
Voices of VR
Designing 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.
Latest episodes

Sep 17, 2024 • 39min
#1418: Award-Winning Animators Experiment with Sandbox Social VR “Garden Alchemy” Research Project#
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

Sep 17, 2024 • 1h 8min
#1417: Kicking Off Venice Immersive Converge with Translating “Riven” Classic Point-and-Click Adventure to Open World VR Puzzler
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

Aug 24, 2024 • 1h 8min
#1416: Preview of Venice Immersive 2024 Innovations in Immersive Storytelling & Art Installations with Curators
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

Aug 24, 2024 • 1h 24min
#1415: Evolution of Holographic VJ Trends in VRChat Clubbing Scene Culminates with Awe-Inspiring Show Using SNR Labs Shader
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!

Aug 21, 2024 • 1h 9min
#1414: SoftlySteph’s Groundbreaking “The Friction of a Modulated Soul” Wins Best Dance Experience at Raindance Immersive
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

Aug 20, 2024 • 1h 32min
#1413: New Holographic Shader for VJs by SNR Labs Enables Awe-Inspiring Volumetric Lighting, Capture, & Dance Performances at Raindance Immersive
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

Aug 17, 2024 • 1h 21min
#1412: “Shadow Canyon” Combines Immersive Dance, VRChat World Building, & Theatre to Win Spirit of Raindance Award
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

Aug 12, 2024 • 49min
#1411: How VRChat World Building Shaped FlowersRite’s Best Music Experience at Raindance Immersive
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

Aug 9, 2024 • 1h 60min
#1410: Fostering Resonite’s Collaborative Maker Culture with Creator Jam Founder Medra
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.

17 snips
Aug 1, 2024 • 1h 10min
#1409: 3D Artist VR Pipelines & Creating “Suku” Immersive Art World as a Living Painting with Durk van der Meer
Durk van der Meer, a freelance digital artist and VR world builder from Curaçao, shares insights about his award-winning creation, Suku, which merges Caribbean culture with surreal, psychedelic elements. He highlights his creative process using tools like Gravity Sketch and Unity, providing a glimpse into the art of 3D visual storytelling. Durk also dives into the exploration of colonial history, integrating themes of cultural appropriation and historical significance into immersive experiences. His unique perspective showcases the transformative power of VR in art.