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

In this lively discussion, Apple_Blossom, a holographic VJ, and A://DDOSS, an advanced shader technology contributor, dive into the innovative realm of VRChat clubbing. They explore the awe-inspiring Night Under Lights event, which featured mesmerizing real-time lighting effects and immersive 3D environments. The conversation highlights the evolution from traditional visuals to holography, the collaborative spirit among VJs, and the technical intricacies behind stunning live performances. Discover how VR is reshaping the music experience like never before!

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