Voices of VR

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.

Episodes

A Process-Relational Philosophy View on AI, Intelligence, & Consciousness with Matt Segall

June 4, 2025 • 83 mins
I've spoken to Whitehead scholar Matt Segall a couple of times before, and I was really keen to catch up with him to hear his process-relational and process philosophical takes on AI, intelligence and consciousness. I was responding to a piece he recently wrote titled " The Philosophical Implications of Artificial Intelligence" (full citation below), and it's helped me to ground the conversation about AI that sometimes feels like i...
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#1567: Tribeca Immersive Curators on the 2025 Selection of Impact Projects Curated by Onassis ONX, Agog, & Tribeca

June 4, 2025 • 51 mins
I spoke with the curators of Tribeca Immersive 2025 Jazia Hammoudi and Casey Baltes to unpack the 11 impact project that are being feature in this year's selection. We also talk about Tribeca's new collaboration with Onassis ONX and Agog, how the selection process has changed over the years. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality
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#1566: Raindance Immersive Curators on the 2025 Selection of Immersive Art on Social VR Platforms

June 4, 2025 • 113 mins
I spoke with Raindance Immersive curators Mária Rakušanová, Joe Hunting, Fangs about the 2025 selection of projects across 8 different categories. Tune in to get all of the latest tips from this year's selection that is mostly happening on social VR platforms including VRChat, Resonite, and Orion Drift. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality
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#1565: “D-Day: The Camera Soldier” by Targo Stories Pushes Immersive Documentary Innovations on Apple Vision Pro

June 4, 2025 • 52 mins
I spoke with producer Victor Agulhon of Targo Stories about their collaboration with TIME Studios to produce D-Day: The Camera Soldier, which he calls the most technologically advance immersive documentary produced up to this point. They took footage from D-Day and spatialized it in a number of different ways, and really pushed the frontiers of innovation for spatial storytelling. It released on the Apple Vision Pro last Tuesday, a...
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#1564: Adding Participatory & Community Elements to the Cinematic Tradition with PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater

May 30, 2025 • 77 mins
The Portland Art Museum Center for an Untold Tomorrow (PAM CUT) has acquired the Tomorrow Theater in South East Portland, and is curating 25 unique events a month and over 250 unique events a year. Most of the experiences are grounded within the cinematic tradition, but there are usually ways that they are adding more levels of participation, community-building, and immersion. Portland Art Museum will be expanding in November to ad...
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#1563: Deconstructing AI Hype with “The AI Con” Authors Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

May 23, 2025 • 73 mins
We are in the middle of a hype cycle peak around AI as there are a lot of hyperbolic claims being made about the capabilities and performance of large-language models (LLMs). Computational Linguist Emily M. Bender and Sociologist Alex Hanna have been writing academic papers about the limitations of LLMs, as well as some of the more pernicious aspects of benchmark culture in machine learning, as well as documenting some of the many ...
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#1562: Highlights of Creature’s IGN XR Gaming Showcase + State of VR Vibe Check with Doug North Cook

May 19, 2025 • 84 mins
The Creature label features a lot of really innovative VR and MR games with rich and innovative gameplay mechanics, and they just featured three new games, a new DLC pack, and lots of updates about the games in a half-hour Creature Feature gaming showcase hosted on IGN. I had a chance to catch up with Creature CEO and Creative Director Doug North Cook to unpack all of the different announcements as well as do a bit of vibe check on...
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#1561: PHI and Agog Collaborate on Immersive Residency on XR for Impact, Artist Retrospective, and Application Details

May 7, 2025 • 64 mins
NOTE: This sponsored episode was produced by Kent Bye in partnership with PHI and participation from Agog: Immersive Media Institute and immersive artist Peter Burr. PHI and Agog: Immersive Media Institute are collaborating on the PHI Immersive: XR for Impact residency program that will be running for four weeks from March 2 to 27, 2026 in Montreal, Canada. It was first announced on March 6th, and it's open to "artists, groups, or...
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#1560: Walkabout Mini Golf’s Incredible Fusion of Worldbuilding, Gameplay, Social Dynamics, & DLC Experimentation

May 2, 2025 • 70 mins
Walkabout Mini Golf is really an incredible accomplishment of VR design with its fusion of worldbuilding, compelling physics-based gameplay, the unique social dynamics and community it's able to cultivate, and over 4 1/2 years of consistent DLC courses every 8 weeks or so. They have launched 33 total courses, and just recently announced that they're bumping the price by $10 and adding 6 DLC courses into the base game so that is now...
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#1559: Expanding Social Dramaturgy of Theater with Video Games in 7-Hour “asses.masses” Binge-Watching Marathon

April 26, 2025 • 103 mins
asses.masses is a unique, 7-hour, live performance that uses video game logic to expand the narrative possibilities and social dramaturgy of experimental theater. With a single video game controller at the front of a movie theater with lights up so everyone can see each other, the audience must negotiate amongst themselves who will step up to play the next section of a narrative game that spans a wide range of different genres fro...
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#1558: Series Director of “Adventure” Series on Apple Immersive Video and Grammar of 180 Video

April 18, 2025 • 59 mins
Charlotte Mikkelborg is the series director of the Adventure series on Apple TV, which is shot on Apple Immersive Video and co-produced by Atlantic Studios (formerly Atlantic Productions) and Apple. I think it has the strongest storytelling released by Apple so far, and it also has some of the most innovative and cutting edge shots that really show the power of the 180-degree format of Apple Immersive Video. In this conversatio...
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#1557: Apple Immersive Video Behind-the-Scenes & Overcoming Fears with “Adventure” Series Athlete

April 8, 2025 • 53 mins
Ant Williams is a freediving athlete featured in the third episode of The Adventure Series titled "Ice Dive" that's co-produced by Apple and Atlantic Studios (formerly Atlantic Productions). In the episode, Williams attempts to swim a world record distance 182 meters under ice, and I wanted to get some additional behind-the-scenes context on his experience as well as what it was like to have the most intense month of his life conde...
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#1556: “Currents” Boldly Defines a New Era of DIY 180-Degree Immersive Filmmaking with a Kit Under $5k

March 29, 2025 • 57 mins
CURRENTS is a stunning debut from Jake Oleson as it pushes the grammar of 180 filmmaking to new heights. Oleson comes from the world of advertising and music videos, and he went through a rigorous pre-production process where he had actually already edited the entire piece before shooting any production footage by using still stereoscopic test photos and videos. The insights from this pre-production animatic are evident, as there a...
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#1555: Award-Winning Tabletop Animation “Oto’s Planet” Uses Unique Interactive Mechanic to Chose Perspective

March 29, 2025 • 41 mins
OTO'S PLANET was being exhibited on the Quest at SXSW, but I had a chance to check out the Apple Pro Version ahead of the SXSW festival and I felt like I much preferred it. OTO'S PLANET picked up the second place prize at Venice Immersive, but I missed being able to interview the director Gwenael Francois there. I did manage to catch up with Francois at SXSW to talk more about the development of this beautiful interactive narra...
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#1554: “Cosmos in Focus” Contextualizes James Webb Telescope Images in Educational Immersive Planetarium Experience

March 29, 2025 • 44 mins
Another Apple Vision Pro piece at SXSW 2025 was COSMOS IN FOCUS by Atlantic Studios (recently rebranded from Atlantic Productions). This was a short and sweet educational experience that allowed you to explore the imagery of the James Webb telescope, but it's both spatially contextualized in the night sky planetarium style. It is also fused together with other deep space satellite images at different scales of resolution creating t...
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#1553: The Story of Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig, and the Multi-Channel Video Translation of “Origins – Life’s Epic Journey”

March 29, 2025 • 47 mins
There was an projection-based immersive experience called ORIGINS - LIFE'S EPIC JOURNEY that was originally formatted for a digital art museum in Germany called Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig, but it was translated into a three-channel video installation that was showing in a small conference room at SXSW. I only saw the video version at SXSW, and so I have not experienced the piece within its originally-intended, fully-immersive context. ...
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#1552: Fly to You Explores Stories of Separated Families in Division of Korea Using Point Clouds & 360 Video

March 29, 2025 • 41 mins
FLY TO YOU tells the story of Kang Songjeol who was separated from her childhood friends in the aftermath of the 1950 split between North and South Korea. Oral history interviews were captured in 360 video, and her childhood memories were recreated with point scans derived from Leici BLK360 LiDAR scans combined with Azure Kinect volumetric captures. The experience manages to virtually fly over the restricted demilitarized zone into...
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#1551: Breaking Down the Game Design of New Conducting-Inspired, Hand-Tracked, Rhythm Game “Symphoni”

March 29, 2025 • 58 mins
SYMPHONI is a brand new hand-tracked rhythm game that was inspired by the mechanics of conducting a symphony. It was directed by Ingram Mao and developed by a number of undergrads and graduates of the USC Games program. This game also goes from mixed reality into fully immersive VR as you progress through each of the stages, but it's a really fresh take within the rhythm game genre as I found myself playing for over an hour on my f...
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#1550: “EchoVision” Answers the Question ‘What is it like to see like a bat?’ with Mixed Reality, AI, & Haptics

March 29, 2025 • 45 mins
ECHOVISION is the latest experience from multi-disciplinary artist Jiabao Li that has three major parts. The first part is a mobile-phone based mixed reality experience that does a metaphoric translation of echolocation by using LiDAR to detect your immediate physical surroundings, and then reveals it with a rippling shader that is voice activated. The second part is a video that poetically visualizes different bat calls that have ...
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#1549: Honey Fungus Cultivates Intimacy with Nature through Embodied Actions Inspired by Fungi and Queer Ecology

March 29, 2025 • 47 mins
There were a number of pieces at SXSW that were centered around embodied interactions including HONEY FUNGUS, which is a series of interactive embodied experiments telling a broader story of cultivating intimacy with ecology. This piece leans more into embodied dream logic rather than clearly articulating a narrative journey, and I had a fascinating conversation with Jonah King who decoded the underlying symbolism. King’s first ste...
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