Voices of VR

Andrew Schneider’s "NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars)" absolutely blew me away, and it was a story-driven, immersive art exhibit at the University of Texas Performing Arts Center that opened at the end of SXSW. It uses a cube of 4000 LED lights in a dark theater space to create a visual spectacle, but also to hide an incredible magic trick. There was an array of 392 speakers hidden on three different walls creating one of the most complex and nuanced spatial audio storytelling experiences that I've ever heard. I was profoundly moved by the themes of grief, loss, and our place in the cosmos as he uses the low-bit visual experience to amplify the richness of the audio storytelling featuring beautiful biomimicry moments, large movements of abstract shapes, as well as allusions to stars and constellations. It's an experience that transcends my ability to fully communicate how incredible it was, but I did have a chance to have an in-depth chat with Schneider to talk about his journey in creating it. From theatre-maker to NYU ITP, Schneider does a brilliant job of mashing up data inputs with novel outputs, but all serving the larger journey he's taking us on as a master storyteller. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Wayne Powell is the Global Artist Relations Manager for d&b audiotechnik, and he's been getting more and more interested in how independent artists and musicians are using spatial audio. He was in Austin, Texas with an array of 13 speakers enabling a spatial audio mix for Roman Rappak's annual Ristband mixed reality live performance. I had a chance to catch up with Powell to learn more about his journey into the immersive audio realm, why spatial audio storytelling experiences are currently capturing his attention, and some of the other trends, exciting immersive artists, and immersive audio hotspots around the world. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

On the last day of immersive exhibitions, I saw Roman Rappak's latest RISTBAND mixed reality live performance experiment, which now has a 4-year streak going at SXSW. This year he added an array of 13 d&b audiotechnik speakers that used wave field synthesis to create a spatial audio mix that was added to his mixed reality performance. I have Rappak recount the evolution of this MR live performance (not using Pico HMDs), and see my interviews about unpacking previous live performances from 2022, 2023, and 2024. Rappak shares that adding immersive art to a live musical performance leaves audiences searching for a story, and if he didn't provide one then people would make one up. He's been adding voice-over narration to more deliberately guide the story he's telling, but also experimenting with spatial audio mixes using high-end speakers. I had a chance to catch up with both Rappak and d&b artist relations manager Wayne Powell (in episode #1536) about his latest spatial audio innovations. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The Polyphonic Spree band founder Tim Delaughter was looking for innovative ways to get people to listen to the entirety of his latest album called Salvage Enterprise. He was driving around a lot of speakers in his van and setting up pop-up listening parties around his home town when he thought there should be a better way to coax people into listening to his entire album, which is something that's a lot more rare in today's fragmented media ecosystem. He worked with Scott Berman as his long-time collaborator on visuals to recruit a number of different animators and filmmakers to create a dome version featuring his entire album called RESOLUTION: A CINEPHONIC RHAPSODY FOR THE SOUL. It's the first time SXSW has been able to curate a dome experience (which showed on the main showroom floor), and it was one of the experiences that was able to quickly fill up their 20 available slots per hour across their six showings a day. It ended up taking home the Audience Award for the XR Experience Spotlight, and was one of the hotter tickets of the exhibition with people rushing to sign up as soon as the doors opened. I had a chance to speak with Director Scott Berman, Polyphonic Spree Founder Tim Delaughter, and Producer Ryan Hartsell about the process of putting this dome experience together. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Web developer Pete Adams created seven different really cool WebXR worlds for his songs featured in the A NUMBER FROM THE GHOST experience. His music was really great to listen to as I explored his abstract open worlds that were being modulated by different three.js effects. It's tough going to make it as an independent musician today, and so Adams was thrilled to take part in SXSW to feature his intersection between art and technology. These experiences also led to him being commissioned by HTC's VIVERSE to continue to develop these WebXR musical immersive experiences for their platform. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Tenderclaws debuted their first piece in competition at SXSW with a short called FACE JUMPING, which was a surreal, seemingly open world experience with a number of interactive experiments leveraging eye tracking in novel ways. Tenderclaws has consistently pushed the edges of locomotion in everyone of their interactive narratives, and FACE JUMPING is no exception. If you lock eyes with another character for long enough, and you'll have an opportunity to swap perspectives with them, which allows you to progress through various different vignettes. There's a deeply poetic story that's unfolding, but I found that I needed a lot of decoding of the dream logic, metaphors, and allegories within my conversation with Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro. But it's the type of experience that I wanted to play again and again to continue to explore this world, and all of the novel eye tracking experiments that I missed. FACE JUMPING was my second favorite piece of the festival, and it ended up winning the Audience Award for the SXSW XR Experience Competition, and it was also one of the hottest tickets during the festival. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

IN THE CURRENT OF BEING is a powerfully-told story about electroshock conversion therapy using haptics, mixed reality, and a free-flowing dream logic structure paired with a documentary interview of a survivor. It was a deeply moving experience, and won the new Agog Social Impact Award at SXSW (more on that below). The director is BODY OF MINE's Cameron Kostopolous, who continues exploring embodied storytelling about a very timely topic. There were a handful of politically-themed pieces this year, and this was particularly prescient considering that the Supreme Court announced during SXSW that it would hear arguments about Chiles v. Salazar that challenges the constitutionality of Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy. Kostopolous is telling the story of trauma from conversion therapy, and hopes to be a part of an impact campaign that bans conversion therapy in at least one state. However this may be impossible if the Supreme Court declares conversion therapists a free speech right, even if there's little evidence that shows any merit that conversion therapy even works and is considered by Kostopolous to be a form of torture. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

There is a six-month exhibition titled "Other Worlds Are Possible" featuring a retrospective of a dozen different immersive storytelling pieces that will shown at the Le Pavillion in Nemur, Belgium from March 22 to September 21, 2025. The exhibition was curated by independent immersive curator Ana Brzezińska, and will also feature other AR pieces, screen-based work, but also an exhibit detailing a brief history and evolution of immersive art and immersive storytelling from different design disciplines. I had a chance to catch up with Brzezińska to get a bit more context on her design intention for this exhibition, to talk about the current state of immersive art and storytelling, as well as her current focus on brining this work to traditional cultural institutions that are reaching out to mainstream audiences. Here's a list of different immersive storytelling pieces that will be featured over the next sixth months (with links to my Voices of VR podcast interviews with the creators). NOTES ON BLINDNESS (2016) SPHERES (2017) BATTLESCAR (2018) GLOOMY EYES (2019) TRAVELING WHILE BLACK (2019) THE HANGMAN AT HOME (2020) GOLIATH: PLAYING WITH REALITY (2021) PLANET CITY (2022) PLASTISAPIENS (2022) EVOLVER (2022) FROM THE MAIN SQUARE (2022) ALL THAT REMAINS (2022) OVER THE RAINBOW (2023) This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The SXSW XR Experience Selection runs from March 9-11 and contains 15 pieces in competition and 16 pieces in the spotlight, and I had a chance to chat with SXSW's XR programmer Blake Kammerdiener about each of these pieces. He provides some highlights from the XR Track Sessions at SXSW, and also mentions that there is an immersive piece called NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) that is showing on March 11th & 12th. See down below for some more links to different SXSW events. Here is a list of the XR experiences being shown at SXSW, and I will update this post as I post my Voices of VR podcast interviews as I've featured a dozen projects in my previous coverage. UPDATE (March 29, 2025): I've now added links to all of my subsequent coverage at SXSW down below. And be sure to check out this Linked article: Recap of All SXSW XR Experiences Including Voices of VR Podcast Interviews with Every Artist. SXSW XR Experience Competition [Overview of all of the SXSW 2025 XR Experience Program] - #1529: SXSW 2025 XR Experience Selection Sneak Peak with Programmer Blake Kammerdiener 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre - #1548: 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre Uses Phone-Based AR to Volumetrically Tell a Forgotten History Any War Any Enemy - #1490: “Any War Any Enemy” is a Beautiful Anti-War, Immersive Poem About Nuclear Annihilation Cosmos in Focus - #1554: Cosmos in Focus Contextualizes James Webb Telescope Images in Educational Immersive Planetarium Experience Currents - #1556: Currents Boldly Defines a New Era of DIY 180-Degree Immersive Filmmaking with a Kit Under $5k Face Jumping - #1532: Tenderclaws' "Face Jumping" Explores the Frontiers of Eye-Tracked Locomotion in Poetically Surreal Short Honey Fungus - #1549: Honey Fungus Cultivates Intimacy with Nature through Embodied Actions Inspired by Fungi and Queer Ecology In the Current of Being - #1531: In the Current of Being Uses Immersive Haptics to Tell the Story of Electroshock Conversation Therapy Proof As If Proof Were Needed - #1543: Proof As If Proof Were Needed Enables Audiences to Collaboratively Edit Video Feeds via Embodied Movements Reflections of Little Red Dot - #1539: Wandering in Open World Doc Archives in Mixed Reality with SXSW XR Jury Prize Winner "Reflections of Little Red Dot" Shelter - #1545: Shelter Observational 360 Documentary Shows Intimate Side of War via Ukrainian Citizen Bomb Shelters [The Choice Chapter 1] - #1075: Stereoscopic Compositing Innovations & “The Choice” Interactive Documentary Exploring Reproductive Rights in Texas The Choice - Chapters 2 and 3 - #1547: Simulating One-on-One Conversations about Abortion Experiences to Change Minds with "The Choice - Chapters 2 & 3" The Last Practice - #1542: Exploring the Paradox of Narratively Critiquing AI While Also Using AI to Make "The Last Practice" The Secret Life of Monsters - The Gateway Experience - #1538: Mixed Reality Calibration Innovations Hidden within "The Secret Life of Monsters: The Gateway Experience" Traces: The Grief Processor - #1544: Traces: The Grief Processor Immersive Documentary Invites Groups to Learn About Grief Ways of Knowing: A Navajo Nuclear History - #1546: How Indigenous Storytelling is Changing Non-Proliferation Narratives in "Ways of Knowing: A Navajo Nuclear History" SXSW XR Experience Spotlight Address Unknown: Fukushima Now - #1438: Honoring the Memory of Abandoned Ghost Towns with “Address Unknown: Fukushima Now” All I Know About Teacher Li - #1452: Immersive Documentary about Chinese Censorship “All I Know About Teacher Li” Tops Venice Immersive Audience Favorites Survey Ancestors - #1507: From Selfies to Virtual Offspring, “Ancestors” Turns Strangers into Family and Intergenerational Speculative Futures Anouschka - #1334: “Anouschka” Wins IDFA DocLab Digital Storytelling Award with AR Narrative Game about Cultural Heritage [Oyrza from DocLab 2024, but also some more discussion about Anouschka] - #1540: Hacking...

The Theater application for the Apple Vision Pro by Sandwich Vision launched in June 2024 with the spatial livestreaming of John Gruber's live interview of Apple Executives at WWDC. They have been collaborating with independent producers of spatial video to distribute rentals and purchases of immersive content spanning across stereoscopic 180-videos to educational planetarium content to more experimental dome content as well as stereoscopic captures of live music performances (I can highly recommend checking out Fungi: Web of Life by K2 Studios). Users can also connect their private collections of movies via Plex Media Servers to enjoy their own private movie collection in a virtual home theater experience with a number of different theater options. They're also currently implementing social features, and may start having live screenings of classic movies with potential collaborations with independent movie theaters. I had a chance to catch up with Sandwich Vision co-founder Adam Lisagor to hear a bit more about his journey into the XR space, how he's blended storytelling and technology throughout his career, as well as his hopes for what might be a new renaissance of spatial video content given Apple's emphasis of on 180-degree spatial video rather than the VR filmmaking era of 360-degree videos. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Lovesick is a narrative game featuring a character-driven story of a bank on the brink of collapse that faces a series of supernatural events that they must escape from. It features a lot of escape room and puzzle mechanics that are mixed with embodied gameplay, but at the heart it's about the relationship between these four different band members in what I found to be a real gem of a story with a payoff ending that made it worth the journey. I had a chance to sit down with director and co-writer Corey Warning from Rose-City Games to get a bit more context for how Lovesick came about catalyzed by some funding from Meta, their iterative design process along the way that was centered and driven by the story they wanted to tell, as well as their hope to bring some narrative-driven content and indie spirit to the VR ecosystem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAb_7fewd6c This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

In a series of posts from February 8th to 11th, open source developer Matthieu Bucchianeri started making allegations that Meta's OVRPlugin is blocking non-Meta OpenXR runtimes, thereby undermining the open and interoperable spirit of OpenXR. He claims that "the OVRPlugin takes intentional precautions to exclude non-Meta platforms. This means that XR content developed with OVRPlugin will only work with Quest Link, and it will not work with any other runtime." Bucchianeri's allegation is that if a PCVR game includes Meta's OVRPlugin as their OpenXR middleware and doesn't implement the counter-blocking measures that he details, then PCVR users will only be able to use a Quest headset with Quest Link while other non-Meta headsets like "Pimax, Pico, Varjo, Vive" will be blocked, even if they have conformant OpenXR runtimes. Bucchianeri has validated these blocking counter-measures, and he says, "as proven with many applications using OVRPlugin with counter-measures enabled, these applications can run on a conformant OpenXR implementation." Not very many XR developers are willing to speak about these issues on the record, but I did manage to record a Voices of VR podcast interview with Virtual Desktop's Guy Godin who was able to independently corroborate many of the core allegations from Bucchianeri. Godin collaborated with Bucchianeri on the Virtual Desktop OpenXR (VDXR) runtime, but has also been receiving many complaints from PCVR users around Meta's OpenXR non-compliance issues, especially with games that launch both on Quest and PCVR and use Meta's OVRPlugin. Godin told me that games will work fine natively on the Quest, but any non-Quest headsets or if they aren't using Quest Link will be blocked on the PCVR version, unless the developer specifically implements anti-blocking counter-measures detailed by Bucchianeri in his technical write-up. It appears as though OpenXR conformance from the Khronos Group only pertains to the actual OpenXR runtimes on the hardware, but headset manufacturers are able to create their own SDK plug-in middleware that interfaces with OpenXR that doesn't have the same conformance requirements. It appears as though Meta is able to technically maintain their OpenXR runtime conformant status because it does not apply to their OVRPlugin middleware SDK solution, and Bucchianeri is claiming that Meta is undermining the normative standards of interoperability by not following the best practices from the Khronos Group. He says, "For the past several years, Khronos has come up with best practices and solutions to develop OpenXR applications and maximize cross-vendor and cross-platform interoperability. Khronos has asked XR developers all over the world to follow these best practices, however - Meta - the largest vendor in Khronos is refusing to follow these best practices." Bucchianeri is also claiming to have had private communications with Meta confirming that these were deliberate and intentional changes. He says, "This is not an accident: this concern was reported to Meta early in 2024 via official means in the Khronos group. Meta acknowledged purposedly blocking other platforms from running OpenXR content at that time." I was able to confirm in my discussion with Guy Godwin in this Voices of VR podcast episode that he also believes that these were deliberate and intentional changes to undermine the spirit of OpenXR. Part of why Bucchianeri was blowing the whistle is because the Khronos Group had not been taking any action against Meta. He describes Meta's actions as "reverting many of the improvements to the developers and users ecosystem that Khronos has spent time, money, energy into solving for the past 7 years." He says, "Unfortunately, since 2024, Khronos has refused to take actions to stop Meta’s OVRPlugin destructive initiative towards the PCVR ecosystem. By not taking any actions to resolve the issues created by Meta’s OVRPlugin, Khronos is sending the message that OpenXR is no lo...

Niantic launched their Into the Scaniverse application on Quest 3 on February 26th, 2025 that features over 50,000 Gaussian Spats from 120 different countries. They originally launched the WebXR version on December 10th, 2024 at IntoTheScaniverse.com, which was built using Niantic Studio (be sure to check out their comprehensive history of Gaussian Splats by Kirsten M. Johnson released at the same time). Users can use the Scaniverse mobile app on Android or iOS to capture, render, geotag, and upload their own Gaussian Splats onto the Into the Scaniverse mapps that can be viewed on either mobile phone or XR devices. I had a chance to speak more about Into the Scaniverse with Joel Udwin, who is Niantic's Director of Product for Niantic's AR, Research, Developer Platforms, and Scaniverse. Gaussian Splats are only about 1 year and a half old as the original "3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering" paper was presented at SIGGRAPH in August 2023, but it represents a new rendering pipeline for volumetrically captured content. Niantic's Into the Scaniverse apps are able to process and render these splats locally on the phone or Quest devices, and they have a lot of plans for how they will continue to utilize and develop this as a core part of their technology infrastructure and enabling new mixed reality applications. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR51MrAtUM4 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

HTC has launched Viverse platform that is aiming to become the YouTube of 3D Content. It's a platform that hosts 3D content and worlds built on PlayCanvas as well as many other open source technologies like WebXR, WebGPU, and VRM. It is sort of like a mix between VRChat with social worlds, 3D web crypto-based metaverse worlds, but also with some more enterprise embedding features as well. It's exciting to see this shift towards building out the open and interoperable metaverse, but in the context of this hybrid walled garden context that is built using open web technology stacks. It is also a hybrid in another way in that it is mostly consumer-facing but also has enterprise use cases like privately embedding of 3D content. I interviewed HTC's Andranik Aslanyan about the new VIVERSE platform, how they recruited over a hundred XR and WebXR developers to seed the content, and how VIVERSE fits into their overall strategy. I get some clarifications on the Android XR non-exclusive IP acquisition, and how VIVERSE fits into where HTC will be heading now that we're coming up on 10 years the HTC Vive was announced on March 1, 2014. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The latest Polys Ombudsperson of the Year is Ingrid Kopp, and previous winners Brittan Heller, Michaela Montagna, and myself gathered again on December 8 2024 to reflect on the current state of the XR industry as well as the specific ethical concerns about the intersection between XR and AI. We also speak about some of the power of storytelling to unpack some of these moral dilemmas, as well as tech policy in the context of the existing political climate, but also some of the broader and general trends of the XR industry. In my takeaways at the end, I also elaborate on the leaked memo from Meta CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth saying "We need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR. And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance. If you don't feel the weight of history on you then you aren't paying attention. This year likely determines whether this entire effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure." A lot of their Meta's commitment to XR seems to be directly tethered to the success or failure of their own first-party app. Zuckerberg's AR/VR Strategy memo from 2014 leaked to TechCrunch by Blake Harris now seems particularly prescient: "for now keep in mind that we need to succeed in building both a major platform and key apps to improve our strategic position on the next platform. If we only build key apps but not the platform, we will remain in our current position. If we only build the platform but not the key apps, we may be in a worse position." Zuckerberg later elaborates that apps and experiences are their top priority in XR: "I think you can divide the ecosystem into three major parts: apps / experiences, platform services and hardware / systems. In my vision of ubiquitous VR / AR, these are listed in order of importance." As time has passed, it's become more and more clear that the success of Meta's Horizon worlds may be directly tethered to Meta's overall commitment to the XR industry. Just yesterday, Meta announced a $50 million dollar fund for Meta Horizon World creators, with special awards for mobile: "By investing in mobile content, we can reach a lot of new people who don’t yet own a Quest headset and ultimately grow the pie for everyone. That’s why, as part of our $50 million Creator Fund for creators of mobile and MR worlds, we’re also announcing our first creator competition of the year with a focus on mobile." UploadVR did a really great follow-up report about "From Quest To Horizon: How Meta's Shifting Priorities Are Affecting Developers" that includes many anonymous statements from XR developers talking about the impact of Meta's shifting priorities. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Oliver Kadel's 1618 Digital specializes in spatial audio sound design and engineering across linear immersive storytelling and interactive immersive experiences. Kadel also co-hosts The Immersive Audio Podcast with Monica Bolles, and I was recently featured in episode #109. I sat down with Kadel to get a survey of some of the spatial audio formats and production pipelines ranging from 3rd order ambisonics, object-oriented audio in game engines, working with the audio formats for Apple Immersive Video, Dolby Atmos, MPEG-H Audio, and emerging open standards like the Immersive Audio Model & Format (IAMF), which is "an audio container specification designed to revolutionize immersive audio experiences across a wide range of applications, including streaming, gaming, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and traditional broadcasting." We talk about some of his favorite immersive audio productions, his process of getting a Ph.D. studying the impact of spatial audio on cognitive load, and some of the future trends of spatial audio.

The Khronos Group is working on a new open standard tentatively called the glTF External Reference Format (or glTFx for short), which will allow users to add multiple glTF assets to a single scene. This used to be called the "glTF Experience Format (glXF)," and the final name is still being finalized. This will enable new capabilities that are not possible by using glTF itself to contain other glTF assets, which includes is level-of-detail (LoD) management, asset-based lighting Management, and billboarding. The Khronos Group continues to translate the core functionality of game engines into various open standards, and are also working towards finalizing glTF extensions for interactivity as well as for physics. I did a deep dive with Khronos 3D Formats Working Group Chairman Alexey Medvedev (AR Tech Lead at Meta/Facebook), and 3D Formats Working Group Vice Chairman Dan Frith (Chief Creative Officer at London Dynamics) to unpack all of the latest news about glTF and glTF External Reference Format. . This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I dig into my archives to unpack the one-on-one, immersive theatre piece that I saw online back in 2021 called TM that used a Socratic dialectic to interrogate you as you're going through a process of joining an imaginary cult. I spoke with Ontroerend Goed's artistic director Alexander Devriendt to get a lot more context for how he designs immersive theatre productions for folks who typically don't like immersive theatre. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

VR filmmakers Joe Hunting and Max Willson are premiering their short documentary film The Reality of Hope at the Sundance film festival this week (online tickets are still available here from Jan 30 to Feb 2 and it'll also be available later this year on Documentary+). Hunting's previous film We Met in Virtual Reality also premiered at Sundance in 2022 and got picked up by HBO, and he's continuing to document very human stories that are rooted within the context of virtual culture. The Reality of Hope is shot both in VRChat and physical reality as it tells the beautiful and inspiring story of Photographotter traveling across the world to donate a kidney to his friend Hiyu, who he met within the furry community in VR. Hiyu is a world builder and avatar creator who has been a part of the team that has created some truly spectacular worlds as a part of the Furality conference (See the full list of worlds listed down below). Facing kidney failure, Hiyu turned to social media asking for help seeking a donor, which caught Photographotter's attention who then privately reached out. Photographotter documented the ups and downs of his inner journey in a VTuber video blog series, and The Reality of Hope fills in a lot of the gaps for the broader Furality community, the worlds that Hiyu has built, and the nuances of their friendship in hospitals of Stockholm, Sweden as the organ donor process requires a three-month commitment. The Reality of Hope is a beautifully-told story that shows the power of VR to forge deep and meaningful connections that proved to be literally life-saving. VRChat Worlds featured in The Reality of Hope Furality Aqua: The Oceans of Luma by Furality Sylva: Treehouse Village at Night by Furality Luma: Crystal Forest by Furality Sylva: Lahaina Springs by Furality Umbra: Village of Umbra by Furality (video) Furality˸ F․Y․N․N․'s Gym by Furality VR Yoga by Castiel先生 Exoplanet Journey by Niko* Tanuki Tunesǃ - タヌキトゥーンズ by Juno Tanuki Photographotters House V2 - by Photographotter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVMSZ30_FMY This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

If it were up to Agnes Callard, she would be having a lot more philosophical encounters in her life. But conversational norms lean towards agreeability, surface-level interactions, and, in some contexts, a polarizing battlefield of ideologies that is near impossible to penetrate. Her preference is for the Socratic Method of inquiry that requires participants to embody specific roles (believing truths vs avoiding falsehoods), with specific rules to follow, and committing to the possibility of having one's beliefs or skepticism radically transformed. This allows for the prospect of overcoming blind spots and co-creating knowledge in a collaborative fashion where one thinks with someone rather than thinking for someone. Socratic inquiry doesn't just happen, so Callard wrote a book called Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life explaining the process in great detail. She even created an entirely new ethical framework arguing that striving for knowledge is a moral imperative per Socrates' aphorism "the unexamined life is not worth living." Callard argues in her book that while achieving knowledge requires following the two rules of believing truths and avoiding falsehoods, it's impossible for one person to follow both rules simultaneously. To do so requires a collaborative and dialectical process like the Socratic Method. She cites William James' 1896 The Will to Believe as the source of the insight that believing truths and avoiding falsehoods are apparently two different mutually-exclusive algorithms: We must know the truth; and we must avoiderror,—these are our first and great commandments as would-be knowers; but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment, they are two separable laws. James, W. (1907). The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. page 17. Longmans Green and Co. For a quick 5-minute overview on why believing truths and avoiding falsehoods are two separate algorithms requiring a dialectical process, check out this short 5-minute video where Callard explains the crux of the Socratic Method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yjjYq-Z-z0 It's not immediately obvious to me that the path towards knowledge requires believing truths and avoiding falsehoods, or that it would be impossible for one person to commit to both. If Callard is right, the path towards knowledge requires a collaborative and deliberative process similar to the path towards justice where the prosecution prosecutes the guilty and the defense acquits the innocent. Once again, a lawyer cannot represent both sides, however, in this instance, the debate is mediated by a judge with an independent jury deciding the verdict. Callard contends that pure Socratic Inquiry needs no moderator as long as both parties are open-minded enough to have their blind spots challenged and potentially be radically transformed. What it does require is a good faith commitment to work collaboratively with a certain amount of epistemic humility. This underlying dialectical nature of knowledge applies in many and varied contexts, especially around conversations focusing on "What is Truth?" or "What is Reality?" Close listeners to the Voices of VR podcast have heard me mention this tension between "believing truths" vs "avoiding falsehoods" in at least a dozen podcasts going back to November 2019 (#846, 860, 912, 927, 932, 959, 971, 1055, 1092, 1144, 1147, & 1353). Dialectical polarities are a core pillar of my experiential design framework, and I've been seeing more immersive stories and experiences use the principles of the Socratic Method as a core mechanic. See my interviews about Horizon (one-on-one Socratic dialogue with an immersive theatre actor within a speculative futures context), Mandala (group Socratic dialectic about philosophical ideas), and The Collider (asymmetrical two-person experience about power and boundaries where one person embodies power-over dynamics with the other embodying power-unde...

I interviewed producer Dan Tucker at IDFA DocLab 2024 about the lessons learned from touring In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats across 20 different venues over the past couple of years. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation." See more context in the rough transcript below. This is the last episode from my series of interviews from IDFA DocLab 2024. You can see all of the interviews in the list below: #1492: IDFA DocLab Curators Preview 2024 Slate of AI & XR Immersive Documentaries #1493: "About a Hero" IDFA Opening Night Doc Blends Realities, Written by AI Trained on Werner Herzog Corpus #1495: Getting Roasted by Unfiltered "AI & Me" Photobooth Installation #1496: Using GenAI to Recreate Erased Family Photos with "Burn From Absence" 4-Channel Video #1497: Experimental VR Doc "Rapture II: Portal" Blends Hypnotic Audio with Spatial Scan of War-Abandoned Home #1498: Immersive Installation Frames Provocative "Töngö Sondi" Animation on Langauge, Censorship, & Identity #1499: From Interactive Biohacking Lecture to Speakeasy with "Drinking Brecht: An Automated Laboratory Performance" #1500: Sharing Indigenous Knowledge with AR on 360 Video and Embodied Rituals in "Ancestral Secrets VR" #1501: Roaming as Resistance: "Entropic Fields of Displacement" wins DocLab Digital Storytelling Award #1502: Candid Audio Clips Juxtaposed with Poetic GenAI Video in "Sincerely Victor Pike" #1503: "The Liminal" Spatial Audio Installation Blends Audio Doc with Specualtive Arab Futurism #1504: Open World, GenAI Podcast "Drift" Reflects on Climate Change from 500 Years in the Future #1505: Immersive Journalist Features Volumetric Sexual Harrassment Testimonies in "Walking Alone, Text You When I'm Home" #1506: Going on a Virtual Date in "ROAMance" that Generates Novel Encounters with Defamiliarization #1507: From Selfies to Virtual Offspring, "Ancestors" Turns Strangers into Family and Intergenerational Speculative Futures #1508: Virtual Architecture Vibes Part 1: "Limbotopia" VR & Dome at Film Gate Interactive #1509: Virtual Architecture Vibes Part 2: "Limbophobia" VR & Dome at IDFA DocLab #1510: Poetic VR Exploration of Iranian Protest Blindings in "Speechless Witness of a Wandering Tree" #1511: Cultivating Virtual LGBTQIA+ Safe Spaces in VRChat with "Dollhouse for Queer Imaginaries" #1512: DocLab Immersive Non-Fiction Winner "Me, A Depiction" Performance Installation Confronts Objectifying Gaze #1513: From Daily News to GenAI Irish Sean-nós Songs in "You Can Sing Me on My Way" Audio Installation #1514: Creating GenAI Flower Ecosystem with "Future Botanica" AR App #1515: VR Researcher Julia Scott-Stevenson on Embodiment in Story & Why Docs are Perfect to Explore AI #1516: Myriam Achard on Phi Studio's Expansion into LBE Distribution & the Fusion of Immersive Art at Phi Contemporary #1517: LBE Lessons Learned from 20-Venue Tour of "In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats" with Producer Dan Tucker This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Myriam Achard about the new distribution arm of Phi Studio (as of now there is still no official name yet) as well as the exciting new Phi Contemporary set to open in 2028 that will be fusing together the contemporary art world with the immersive art, storytelling, and technology worlds that the Phi Centre have been curating. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed VR researcher Julia Scott Stevenson at IDFA DocLab 2024 about her research into embodiment and AI within the context of immersive stories as well as her work around climate change. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed co-directors Marcel van Brakel and Hazal Ertürkan about Future Botanica that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Seán Hannan about You Can Sing Me on My Way that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Lisa Schamlé about Me, A Depiction that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Queer.Space about Dollhouse for Queer Imaginaries that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Aphra Taghizadeh about Speechless Witness of a Wandering Tree that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Wen Yee Hsieh and producer Sebox Hong about Limbophobia that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Wen Yee Hsieh about Limbotopia that showed at Film Gate Interactive in Miami Florida back in 2023. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Steye Hallema about Ancestors that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Stanislaw Liguzinski about ROAMance that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Vincent Abert about Walking Alone Text You When I'm Home that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed co-directors Nienke Huitenga and Lieven Heeremans about Drift that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Alaa Al Minawi about The Liminal that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Gregor Petrikovič about Sincerely Victor Pike that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. You can watch this short film here. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Pegah Tabassinejad about Entropic FIelds of Displacement that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed co-directors Francisca Silva and Maria Jose Diaz about Ancestral Secrets VR that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Sister Sylvester about Drinking Brecht that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Ruben Cabenda about Töngö Sondi that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Alisa Berger about Rapture II: Portal that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed director Emeline Courcier about Burn From Absence that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed co-directors Daniela Nedovescu and Octavian Mot about AI and Me that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

From Dust is a 24-minute VR Opera by composer Michel van der Aa that is premiering this week at the Rotterdam Immersive Tech Week, and I had a chance to get a sneak peak at the end of my trip covering IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam. The emotional core of From Dust is the top-notch composition from van der Aa and brilliant musical performance by Sjaella. It was a really powerful and moving immersive journey that seamlessly integrated my GenAI prompts creating a personalized experience. I can highly recommend checking it out to see where immersive music experiences are headed here in the future. The throughput of this piece is only 3-4 people per hour, and so it may be hard to be able to see it once they start touring it around Europe to different musical festivals. van der Aa told me that this is the lease commercial project that he's had a chance to ever work on, and acknowledges that this is a piece of subsidized art. There have been a lot of broader discussions happening within the XR industry about the sustainability of these types of location-based experiences, and the need for creators to understand some of the more pragmatic financial constraints for exhibition taking into consideration earlier in the production process. I'm in the process of finishing up the public report from the Think Tank at Venice Immersive this year on this very issue, and the MIT Open Documentary Lab is also actively starting to study these types of distribution questions as well at the R&D Summit at IDFA DocLab this year. But at the same time, it's also great to see artists who are able to get this type of work funded who are willing to push the virtual reality medium to the limits of creative expression despite some of the financial impracticalities of exhibition. Especially as it may drive the adaptation of this type of work into a format like the Apple Vision Pro or PCVR where it can be within a form factor that is a lot more scalable, even if there are compromises on fidelity or on the GenAI elements using the open source LLM of Flux that can not be distributed Steam due to Valve's restrictions on AI integrations within games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig9VqdLW9X0 I had a chance to catch up with van der Aa last week in order to get more context on his journey and process on creating the piece, as well as get some elaboration on the degree on some of the branching mechanics. There are some questions that they ask during the onboarding process that categorize the user's Big Five Personality characteristics, and then they are creating some invisible branching of my experience that was completely imperceptible to me. van der Aa told me that about 75% of the musical experience is the same for everyone, but that there are some explicit and implicit branching that is happening musically, but also a bit more visually as they are integrating my GenAI prompts in 4-5 different places throughout the experience. It's certainly an innovative and ambitious piece that has some GenAI parallels to Tulpamancer from Venice 2023, but one that shows the potential of combining musical composition with these types of immersive adventures that are able to tell a much richer story when combined. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

About a Hero is a documentary that reenacts an imaginal, true crime documentary script written by an AI language model that was trained on a corpus of Werner Herzog content. It's a film that blends and blurs the lines between what's physically-captured, documentary material versus completely constructed and fabricated content generated by AI. It's the opening night documentary film at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam, and it's also featured within the DocLab Spotlight. I had a chance to talk with director Piotr Winiewicz and producer Mads Damsbo about the process of making this piece as well as the set of rules that they created for themselves in order to make it a true collaboration between man and machine.Also be sure to check out my interview with the DocLab curators talking about all 28 projects in this year's selection. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I speak with the curators of the 28 immersive documentary projects being featured at the 18th edition of IDFA DocLab including Caspar Sonnen, Nina van Doren, and Toby Coffey. The theme of this year's program is "This is Not a Simulation," and there were many immersive projects that featured AI this year. We talked about each of the experiences in this year's program, except for the three projects I've previously covered at Venice Immersive 2024 (All I Know About Teacher Li, Fragile Home, & Impulse: Play with Reality) . We also briefly discussed the IDFA campaign around being complicit and challenging neutrality. [UPDATE: December 23, 2024]. Here are links to all of my coverage from IDFA DocLab 2024: #1492: IDFA DocLab Curators Preview 2024 Slate of AI & XR Immersive Documentaries #1493: "About a Hero" IDFA Opening Night Doc Blends Realities, Written by AI Trained on Werner Herzog Corpus #1495: Getting Roasted by Unfiltered "AI & Me" Photobooth Installation #1496: Using GenAI to Recreate Erased Family Photos with "Burn From Absence" 4-Channel Video #1497: Experimental VR Doc "Rapture II: Portal" Blends Hypnotic Audio with Spatial Scan of War-Abandoned Home #1498: Immersive Installation Frames Provocative "Töngö Sondi" Animation on Langauge, Censorship, & Identity #1499: From Interactive Biohacking Lecture to Speakeasy with "Drinking Brecht: An Automated Laboratory Performance" #1500: Sharing Indigenous Knowledge with AR on 360 Video and Embodied Rituals in "Ancestral Secrets VR" #1501: Roaming as Resistance: "Entropic Fields of Displacement" wins DocLab Digital Storytelling Award #1502: Candid Audio Clips Juxtaposed with Poetic GenAI Video in "Sincerely Victor Pike" #1503: "The Liminal" Spatial Audio Installation Blends Audio Doc with Specualtive Arab Futurism #1504: Open World, GenAI Podcast "Drift" Reflects on Climate Change from 500 Years in the Future #1505: Immersive Journalist Features Volumetric Sexual Harrassment Testimonies in "Walking Alone, Text You When I'm Home" #1506: Going on a Virtual Date in "ROAMance" that Generates Novel Encounters with Defamiliarization #1507: From Selfies to Virtual Offspring, "Ancestors" Turns Strangers into Family and Intergenerational Speculative Futures #1508: Virtual Architecture Vibes Part 1: "Limbotopia" VR & Dome at Film Gate Interactive #1509: Virtual Architecture Vibes Part 2: "Limbophobia" VR & Dome at IDFA DocLab #1510: Poetic VR Exploration of Iranian Protest Blindings in "Speechless Witness of a Wandering Tree" #1511: Cultivating Virtual LGBTQIA+ Safe Spaces in VRChat with "Dollhouse for Queer Imaginaries" #1512: DocLab Immersive Non-Fiction Winner "Me, A Depiction" Performance Installation Confronts Objectifying Gaze #1513: From Daily News to GenAI Irish Sean-nós Songs in "You Can Sing Me on My Way" Audio Installation #1514: Creating GenAI Flower Ecosystem with "Future Botanica" AR App #1515: VR Researcher Julia Scott-Stevenson on Embodiment in Story & Why Docs are Perfect to Explore AI #1516: Myriam Achard on Phi Studio's Expansion into LBE Distribution & the Fusion of Immersive Art at Phi Contemporary #1517: LBE Lessons Learned from 20-Venue Tour of "In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats" with Producer Dan Tucker [Resuming post from November 13, 2024] For more information on each of the pieces in this year's program, then be sure to check out the time stamps below to hear what the curators have to say. 12:15You Can Sing Me on My Way 15:01AI & ME 17:59About a Hero 22:54Oryza: Healing Ground 26:26Future Botanica 27:42Ancestors 31:00Drift 32:58Burn from Absence 36:13Sincerely, Victor Pike 37:22Limbophobia 40:20Ancestral Secret VR 41:04Drinking Brecht: an Automated Laboratory Performance 45:21Dollhouse for Queer Imaginaries 46:36The Liminal 49:38Me, A Depiction 53:55Walking Alone, Text You When I’m Home 56:00Rapture II – Portal

Film Gate Interactive celebrated their 10-year anniversary in 2023, and I had a chance to get a retrospective recap from founder and curator Diliana Alexander as well as with board members Savannah Niles and James Powderly. Their 11th edition of Film Gate Interactive is happening December 4-8th, 2024 and so be sure to check out their sponsorship deck for more context on the many different partnerships and collaborations that Alexander has set up in this unique regional immersive festival. We talk about the curation process, the unique character of Miami and the various immersive excursions to explore the city, and a retrospective look at the founding and evolution of this cultivation of the immersive community within the unique cauldron and culture of Miami. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Lena Herzog's Any War Any Enemy is a hauntingly beautiful spatial poem that takes us on a liminal journey about nuclear annihilation. Rather than disassociating and letting power structures sleepwalk us all into catastrophe, she explores a new form of transcendental anti-war protest by leaning into an underlying existential angst that doesn't turn away from the human costs. It's a cautionary tale that serves as a wake-up call about the insanity of mutually-assured destruction, and an opportunity to use VR to ground apocalyptic abstractions into an embodied experience that allows us to bear witness to possible futures that should be avoided at all costs. I previously spoke with Herzog about her first VR piece Last Whispers in 2019 about the extinction of languages. This piece is about the potential extinction of all of humanity via nuclear annihilation, and she's working in the third piece in her trilogy that is aiming to end on a more positive and optimistic note. I had a chance to catch up with Herzog virtually to unpack more about her process of creating this piece, and how she's exploring the more poetic and metaphoric dream logic within her immersive, anti-war poem.

I interviewed Kerestell Smith, Chief Creative Officer at Another Axiom and original solo creator of Gorilla Tag, at Meta Connect 2024. Another Axiom announced in June that Gorilla Tag has surpassed $100 million in lifetime revenue. We talk about the journey into creating Gorilla Tag, the underlying design philosophy of emphasizing embodied gameplay and proprioceptive consistency, as well as what's coming next in their follow-on title of Orion Drift. See more context in the rough transcript below. Since this is the last episode in my series from Meta Connect 2024, then here's a list of all 20+ interviews and 12+ hours of my coverage from this year: #1468: Kickoff of Meta Connect 2024 Coverage with Orion AR Glasses Hands-on Impressions with Tested's Norm Chan & CNET's Scott Stein #1469: Analyst Anshel Sag on Meta Connect Announcements & Orion Glasses Impressions #1470: Meta's Hyperscape Serves Cloud-Rendered, Photo Gaussian Splat Captures #1471: Tyriel Wood & Zimtok5 on Oculus Quest 3S Tradeoffs with Quest 3 #1472: VR Training Trends Using AI with Virti's Courtney Harding #1473: Learn XR's Dilmer Valecillos on Teaching XR Development & Meta Connect Announcement Impressions #1474: Teaching Immersive Storytelling at ASU's Narrative and Emerging Media Program with Nonny de la Peña & Mary Matheson #1475: A-Frame's Diego Marcos on WebXR Momentum and Integrations with Open Source AI #1476: UploadVR Editor Ian Hamilton's Deep Reflections: AR vs VR, Ethical Dilemmas, & Future of Meta's Algorithmic Realities #1477: Flat2VR Studios' Journey of Bringing 2D Games to VR with Eric Masher #1478: Agile Lens 2018: The Intersection of Architecture, Theatre, & Storytelling with Alex Coulombe #1479: Agile Lens 2023: Selling High-End Real Estate with VR, Unreal's Meta Humans. Pixel Streaming, & AI Experiments #1480: Agile Lens 2023: Hands on with Four Seasons VR Demo & A Christmas Carol VR 2023 #1481: Agile Lens 2024: Context on Boz's Apology to VR Devs, Orion AR Glasses Impressions, & Unreal Engine Mediation with Apple/Meta #1482: Mixed Reality Gameplay Innovations & Design Insights from "Starship Home" Co-Directors Mark Schramm & Ashley Pinnick #1483: Dimensional Double Shift Combines Multi-Player Co-Op, "Job Simulator" Gameplay, & Hand Tracking #1484: Cas & Chary on Meta Connect Announcements & Using Ray-Ban Meta Smartglasses to Stay Connected #1485: Fitness Flow States with "Starwave" Design Innovation Leads & Finding Love within VR #1486: Going All in with Gaussian Splats: Gracia's Viewer, AI Training, & Photoreal Capture with VR Fund's Tipatat Chennavasin #1487: XR Evangelists JoyReign & JDun on Horizon World Trends & Meta Connect Announcements #1488: Nima Zeighami on Delivering WebXR Content with Infinite Reality's Ethereal Engine Acquisition #1489: Gorilla Tag Design Philosophy & Embodied Gameplay Deep Dive with Kerestell Smith Here's the launch trailer for Gorilla Tag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivwQ2DUjcHI Here's a developer snapshot preview of their next title of Orion Drift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xjnw_skc9g This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Nima Zeighami, VP of Product at Infinite Reality, at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed XR Evangelists JoyReign Creator of Joy In The Morning Show and CEO of Onyx Leaf Media as well as JDun of the Getting Things Dun YouTube channel, Get'Em To The Metaverse Podcast, & Chief Metaverse Officer of Onyx Leaf Media, at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's the Question HDMI video that JDun mentioned in the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8QDvoEJLps This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Tipatat Chennavasin, General Partner and co-founder of Venture Reality Fund, at Meta Connect 2024 about why he has gone all-in with Gaussian Splatting by investing in the Gracia.ai and their viewer that's on the Quest store. We also talk about some of the news from Meta Connect, Quest 3S excitement, the merits of AAA games like Batman Arkham Shadow to bring more people into VR, and other some experiences and demos that caught his attention at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Job Stauffer and Robin Orr, the two design innovation leads on Starwave, at Meta Connect 2024. They also met and fell in love in VR, and each share their respective journeys into the space through building community around VR fitness experiences. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's the launch trailer for Starwave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LtG2qnPeSY This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Casandra Vuong and Chary Keijzer of the Cas and Chary YouTube channel, at Meta Connect 2024 about all of the latest announcements, their journey into their XR coverage, and how they use the Ray-Ban Meta Smartglasses to stay connected to each other. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their video about the Quest 3S launch produced while onsite at Meta Connect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrGZ7ef84tw This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Andrew Eiche, CEOwl at Owlchemy Labs, at Meta Connect 2024 about their latest title Dimensional Double Shift. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their launch trailer. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Co-Directors of Starship Home Mark Schramm, Director of Engineering at Creature, and Ashley Pinnick, Art Director at Creature, at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's the Launch Trailer for Starship Home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6SepPOEwh8 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Alex Coulombe, Studio Lead & CEO of Agile Lens Immersive Design, at Meta Connect 2024 about Meta's Orion AR Glasses first impressions, being a mediator with Apple and Epic Games as well as with Meta and Epic Games, and a bit more context as to why Meta CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth gave an apology to developers at the beginning of the developer keynote. See more context in the rough transcript below. Also be sure to read Coulombe's Orion hands-on impressions in his UploadVR article. Here's the Developer Keynote where Boz gave an apology to developers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztl25aRlnWE This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I'm diving into my backlog to publish three unpublished interviews with Agile Lens with this last conversation from December 2023. I interviewed Alex Coulombe, Lead & CEO of Agile Lens Immersive Design, Kevin Laibson, Experience Director for Agile Lens, and Jackie Roman, Cinematographer at Agile Lens, at FilmGate Interactive 2023 about the Four Seasons Lake Austin VR experience as well as the A Christmas Carol VR experience. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I'm diving into my backlog to publish three unpublished interviews with Alex Coulombe, Creative Director of Agile Lens Immersive Design, with the second interview that happened at Tribeca Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's a talk that was given later in 2023 about the Four Seasons Lake Austin VR experience given at Unreal Fest 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6la2yieiCG0 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I'm diving into my backlog to publish three unpublished interviews with Alex Coulombe, Creative Director of Agile Lens Immersive Design, starting with at Magic Leap LeapCon 2018. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Eric Masher, Chief Operating Officer for Impact Reality and Flat2VR Studios, at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's the trailer for the first four releases for Flat2VR Studios: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHJpfDgcWOQ This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Ian Hamilton, Editor at UploadVR.com, at Meta Connect 2024. Here's the article about the twin sisters who play Walkabout Mini Golf VR together that Hamilton references. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Diego Marcos, Founder of A-Frame and worked on Firefox and one of the original creators of what would eventually become the the WebXR specification, at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Nonny de la Peña, Emblematic Group founder & Founding Director of Arizona State University's Narrative and Emerging Media Program as well as Mary Matheson, Professor of Practice at ASU's Narrative and Emerging Media Program, at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Dilmer Valecillos of the DilmerV YouTube Channel and Founder & Engineer LearnXR.io , at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Courtney Harding, Founder and CEO of Friends with Holograms education & training in VR as well as Head of Immersive Content at Virti, at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Tyriel Wood of the Tyriel Wood YouTube channel covering XR tech and Zimtok5, VR Streamer for last ten years, at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's Wood's video on the Meta Quest 3S: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-CXdU330No Here's Zimtok5's video on the Meta Quest 3S: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csBnN73V95w This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Marcello Typrin Product Director at Reality Labs, at Meta Connect 2024 about the Hyperscape Demo. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Anshel Sag, Principle Analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

This is the kickoff of my Meta Connect 2024 coverage with more than 12 hours of coverage across 20+ interviews on site. In my first episode, I interviewed Scott Stein, Editor at CNET, AR, VR, Wearables, Gaming, & Future of Tech as well as Norm Chan, Executive Editor of the YouTube Channel Tested, at Meta Connect 2024 talking about the AR Orion Glasses demo. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here are the lines to all of my episodes from Meta Connect 2024: #1468: Kickoff of Meta Connect 2024 Coverage with Orion AR Glasses Hands-on Impressions with Tested's Norm Chan & CNET's Scott Stein #1469: Analyst Anshel Sag on Meta Connect Announcements & Orion Glasses Impressions #1470: Meta's Hyperscape Serves Cloud-Rendered, Photo Gaussian Splat Captures #1471: Tyriel Wood & Zimtok5 on Oculus Quest 3S Tradeoffs with Quest 3 #1472: VR Training Trends Using AI with Virti's Courtney Harding #1473: Learn XR's Dilmer Valecillos on Teaching XR Development & Meta Connect Announcement Impressions #1474: Teaching Immersive Storytelling at ASU's Narrative and Emerging Media Program with Nonny de la Peña & Mary Matheson #1475: A-Frame's Diego Marcos on WebXR Momentum and Integrations with Open Source AI #1476: UploadVR Editor Ian Hamilton's Deep Reflections: AR vs VR, Ethical Dilemmas, & Future of Meta's Algorithmic Realities #1477: Flat2VR Studios' Journey of Bringing 2D Games to VR with Eric Masher #1478: Agile Lens 2018: The Intersection of Architecture, Theatre, & Storytelling with Alex Coulombe #1479: Agile Lens 2023: Selling High-End Real Estate with VR, Unreal's Meta Humans. Pixel Streaming, & AI Experiments #1480: Agile Lens 2023: Hands on with Four Seasons VR Demo & A Christmas Carol VR 2023 #1481: Agile Lens 2024: Context on Boz's Apology to VR Devs, Orion AR Glasses Impressions, & Unreal Engine Mediation with Apple/Meta #1482: Mixed Reality Gameplay Innovations & Design Insights from "Starship Home" Co-Directors Mark Schramm & Ashley Pinnick #1483: Dimensional Double Shift Combines Multi-Player Co-Op, "Job Simulator" Gameplay, & Hand Tracking #1484: Cas & Chary on Meta Connect Announcements & Using Ray-Ban Meta Smartglasses to Stay Connected #1485: Fitness Flow States with "Starwave" Design Innovation Leads & Finding Love within VR #1486: Going All in with Gaussian Splats: Gracia's Viewer, AI Training, & Photoreal Capture with VR Fund's Tipatat Chennavasin #1487: XR Evangelists JoyReign & JDun on Horizon World Trends & Meta Connect Announcements #1488: Nima Zeighami on Delivering WebXR Content with Infinite Reality's Ethereal Engine Acquisition #1489: Gorilla Tag Design Philosophy & Embodied Gameplay Deep Dive with Kerestell Smith Here's Chan's Tested coverage of Orion AR Glasses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynLm-QvsW0Q Here's Stein's CNET coverage of the Orion AR Glasses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b020SbvnFX0 Here's the full video of the Meta Connect 2024 keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7JyydkqDeI This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Sam Jones, Kathryn Hicks, Lauren Cason, Emma Sofija, and Paige Piskin at the Snap Lens Fest about the Snap Spectacles as well as their award-winning Hackathon project called Emergensee. I also share some of my concluding thoughts on the Snap Spectacles based upon my 8 hours of coverage in the past 15 episodes. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's my 15-episode series on the Snap Spectacles announcement and a deep dive into the Snap AR Ecosystem: #1453: Kickoff of Snap Spectacles Coverage with First Impressions with XR Analyst Anshel Sag #1454: Niantic Launches Virtual Pet AR Game "Peridot Beyond" on Snap's Spectacles #1455: Wabisabi Game Studio Leverages AR Connected Lenses on Snap Spectacles for Outdoor Capture the Flag Game #1456: Turning Your Phone into a Spectacles AR controller with DB Creations' "Tiny Motor Arcade" #1457: Snap's Lens Studio, Spectacles, & "Polygon Studio" Open Source Low-Poly Drawing App #1458: Building a Geo-Located, Dungeon-Raiding, AR Game for Spectacles with Aidan Wolf #1459: Snap Co-Founders Share Vision for AR & Spectacles at Lens Fest Q&A Panel #1460: Snap AR Platform Lead Sophia Dominguez on Spectacles and AR Ecosystem #1461: AR Lens Genres, Spectacles Impressions, & SelfReflect VTubing App Using Snap's Camera Kit with Brielle Garcia #1462: XR Industry Reality Checks with Cix Liv and Turning Your Phone into an AI-Driven Exercise Routine #1463: Arguing for Utility-Driven AR Minimalism with Lucas Rizzotto Reflecting upon the XR Market #1464: Snap's Head of Spectacles Software Engineering Shares Technical Break Down of Design Tradeoffs #1465: Team of Women AR Artists Explore Dreams in Spectacles Hackathon #1466: Freelance XR Dev Veronica Flint Shares Thoughts on Spectacles and Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses #1467: AR Medical Training App Wins Spectacles Hackathon + My Concluding Thoughts on Snap Spectacles This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Veronica Flint at the Snap Lens Fest about the Snap Spectacles. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Alexis Zerafa, Lafiya Watson Ramirez, Meredith Binnette, Heather Dunaway Smith, and Nella at the Snap Lens Fest about the Snap Spectacles and their hackathon project about dreams. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Snap's Head of Spectacles Software Daniel Wagner at the Snap Lens Fest about the Snap Spectacles. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's the presentation Wagner made at Lens Fest that I based my interview off of. https://www.youtube.com/live/FNoC73AbkzE?t=2270s This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Lucas Rizzotto at the Snap Lens Fest about the Snap Spectacles as well as his ideas on AR Minimalism. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Cix Liv at the Snap Lens Fest about the Snap Spectacles, his reality check reflections on the XR industry, and his latest fitness startup Vibe Fitness Gam. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Brielle Garcia at the Snap Lens Fest about the Snap Spectacles and her SelfReflect VTubbing app that uses Snap's Camera Kit. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Snap's AR Plaform Lead Sophia Dominguez at the Snap Lens Fest about the Snap Spectacles. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Snap AR Platform Lead Sophia Dominguez interviewed Snap co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy at the Snap Lens Fest about AR and the Snap Spectacles, and there was an audience Q&A at the end as well. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Aidan Wolf at the Snap Partner Summit about the Snap Spectacles. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Max van Leeuwen and Liisi Mononen at the Snap Partner Summit about the Snap Spectacles. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Dustin Kochensparger and Blake Gross at the Snap Partner Summit about the Snap Spectacles. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Anwar Noriega and Julio Martinez at the Snap Partner Summit about the Snap Spectacles. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Niantic's Erin Schaefer and Asim Ahmed at the Snap Partner Summit about the Snap Spectacles as well as their game Peridot Beyond. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Anshel Sag at the Snap Partner Summit about the Snap Spectacles. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here are the links to each of my 15 episodes on the Snap Spectacles announcement and a deep dive into the Snap AR Ecosystem: #1453: Kickoff of Snap Spectacles Coverage with First Impressions with XR Analyst Anshel Sag #1454: Niantic Launches Virtual Pet AR Game "Peridot Beyond" on Snap's Spectacles #1455: Wabisabi Game Studio Leverages AR Connected Lenses on Snap Spectacles for Outdoor Capture the Flag Game #1456: Turning Your Phone into a Spectacles AR controller with DB Creations' "Tiny Motor Arcade" #1457: Snap's Lens Studio, Spectacles, & "Polygon Studio" Open Source Low-Poly Drawing App #1458: Building a Geo-Located, Dungeon-Raiding, AR Game for Spectacles with Aidan Wolf #1459: Snap Co-Founders Share Vision for AR & Spectacles at Lens Fest Q&A Panel #1460: Snap AR Platform Lead Sophia Dominguez on Spectacles and AR Ecosystem #1461: AR Lens Genres, Spectacles Impressions, & SelfReflect VTubing App Using Snap's Camera Kit with Brielle Garcia #1462: XR Industry Reality Checks with Cix Liv and Turning Your Phone into an AI-Driven Exercise Routine #1463: Arguing for Utility-Driven AR Minimalism with Lucas Rizzotto Reflecting upon the XR Market #1464: Snap's Head of Spectacles Software Engineering Shares Technical Break Down of Design Tradeoffs #1465: Team of Women AR Artists Explore Dreams in Spectacles Hackathon #1466: Freelance XR Dev Veronica Flint Shares Thoughts on Spectacles and Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses #1467: AR Medical Training App Wins Spectacles Hackathon + My Concluding Thoughts on Snap Spectacles This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed All I Know About Teacher Li director Zhuzmo at Venice Immersive 2024. Due to the sensitivities of the topic of Chinese censorship, then the director Zhuzmo has requested that he remain anonymous. I did an interview face to face with them in Venice, got a transcript, and then fed the text back into a text-to-speech AI at Eleven Labs in order to mask his voice. See more context in the rough transcript below. All I Know About Teacher Li also happened to top the unofficial Venice Immersive 2024 Survey results that I did in collaboration with XR Must for both the Top 5 as well as for the Audience Favorites. I found last year's survey results to be really useful in organizing the order of discussing pieces in our critic's roundtable, but also helping to understand the audience's reaction to the selection. Last year there were 50 respondents, and this year there were 82 respondents who on average saw 21.9 experiences each. Here's a list of the Most Seen experiences from Venice Immersive 2024, which is sort of a proxy for popularity and buzz, but also throughput. The next result is the audience favorites (no limit), which is calculated by how many people listed it as a favorite relative to how many saw it. This tends to have the most robust overview of the entire selection, and is also an interesting calibration process to see what you personally liked vs what might have been favored by the zeitgeist.  Finally the top 5 ranking usually is a proxy for seeing which projects might have been in the running for a jury prize, but there was a lot more variance this year, which was reflected in the range of projects that people were predicting to be a prize winner. The top prize from the jury was awarded to Ito Meikyu, which was ranked 10th by the audience. The second place from the jury went to Oto's Planet, which was ranked 5th. And then the third place from the jury went to Impulse: Playing with Reality, which was ranked 2nd. I find it increasingly difficult to predict what will resonate with the jury as even the audience favorites can vary widely from my own personal favorites. Again what resonates with you may not resonate with others, and there are so many other qualities and nuances of each project that can’t be reduced down to numbers. Nonetheless, I found last year’s survey results to be quite an interesting cross section and sometimes confirms an intuition and many other times can be surprising. Either way, it’s additional data to help make sense of the selection and the industry. Here's my top 10 that I published after finishing watching all of the pieces on Wednesday, August 28th. I about watched 1/3 of the pieces ahead of the festival, 1/3 on the press preview, and the remaining 1/3 on the press & industry day and the first day bookings are available. Also, the essence of each project can't be reduced down to numbers, which is a big motivation that I have to record over 30 hours of coverage for Venice Immersive 2024 over the course of 5 days in order to unpack more of the design process, experiential design tradeoffs, and some of my own embodied experiences and impressions. #1416: Preview of Venice Immersive 2024 Innovations in Immersive Storytelling & Art Installations with Curators #1417: Kicking Off Venice Immersive Converge with Translating "Riven" Classic Point-and-Click Adventure to Open World VR Puzzler #1418: Award-Winning Animators Experiment with Sandbox Social VR "Garden Alchemy" Research Project #1419: Creating a Four-Sided Pepper's Ghost Pyramid Illusion with "Telos I" Dance Piece #1420: Experimental Documentary "Mammary Mountain" Captures Oral Histories of Breast Cancer Journeys #1421: Interactive Mixed Reality Doc on ADHD "Impulse: Playing With Reality" Takes Home Immersive Achievement Prize at Venice Immersive 2024 #1422: A Simple Silence Wraps Up Craig Quintero's Trilogy Exploring Spatial Transformations & Immersive Encounters

I interviewed The Guardians Of Jade Mountain director Hayoun Kwon and producer Richard Turco at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Play Life (Žaisti Gyvenimą) co-directors Zilvinas Naujokas, Vilius Petrauskas, and Mantas Pronckus at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc2KspZgGRk This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Mamie Lou director Isabelle Andreani at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's her artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJT99fqzyiw This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Body of Mine director Cameron Kostopoulos at Venice Immersive 2024 about his impact campaign since winning a special jury prize at SXSW 2023 (see my first interview with him here.). He showed Body of Mine as a part of the competition at Venice Immersive 2023, and he was back on the Immersive Island this year pitching his latest project A Cure for Straightness at the Venice Production Bridge. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's the launch trailer for Body of Mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE7KYISf7cI This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Une Eau La Nuit (Bodies Of Water) co-directors Chélanie Beaudin-Quintin and Caroline Laurin-Beaucage with producer Laurence Wells at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here is their artist statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_XVyHOle3Y This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed The Art Of Change co-directors Simone Fougnier and Vincent Rooijers with producer Peter Ariet at Venice Immersive 2024. I had a chance to get an early look at this piece, and I watched it three times before stepping foot on the island. I absolutely loved this piece, and it was at the top of my personal favorites from the festival. I found this piece to be so emotionally moving, as well as innovative in it's spatial transformations and use of consonance and dissonance cycles within pacing and editing. I also really enjoyed the time-travelling self-reflective narrative conceit that's woven throughout the album, and then condensed down into each of the beats of that story. Overall, I loved this piece, and look forward to having more folks be able to see it on the festival circuit or if it picks up more distribution through domes or other LBE efforts. Fun fact is that I've been listening to the full Droeloe concept album also titled The Art of Change on repeat upon my return from Venice and throughout the process of editing and publishing this series. So I can also highly recommend checking out the full album if you'd like a sneak peak to the vibe of this piece.See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPXYRnWCLaQ This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed In The Realm Of Ripley director Soo Eung Chuck Chae at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnFZyQ3S4vs This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Project: Lost Worlds director Fins at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Venice Immersive Worlds Gallery Producer Mike Salmon at Venice Immersive 2024 about this year's selection of 20 VRChat worlds as well as his process of scouting promising leads and trends of world building, music, art, and immersive storytelling.. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Uncanny Alley: A New Day co-directors Rick Treweek and Stephen Butchko along with Ferryman Collective's Deirdre V. Lyons and Christopher Lane Davis at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Duchampiana director Lilian Hess at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here is their artist statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX8app5_XtI This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Rencontres director Mathieu Pradat at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVnsFWIUgp4 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Project_y: Working Title co-directors Yuzo Sugano, Taro Hirai, and Shingo Yoshimura at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-XngO8Eebs This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Address Unknown: Fukushima Now director Arif Khan at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's his artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP5rHv7x7go This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed What If…? - An Immersive Story director Dave Bushore at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. What If...? also picked up an Emmy for Outstanding Innovation In Emerging Media Programming as awarded by a juried portion of the Emerging Media Programming Peer Group of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Also, Bushore announced that he was leaving Marvel after returning home from Venice Immersive 2024. The Hollywood Reporter reported on how Bushore was really inspired by Venice Immersive and will be likely focusing on the frontiers of immersive storytelling in his next venture. “Being invited to Venice was mind-blowing,” Bushore tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Being there and seeing the embracing of this new type of content, and the people coming through doing the experience, filmmakers and ambassadors, that was a really cool thing.” And it’s exactly what this self-described “story nerd” wants to do more of. Bushore is not joining a new company, but instead is bounding into parts unknown. He seeks to take his experience in the intersection of technology and new ways audiences participate in their favorite brands. His goal is to create exciting, emotionally poignant, groundbreaking experiences that continue to push the boundaries of media and entertainment. My conversation with Bushore happened in the middle of his journey at Venice Immersive, and you can tell that his excitement about the potentials were palpable. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3IZiZMpeRA This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Strangeways co-director Adam Lieber, developers Dale P Deacon and Alex Bossman, as well as avatar creator Egbert Harm Westra at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbu54ULcUC0 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Earths To Come director Rose Bond at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's her artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w871q2dmKx4 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Free UR Head director Tung yen Chou at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcb_EFwm_aE This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed The Gossips' Chronicles director Corinne Mazzoli and producer Marta Bianchi at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuMwoawxscs This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis: Sentience co-directors Tosca Terán and Brendan Lehman at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PzZXrqncsY This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Un Soir Avec Les Impressionnistes, Paris 1874 director Pierre Gable at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJaTpgZEAqA This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Emissive / Excurio co-founder and CEO Fabien Barati at Laval Virtual 2023 after having tried the free-roaming Immersive Expedition edition of Éternelle Notre-Dame, which was really quite incredible. I originally saw the sit-down version of Éternelle Notre-Dame at Venice Immersive 2022, but the free-roaming, immersive expedition version was such a distinctly different experience that felt like I was going on a proper adventure. Here's a showreel of Excurio's immersive expeditions that includes Horizon of Khufu, Tonight with the Impressionists, Paris 1874, Eternal Notre-Dame, and Life Chronicles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUoOzBYQ1cM Emissive / Excurio had their Un Soir Avec Les Impressionnistes, Paris 1874 immersive expedition experience in competition for Venice Immersive 2024, and so I wanted to publish this unpublished interview from my archive backlog because their immersive expedition LBE experiences are really taking the immersive industry world by storm from France to China to Canada and beyond. They're able to put over 100 people per hour through their experiences, and over a hundred thousand over the period of months for some of their runs. There was certainly a buzz around how successful of a model this has been on both the creation of IP but also for the third-party exhibitors who are managing the on-site logistics. Hopefully this archival interview provides a bit more context for how these immersive expeditions have been developing as it was certainly a hot topic amongst folks during the festival who are thinking about the challenges of distribution, throughput, and finding sustainable models that have the promise of growing the XR industry. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Below Deck co-directors Martina Mahlknecht and Martin Prinoth at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tJmhkJC05Q This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Somewhere Unknown In Indochina co-directors Asio Chihsiung Liu and Feng Ting Tsou at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. (Note that I'll likely need to manually clean up this rough transcript as WhisperX seemed to be having some difficulties detecting speaker changes on this one.) Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwLksFqZXs8 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Fragile Home director Ondrej Moravec at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. There were also allegations of copyright infringement that were made within the context of a private WhatsApp group during the festival, and Moravec distributed an official statement privately to selected people privately on September 2nd, and then he shared his statement with me after the festival to be included here as an official comment on the matter. Here's their artist's statement about Fragile Home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcc00RQ5I-A This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Champ De Bataille director Francois Vautier at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's his artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37k4gIfTdaw This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Ceci Est Mon Cœur (This is My Heart) co-directors Stephane Hueber-Blies and Nicolas Blies at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf3909F8UI8 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Nightmara: Episode 3 director Gianpaolo Gonzalez at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's his artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcgxlKjMN2s This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom creators from Bandai Namco Filmworks including Naohiro Ogata, Kiichiro Inoue, Ken Iyadomi as well as Atlas V producers Arnaud Colinart and Julien Bercy, and technical art director Gaël Chaize at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoxzpYrQvt4 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed A Simple Silence director Craig Quintero at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's his artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDqtTyBuuUA This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Impulse: Playing With Reality co-directors May Abdalla and Barry Gene Murphy at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's the official launch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apgQxXwx7WE This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Mammary Mountain co-directors Tara Baoth Mooney, Camille C. Baker, and Maf'j Alvarez at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThEkIrqgDK0 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Telos I co-directors Emil Dam Seidel and Dorotea Saykaly at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVKFzca5jjc This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Garden Alchemy co-directors Michelle Kranot and Uri Kranot at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's the artist's statement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WgHtYWZoQs This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Riven's creative director Eric Anderson and development director Hannah Gamiel ahead of Venice Immersive 2024 since it was being featured within the Best of Selection. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The 8th edition of the Venice Immersive 2024 will be kicking off on August 28th, which will be featuring over 28 hours of immersive storytelling and immersive art content across over 70 different projects. This year there area a lot more immersive installations representing over a third out of the total number of on-site projects (18 out of the 52). There's eight mixed reality projects, a couple of projects featuring haptics, and one that prominently featuring AI character interactions. There are also 20 VRChat worlds in the Worlds Gallery along with 3 VRChat worlds in competition with 1 project that's using Resonite social VR platform. I had a chance to catch up with the co-curators Liz Rosenthal and Michel Reilhac again this year to get a sneak peak of the 26 projects in competition as well as 9 of the projects within the Best of Selection (note we talk about 10 Best of experiences, but it was announced just this morning that the Apple Vision Pro experience Adventure was pulled from the festival after attendees who had it booked received a message from Vivaticket saying, "we regret to inform you that the immersive experience Adventure for which you made a reservation has been cancelled" ). We also talk about how there's going to be a private think tank on September 1st looking at LBE distribution challenges and opportunities. Be sure to check out their previous report titled "Think Tank: Immediate Options to Address the Pressing Needs of Immersive Distribution." [EDIT: September 16, 2024 - Here are the links to all of my coverage and interviews from Venice Immersive 2024] #1416: Preview of Venice Immersive 2024 Innovations in Immersive Storytelling & Art Installations with Curators #1417: Kicking Off Venice Immersive Converge with Translating "Riven" Classic Point-and-Click Adventure to Open World VR Puzzler #1418: Award-Winning Animators Experiment with Sandbox Social VR "Garden Alchemy" Research Project #1419: Creating a Four-Sided Pepper's Ghost Pyramid Illusion with "Telos I" Dance Piece #1420: Experimental Documentary "Mammary Mountain" Captures Oral Histories of Breast Cancer Journeys #1421: Interactive Mixed Reality Doc on ADHD "Impulse: Playing With Reality" Takes Home Immersive Achievement Prize at Venice Immersive 2024 #1422: A Simple Silence Wraps Up Craig Quintero's Trilogy Exploring Spatial Transformations & Immersive Encounters #1423: Translating Anime IP into a VR Film with "Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom" #1424: Quill Animation Series "Nightmara" Pushes at the Edges of Immersive Storytelling Innovations and Novelty #1425: Immersive Art Installation "Ceci Est Mon Cœur" Uses the Poetry of Light to Explore Childhood Trauma #1426: Champ De Bataille Uses Cinematic VR to Explore the Horrors and Emotion of World War I #1427: Poetic Environmental Storytelling of "Fragile Home" Elegently Tells the Story of War in Ukraine with Mixed Reality #1428: Exploring the Horrors of Forgotten Refugee's Plight in "Somewhere Unknown In Indochina" #1429: Below Deck Innovations Fuse Theatrical Staging, Mixed Reality, & 360 Video #1430: Immersive Expeditions Prove to be Profitable LBE Business for Emissive's Fabien Barati #1431: Taking a Walk through Art History with "Un Soir Avec Les Impressionnistes, Paris 1874" #1432: Combining Biodata with Open World Mushroom Adventure with "Symbiosis/\dysbiosis: Sentience" #1433: Challenging the Authority of Museums with College Biennale Winner "The Gossips' Chronicles" #1434: Choreographing the Collective VR Viewing Experience into a Public Art Performance with "Free UR Head" #1435: Blending Poetic Animation with Spatial Audio Orchestration with "Earths To Come" #1436: Transforming 2D Art into an Immersive VRChat Journey Complete with Themed Avatars with "Strangeways" #1437: What If…? Director Dave Bushore on Translating Marvel IP into an Emmy-Award Winning Interactive Cinematic Journey

The Night Under Lights Presents: The Seasons at the Moon Pool (replayable VRChat link and video) shown during Raindance Immersive was one of the most immersive music experiences I've ever had in VR so far. It was so awe-inspiring and incredible to see 3 DJ / VJ sets using the SNR Labs particle-screen version of their holographic Apple Global Illumination shader that I covered previously in episode #1413 with Apple_Blossom and A://DDOSS. The real-time immersive lighting effects have to be seen in VR to fully appreciate the awe-inspiring nature of it. You can see a video capture of it below, but if you have PCVR, then I highly, highly recommend checking out the replayable version on VRChat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZJ53W7NYnA VJs are able to input their 2D video livestream into the SNR Labs particle screen shader, which then translates the luminance values into height and enables a sort of volumetric translation. It has a DepthKit-like effect where you can see 3-dimensional shapes and objects with shadows or imagine if you were to push a cube through a sheet of fabric to get a feeling of objects from one-degree of fidelity, which is height from a fixed plane. VJ Silent and VJ namoron were instrumental in helping to develop this shader with SNR Labs, and TehArbitter's Moon Pool location for Night Under Lights was also instrumental in helping to shape the development of it. VJ TehArbitter (aka Arbi) brought together two other VJs and three DJs to present three sets with the theme of the different seasons. The first set was DJ Ladybug + VJ Silent, the second set was DJ Yuna + VJ TehArbitter, and then the final set was DJ Terkoiz + VJ namoron. I had a chance to catch up with half of the performers including VJ Silent and VJ namoron as well as with DJ Ladybug to talk more about the development of this specific project, but also to recount some of the history of the visual effects in the VRChat clubbing scene as well deeper trends of volumetric and holographic visual effects that VJs are exploring in VR. Also whether it merits a new terms as video jockey or visual jockey doesn't always fully encompass the holographic, volumetric, spatial, immersive, or narrative elements that are being explored. Some of the VRChat clubs discussed include: Dimension, Virtual Base event, Shelter, Ghost Club, Concrete, Concrete: Pale Sands, PSHQ, Slyfest, Loner, Kaleidosky, Sanctum, Schism, Deviate, Atlantis, Mochii's Island, Reflections, Redacted, Heist, Light Dimension, Simplicity, & Endless Serenity Also worth noting is that there are three VRChat worlds that are being featured in the Venice Immersive Worlds Gallery that connected to the themes discussed in this episode, and they're also three of the 20 VRChat worlds in the Venice selection that are not and likely will not have a public-facing world that's easily accessible. The NUL Presents˸ The Seasons Replay ＠ moon_pool is not in the Venice Immersive worlds gallery, and does have replayable version. But Silent works at Sanctum, and their billboarded stereoscopic screen in the Reactor is being featured in Venice, and the SNR Labs: Test Facility will be demonstrating the more 3D version of their Holographic shader named Apple Global Illumination, and Silent also mentioned Jerk and May who have the Concrete: Pale Sands, which is also a part of Venice Immersive. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

SoftlySteph's The Friction of a Modulated Soul took home the Best Dance Experience at Raindance Immersive in a groundbreaking performance that tells the "story about the different cages that bind us from our authentic truth." It's a piece that completely blew me away with it's technological innovations, her fluid and emotionally-driven dance, a moving story that takes you on guided journey towards authentic identity, and an excellent curation of music from other VRChat creators. The piece manages to tie together so many different strands of technical innovation, storytelling, and performance, and it was one of my highlights from the entire Raindance Immersive festival this year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAUjJ_ozldM The crux of the innovations within The Friction of a Modulated Soul are from the new holographic shader (aka the "Apple Global Illumination") developed in partnership with SNR Labs' Apple Blossom, A://DDOS, and namoron (covered in great detail in the previous episode #1413) that both plays back recorded holographic objects that are a part of a timed dance performance, but also replicates and mirrors her dance performance at different scales in real-time. There's also real-time lighting effects on the 1.4 million point-cloud pixels that are utterly awe-inspiring, and took lots of black magic shader wizardry pull it all off by encoding and decoding information from video streams (again many of the more technical details are covered in episode #1413). I saw this piece as a live performance during Raindance, but they're also working on a replayable VRChat world that should be ready within the next month or so. SoftlySteph also curated a soundtrack of independent music by VRChat creators with five of the songs specifically composed for this piece. Everything in this piece was designed around story, which takes the audience on a journey from resisting internal disconnections, to achieving authentic connection to self, to then resisting collective pressures to disconnect, and then finally culminating with authentic connection. https://twitter.com/SoftlySteph/status/1807125937819148769 Overall, this was a beautifully-executed piece that is pushing into new forms of dance genre and performance, and was well-deserving of the best dance performance at Raindance Immersive. I had a chance to catch up with SoftlySteph to get a bit more context about how this project came about, her journey into VR via the stage dance and dance performance scene, and then her intentions with architecting this story about authentic self. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

There was a new holographic shader developed by members of SNR Labs group on VRChat that completely blew me away in how it was used in a couple of performances at Raindance Immersive. It's like a new form of volumetric capture that also has lighting effects, and can be used in translating 2D images into 3D or capturing low-res 3D objects into a sort of hybrid of point-cloud, particle effect, 3D objects. It's called Apple Global Illumination after it's primary author Apple_Blossom, who worked with designing it with A://DDOS along with other collaborating artists including VJ Silent, VJ Namoron, and immersive dancer SoftlySteph. SoftlySteph's Frictions of a Modulated Soul took home the best dance performance at Raindance Immersive (and will be featured more in depth in the next episode), and the Night Under Lights: The Seasons at Moon Pool was one of the more awe-inspiring uses of this shader and was a personal favorite of mine from this year's festival. See the VRChat replay of the Moon Pool here and I'll be covering this in two episodes from now. There's a particle screen variation of the shader that is able to translate 2D VJ screens into more volumetric experiences based upon the luminance value of each pixel, which can be seen in this video below: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rZJ53W7NYnA Then there's a version that can encode 3D objects into a video that is streamed into VRChat, and then decoded into a dynamic hybrid between a particle effect, point cloud representation, and 3D model. And each of the particles are emitting light that are reflected on the surrounding environment and avatars. Here's a clip of SoftlySteph's performance as captured by Madame Kana https://twitter.com/SoftlySteph/status/1807125937819148769 Their SNR Labs Test Facility was also selected to be a part of the Venice Immersive Worlds gallery that opens next week. Here's a video overview: https://twitter.com/SNR_LABS/status/1813989248837595504 I had a chance to sit down with Apple_Blossom and A://DDOS to learn more about how this breakthrough shader was developed, as well as diving a bit into the weeds for the mechanics for how it works. The Apple Global Illumination feels like a real revelation and breakthrough in how it's opening up new avenues for how VJs and dancers will be able to use it for new forms of creative expression and holographic and volumetric effects to be paired with DJ sets across different clubbing venues in VRChat. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Shadow Canyon: A Puppeteer's Tale is a unique blend of VRChat Worldbuilding by nprowler, immersive dance performances by students of the VR Dance Academy founded by Dust Bunny, and then improv actors and immersive theatre staging led by Mycana. Overall, it was such a unique blend of different disciplines that the curators of Raindance Immersive awarded it with a special prize reserved for projects that embody the indie spirit of Raindance. The project started when nprowler and Dust Bunny saw some shadow effects in VRChat that inspired them to experiment with creating shadow dances with both sheet materials hanging from a line as well as onto the walls of a walking simulator VRChat world called Horse Canyon that premiered last year's Venice Immersive. Dust Bunny brought in her students from the VR Dance Academy, and then collaborated with theatre director and digital storyteller Mycana to figure out a narrative. The story primarily is motivating a sort of guided tour to different locations on the map that feature different dances that were inspired by different Tarot cards. The main protagonist is watching each of these dances while another Mystic sidekick character helps interpret the meaning leading to breakthroughs of creative inspiration. For me the strongest part of the piece were the awe-inspiring dance scenes with beautiful shadow effects and getting a chance to explore this latest iteration of nprowler's vast world of nature-inspired spatial architectures. To get a sense of some of the journey that you're taken on, then be sure to watch the section of Madame Kana's Raindance Immersive 2024 documentary featuring clips from Shadow Canyon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soHDdq0Lbwk&t=256s I had a chance to catch up with Dust Bunny, nprowler, and Mycana to unpack their unique creative collaboration and how they fused each of their strengths to put together a very unique and awe-inspiring piece that's at the intersection of immersive dance, the vastness of walking simulator world building, immersive theatre, improv, and immersive storytelling. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

FlowersRite (花之祭P) is a music producer, 3D artist, cosplayer, and VRChat world builder who won the Best Music Experience at Raindance Immersive 2024 with her experience called Children of the Seed. Within a couple of days of discovering VR in 2019, she had bought a PC, HTC Vive, and Vive Trackers to do full-body tracking, and has slowly been transitioning into becoming a professional 3D artist. She has published 11 VRChat worlds since August 2019, including The Great Inventor Escape, which was featured in the Worlds Gallery at Venice Immersive 2022. She was building the world for Children of the Seed at the same time as she was composing the music in a creative process where the VRChat world building directly feed into the creation of the lore and backstory that directly inspired the development of the music. The end result is a majestic performance space and auditorium that's suspended in a dark forest that the audience has to move up in vertical space through a series of ramps and stairs to get it. The audience sits in a semi-circle while she stands on a island-like stage in the middle performing as a DJ / VJ controlling a series of in-world effects like rain as well as circles of light and organic shapes that slowly transition each of the movements that are demarcated with their name in a floating text overlay. I had a chance to catch up with FlowersRite to get more context about her journey into VR, some of the different VRChat worlds she's created over the past 5 years, and how her world building creative process influenced the development of The Children of the Seed. At this point, she hasn't uploaded a replayable version of her musical performance in VRChat yet, but you can listen to her music in this 2D music video of Children of the Seed that has a completely different art style and experience than what was shown in VRChat during Raindance Immersive 2024. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Medra is the CEO and founder of the Creator Jam, which is a non-profit that's been consistently organizing weekly and monthly collaborative-building events within the social VR platform of Resonite (and originally within Neos VR) since June 2, 2019. Resonite's technological architecture allows for the rendering and editing of content in real-time in a collaborative fashion, which has led to a rich maker culture within Resonite as embodied by the Creator Jam Community. Neos VR and then Resonite were both developed by Tomáš Mariančík (aka Frooxius). When I interviewed Mariančík in 2015 at GDC, I had regarded him as one of the few "mad geniuses" of VR. He had won 3rd place in two game jams at that point including 3rd place in the Oculus & IndieCade 2013 VR Jam with SightLine, and then 3rd place in the Leap Motion 2014 3D Jam with World of Comenius. Then he would go on to win 3rd place in the Oculus & Samsung 2015 VR Jam with Neos The Universe after participating in the Rothenberg River Accelerator at the invitation of Tipatat Chennavasin. When I interviewed Chennavasin in Spring of 2015, he talked about recruiting Mariančík for the Rothenberg Ventures River Accelerator by saying, The mandate I had was, find awesome people in VR and support them and help them. I got to do that. Sightline the Chair was one of my favorite demos of all time in VR. When I saw that, I was never so jealous or angry. I was like, "This guy's brilliant, smarter than me. Oh my god! This is the demo I wish I was smart enough to think of doing." And I fortunately found his contact. He was in the Czech Republic, Tomas. I sent them a Skype message and it was just this amazing thing where I had to explain what's a VC, what's an accelerator program, how can it help them, what are they doing, and they were just kind of shocked, a little suspicious. But fortunately, after a couple talks, we got them out here and it's just been amazing to see them, support them, and help them flourish as entrepreneurs, but also developers and innovators in the VR space. After participating in the Rothenberg Ventures River VR incubator, then Mariančík and other Solirax co-founder Karel Hulec started working on his deep vision of Neos VR. That following spring Mariančík wrote a blog post titled "How VR became my day job because I didn't give up" in what he described as the "Frooxius origin story" to r/Oculus. He details how difficult it was to make it as a full-time VR developer. Despite his many successes in different game jams, he wasn't really receiving a lot of support from Oculus. Oculus always knew how to support game developers, but didn't quite know what to do with the more education-focused and experimental apps exploring the boundaries of perception that Mariančík was working on. And to top it all off, the depth of vision of how Mariančík was thinking the medium was also probably 5-10 years ahead of anyone else. He reflected on this in his origin story post by saying, The trouble is that Neos is a very complex and expansive idea and requires a lot of time to work through all the aspects of it and thorough consideration to make sure everything fits neatly together, because I needed to find a set of basic elements which are both very simple and elegant, but interact in so many ways that they provide extremely flexible, but also consistent system. I always know what to do from moment to moment, but there’s just a lot of things to do. So I keep working for months, piecing the system and working through it all. But before the system comes together, there isn’t much to show for it. What I found most difficult is watching as everyone else is showing off their VR projects with quickly made solutions, but with a fraction of functionality, gaining attention, winning awards, participating at events, demoing in public, getting invited to VR shows and podcasts, while I’m piecing together my big vision in the shadows.

The VRChat world Suku took home the Best Art World prize at Raindance Immersive 2024, and it's by Durk van der Meer who is a freelance digital artist, character artist, and VR world builder based in Curaçao. Suku blends together elements of Caribbean culture and geography with Dutch colonial architecture combined with a sort of psychedelic Studio Ghibli twist that gives the overall experience a sense of surrealism and magical realism. https://twitter.com/DurkatWork/status/1805274104460722464 I had a chance to catch up with van der Meer to speak about his 3D artist pipelines and workflows primarily focused on Gravity Sketch, but we also cover some of his other tools like Google Blocks and Adobe Substance 3D Modeler (formerly known as Oculus Medium). We also talk about focusing all of his creative artistic side projects into the process of VRChat world building within Unity as a vast open world that also leverages the World Creator Professional plug-in. I also had a chance to go on a guided tour of the world with van der Meer where he added a lot of additional context for his creative process, some stories and myths about the history of Curaçao, but also other elements of the darker side of Dutch colonial history by featuring a slave house and plantation house that was transformed into an immersive art installation. There's also other elements of the Caribbean culture of Curaçao that van der Meer integrates that he himself started to wonder if it bordered on a form of cultural appropriation. His intention was to explore his own creative imagination, and he did not intend this world to be in any way educational or a historically accurate elaboration of the darker side of these colonial histories. He considered adding some additional context to the world, but ultimately decided to not add any other additional information about any of the symbols or architecture featured within the piece. Many of these aspects only came up within the context of the guided tour, which was part of the Raindance Immersive exhibition. But the allusions by van der Meer to the dark colonial history of Curaçao was definitely a part of the experience that stuck with me, and we have a chance to dig into a little bit at the end of our conversation, and I dug into a few additional references at the end of the podcast as I was wrapping everything up. Kirby Ferguson's Everything is a Remix YouTube series is probably one of the more compelling counter argument to worries about cultural appropriation as he argues that the core of remixing is "to copy, transform, and combine existing materials to produce something new." Ferguson argues that all art and cultural production is ultimately borrowing from a wide range of different sources from different cultures, and that nothing is actually truly original. Legally fair use in copyright law dictates four different factors measuring fair use that including "the purpose and character of your use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and the effect of the use upon the potential market." That's the legal side of the argument, but concerns around cultural appropriation are more ethical and moral rather than strictly legal. I dug into some references on cultural appropriation from Google Scholar, which pointed me to this 2006 article titled "From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation: A Review and Reconceptualization of Cultural Appropriation" by Richard Rogers, which has over 700 citations. Rogers defines cultural appropriation pretty broadly by saying that it's the "use of one culture’s symbols, artifacts, genres, rituals, or technologies by members of another culture—regardless of intent, ethics, function, or outcome." He goes on to define four different categories that include exchange, dominance, exploitation, and transculturation across a spectrum from reciprocal exchange all the way to transnational corporations commodifying cultural art...

K. Guillory (aka Aemeth) has been writing The Metaculture online magazine since August 13, 2021 with over 70 articles covering the latest trends in arts and culture on social VR platforms such as VRChat. She focuses primarily on the live music and performance scenes, but also has been tracking the historical evolution of the underground clubbing scene in VRChat, virtual fashion, as well as many other artistic trends from painting in VR to film in VR to VTubers. In fact, I mention some of her intrepid work in my own interviews with Starheart on VTubing and BabyBonito on painting within VR as her previous interviews on these topics and coverage on these trends came up they were continuing to evolve and be featured at the Raindance Immersive festival in 2023 and 2024. Guillory has been ahead of the curve in terms of tracking some of these trends of virtual culture before they get picked up and highlighted by other curators and virtual cultural critics and essayists. Guillory was inspired to start The Metaculture magazine from a conversation that I had with her on July 24, 2021 at Nanotopia's Mycelia exhibition in VRChat as a part of the AMAZE festival. She was sharing with me all sorts of insider tips on the underground dancing and clubbing scene with VRChat, and so I suggested to her that she find a way to archive, document, and publicly share more of this oral history knowledge as most of the information about the nuances of these hidden corners of the VRChat cultural scene were scattered across disparate Discord servers, ephemeral Twitter announcements, as well as insider community knowledge from knowing someone who knew someone about it all. Starting in 2021 and 2022 there started to be more and more YouTubers creating documentaries about VRChat's underground clubbing scene trend with Straszfilms' The Virtual Underground: An Introduction to VRChat's Rave Scene published May 5, 2021. Then Phia's The EXPLOSIVE Rise of VRChat Clubbing published her take on it on her The Virtual Reality Show channel on Mar 12, 2022. Then I actually conducted this interview with Guillory featured here on March 25, 2022 right as the zeitgeist about the clubbing scene started to explode. I knew she was tracking it very closely, and I wanted to get a bit of an insider's perspective on it all. Then a few weeks after I recorded my chat with Guillory, PBS Voices published their I Went Clubbing in Virtual Reality: Raves of VRChat on Apr 6, 2022, and then Guillory/Aemeth was featured as a subject matter expert on Resident Advisors' piece The music, venues and creators driving virtual reality clubbing that was featured on Sep 28, 2022. You might able to detect some of the parallels of how she tells me the story in this interview as well as some of the points that she also makes within the Resident Advisor video. The Origin Story of VRChat In the process of producing this episode, I came across this documentary by YouTuber Twice about the History of VRChat 2014-2022 that does a really great job of establishing the major platform developments, UI/UX changes, as well as turning points in the cultural evolution of the VRChat platform. Twice first came across VRChat in 2017, and so his video aggregates some archival footage before he started creating his own content, but for everything after 2017 he weaves his own personal history, footage, and memories on the platform to help flesh out the broader story of VRChat as a platform. This documentary inspired me to go on my own trip down memory lane as well as a entering into a bit of a rabbit hole of research into the origin story of VRChat itself, and so I wanted to share some of the results of my archeological dig here. I first ordered my Oculus Rift DK1 on January 1, 2014, and I received it about a week later. I along with many VR enthusiasts and VR developers ended up obsessively following the /r/Oculus subreddit as this where a critical mass of the community was congregating to share ...

Doug North Cook is the CEO and Creative Director for Creature, which is both an immersive game studio and label announced a year ago that's representing 10 different XR studios and 16 projects slated as far out as 2027. Creature had four different projects with announcements as a part of the UploadVR Summers Showcase 2024 on June 26th that included Laser Dance, Thrasher, Maestro as well as the "cozy sci-fi, psychedelic adventure" mixed reality game that they're building called Starship Home. Each of these games are exploring either innovative hand-tracking or mixed reality mechanics that are exploring new forms of embodied gameplay. He describes the ribbon dance-inspired gamed mechanic of Thrasher as "a form of extended proprioception" where it feels like an extension of your body when playing it. I totally agree with this assessment, and I elaborate more on the magical experience of Thrasher's hand tracking with the creators after having a chance to have an early look at Raindance Immersive where it took home the best game experience. I also caught up with the solo developer of Laser Dance, which picked up one of the Spirit of Raindance 2024 Awards. North Cook said that Laser Dance has become his go-to demo in order to show off the affordances of mixed reality, and both of these games capture the innovative indie spirit that are represented by the game label side of Creature. I had a chance to catch up with North Cook to unpack the challenges of mixed reality development, a bit of a behind-the-scenes sneak preview on their mixed reality game Starship Home, collaborating with SideQuestVR on a $1M Indie VR Fund, but also how he's found a unique sweet spot between an agency and publisher to create a collaborative brain trust of veteran XR game developers who are helping to solve many of these intractable XR design problems. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Thrasher is a really compelling VR game with a very satisfying and magical core game mechanic inspired by ribbon dancing. It's the latest VR game from Brian Gibson, who designed the art and music for the VR rhythm game Thumper, as he teamed up with former Harmonix co-worker Mike Mandel via Puddle Studio. Thrasher was also partially inspired by the classic Snake video game, but in this version you're controlling a much more abstract and artistic "space eel" entity with your hands in order to deliberately crash through crystals and avoid obstacles. There's many power-up permutations to extend on this idea, but the main thrust of the game is that it's just super satisfying to manipulate this space eel entity by moving a single hand around either using tracked controllers or hand tracking alone. Thrasher is launching today on the latest Meta Quest platforms as well as on the Apple Vision Pro. Inspired by the lack of input controls on the Apple Vision Pro, they also implemented hand-tracking to the point where you can quickly twirl around your index finger as an input control to the point where it started to feel like this entity was a sort of extension of my body. I played all the way through it first on the Apple Vision Pro with just hand tracking, and then on the Quest 3 with hand-tracked controllers, and I actually preferred the way that the game feels with just hand-tracking, even though it's technically more precise with Quest's 6-DoF controllers. Even though it's technically harder to play within the hand tracking mode, it just feels a bit better, especially if you prefer to play in more of a vibe-out mode than trying to climb up the leaderboards. I was a part of the Raindance Immersive jury that awarded Thrasher with the Best Game award because it has such a novel, unique, and satisfying game feel along with a lot of depth and development as they explore this mechanic to it's logical extreme with different power-ups, obstacles, and an increasingly difficult game progression curve. There's even a very subtle and nuanced combination system for advanced players that is elaborated in more detail on their website with this Thrasher Gameplay Guide, or you can watch this THRASHER: "How to Win" video for more details on how it works. I played through it twice without having access to these supplemental materials, and I wasn't able to fully figure it out. So this system is a bit cryptic and hidden from the perspective of the game design, but you can dig into more details in and experiment more on the first level. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN6qfuSAqaw I had a chance to catch up with Gibson and Mandel last month to talk about their journey and design process in creating Thrasher, and some of their preliminary thoughts on whether they'll release a more relaxed vibe-out or Zen mode. Whether they decide to or not, Thrasher is certainly one of the best games that I've played so far on the Apple Vision Pro, and their ribbon-dance inspired mechanic is something that feels super magical and fun to play around with. It's also a good example to discern some of the phenomenological differences in what the game feels like with controllers (and haptics) a blend of embodied movement with abstracted agency, and with just hand tracking or finger tracking and a bit more visceral embodied experience overall. Also stay tuned for my next episode where I had a chance to chat with Creature label co-founder Doug North Cook talking about helping to produce and represent Laser Dance, Thrasher, and their flagship mixed reality game of Starship Home. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Laser Dance is a mixed reality game by solo XR game developer Thomas van Bouwel, who previously released minimalist puzzle game called Cubism. I had a chance to try out Laser Dance through Raindance Immersive, and it's one of those types of games that I think will really help define some of the key affordances of successful mixed reality games that modulate your existing context enough to transport you into another realm of play where you use your body as a controller. https://twitter.com/tovanbo/status/1806323145000816867 I had a chance to catch up with van Bouwel to unpack more about the mixed reality and hand tracking lessons from Cubism in the first half of our conversation, and then we dive into many of the peculiar considerations of mixed reality game design for Laser Dance covering everything from gameplay that adapts relative to the uniqueness of someone's space, the evolving Presence Platform functionality for mixed reality along with the types of custom programming needed to solve some of the open problems, as well as collaborating with the newly-formed Creature label that is providing additional support for innovative indie-driven, mixed reality and XR games like Laser Dance, Thrasher (more on this experience tomorrow), as well as their flagship mixed reality game of Starship Home. We also cover some of the unique insights from architecture that have also really helped to shape van Bouwel's journey from architectural visualization into the frontiers of leveraging spatial affordances for mixed reality gameplay. The release date for Laser Dance has not been announced yet, but you can wishlist it here. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Madame Kana is a French, transgender woman and VReporter who has been publishing a new documentary about VRChat every 2-3 weeks for the past year on her YouTube channel, and she won the Discovery Award this year at Raindance Immersive 2024 for her short film called New Eden Evergarden; Behind the Magic. She published a 39-minute documentary about last year's Raindance Immersive 2023 edition, and she also recently published a 32-minute documentary about this year's Raindance Immersive 2024 edition, which I highly recommend checking out as she highlights many of the projects that I have been and will be featuring on the Voices of VR podcast series featuring different Raindance Immersive artists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soHDdq0Lbwk I had a chance to catch up with Kana to get more information about her journey into VR, and her motivations for capturing so many different elements of virtual culture including the two Raindance Immersive documentaries from 2023 and 2024, short-form and long-form documentaries about Evergarden, a collection of meaningful moments from Public VRChat instances (Part #1 and Part #2), the Furry scene in VRChat, a vlog about how Joe Hunting's We Met in Virtual Reality film inspired her to make her own documentaries within VRChat, an update on Dust Bunny's VR Dance Academy, trip reports on the Virtual Market, Spookality and other VRChat horror worlds, a profile on VRChat Creator Tonton Demon, and reports on the Japanese scene in VRChat including VR Japan Tours performance group, the Japanese Jazz scene in VRChat, and an interview with Japanese musicians AMOKA. Needless to say, it's an impressive amount of coverage of the frontiers of virtual culture within VRChat over the past year, and certainly played a big part in why the Raindance Immersive curators Mária Rakušanová and Joe Hunting honored her with a Discovery Award. Kana is currently working on a documentary on the transgender community within VRChat as gender expression is a particularly personal interest of hers as VRChat helped her to become more public about her own transgender identity, and she sounds committed to continuing to explore the frontiers of virtual culture and continue to crank out these 10, 20, or 30-minute documentaries. Be sure to follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @Les_Gribouilles for clips and previews of her latest videos and be sure to subscribe to her YouTube channel to follow her latest completed works. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

BabyBonito is an artist, avatar creator and worldbuilder within VRChat who participant different VRChat communities including a creative collective in VR called GlitchesVR, which has a substack that covers the latest in virtual culture. As a classically trained artist Bonito first got into VR through the process of creating her own avatars, which have a distinctive look having a wiggly fish on her head. She also started to shoot documentaries within VR, and actually got an honorable mention from Raindance Immersive 2023 for her short film called The Painters of Virtual Reality, which documents the still life drawing community on VRChat. I wanted to catch up with Bonito as I saw her at a lot of events throughout Raindance Immersive, and I wanted to hear more about her journey into VR, some of the groups and communities she's involved with on VRChat, her thoughts on how the creator economy may change the creative dynamics on the platform, and some of the other pockets of indie artists and creatives who are actively co-creating different aspects of virtual culture. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Ariel Emerald is a VR filmmaker who has had a short film titled Ulterior Motives and music video screen titled Like Crazy at Raindance Immersive for the past two years. Before getting into social VR, she suffered from social anxiety and isolation, and didn't have the resources to pursue a career in film. But getting into virtual reality via VRChat allowed her to overcome social anxiety, discover the virtual clubbing scene, cultivate a friendship network, develop her cinematography and color grading skills, write and direct a range of different fiction and non-fiction pieces shot within VR, and and bring the community of VR filmmakers together with the Filmmakers of VRChat Discord. I had a chance to catch up Ariel to talk about her journey into VR by overcoming social anxiety, and the latest in her pursuit of a career in filmmaking via VR. We also cover some of the history of filmmaking in VR starting with VRChat user hirabiki's VRCLens that had a VRCLens Sample world that first launched on August 25, 2020 and was initially available on Booth, but now is exclusively available on Gumroad. We cover other turning points like Metacosm Studios, Joe Hunting's on “We Met in Virtual Reality" premiere at Sundance on January 21, 2022, VRCon Film Fest 2022 on December 17, 2022, Phia Bunny's The Virtual Reality Show Film Fest on February 25, 2023, the founding of the Filmmakers of VRChat community and Discord soon afterwards, and then a selection of films shot in VR at both Raindance Immersive 2023 and Raindance Immersive 2024. Filmmaking in VR is still in it's very early phases in exploring non-fiction and documentary forms, replicating existing fiction genres, and then eventually pushing forward new genres of storytelling that will be made possible by the affordances of VR, breaking down geographic access to performers around the world, and having thousands and eventually millions of easily accessible virtual film sets on social VR platforms like VRChat. It's very exciting to see where it'll all go. Ariel Emerald's gives me a glimpse of what's possible when all of these virtual and human resources come together within VR to push at these edges of genre, cultivation of moods and feelings with virtual architecture, and explore new possibilities in storytelling. EDIT: August 20, 2024. Here's a director's reel that Ariel just posted. https://twitter.com/ariel_emeraldVR/status/1825985914419454153 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

TFMJonny is a full-time VTuber content creator with more than a million subscribers on YouTube and TikTok, but also does Twtich livestreams, releases music on Spotify, and has a background in acting, voices acting, and improv (more links are here on his Linktree). It's a journey that started with live singing within The Great Pug in VRChat, and then transitioned into livestreaming his performances, and eventually into a long-form and short-form video content on all of the major platforms. He uses VRChat to embody different characters as a VTuber, and engage with people via chat roulette platforms like Omegle in a way that blends the virtual and the physical. He stars in a music video of his song Like Crazy that was featured at Raindance Immersive 2024, and I had a chance to catch up him to learn more about his journey into VR, how he helped to start the Star Collective talent group of live performers in VRChat, and finally his recent focus on community building and how he's leveraging beta access to VRChat's creator economy to experiment with a monitized TFMJonny VRChat group to host meetups with his supporters. We move from the evolution of live performance in VRChat, catching the VTubing waves, while also navigating the ever-shifting landscape of content creation with the focus moving from long-form to short-form content where the revenue models and algorithmic tunings are all still in flux. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Starheart is a Musician, Composer, Filmmaker, and VTuber who has been doing live performances in VR over the past couple of years. She started making music videos on Halloween of 2022, and realized that she needed a persistent avatar. VR had already been creating a safe space for her to anonymously experiment with and discover her identity as a transgender woman, and she debuted her VTubing persona of Starheart on April 18, 2023 with a music video called "Elsewhere." Then three days later she opened for Naku on Phia's The Virtual Reality Show, which opened up opportunities to play at over 40 different music venues over the past year. VR has opened up many new opportunities for Starheart to discover the core essence of her identity and new modes of creative expression as an artist, musician, and filmmaker. Starheart is her name and persona, but it's much more than a character. In fact, she told The Metaculture magazine's K. Guillory last year that "Becoming Starheart has been integral for finding my musical voice, and is the most authentic version of myself as a performer I've ever been." I picked up on this thread to hear more about Starheart's creative journey into VR through her music videos, musical performances, filmmaking explorations and creation of her authentic identity beyond her physical body. Starheart's "I Still Love You" ended up winning the Best Music Video this year at Raindance, and this episode will be kicking off a series of interviews that I'll be doing with Raindance Immersive artists to get a better sense of what's been happening at the frontiers of virtual culture within the social VR platform of VRChat. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Cosm is a front-facing, 180-degree, 87-foot diameter, 8K+ LED dome screen that can seat up to 1500 people. Their first location is opening in Los Angeles this weekend showing UFC 303, which is produced by their Cosm Immersive division (formerly LiveLikeVR) focusing on live sporting events, music, entertainment. They also have a Cosm Studios division that will continue to produce educational content for their network of planetariums, but also developing new forms of immersive art and immersive stories. Cosm Studios has been working with different XR artists over the past number of years in order to translate their work into either full dome planetariums or front-facing dome venues (with a second location opening in the future outside of Dallas, Texas). The Madison Square Garden Sphere opened up in Las Vegas on September 29, 2023 and has a seating capacity of around 18,600 people. Cosm is on a much smaller scale of a venue at 1500 people that allows them to be a bit more experimental with the types of immersive art, immersive stories, and immersive content as well as live sporting events to fill up their venue. Cosm listed a number of their content partnerships in a LinkedIn post from a couple of months ago where they said, "Transforming live sports and entertainment, Cosm LA invites you to experience the biggest and best live sports from ESPN, the National Basketball Association (NBA), Ultimate Fighting Championship, TNT Sports U.S., and NBC Sports in immersive 8K+. In addition to live sports, Cosm LA will showcase music, entertainment such as Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group, and immersive art experiences from our Cosm Studios Creators Nancy Baker Cahill, Chris Holmes, Ricardo Romaneiro, and Guy Reid of PLANETARY COLLECTIVE." I had a chance to catch up with the head of Cosm Studios Neil Carty as well as the Senior Director of Studio Development for Cosm Studios Katy Yudin last year at Tribeca Immersive 2023 in order to get the backstory for how Cosm came about as well as how they've been working with immersive artists and immersive storytellers over the past couple of years to translate their XR projects to work in these different dome formats. You can check out Cosm's upcoming events that includes sporting events and world premieres of immersive content like "O" by Cirque du Soleil on July 11, LIQUIDVERSE: Microcosm & Macrocosm on July 12, Orbital on July 17, and SEEK on July 18. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Ru is a transgender woman who works as a hospice nurse in Ohio, and since 2018 has been involved as an immersive artists, virtual DJ, and event producer holding weekly events in her psychedelic space called Kaleidosky, which is nominated for Best Music Experience for Raindance Immersive 2024. I had a chance to get a tour of her Kaleidosky 3.0 event space where she showed me how the intuitive VJ system works in creating feedback-loop fractal art in a kaleidoscope that's projected onto a sphere serves as a fully immersive skybox with a floating island in the middle that contains plenty of hang out spots, mini games, and a dancefloor. Kaleidosky has an indie art spirit with a lot of avant-garde performances, with many of them being within the trance or psychedelic trance (aka psytrance) genre, but performers are not limited to this genre. There ends up being an experimental vibe, and happened to have a lot more intimate conversations happening and deep listening happening rather than intensive dancing. Ru doesn't even consider Kaleidosky to be a club, but more of an event space for DJs and VJ artists to experiment with their artistic practice. Ru has featured over 300 different performers since opening the first Kaleidosky in December 2022 and holding events on a weekly basis. I had a chance to catch up with Ru to get a lot more context about her story as being one of the most prolific virtual music event producers in the VRChat scene. Be sure to join the Beat Syndicate group in VRChat and follow her on X (formerly Twitter) for more information on upcoming events. Also be sure to also check out these YouTube documentaries about the clubbing scene in VRChat as well as explorations of gender, and the thriving trans community on VRChat. I Went Clubbing in Virtual Reality: Raves of VRChat by Josef Lorenzo on PBS Voices [which features Ru and her Kaleidosky club] Why are there SO many Trans people in VRChat? Gender, Identity, and Self Discovery by The Virtual Reality Show Identity, Gender, and VRChat (Why is everyone in VR an anime girl?) by Straszfilms This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The Troll Project was created by Ruth Diaz, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology and focuses on XR community design, in order to explore the root causes of trolling, but also tackling the issue head on within social VR spaces with some community-driven solutions that she has experimented with. She's recorded a number of ethnographic interviews with existing trolls, former trolls, and community managers to get a better idea behind the root causes that are leading people to troll others online. And she's put her theories into practice when trolls have interrupted her group discussions on different social VR platforms. Diaz has developed a conflict resiliency framework called The D.O.T. Model, which stands for "Deepen. Orient. Transform." The core idea is that there are polarities between the villain archetypes of the troll who fights versus the victim archetype of the target whose response is flight, and then another polarity axis between the vicarious bystander archetype who freezes vs the hero archetype who takes action to fix the situation and become the victor. The D.O.T. framework helps people navigate between these archetypal polarities while dealing with trolls. She writes, "It is designed so we learn how to re-center without using anything on the outside changing to fit our needs. It is a re-orienting “compass” that identifies polarizing relationships patterns, the non-verbals and emotions that accompany these reactive dances, and where one fits in those polarities. Using a catchy visual and simple recipe for each polarity/archetype we embody in negative interactions; it teaches us how to get back to the humanness of heart and reconnect to those around us in a meaningful way. " Diaz was teaching these conflict resiliency methods in public social VR spaces where the group would get trolled, but then they would apply these principles as a group intervention that would actually sometimes result in a transformative experience for the troll. She then started doing ethnographic interviews on different social VR platforms that could potentially lead towards a more formalized community-driven intervention framework for how to deal with trolling. I had a chance to speak with Diaz a couple of weeks ago in order to get more context into some of her ideas about moving beyond the technological solutions of blocking and banning to more holistically address some of the root causes of trolling with more of a community-driven solution. She's presenting today at the Augmented World Expo in a session titled "Resilient XR Environments: Building & Navigating Conflict-Resilient Spaces", and is ultimately hoping that The Troll Project can "contribute to understanding the complex interplay between human behavior, online identity (in 2d and 3d), and social dynamics, facilitating the development of strategies to mitigate negative behaviors and enhance transformative experiences in online communities." Part of a technological solutionism mindset to to expect that technological architectures can solve human problems, but there's limits to the existing technological mitigating strategies and The Troll Project is a welcomed venture into digging deeper into this problem. Trolling is obviously a huge issue that is unlikely to ever be fully eradicated, but Diaz has seen some of the transformative potential of her process by converting trolls into former trolls, and it's worth exploring these types of community-based alternatives to get to the root of the problem. The Troll Project is looking for funding and collaborations to take it to the next level, and so be sure to check out their Join & Contribute section to get more details for how to get involved. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Today Niantic's 8th Wall is announcing Niantic Studio, which is "a new visual interface for Niantic 8th Wall developers that offers an entirely new way to build immersive 3D and XR experiences." It's essentially a web-based game engine using three.js that can render WebXR experiences and starts to integrate a few of Niantic's Lightship APIs, but will be launching with more integrated computer vision and geospatial mapping features soon. I had a chance to speak with 8th Wall Founder Erik Murphy-Chutorian at length to get a lot more details, and be sure to tune into the podcast or read more information below to get a lot more context on this announcement that's being made at the Augmented World Expo. You can read more about Niantic Studio in their blog announcement. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

YouTuber Brad Lynch (aka SadlyItsBradley) has completely replaced all of his computer screens with an Apple Vision Pro, even going as far as getting a headless Mac Book Pro that does not even have a screen. He's been using the Apple Vision Pro for around 8 hours a day since launch, and I wanted to get a sense of how he's been using it. It turns out the he is mostly streaming his gaming PC via Moonlight and using social VR apps like VRChat via ALVR to hang out with friends and ambient hang out virtual spaces. He's also using SteamVR overlays to augment his virtual reality experience with Steam apps like XSOverlay, VRHandsFrame, and OVR Advanced Settings. It's feels like a very niche use case of a hardcore VR enthusiast, but one that mixes and mashes realities in a way that might be a sign of things to come. Some of the most compelling apps for Lynch are open source that enable experiences that are being driven by his high-end Windows machine. https://twitter.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1783406980192702842 Lynch has been closely following a lot on VR hardware developments over the last number of years, but the Apple Vision Pro has satisfied most of his desires in what he wants within a high-end spatial computing device. The resolution is high enough and the quality good enough so that he can spend more time exploring different screen replacement use cases, augmented VR experiences via overlays, and productivity use cases of XR. Most PCVR enthusiasts are Windows users, and so Lynch's audience has traditionally focused more on the gaming use cases of VR. As a result they have not been as interested in the Apple Vision Pro due to the lack of high-fidelity input controls. But for Lynch, the basic locomotion gestures made available in ALVR are good enough for him to get around within VRChat without needed to hook up or use any external controllers. Because of the perceived or actual gaps between his ideal spatial computing use cases and his VR gaming audience, then Lynch actually scrapped his formal review video and is considering releasing clips or falling back to Q&A livestreams to field many questions about the trajectory of hardware in the XR industry. Lynch also has been enjoying the mashing up of spatial contexts in XR, mostly via the SteamVR overlays and windows but mentions some experiments of bringing in fully spatial objects. It reminds me of the interview that I did with the PlutoVR founders in 2020 when they were experimenting a lot with the idea of multi-app spatial computing paradigms with WebXR and apps like Aardvark by Joe Ludwig. Apple is slowly building out more and more spatial primitives across all of their operating systems, and are slowly becoming more and more game engine-like as new APIs were announced as a part of their WWDC, where visionOS 2.0 was announced as coming out later this Fall. We talk about some of the quality of life features, but also the role of an integrated ecosystem, and what BigScreen Beyond, Valve, and Meta might do to keep up with how Apple is pushing forward these ideas of multi-app integrations within spatial computing. At the moment Lynch's 8 hours of daily usage is likely an extreme outlier, but the types of ways that he's blending realities together feels like there's something deeper that we'll continue to see moving forward. VR typically involves a complete context shift, while AR tends to bring in modular elements of other contexts to shift your existing context. Lynch is on the bleeding edge of fully immersing himself within these virtual contexts, but modulating his experience with these SteamVR overlays in what could best be described as a sort of AR within VR use case. The visionOS 2.0 Beta release (coming this Fall) allows users to overlay their Mac Virtual Display over immersive environments, but SteamVR Overlays already enable this on PCVR experiences and so Lynch's experiences with overlays in VRChat could definitely be a sign of how Apple might e...

On June 12, 2024, VRChat announced they were laying off 30% of their staff, and they posted a letter to all employees sent from CEO Graham Gaylor that said, "We’re reducing the size of our team by around 30% and saying goodbye to many talented team members in the process. This is the hardest change we’ve had to make at VRChat, and Jesse and I take full responsibility for the decisions that brought us here." VRChat listed the four main reasons for the layoff in that they added too many individual contributors to their development team without a management layer to prioritize efforts, which meant they needed to reduce their headcount to folks who were more directly working on features that would lead to a path of profitability over the next five years. VRChat has taken a long time to launch their creator economy, which is still in closed beta, and their VRChat+ subscription models doesn't offer all that many differentiated features to drive users to join beyond a signal of patronage to support the platform. I wanted to gather some active VRChat community members to talk about the burgeoning creator economy as well as other potential pathways to profitability around streaming avatar streamlining, events, contributor / group subscriptions, and emerging features like increased instance size caps. The VRCSpaces community on X (formerly Twitter) held a Space on the day of the announcement discussing the layoffs, and I invited participants Table, yewnyx, and Miss Stabby as well as qDot who wrote up a really great thread breaking down some of the Silicon Vally startup dynamics. More than anything, I wanted to get their take about what VRChat is getting right, and where the most viable pathways for them might be on their road towards profitability. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Raindance Immersive 2024 opened last weekend in VRChat, and will run for the next four weekends featuring the latest innovations of virtual culture with 77% of experiences happening on social VR platforms and 69% that feature VRChat. I spoke at length with co-curators Mária Rakušanová and Joe Hunting about each of the 36 experiences that span nine different categories with four experiences each including Best Art World, Dance Experience, Game, Live Show, Music Experience, Narrative, Out of Competition experiences as well as the Music Video of VR and Short Film of VR. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ-VmsZ5oAU There are a number of mixed reality games that will be showing on the Apple Vision Pro and Quest 3, as well as the four narrative experiences that will be showing at a physical exhibition at Raindance, but otherwise the other 30 experiences all have some connection to a social VR platform. The best live show and best dance experience categories are new this year, and Hunting is continuing to cultivate the two film categories featuring short films and music videos, all of which were shot within VRChat. I talk with both Rakušanová and Hunting about the shift from June to November, and then dive into each of the nine categories and 36 experiences highlighting the latest trends and innovations by indie XR artists who are primarily working on social VR platforms including VRChat, Resonite, and EngageXR.

Curator Ana Brzezińska announced the Tribeca Immersive 2024 line-up on May 23, 2024 mentioning that "this year we are not presenting any VR/AR experiences," but rather that they're pivoting this year to featuring eight immersive art pieces by six different artists being shown at Mērcer Labs: Museum of Art and Technology, which first opened to the New York City public on January 4th, 2024. Tribeca Immersive opens on June 6th and runs for 12 days until June 17th, and you can get tickets to see it here. Some immersive creators discovered this surprising news by receiving a refund to their submission, which said "As the immersive landscape evolves, our category is taking new shape to explore formats outside of VR/AR this year and our decision is not a reflection of the quality of your work… Because our change in format was a recent shift and changed our consideration of the works, we will be refunding you your submission fee." Tribeca Immersive will be taking over five of the rooms at Mērcer Labs that includes "a two-story high 5-wall LED immersive hall; a 4DSOUND installation space; and two infinity rooms, including one equipped with volumetric technology that makes you feel like you’re watching a space opera." This space opera location is called the Dragon Room, which is described by Mērcer Labs on their Instagram page in the following way, "Volumetric lighting allows visitors to see voxels (volumetric pixels) of light in space. The light source is modeled as a transparent object in a container of volume. The resulting effect is of passing through a hologram. The use of mirrors and advanced technology, unlock the power of three-dimensional visualization to create a cascade of luminescent particles that appear suspended in infinite space. The individual light particles in an architectural format offer virtually endless opportunities for formal reinvention. The volumetric installation powered by @ledpulse, Dragon02 technology, features a unique configuration exclusive to Mercer Labs. This remarkable installation, the largest of its kind, and incorporates more than half a million LED neurons-microchips, meticulously synchronized to create an unparalleled visual experience." I had a chance to sit down with Brzezińska last week to get a bit more context on this pivot as well as on the eight immersive art pieces in the selection that will be spread across three different daily selections repeating four times over the 12-day run. Also be sure to check out her Substack post titled "In The Stillness of Synthetic Light*. Note on Tribeca Immersive 2024" to get even more context for her intentions and motivations for this year's selection where she says, "I believe that before we start seeking hope — which I expect to become a major theme in many upcoming art events — we need space for reflection and respite that allows for a radical suspension of judgment." I unfortunately won't be able to travel to Tribeca to check it out myself due to a family medical situation that's limiting my travel this year, but I'm looking forward to hearing back from folks in the community to hear how it all comes together. There will not be a formal Storyscapes competition this year, and so I will also be interested to see how the Tribeca Immersive selection continues to evolve over time and whether this represents a permanent shift away from immersive stories towards immersive art, or if we'll see an the inclusion of both forms in the future. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

ILM Immersive & Marvel Studios is releasing What If...?: An Immersive Story exclusively on Apple Vision Pro tomorrow, and I had a chance to take an early look and speak with producer and executive producer Shereif Fattouh as well as technical art director Indira Guerrieri about the process of creating this experience. It's mostly an immersive story with light interactions, but you can't actually die and so it's more about immersing yourself into these worlds with first-person embodiment and exploring around 10 different gesture-based interactions in nearly 50 different interactive moments across the 40 to 45-minute experience. There's also some disembodied moments where you're watching 3D movie cinematics on shards of glass floating in the environment, and so they're also really leaning into how good 3D movies look on the Apple Vision Pro within this experience. Overall, it's blending lots of elements together that feels like something new and a new genre of immersive storytelling that's building upon existing IP, and giving new opportunities to engage with these character's stories as well as their worlds. This is also the first Unreal Engine experience releasing on the Apple Vision Pro store, and so Fattouh told me that ILM Immersive has been making private modifications to get things working. There are features like mixed reality passthrough that are not available yet in Unreal Engine 5.4 yet. Agile Lens' Alex Coulombe told me, "The Epic Games XR team is small so I would I err on the side of assuming no major Vision Pro updates coming soon from Epic. To have the current features working it still requires a source build of Unreal Engine 5.4 (the Epic Games Launcher doesn’t work) and current features include fully immersive mode, hand tracking / gesture recognition, forward and deferred rendering." So hopefully we'll get more on this soon from Epic Games, but at least we know it's possible and we'll start to see more Unreal Engine experiences on the Apple Vision Pro soon. Be sure to check out the transcript below for more information, and also don't miss my episode featuring my talk on an Elemental Theory of Presence, Experiential Design, and Immersive Storytelling, as well as my previous 480+ episodes on the topic of immersive storytelling over the past decade including previous coverage on Cycles, Myth: A Frozen Tale, Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, and a conversation with John Gaeta about ILMxLab's The Holo-Cinema from Sundance New Frontier 2016. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is featuring an inaugural Immersive Competition with eight pieces in competition along with six pieces outside of competition. I had a chance to speak with Elie Lavasseur, the Head of Immersive Competition Festival de Cannes, to get a bit more context for how this came about, their curatorial intention, and an overview of the program. I've had a chance to see 5 out of the 8 pieces in competition, and all 6 of the non-competition pieces curated by Atlas V in an exhibition titled "exhibition 'exhibition 'Cinema Beyond the Frame: An Introduction to Virtual Reality'. I'll link my Voices of VR podcast coverage down below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh7XTZNtzGs Immersive Competition for Festival de Cannes: Evolver -- #1104: Tribeca XR: “Evolver” is an Awe-Inspiring Fluid Dynamics Simulation of Human Blood Flow Giving an Embodied Experience of Interbeing Colored -- #1251: From Book to Play to AR Installation, “Colored” Explores the Forgotten Segregation History of Claudette Colvin Maya: The Birth Of A Superhero -- #1244: “Maya: The Birth” Animation Uses Mythic Symbols & Magical Realism to Explore Menstrual Taboos as well as #1379: “Maya: The Birth of a Superhero” Evolves Storytelling Grammar with Magical Realism, Dream Logic, & Interactive Embodiment Traversing The Mist -- #1325 End of Tung-Yen Chou’s Gay Sauna Trilogy with “Traversing the Mist” Human Violins: Prelude (Multi-user Version) En Amour Telos I The Roaming Immersive Selection of Non-competitive works: Notes on Blindness (2016) -- #1068: “Notes on Blindness” VR Experience Receives a Legacy Peabody Award for Interactive Storytelling Battlescar (2018) -- Unpublished interviews coming soon Spheres (2018) -- #617: Journey into a Black Hole with “SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime” Gloomy Eyes (2019) -- Unpublished interview coming soon Missing Pictures: Naomi Kawase (2022) -- #1103: Tribeca XR: Translating Unmade Films into Spatialized VR Story Treatments with “Missing Pictures” Emperor (2023) -- #1276: Beautiful “Emperor” Explores Aphasia Communication Gaps with Compelling Interactions

One of the most common ways to describe the experience of VR is through the lens of presence, and in this episode I'm going to do a deep dive into the existing academic literature of presence in order to more fully contextualize my approach to it. This is my Storycon 2022 keynote where I elaborate on my elemental approach to presence as well as my thoughts on experiential design and immersive storytelling. I use the four archetypal elements to break down presence into four primary components where fire represents active presence, air represents mental and social presence, water represents emotional presence, and earth represents embodied and environmental presence. And I use the lens of quality, context, character, and story to explore the fundamental components of experiential design. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_2_qvIymt4 I started to develop my approach to presence through a number of Voices of VR podcast interviews in the fall and winter of 2016, and I was then introduced to the work of Dustin Chertoff, whose presence work from 2008-2010 draws upon the field of experiential marketing. He similarly boils presence down into the components of Active Presence, Cognitive Presence, Relational Presence, Affective Presence, and Sensory Presence. When I interviewed Chertoff in February 2017, we agreed that our approaches to presence were functionally identical. I then went on to present my preliminary ideas on presence at a Silicon Valley Virtual Reality conference keynote in March 2017, and I've continued to develop these ideas over the past 5-7 years. I gave this Storycon Keynote on May 5, 2022, which happened to be the 8th-year anniversary of the Voices of VR podcast. Now two years later, I'm celebrating my 10-year Voices of VR podcast anniversary in part by airing this talk as well as a few others. I consistently refer folks to it as one of my more fully-formed and rigorous elaborations that I've given of my elemental theory of presence. I not only contextualize it with Chertoff's work, but also with the broader body of academic presence research and it's history. I would often find there were would be different presence theories talking about some of the same concepts, but using different terminology. In this talk, I take an archetypal approach that synthesizes these different frameworks through an archetypal lens. At times it can be a bit laborious reciting an archetypal complex of keywords, and there are definitely sections of this talk that are probably better off read than spoken. So I'd highly recommend also checking out the video version as well as the PDF of the slides, and/or the fully-annotated transcript in the shownotes that includes the embedded slides and linked citations. That all being said, be warned that this is still probably way too dense for an hour-long talk, as it's more like an entire semester's worth of material. It's also probably closer to a Ph.D. defense than a synthesized book or practical handbook that's ready for prime time. As with many other aspects of XR, many theoretical aspects are still developing, emerging, boundaries being pushed, and rules being broken. So it's in that spirit that this is my latest fully-formed iteration of these ideas. This talk also leans more into the theoretical parts, and some of the more practical applications often come within the context of individual interviews where the context is a lot more bounded to a specific situation, experience, or story. Be sure to check out my 30+ hours of coverage from Venice 2023 as an example for how I've put these ideas into practice. It's been through many invited lectures and keynotes around the world where I've been able to develop these ideas by engaging with audiences and interviewing thousands of creators over the past decade. At some point, I'm still hoping to go through a more formal write-up of these ideas to give them even more rigor, and perhaps potentially even go through a more for...

May of 2024 marks the ten-year anniversary of the Voices of VR podcast, and I wanted to air a featured session that I presented at SXSW 2023 called "The Ultimate Potential of VR: Promises and Perils." This is a 45-minute talk that distills down the biggest insights from my 3-hour episode #1000 of the Voices of VR podcast, which aggregated 120 of the best answers to the question of "What is the ultimate potential of VR, and what it might be able to enable?" This talk synthesizes all of the most exciting potentials as well as scariest perils, and provides an annotated roadmap of my coverage over the past decade on the Voices of VR podcast. Back in 2016, I synthesized the first 400 answers to the question of the ultimate potential of VR in order to map out the contextual domains of virtual reality within a Silicon Valley Virtual Reality conference talk. I also use the same contextual mapping within my XR Ethics Manifesto talk in 2019, which a summary can be seen in my Landscape of XR Ethics talk that I featured in the previous episode. I provide a lot more background to this archetypal mapping of contexts in a forthcoming paper titled "Privacy Pitfalls of Contextually-Aware AI: Sensemaking Frameworks for Context and XR Data Qualities" that will hopefully be published sometime in 2024. This Ultimate Potential of VR talk combines both the promises and perils exploring both the benefits and risks of XR through these different contextual domains. I have also added a categories section on my VoicesofVR.com website that uses this same contextual framework as a taxonomy to classify over 1000 episodes. I'm still in the process of tagging my entire backlog, but this talk should provide a good overview to this contextual taxonomy if you want to dive deeper into more episodes across any of the different areas. Again, you can explore these different sections by navigating to the categories section of my website. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-8Z-hWaktY I also just uploaded a new video version of this talk with some updated slides and citations. Because I do rely heavily on about 140 slides throughout this talk, then I do highly recommend either watching the video version, listening along with the PDF of slides, or reading through the show notes afterwards where you'll find a full transcript with all 140 slides embedded throughout the transcript as well as links to over 170 of the footnotes and citations with hyperlinks. The podcast version and write-up will also include the Q&A session that happened after the talk at SXSW. I also wanted to elaborate on one other point about my motivation in putting together this talk. Over the past decade, there's been a persistent cycle where each year there's some journalist or tech pundit who pre-maturely declares the death of virtual reality. Now there have not been very many clear objective metrics to help quantify what's been happening in the broader XR industry to the outside world, which has made it difficult to establish a broad consensus as where the XR industry is at and how it might be evolving. But it's also also fostered an environment where skepticism about XR generally has been able to persist. After conducting over 2000 oral history interviews with XR creators over the past decade, it's given me many insights about the underlying affordances of the XR medium across many different contextual domains, which can be difficult to summarize or even communicate. That's what I hope to do in this talk. I wanted to lay out the evidence for why I believe virtual reality and spatial computing more broadly is a compelling enough medium to persist throughout these cycles of skepticism, and eventually find real utility throughout the full spectrum of the human experience. I actually have no idea when virtual reality may become a mass medium that's completely ubiquitous, but I'm convinced that it will some day in the future based upon some of the underlying principles that I la...

This is a 19-minute talk that I gave at Laval Virtual 2023 that is summarizing the work that I've done on XR Ethics over the past ten years. There's around 60 slides in this talk, and so you may prefer watching the video version over on YouTube for the full multi-modal experience, or this audio-only podcast version includes the Q&A session at the end. And you can also check out the show notes for this episode that has each of the slides embedded within the full transcript along with all of the linked footnotes in case you'd like to dig into the full context of any one of these topics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bab0CM7zK4 There's a lot of ground that I attempt to cover within my 15-20 minute allotted time slot at Laval Virtual 2023, but this should provide a high-level roadmap to how I see the landscape of XR ethics. The landscape of XR ethical considerations is also an ever-expanding area, and so this is far from a complete treatment, but hopefully covers some of the major issues that I've been covering on the Voices of VR podcast over the past decade. This talk at Laval Virtual was on Apr 13, 2023, which was a month after my Featured Session at SXSW on March 12, 2023 about The Ultimate Potential of VR: Promises & Perils. That talk explored both the exalted potentials of XR as well as the more troublesome perils, and this talk was focusing on just the perils. They both use a contextual framework that I elaborate more on within an upcoming paper titled "Privacy Pitfalls of Contextually-Aware AI: Sensemaking Frameworks for Context and XR Data Qualities" that was written for the Existing Law and Extended Reality Symposium at Standford Cyberpolicy Center in January 2023, and will hopefully be published later this year. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in! [1] My name is Kent Bye, and I do the Voices of VR podcast. And today, I'm going to be doing a tour in the landscape of the XR moral dilemmas and ethical considerations. And I'm attempting to cover all of the XR ethical moral dilemmas within the next 15 to 20 minutes [obviously not all of them, but a high-level sampling]. And so it's pretty ambitious. I do have the slides available with lots of footnotes.` I've been doing the Voices of VR podcast since 2014. And so I've recorded over 2,000 interviews and published over 1,200 of them, so just over 2 thirds of them that I've recorded. [2] And in the process of talking to a lot of folks within the XR community, there's naturally been a lot of different ethical and moral dilemmas. And so this is like a broad overview of the landscape of XR ethical and moral dilemmas. And so I'll be diving into each of these, but this is just to give you a bit of a sense of the landscape. [3] And it actually takes me back to Laval Virtual back in 2019, where I was brought out to brainstorm with a group of folks… [4] some of the different ethical and moral dilemmas. And so we have lots of these post-it notes. And so we're struggling with how do we start to organize the whole landscape of all these different ethical and moral dilemmas. [5], [6] And so In SVVR in 2016, I had given a presentation trying to map out the ultimate potentials of virtual reality of all the different domains and industry verticals and potentials. And so I asked people at the end of every podcast, "What's the ultimate potential of VR?" And they'd say, "Well, it's education. It's entertainment. It's being able to connect with friends and family. It's empathy. It's doing stuff for your career." And so this was like a start of a cartography of the different domains of human experience… [7] which ended up being very helpful for starting to map out these ethical and moral dilemmas into all these different domains or contexts. [8] And so at the end of 2019, I did a whole talk on the XR Ethics Manifesto. In 2019, I was doing a lot of talks about privacy…

The contributing editor and co-founder of fxguide Mike Seymour invited me onto his fxpodcast to share some of my thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro, the ecosystem differences between the Quest and Vision Pro, the potential for different killer apps, and where we see it going in the future. This is a rebroadcast of fxpodast episode #368, but with some additional context about Seymour's work with digital humans as well as the training application that he's developing on the Apple Vision Pro. I still see the Vision Pro primarily as a developer kit, but there are certainly many productivity & screen replacement as well as media consumption use cases. I'm hoping to do some more coverage of the Vision Pro here soon, including airing an interview with Resolution Games' Tommy Palm about their development of the Game Room application produced by Apple. Apple announced yesterday that they'll be announcing some new products on May 7th likely including the Apple Pencil 3 given Tim Cook's X/Twitter post saying "Pencil us in for May 7! ✏️ #AppleEvent, and also "revamped versions of the iPad Pro and Air, according to people familiar with the matter" per Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. I expect more Apple Vision Pro updates and news to be given at WWDC on June 10-14, and a first-look at how the broader XR industry is adopting the Apple Vision Pro at Augmented World Expo (AWE) on June 18-20, which I unfortunately will not be able to attend due to a family medical situation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The OpenXR 1.1 minor release comes out today, which moves some of the more commonly used extensions into core and it also marks a new Khronos Group commitment to a yearly release cycle. It's been nearly five years since the initial release of OpenXR 1.0 on July 29, 2019, and Khronos Group President Neil Trevett tells me that it's been one of the most successful open standards they've ever published, and I had a chance to catch up with Trevett and OpenXR working group chair Alfredo Muniz to talk about the range of conformant XR devices, engines, programs, what's happening with Apple and OpenXR, next steps for where they plan to take the standard in the future, and how you can get more involved either through their OpenXR Discord channel, OpenXR Forums, or OpenXR GitHub Issue Tracker. Also, here's a link to the announcement slides for OpenXR 1.1, which have some really helpful overview information about how broadly OpenXR has been adopted, as well as a sneak peak at some of what is coming soon including "extending hand tracking, enhanced handling of spatial entities, expanded haptics support, controller render models (glTF), increased accessibility, and Metal (Mac OS) support." I posted a thread on X / Twitter that highlights some of these slides from the OpenXR 1.1 announcement page. Here's five previous interviews covering the evolution of OpenXR since 2015: My 2015 interview with Neil Trevett with some preliminary thoughts about an open standard for VR My 2016 interview with Neil Trevett announcing the formation of what would become OpenXR My 2017 GDC conversation with Joe Ludwig marking the announcement of OpenXR. My 2018 GDC conversation with OpenXR working group chair Nick Whiting with a first look at OpenXR. My 2019 SIGGRAPH conversation with Neil Trevett marking the official OpenXR 1.0 release Also see some related topics within my interviews tagged with open standards.

I'm digging into my unpublished interview archives backlog to publish this conversation with Khronos Group President Neil Trevett marking the 1.0 release of OpenXR that happened during SIGGRAPH in July 2019. We talk about the intention of OpenXR as a specification, and I figured that it's worth looking back at the evolution of the specification as it has become quite a prominent open standard within the XR industry. Be sure to also see episodes #1382 that I just published from GDC 2018, #507 from GDC 2017, and #1385 with a current update on OpenXR 1.1.

OpenXR 1.1 is being released today, and so I'm digging into my archive of unpublished interviews to go back GDC 2018 when OpenXR working group chairman Nick Whiting presented some of the first information about the OpenXR specification, which wouldn't have it's initial release over a year later on July 29, 2019 (see episode #1384 for more on that). I'll also be publishing an update on OpenXR 1.1 in episode #1385, and so these next three episodes should provide a pretty comprehensive look at the evolution of OpenXR over the past 6+ years. Also be sure to check out episode #507 from GDC 2017 where I chat with Joe Ludwig about the initial announcement of OpenXR.

I interviewed The Golden Key co-directors Matthew Niederhauser & Marc Da Costa remotely during SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here is all of my coverage of projects in and around SXSW XR Experience 2024: #1360: Sneak Peak of SXSW XR Experience Projects, Events, & Lounges with Programmer Blake Kammerdiener #1362: “The Tent” Tabletop AR Mixes Photogrammetry, Volumetric Capture, & Theatre in Modern-Day Fairytale about Unhoused Crisis #1363: DIY 360 Video for Perspective-Taking and Investigating Murder of Trans Woman in “Her Name Was Gisberta” #1364: Step into the Movies with “The Vortex Cinema” Blending Cinematic Storytelling, Gaming, & Escape Room Mechanics #1365: “We Speak Their Names in Hushed Tones” Explores Impact of Migration on Families Left Behind in Poetic Immersive Still Life & Audio Documentary #1366: Electric South’s Ingrid Kopp on Increasing Access to Immersive Production Resources to African XR Creators + Tribeca 2019 Program #1367: “Escape to Shanghai” Immersive Doc Tells the Story of Jewish Refugees who Fled to China to Escape the Holocaust #1368: “Walk to Westerbork” Immersive Doc Shares Remarkable Story about a Dutch Jewish Holocaust Survivor Who Defied the Odds #1369: Interactive UN Doc “Dreaming of Lebanon” Blends Interactive Oral History, 360 Video, and Speculative Worldbuilding #1370: “Madame Pirate: Code of Conduct” Blends Spatial Representations to Tell the Story of Most Powerful Pirate in History #1371: “Pirate Queen: The Forgotten Legend” Fuses Escape Room Mechanics with Environmental Storytelling & Embodied Gameplay #1372: “Last We Left Off” 360 Video Plays Switches Between D&D Imaginal Realms with Physical Reality, & Exhibiting with Apple Vision Pro #1373: Interactive Biopic Doc on Opera Singer “Joseph Rouleau: Final Encore” that Mixes Modalities #1374: Telling Stories of Indigenous Leaders with OurWorlds.io’s “Chief” on Apple Vision Pro #1375: Unique 2D Hand-Drawn Animation Technique with “Tadpole” Leads to a Provocative Immersive Story #1376: Indie Musician Roman Rappak’s Annual Mixed Reality Performance Experiments & Expansion into “Detachment” Immersive Story #1377: Immersive Producer Katayoun Dibamehr’s Journey to Becoming an Award-Winning Producer at Floréal #1378: Anagram’s Mental Health Series Continues with Preview of “Impulse” Mixed Reality Story about ADHD #1379: “Maya: The Birth of a Superhero” Evolves Storytelling Grammar with Magical Realism, Dream Logic, & Interactive Embodiment #1380: “Reimagined Volume III: Young Thang” Adapts a Nigerian Folktale while Refining the Grammar of Spatial Storytelling #1381: “Soul Paint” Wins SXSW Special Jury Prize for Innovative Body Mapping Technique to Spatially Draw Your Emotions #1382: Interactive Generative AI Storytelling Installation “The Golden Key” Wins Top Prize at SXSW Leveraging Archetypal Folklore Motifs PREVIOUSLY COVERED PROJECTS [PART 1 from Tribeca Immersive 2023 – Part 1 + Part 2 debuts at SXSW] #1244: “Maya: The Birth” Animation Uses Mythic Symbols & Magical Realism to Explore Menstrual Taboos [from Venice Immersive 2023] #1272: Kickoff of Venice Immersive 2023 Coverage with Winner “Songs by a Passerby” and Atmospheric Storytelling [from Venice Immersive 2023] #1276: Beautiful “Emperor” Explores Aphasia Communication Gaps with Compelling Interactions [from Venice Immersive 2023] #1287: “Letters from Drancy” is an Incredibly Emotional and Powerful Story About the Holocaust [from Venice Immersive 2023] #1292: Pioneering the VR Essay with “Shadowtime” Critiquing Sci-Fi Dystopic Aspirations of VR [from Venice Immersive 2023] #1293: The Personalized AI-Driven “Tulpamancer” VR Sandpaintings with AI Text to Audio & VR Workflow [from Venice Immersive 2023] #1303: A Deep Dive into Breaking Down the Experiential Design of “The Imaginary Friend” [from DocLab 2023] #1331: Recreating Spatial Presence in Caves ...

I interviewed Soul Paint co-directors Sarah Ticho & Niki Smit remotely ahead of the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Reimagined Volume III: Young Thang director Melissa Joyner and co-directors Julie Cavaliere & Michaela Ternasky-Holland remotely after the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Maya: The Birth of a Superhero co-directors Poulomi Basu & CJ Clarke remotely after the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Impulse (Preview) co-directors May Abdalla & Barry Gene Murphy remotely after the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Floréal director Katayoun Dibamehr during Tribeca 2023 about her journey into becoming an award-winning immersive producer. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Detachment director Roman Rappak remotely after the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Tadpole director Diane Catsburrow Linnet remotely after the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Chief co-director Catherine Eng remotely after the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Joseph Rouleau: Final Encore co-directors Émilie Rosas & Colas Wohlfahrt remotely ahead of the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Last We Left Off director Connor Illsley remotely during SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Pirate Queen: The Forgotten Legend director Eloise Singer & writer Maja Bodenstein a few days after the launch of their game on March 7th. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Madame Pirate: Code of Conduct co-directors Morgan Ommer & Dan-Chi Huang remotely ahead of the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Dreaming of Lebanon co-directors Martin Waehlish & Cynthia Sawma remotely after SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Walk to Westerbork director Mary Matheson remotely ahead of the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Escape to Shanghai director Charlotte Mikkelborg remotely during SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Electric South director Ingrid Kopp during Tribeca Immersive 2019. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed We Speak Their Names in Hushed Tones director Omoregie Osakpolor remotely ahead of the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed The Vortex Cinema director Max Sacker as well as actors Christian Stotz & Brian Chase remotely ahead of the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Her Name Was Gisberta director Sérgio Galvão Roxo remotely ahead of the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed The Tent creator Rory Mitchell remotely ahead of the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The Agog Immersive Media Institute officially launched today by Grist-founder Chip Giller and philanthropist / investor Wendy Schmit. They describe Agog as "a groundbreaking initiative at the intersection of technology, communications, and social impact. Agog, a philanthropic organization, will help creators and nonprofit leaders harness the power of extended reality (XR) technologies to spur positive social transformation, opening new avenues for empathy, understanding, and activism." I had a chance to get a bit more context on Agog from co-founder Giller as well as advisor / consultant Amy Seidenwurm, who ran Meta's VR for Good initiative for six years. We talk about their five main areas of focus that include social justice and equity, high-impact storytelling/world-building, research, education and outreach, and advocacy and policy. They've been operating in stealth for a number of months already having been involved in a number of projects, and I'm really quite excited to see how they can help fill in some of the gaps that are needed within the growing XR ecosystem as more and more non-profits and social change organizations start to wrap their minds around how to integrate immersive media within their missions. Be sure to check out the Agog.org website for more information, and check it out in the Quest browser to see the first WebXR and AR iterations for what they intend to develop into a fully-spatial brand. It's not launching with full iOS or visionOS support yet, and I am able to see the AR components on Android, but it isn't as fully interactive on Quest yet. Still early days for WebXR, but keep an eye on how they continue to develop their website with more immersive features. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I had a chance to speak with Blake Kammerdiener, the lead programmer of the SXSW XR Experience selection to get a sneak peak of the 36 projects that are being featured this year (14 projects in the XR Experience Competition, 18 projects in the XR Experience Spotlight, and 4 XR Experience Special Events). The XR Experience Exhibition will be running from Sunday March 10 to Tuesday March 12 from 11a to 6p CDT. New this year to the Exhibition Floor will be sponsor booths on the main exhibition on Floor 3 of the Fairmont (Arizona State University MIX Center, Meta, Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA)'s Taiwan Pavilion, and Xn Québec), as well as XR lounges in conference rooms including the Canadian Innovation Lounge, and L'Effet Québec on Fairmont's 3rd floor. There are also some XR Experience projects on the 4th and 5th Floors as well, and the XR Track also runs from March 10-12, and will be split between the Hilton Hotel and the 5th floor of the Fairmont. Here's an unofficial spreadsheet listing some XR parties and XR events happening during SXSW as well, and be sure to check out events at the Canada House & Ireland House. I will unfortunately not be in Austin, TX to attend SXSW physically this year due to a family medical issue, but I will be covering 1/2 to 2/3 of the SXSW XR Experience projects remotely. Here is a list of upcoming interviews as well as some previously covered projects at SXSW including 6 from Venice Immersive, 1 from Tribeca Immersive, and 1 from IDFA DocLab. #1360: Sneak Peak of SXSW XR Experience Projects, Events, & Lounges with Programmer Blake Kammerdiener #1362: “The Tent” Tabletop AR Mixes Photogrammetry, Volumetric Capture, & Theatre in Modern-Day Fairytale about Unhoused Crisis #1363: DIY 360 Video for Perspective-Taking and Investigating Murder of Trans Woman in “Her Name Was Gisberta” #1364: Step into the Movies with “The Vortex Cinema” Blending Cinematic Storytelling, Gaming, & Escape Room Mechanics #1365: “We Speak Their Names in Hushed Tones” Explores Impact of Migration on Families Left Behind in Poetic Immersive Still Life & Audio Documentary #1366: Electric South’s Ingrid Kopp on Increasing Access to Immersive Production Resources to African XR Creators + Tribeca 2019 Program #1367: “Escape to Shanghai” Immersive Doc Tells the Story of Jewish Refugees who Fled to China to Escape the Holocaust #1368: “Walk to Westerbork” Immersive Doc Shares Remarkable Story about a Dutch Jewish Holocaust Survivor Who Defied the Odds #1369: Interactive UN Doc “Dreaming of Lebanon” Blends Interactive Oral History, 360 Video, and Speculative Worldbuilding #1370: “Madame Pirate: Code of Conduct” Blends Spatial Representations to Tell the Story of Most Powerful Pirate in History #1371: “Pirate Queen: The Forgotten Legend” Fuses Escape Room Mechanics with Environmental Storytelling & Embodied Gameplay #1372: “Last We Left Off” 360 Video Plays Switches Between D&D Imaginal Realms with Physical Reality, & Exhibiting with Apple Vision Pro #1373: Interactive Biopic Doc on Opera Singer “Joseph Rouleau: Final Encore” that Mixes Modalities #1374: Telling Stories of Indigenous Leaders with OurWorlds.io’s “Chief” on Apple Vision Pro #1375: Unique 2D Hand-Drawn Animation Technique with “Tadpole” Leads to a Provocative Immersive Story #1376: Indie Musician Roman Rappak’s Annual Mixed Reality Performance Experiments & Expansion into “Detachment” Immersive Story #1377: Immersive Producer Katayoun Dibamehr’s Journey to Becoming an Award-Winning Producer at Floréal #1378: Anagram’s Mental Health Series Continues with Preview of “Impulse” Mixed Reality Story abou ADHD #1379: “Maya: The Birth of a Superhero” Evolves Storytelling Grammar with Magical Realism, Dream Logic, & Interactive Embodiment #1380: “Reimagined Volume III: Young Thang” Adapts a Nigerian Folktale while Refining the Grammar of Spatial Storytelling

Yale Anthropologist Lisa Messeri spent a year doing field work in Los Angeles in 2018 studying the political ecology of the VR community, and will be releasing her landmark book called In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles on Friday, March 8th. It's the best book about the culture of VR that I've read so far as it is pulling in many insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), anthropology, social sciences, sci fi, pop culture, and philosophy. Making claims about reality is daunting for any working scholar in the 21st Century, and Messeri uses the feeling of "unreality" as a analytical tool to analyze not only virtual reality, but also the fracturing nature of our political context, but also the unreality of Los Angeles as the factory of dreams and façade-like architecture that blurs the boundary for what's deeply real vs what's surface scaffolding enough to transport you into another reality. Messeri uses the framing of fantasy to interrogate a number of claims being made by the VR community circa 2018. Fantasy by her definition could include both positive aspirational dreams, but they could also turn out to be deluded illusions. I personally prefer the using the phrase of potential since it is a bit more neutral for me, and includes both the promising positive potentials as well as the more perilous negative potentials. But she splits her book into three parts the Fantasy of Location exploring the unreality of Los Angeles as well as how VR transports you into another world per Mel Slaters place illusion. The second part is the Fantasy of Being deconstructs the VR as the ultimate empathy machine per Chris Milk's infamous 2015 TED Talk. Then the third part explores the Fantasy of Representation with the aspirations of the LA VR community to create a more diverse and equitable ecosystem that transcends the bias and power dynamics of Silicon Valley. In each one of these three sections, Messeri uses case studies and follows specific individuals over time to see whether or not some of these aspirations and potentials end up becoming grounded into physical reality, or whether they end up collapsing into a more deluded illusion. I was inspired to dig into my backlog of 800+ unpublished Voices of VR podcast episodes to publish some interviews that I conducted between 2017-2019 featuring some of the main characters and protagonists featured in Messeri's book: Marci Jastrow is featured in Chapter 3 letting Messeri become a scholar-in-residence at Technicolor Experience Center Carrie Shaw of Embodied Labs is featured in Chapter 5, and radically opens up her business to Messeri to study Jackie Morie is featured in Chapter 6 as Messeri deconstructs some of the gender essentialist claims that VR is a medium that's a natural fit for women. And Joanna Popper is featured in Chapter 7 as Messeri breaks down the unique pathways into emerging technology that she was noting as an interesting trend from an anthropological perspective. I had a chance to read through an advanced copy of In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles, and it's already started to make a huge impact on the way that I think about the many dimensions of unreality in our present day realities ranging from the surreal experiences of VR presence to the fractured reality bubbles of our political discourse to the ways in which techno-utopian solutionism can impact the philosophies that are driving how technologies like AI are developed aspiring towards speculations of Artificial General Intelligence or Artificial Superintelligence. I even started applying Messeri's unreality analytic to make sense of some of what Alvin Wang Graylin was saying in our discussion about Our Next Reality. I said, "I found myself is this kind of unreality of a potential imaginal future of this post-scarcity, post-labor context where all of our problems have been solved,

Flashback to 2018 with Joanna Popper talking about the state of Location-Based VR. Popper is featured in the 7th chapter of Yale anthropologist Lisa Messeri's In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles field study conducted in 2018. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality