local and global impacts of melting ice shelves and the ongoing ethnographic questions of who is included in polar research programs. The culmination of their work, the groundbreaking virtual reality (VR) game, ‘Stories from the Southern Seas,’ will allow players the opportunity to make their own discoveries about and connections to this remote continent.

Drawing from Tiffany, Aya, and Louise’s combined skill set, TOM builds on the inherent strengths of VR and the proven benefits of games-based learning by applying our distinctive impact-led design methodology to effect real and measurable environmental change. By creating digital worlds based on data and lived experiences in our physical one, they increase access to and action on behalf of remote and wild places from the comforts of personal homes and headsets. The three women met on the Sea Women Expedition, which carried WINGS Flag #32 to Arctic Norway in 2022.