Voices of VR

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, CEO and Creative Director of Creature, leads an immersive game studio and label showcasing 16 XR projects. He discusses innovative titles like 'Laser Dance' and 'Thrasher,' with unique mechanics that enhance player embodiment through hand-tracking. North Cook shares insights on the creative process behind these games and the importance of collaboration in the mixed reality landscape. He emphasizes how XR technologies restore joy and playfulness, making gaming accessible and engaging for all.

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

Solo XR game developer Thomas van Bouwel discusses the mixed reality game Laser Dance and minimalist puzzle game Cubism. Topics include hand tracking, unique gameplay adapting to space, Presence Platform functionality, custom programming, collaborating with Creature label, insights from architecture, and more.

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