Voices of VR
667 episodes - English - Latest episode: 13 days ago - ★★★★★ - 158 ratingsDesigning for Virtual Reality. Oral history podcast featuring the pioneering artists, storytellers, and technologists driving the resurgence of virtual & augmented reality. Learn about the patterns of immersive storytelling, experiential design, ethical frameworks, & the ultimate potential of XR.
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Episodes
#1239: “Fortune” Uses AR Filters to Tell Spatial Stories about Money and Facilitate Social Media Conversations
August 15, 2023 19:34 - 30 minutes - 21 MBFortune is a series of 8 Snapchat and Instagram AR filters that explore the topic of money and our relationship to money. Each project is around 90-seconds in length and uses a variety of immersive storytelling techniques from tabletop-scale animation to interactive facial filters to experiences AR-enabled interactions. At the end of each episode is a question designed to kick off a broader social media engagement campaign and group discussion about money. It should be premiering on Arte's so...
#1238: “The Fury” Combines Two-Channel Video Installation with 360 Video to Explore Memories of Sexual Assault
August 15, 2023 19:10 - 32 minutes - 22.5 MBThe Fury is a two-channel video installation in combination with a 360 video that "explores sexual exploitation of female political prisoners, referencing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s brutal treatment of political prisoners." Director Shirin Neshat is an established visual artist, photographer, video artist, and filmmaker who collaborated with Khora CTO and co-founder Peter Fisher who led the 360 video production. The two-channel video installation is told in three different parts, and the ...
1238: “The Fury” Combines Two-Channel Video Installation with 360 Video to Explore Memories of Sexual Assault
August 15, 2023 19:10 - 32 minutes - 22.5 MBThe Fury is a two-channel video installation in combination with a 360 video that "explores sexual exploitation of female political prisoners, referencing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s brutal treatment of political prisoners." Director Shirin Neshat is an established visual artist, photographer, video artist, and filmmaker who collaborated with Khora CTO and co-founder Peter Fisher who led the 360 video production. The two-channel video installation is told in three different parts, and the ...
#1237: The VOID’s Curtis Hickman on his book “Hyper-Reality: The Art of Designing Impossible Experiences”
August 03, 2023 14:05 - 1 hour - 59.8 MBThe VOID was a location-based entertainment company that shut down during the pandemic and maybe coming back at some point. The VOID Co-founder & Chief Creative Officer Curtis Hickman convinced his partners to allow him to reflect upon and share the many experiential design lessons in a book titled Hyper-Reality: The Art of Designing Impossible Experiences. The book launched on June 15, 2023, and does an amazing job of sharing a ton of theoretical design insights that are grounded in specific...
#1236: Blind and Low-Vision Challenges & Opportunities for XR Accessibility with Lighthouse Access Tech Experts
July 13, 2023 19:12 - 56 minutes - 39 MBSean Dougherty and Jeffrey Colon are Access Technology Experts who work for the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired non-profit, and they were very active at the XR Access Symposium during a number of sessions focusing on the NSF-grant funded SocialSense XR: Making the Invisible Visible program, doing a review of Vision Accessibility with AR+AI Tools, and facilitating a group discussion about Exploring Accessible VR for Blind Users. This was the final interview from my trip to XR ...
#1235: Head-Mounted AR as an Assistive Technology for Blind and Low-Vision Users with Yvonne Felix
July 13, 2023 19:00 - 27 minutes - 18.9 MBYvonne Felix has been using augmented reality as an assistive technology since 2012. They tell me, "I actually wear an augmented reality device that allows me to see. I'm legally blind, so that means that I have about 2% of my vision left. And I use something called eSight Eyewear that actually gives me access to 100% of my vision, depending on the situation." I recorded this interview with Felix the VRTO conference back in 2018, and I wanted to include it in this series because I heard a l...
#1234: Geospatial Browsing AR Feature in Google Maps with Screen Reader Support
July 13, 2023 18:31 - 30 minutes - 21.5 MBOhan Oda works at Google on an AR feature in Google Maps called Live View that he was showing off during the demo session at the XR Access Symposium. It adds some screenreader support for geospatial browsing where users can search for nearby landmarks and businesses, and Oda wanted to get some feedback and raise awareness for these accessibility features in Google Maps. I had a chance to catch up with Oda where he elaborated on how his team's finding that most sighted users were not returni...
#1233: Intersection of AI and Spatial Computing for XR Accessibility with Mozilla’s Liv Erickson
July 13, 2023 17:53 - 20 minutes - 14.7 MBLiv Erickson is the ecosystem development lead at Mozilla focusing on innovation in spatial computing and AI technologies, and they are the former director of the Mozilla Hubs team. They gave a presentation at the XR Access Symposium that they summarizes in their blog post on "Multidimensional computing accessibility in the age of XR and AI," and they also facilitated a break-out session on Spatial Computing, Data, and AI. I had a chance to catch up with them at the start of the second day to...
#1232: Low-Vision VR Design Innovations & XR Accessibility in Owlchemy Labs’ “Cosmonious High”
July 13, 2023 17:29 - 57 minutes - 39.7 MBOwlchemy Labs has been on the leading edge of accessible VR game design since 2016. starting with Job Simulator, and then following up with key accessibility features for Vacation Simulator, and Cosmonious High. They were at XR Access Symposium showing off their pioneering work on low-vision VR features for Cosmonious High launched last March, and I had a chance to sit down with their Accessibility Product Manager Jazmin Cano and Senior Accessibility Engineer Peter Galbraith to unpack their j...
#1231: XR Accessibility Insights from a Government Contractor + AR as an Assistive Technology
July 13, 2023 16:26 - 26 minutes - 18.4 MBJoel Ward is an Emerging Technology Manager at Booz Allen Hamilton who has been working within Web Accessibility since around the time Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act was enacted on August 7, 1998 and the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines came out (WCAG version 1.0 was published on May 5, 1999). Ward spoke on a XR Access Symposium panel discussion about Empowering the Workforce through Accessible XR, and also brought a pair of XREAL Air glasses with live captioning to show off ...
#1230: Captioning for XR Accessibility with W3C’s Michael Cooper
July 13, 2023 15:56 - 25 minutes - 17.5 MBMichael Cooper works for the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative, and he was attending the XR Access Symposium to learn more about the existing XR accessibility efforts but also to moderate a break-out session about captions in XR. One of Cooper's big takeaways is that there is no magical, one-size-fits-all solution to captioning in XR because people have different needs, different preferences, and different contexts that means that there is a need for frameworks to help ...
#1229: XR for Career Exploration with Accessibility in Mind with Transfr’s Mark Steelman
July 13, 2023 14:57 - 14 minutes - 10.5 MBMark Steelman is a XR Access Working Group Member and Senior Unity Engineer at Transfr, which uses virtual reality to "train people for well-paying careers available now in high-demand fields." Steelman was at XR Access showing off some of the accessibility features of their VR training software that includes captions, height adjustments, spatial audio, and arrows as audio cues or a way to direct attention. He was soliciting feedback from XR Access attendees to add even more features to ensur...
#1228: XR Accessibility and Public Policy with XR Association’s Liz Hyman
July 13, 2023 08:30 - 21 minutes - 15 MBLiz Hyman President and the CEO of the XR Association (XRA), which is a non-profit, industry trade association representing 47 XR companies including major players like Meta, Google, Microsoft, HTC, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Unity, and HTC. XRA has been collaborating with XR Access from the beginning, and they collaborated on Chapter 3 of their an XR Developer's Guide Series focusing on Accessibility & Inclusive Design in Immersive Experiences. At the XR Access Symposium, Hyman moderat...
#1227: Journey of Making XR Accessible with XR Access COO Dylan Fox
July 13, 2023 05:36 - 39 minutes - 27.5 MBDylan Fox is the Director of Operations for the XR Access Initiative, where he focuses on outreach and advocacy for making virtual and augmented reality accessible for people who have disabilities. I previously interviewed Fox for the white paper on Accessibility that he co-wrote for the IEEE Global Initiative on the Ethics of Extended Reality. I had a chance to catch up with Fox at the XR Access Symposium to get an overview of the event, the latest excitement about the accessibility featur...
#1226: Poster Session Interviews from XR Access Symposium 2023
July 13, 2023 04:29 - 49 minutes - 34.2 MBI had a chance to do six brief interviews during the poster session of XR Access Symposium 2023 that I've compiled into this single podcast episode. This gives a great overview of some of the emerging topics for XR accessibility including XR accessibility heuristics, representing disabilities through avatars, audio descriptions for 360 videos, using AR glasses for live captioning, accessibility implications of augmented reality art, and the assistive technology potential of digital twins. Be...
#1225: XR Accessibility for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Captions, & Potential of Haptics
July 12, 2023 22:40 - 16 minutes - 11.9 MBChristian Vogler leads the Technical Access Program at Gallaudet University, and has been looking into captions for VR and 3D spatial environments for folks who are deaf and hard of hearing. I had a chance to catch up with him at the XR Access Symposium where he was providing warnings about translating of 2D accessibility paradigms into the new realities and potentials of 3D volumes and spatial computing. He was talking about some of the concerns for folks who are deaf and hard of hearing inc...
#1223: Defining Disability Through Differences in Movement, Sensing, Feeling, Thinking, & Communicating
July 12, 2023 16:12 - 17 minutes - 12.6 MBChristine Hemphill started Open Inclusion in 2018 as a disability-inclusive research and design organization that is working at the intersection between accessibility and emerging technologies. She makes sense of the broad spectrum of disabilities by saying, "I talk about people that think, feel, move, sense or communicate significantly enough differently that they're excluded from the way design works today. So to me that's disability." Hemphill's phenomenological framing of disability re...
#1222: Kickoff of XR Accessibility Series with XR Access Co-Founder Shiri Azenkot
July 12, 2023 15:53 - 19 minutes - 13.8 MBThis is the first of fifteen in a Voices of VR podcast series on XR Accessibility based upon my coverage from the XR Access Symposium 2023 that happened in New York City on June 15th and 16th. I'm kicking off my 8 hours of coverage with an interview with XR Access co-founder Shiri Azenkot, who is an associate professor at Cornell Tech researching accessibility. She is focusing on making augmented and virtual reality technologies accessible as well as trying to leverage XR to solve accessibili...
#1221: Wagner James Au’s Book “Making a Metaverse that Matters” Shares 20 Years of Virtual World Insights
June 22, 2023 01:33 - 1 hour - 63.9 MBWagner James Au's latest book Making a Metaverse that Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For releases on June 27 after the 20th anniversary of Second Life is on June 23, 2023. Au started as an embedded journalist employed by Second Life to cover the evolving trends of digital culture within their virtual world, and he's continued to be an intrepid reporter of this space on his New World Notes blog tracking the evolution of various different Metaverse plat...
#1220: Tribeca Immersive 2023 Preview with Curator Ana Brzezinska
June 07, 2023 16:35 - 52 minutes - 36.4 MBI had a chance to speak with Tribeca Immersive curator Ana Brzezińska to break down each one of this year's selection of 13 immersive stories. I'll be in NYC from June 7-16th covering the festival, and so stay tuned for more coverage coming soon. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality
#1220: Tribeca Immersive 2023 Preview with Curator Ana Brzezińska
June 07, 2023 16:35 - 52 minutes - 36.4 MBI had a chance to speak with Tribeca Immersive curator Ana Brzezińska to break down each one of this year's selection of 13 immersive stories. I'll be in NYC from June 7-16th covering the festival, and so stay tuned for more coverage coming soon. UPDATE August 18, 2023Here are all 16 interviews that I recorded with immersive creators at Tribeca 2023. #1220: Tribeca Immersive 2023 Preview with Curator Ana Brzezińska #1238: "The Fury" Combines Two-Channel Video Installation with 360 Video to...
#1219: Apple Vision Pro Hands-on Debriefing with CNET Editor Scott Stein
June 07, 2023 16:28 - 1 hour - 76.3 MBI speak to CNET editor at large Scott Stein about his hands-on impression of the Apple Vision Pro that he had on Tuesday, June 6, 2023. Check out his full article: "Apple Vision Pro Hands-On: Far Better Than I Was Ready For." Also see my Twitter thread live coverage of #WWDC23 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality
#1218: Apple Vision Pro Hands-on Debriefing with UploadVR Editor Ian Hamilton
June 07, 2023 16:21 - 1 hour - 44.3 MBI speak with UploadVR Editor Ian Hamilton about his hands-on impression of the Apple Vision Pro that he had on Tuesday, June 6, 2023. Check out his full article: "Apple Vision Pro Hands-On: Way Ahead of Meta In Critical Ways." Also see my Twitter thread live coverage of #WWDC23. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality
#1217: Apple Vision Pro Hands-on Debriefing with Road to VR Editor Ben Lang
June 07, 2023 16:18 - 46 minutes - 32 MBI speak with Road to VR Editor Ben Lang about his hands-on impression of the Apple Vision Pro that he had on Monday, June 5, 2023. Check out his full article: "Hands-on: Apple Vision Pro isn’t for Gaming, But it Does Everything Else Better." Also see my Twitter thread live coverage of #WWDC23. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality
#1216: First Impressions of Apple Vision Pro from Two XR Developers at WWDC
June 06, 2023 22:43 - 59 minutes - 41.3 MBApple finally announced their mixed reality headset called the Apple Vision Pro at Apple's WWDC keynote on June 5, 2023. It's a $3500 device that by accounts is the most advanced XR headset produced up to this point that's largely driven by eye tracking, hand gestures, and speaking. I was not able to score an invite to be at WWDC myself, and so I was closely tracking all of the news in my WWDC23 Twitter thread. But I wanted to get some first-hand testimonies from XR developers who were on the...
#1215: Fatboy Slim’s Groundbreaking & Trippy VR Concert on EngageXR
May 30, 2023 23:17 - 1 hour - 49.1 MBEngage XR produced a 45-minute “Eat Sleep VR Repeat” – Immersive Metaverse Concert in collaboration with Fatboy Slim’s Norman Cook that showed in a limited screening on March 30, 2023. It was an incredibly, mind-bending and groundbreaking VR concert experience that combined novel interactions and social dynamics, but also a trippy and psychedelic journey through the mind and music of Norman Cook. I had a chance to catch a press preview of this virtual concert on March 28th, and then unpack th...
#1214: History of Engage XR’s Education & Communications Platform
May 30, 2023 23:00 - 57 minutes - 39.9 MBThe Engage XR platform holds a mix of different types of gatherings in VR ranging from educational meetings, corporate communications, and virtual events and conferences. With the onset of the pandemic in 2020, then HTC started holding a number of their conferences and announcements on the Engage platform, and eventually became an investor. I had a chance to speak with the CEO David Whelan back in May of 2021 to get a bit more context and history of the Engage Platform. Engage has continued ...
#1213: Primer on WebGPU & Bringing High-Performance 3D Graphics and Parallel Compute to the Web
May 19, 2023 18:32 - 1 hour - 51.3 MBWebGPU shipped in Chrome 113, which brings high-performance 3D graphics & parallel compute capabilities to the web. I was able to chat with Google Chrome software Engineer Brandon Jones, who is a W3C specification editor for both WebGPU and WebXR Device API. We talk about the history of WebGPU, some his speculations as to how Apple may be actively working on support both WebGPU and WebXR (spec editor Ada Rose Cannon works at Apple), the future of WebXR, the new WebGPU Shading Language (WGSL),...
#1212: Breakdown of Award-Winning “Reeducated” VR Doc & Translation into Interactive Component of Yorker Article on Chinese Prison Camps
May 12, 2023 20:52 - 1 hour - 43.6 MBThe immersive documentary Reeducated won a Peabody Award as well as the Outstanding Interactive Media winner of the New Approaches category of the New & Documentary Emmy in 2022. I had a chance to record this interview with the co-directors Ben Mauk and Sam Wolson just after it’s world premiere at SXSW 2021 (where it picked up a Special Jury Recognition for Immersive Journalism). This 360-video was based upon oral history testimony of 3 different prisoners within one of China’s reeducation ce...
#1211: Jay Graber in 2019 on Decentralized Social Networking Philosophy before becoming Bluesky CEO
May 05, 2023 01:37 - 33 minutes - 23.6 MBI did an interview with Jay Graber back in 2019 at the Decentralized Web (DWeb) Camp a few years before she officially became the Bluesky CEO, which is currently the new hot social media platform that’s a Twitter clone built on top a decentralized architecture using the Authenticated Transfer (AT) Protocol. At the time, Graber was working on a decentralized events application called Happening, but she had a lot aspirations to build out a fully-fledged decentralized social media platform. The ...
#1210: Adding a Social Graph to the Open Metaverse with Immers Space’s ActivityPub Integration
May 04, 2023 22:17 - 1 hour - 43.9 MBImmers Space implements the ActivityPub open standard in order to add a federated social graph to the open Metaverse. I had a chance to try a prototype back in December 2022 where I went from a modified Mozilla Hubs WebXR space (that had the Immers Space open source tools integrated into it) into a FrameVR.io WebXR space by clicking on a persistent interface tracking my connected friends. Just as many virtual worlds allow you join in your friends, this method starts to add a distributed socia...
#1209: Metaverse Standards Forum Update on Working Groups & Incorporating as a Non-Profit Industry Consortium
April 18, 2023 16:05 - 1 hour - 42.7 MBThe Metaverse Standards Forum announced today that they are “incorporated as an independent non-profit industry consortium.” The Khronos Group has been financially bootstrapping the Metaverse Standards Forum’s efforts to see if there was enough interest, and they went from 37 founding members in June 2022 to now having over “2,400 members and multiple active Working and Exploratory Groups focused on driving pragmatic interoperability advances.” Now that they’ve incorporated as a 501(c)6 indus...
Metaverse Standards Forum Update on Working Groups & Incorporating as a Non-Profit Industry Consortium
April 18, 2023 16:05 - 1 hour - 42.7 MBThe Metaverse Standards Forum announced today that they are “incorporated as an independent non-profit industry consortium.” The Khronos Group has been financially bootstrapping the Metaverse Standards Forum’s efforts to see if there was enough interest, and they went from 37 founding members in June 2022 to now having over “2,400 members and multiple active Working and Exploratory Groups focused on driving pragmatic interoperability advances.” Now that they’ve incorporated as a 501(c)6 indus...
#1208: 2023 SXSW Immersive Recap and Highlights with Programmer Blake Kammerdiener
April 03, 2023 17:34 - 56 minutes - 39.4 MBIn my final SXSW interview, I had a chance to catch up with SXSW Immersive Programmer Blake Kammerdiener to do a retrospective look at this year’s program, some of the challenges for VR exhibition, his design intentions for how to intermingle the technologists, storytellers, and musicians who attend SXSW, how there’s a larger music selection this year, the emerging mixed reality experiences that are starting to crop up, the range of unique haptic experiences from Symbiosis to In the Pursuit o...
#1207: “Temporal World” Blends Touch with Sound Design for a Unique Haptisonic Experience about Memory
April 03, 2023 17:13 - 48 minutes - 33.3 MBChloé Lee’s immersive art piece Temporal World: A Haptisonic Virtual Reality Memory World uses a custom-made haptic vest that is intimately integrated into the ambient sound design of this point-cloud, spatial exploration around memory. Lee wanted to incorporate open-world wandering, but also explore the fragmented nature of her own immigrant identity and disjunctive blending of memories across multiple cultures. She uses the sparse point clouds to mirror aspects of this immigrant experience,...
#1206: The District VR Enables Professional DJs to Play Live Social VR Gigs without Mixer Hardware
April 03, 2023 16:43 - 57 minutes - 39.5 MBAnother World VR developers Ioulia Isserlis and Max Sacker thought it was a prank when German Hip Hop legend Dennis Lisk (aka Denyo) reached out via email to collaborate on developing a social VR and a completely virtualized live DJ performance toolkit. But it wasn’t a prank, and they’ve been building a real-time audio engine compatible with Unreal Engine in order to meet the live performance standards of professional DJs to mix, sync, and modulate music in real-time. Most DJ sets in social V...
#1204: Blending Open World Exploration with VR Immersive Theatre Drama with “Find WiiLii” in International Collaboration with GiiOii Immersive Studio and Ferryman Collective
April 03, 2023 16:01 - 56 minutes - 39.1 MBThe Ferryman Collective were back at SXSW presenting another immersive theatre piece in virtual reality, but this time they were translating an adapted a piece called Find WiiLii that was originally produced in South Korea by GiiÖii Immersive Studio. Set in a far-future, science-fiction VRChat world, the creators wanted to invite participants to do more open world explorations this section of a nostalgic city that recreates architecture from a section of Seoul. This piece also explore staging...
#1203: “Body of Mine VR” Uses Full-Body Tracking Embodiment to Explore Gender Dysphoria & Transgender Testimonies
April 03, 2023 15:46 - 53 minutes - 37.3 MBBody of Mine VR won a special jury prize for the SXSW Immersive Competition for it’s potent use of virtual embodiment to explore gender dysphoria and testimonies from a number of different transgender folks. Director Cameron Kostopoulos leaned upon his own queer-identify story of being exiled from his family due to his queerness, and wanted to create a safe refuge in a virtual space to explore stories from the LGTBQIA+ community, and particularly from trans-identified folks. The experience u...
#1202: Miro Shot’s Second Mixed Reality Concert at SXSW: An Intimate, Live Performance Ritual
April 03, 2023 15:33 - 28 minutes - 19.6 MBRoman Rappak's Miro Shot band returned to SXSW again this year for an updated mixed reality, live concert performance with a much needed upgrade from the high-latency and outdated GearVR headsets to the much more cutting-edge HTC Elite mixed reality headsets. There was a capacity drop from around the 100 GearVR headsets that he had for his MR performance last year down to just 7 HTC Elite headsets where Miro Shot played the same song on repeat for a couple of hours inducing a trance-like vibe...
#1201: Jessie Cohen’s Oral History of Public Relations for Immersive Stories from 2013 to 2023
April 03, 2023 15:02 - 1 hour - 45.2 MBJessie Cohen started representing immersive stories back at Sundance 2013 when she was working for the Sundance Film Festival for the New Frontier section. She eventually transitioned from trying to represent every New Frontier project through the festival into working directly with virtual reality directors and artists who were exhibiting their work through Jessie Cohen PR and Consulting. She then came back to represent festivals like Sundance New Frontier, Venice Immersive, and London Inter...
#1200: Defining Process-Relational Architecture with Andreea Ion CojoCaru: Spatial Design as a Participatory Improv Performance
April 03, 2023 14:43 - 1 hour - 71.5 MBAndreea Ion CojoCaru is a unique blend of VR developer and practicing architect in both virtual and physical spaces, but who is also driven by deep philosophical questions and her own embodied curiosities exploring the boundaries between the virtual and the physical. These embodied experiences in virtual reality have actually catalyzed a pretty significant paradigm shift in CojoCaru's own philosophical thinking. I first met CojoCaru at VR Now in Germany in 2018 in a serendipitous collision th...
#1199: “Whipped Cream: The Dark” Interactive Music Video Blending Volumetric Capture with Spatial Locomotion
April 03, 2023 13:37 - 32 minutes - 22.9 MBDeparture Lounge is volumetric studio based in Vancouver, Canada that is collaborating with the Monstercat music label to experiment with XR technologies in making both 2D music videos and more volumetric immersive experiences that they were showing at SXSW. The 2D music video for WHIPPED CREAM, Jasiah & Crimson Child - The Dark debuted on February 1st, 2023, and there was a more immersive and interactive translation of this video that debuted at SXSW this year. It was only after I had watch...
#1198: AmazeVR is Bringing High-Res, Immersive Concert Experiences to the Quest Starting with K-Pop Band Aespa
April 03, 2023 13:14 - 29 minutes - 20.7 MBLast year, AmazeVR launched their Into the Hottiverse virtual concert experience at SXSW featuring Megan Thee Stallion before taking it on a VR concert tour at AMC theaters around the United States. This year AmazeVR is back with an even more streamlined production and production process with a K-Pop band named Aespa that their aiming to launch their own VR application with later this summer. They continue to push the fidelity and resolution up higher and higher as they use bespoke and propr...
#1197: Myriam Achard’s Industry-Leading, Immersive Curation for Montreal’s Phi Centre
April 03, 2023 13:01 - 38 minutes - 26.7 MBMyriam Achard is the Chief of New Media Partnership as well as PR Officer at Montreal's Phi Centre. Part of Achard's job is to travel around the work searching for the best immersive storytelling, art, music at festivals and gatherings around the world. She's on the lookout for new talent to bring to the Phi Centre, but also help make connections for immersive artists who are trying to find a viable pathway from immersive festivals into the broader consumer market via location-based experienc...
#1196: “Eggscape” is a Groundbreaking, Mixed Reality, Multi-Player, Table Top Platformer Aiming for LBE
April 03, 2023 12:40 - 22 minutes - 16 MBEggscape is a mixed reality, table top platformer game similar to Lucky’s Tale, but since it’s mixed reality then there’s a lot more of moving your body through space as a control dynamic. I previously got the whole backstory about Eggscape from director German Heller at Venice Immersive, where it picked up a third place price. Now that the Meta Quest Pro has been released, they’ve ported it to take full advantage of the color passthrough, which I have to admit has been the most immersive and...
#1195: Exploring Non-Normative Avatars with Disabled Dancers in “Figural Bodies” Research Project
April 03, 2023 12:23 - 46 minutes - 32.3 MBFigural Bodies is a research project out of Goldsmiths college that uses motion captured dance with disabled, non-disabled, and neurodivergent dancers in order to explore non-normative avatar representations as well as the accessibility challenges for immersive technologies. Their installation at SXSW included a dance performance where audience members could hear an experimental audio sound track while watching Kat Hawkins dance in physical reality while seeing them puppeteer a range of abstr...
#1194: “Jailbirds” is a Well-Told, Magical Realist Story Using Character-Driven Animation and Stylized Cinematography
April 03, 2023 12:08 - 41 minutes - 28.8 MBJailbirds is a really well-told, three-part episodic animated VR piece that uses the spatial affordances of VR to tell a compelling metaphoric story about the escapist qualities of virtual reality. It’s a character-driven story set within a prison, and it explores themes of liberation in similar ways that virtually-mediated experiences in VR help transport us into another realm. The piece continues to evolve it’s cinematic storytelling style that encourages a 180-degree viewing experience of ...
#1193: Phone-based Interactive Story “Consensus Gentium” Takes Top SXSW Prize for Chilling Speculative Worldbuilding Exploring AI Bias, Surveillance, & Biometric Agency
April 03, 2023 11:55 - 1 hour - 53.8 MBConsensus Gentium is took him the Grand Jury prize for SXSW Immersive 2023, and it’s the most immersive phone-based experience that I’ve ever had. The Latin title translated means that “If everyone believes it, it must be true,” and it’s a near-term speculative sci-fi piece that explores what China’s social scoring system might look like in the context of the United States where mobility is restricted by algorithms but can be expanding if citizens agree to be surveilled by a phone app. The ex...
#1192: The Last Moments of AltspaceVR, Athena Demos’ Eulogy & Retrospective Journey into Social VR
April 03, 2023 11:29 - 1 hour - 42.3 MBAltSpaceVR closed it’s doors for the second time on March 10th, 2023 at 10:08pm, and Athena Demos was there to bear witness to it all until the very last moments. She shared an eulogy again that she had first shared during The Polys livestream, and I had her read through what she had said. I had a chance to catch up with Demos to hear about her journey into social VR through the Burning Man community and helping to produce and translate the 2015 scan of Black Rock City into a virtual Burning ...
#1191: Closing the Distribution Gap: Atlas V’s Astrea Aims to Port, Publish, & Market the Best of Immersive Stories
April 03, 2023 11:13 - 56 minutes - 39 MBAstrea is the publishing arm of Atlas V that aims to close the current gap in distribution for immersive stories that debut on the film festival circuit, but then often don’t make it wider distribution. There’s a lot of optimization, porting, and marketing involved in this process, and I had a chance to catch up with Astrea’s head of distribution Danielle Giroux to talk about their curation and publishing process as well as some selections from their full lineup. We also talk about other dist...