Voices of VR Podcast – Designing for Virtual Reality

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Designing for Virtual Reality

Kent Bye

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    • Jun 4, 2026 LATEST EPISODE
    • weekly NEW EPISODES
    • 51m AVG DURATION
    • 897 EPISODES

    Ivy Insights

    The Voices of VR Podcast - Designing for Virtual Reality is an incredibly valuable resource for anyone interested in the virtual reality (VR) industry. Hosted by Kent Bye, this podcast chronicles the ebbs and flows of the VR space, making it an invaluable chronicle for the future of technology.

    One of the best aspects of this podcast is its critical overlay of the moral and social implications of VR. It provides a great resource for understanding what's happening in VR and how it can positively enhance various sectors of industry. Kent Bye is an excellent host who consistently gets interesting people to interview, making each episode informative and entertaining. The depth of the interviews is another standout feature, as they cater to both average listeners and those seeking more in-depth analysis.

    The professionalism exhibited by Kent Bye throughout this podcast is commendable. In an industry that still feels experimental and rough around the edges, he maintains a high level of quality and consistency in his episodes. The fact that this podcast is offered for free is even more impressive, as it feels like something one would have to pay a large corporate fee for. Supporting Kent on Patreon is highly recommended to ensure he can continue producing such valuable content.

    While there are many positives to this podcast, one potential downside is that it may not be suitable for listeners who are completely new to VR. Some prior knowledge or familiarity with the subject matter might be beneficial in order to fully appreciate and understand the discussions. Additionally, given the fast-paced nature of advancements in VR, some episodes may become outdated over time.

    In conclusion, The Voices of VR Podcast - Designing for Virtual Reality is a must-listen for anyone interested in diving into or staying up-to-date with the world of virtual reality. Kent Bye's expertise and ability to interview individuals from various disciplines make him an exceptional reporter in the field. This podcast serves as both an educational resource and a historical document that will be fascinating to revisit in the future. With its informative and entertaining episodes, it's hard to find a podcast as outstanding as The Voices of VR.



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    Latest episodes from Voices of VR Podcast – Designing for Virtual Reality

    #1723: Agog’s Open Call for Climate Futures + Immersive Media: Deadline on June 12th

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2026 29:18


    Agog is having their first open call on Climate Futures + Immersive Media that closes on June 12, 2026, at 11:59p PDT. Agog is "committing up to $1 million in grants to support innovators, technologists, artists, organizers, researchers, organizations, studios, and creative teams using immersive media to engage people on climate, from awareness to action." Their official page has a lot more details, including a FAQ as well as a link to an info session held in VRChat. I had a chance to catch up with Agog's co-founder and executive director Chip Giller as well their chief of programs and strategy Amy Seidenwurm. I got some updates on where some of their initial $6.5 million of funding has gone so far in order to support the broader XR industry around immersive storytelling in what has been a lot of foundational field building. Most of this money has been done through private invitations, and this open call is the first time that Agog has opened up funding to the wider XR industry. We dig into more details about this Climate Futures + Immersive Media open call, and be sure to check out my previous three conversations for more context: Episode #1720 on the Immersive Impact Review hybrid journalistic / academic magazine launched at SXSW, Episode #1721 on the Impulse Impact Study that came out last week, and #1722 is the keynote on Patterns of Meaning, Transformation, and Impact that I gave at the Meaningful XR Conference over the weekend that explores my phenomenological framework for understanding the unique affordances of experiential design and immersive storytelling as well as some theories of change for XR. Giller said that each proposal will need to have their own theory of change with plans for how to engage existing communities and be able to track the success or failure of your work. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1722: Meaningful XR Keynote on Patterns of Meaning, Transformation, and Impact

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2026 33:57


    I gave the opening keynote of the Meaningful XR Conference on May 30, 2026, and here's the video version of my keynote talk titled: "Patterns of Meaning, Transformation, and Impact in XR" and here is the PDF of the slides with clickable footnotes. In this talk, I cover my Experiential & Phenomenological Framework, discuss the Impulse Impact Study that came out on May 28th (see my discussion in episode #1721). I cover a bit about the Transformation Economy (see my interview with Joe Pine in episode #1718), Mission-Oriented Change, & Co-Creation, as well as cover some Other Models for Paradigm Shifts, and finally dive into AI & Friction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-XNH4upTVw This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1721: Impact Study on “Impulse” Immersive Doc on ADHD: Artistic Reflections

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2026 96:34


    On May 28, 2026, Anagram released a report titled: "Results of Impact Study Carried Out for Mixed Reality Experience Impulse: Digest for General Public," which was commission by Agog. This 43-page report was written by Dr. Alexandra Sierra, and there's also a more extended 121-page version from December 2025 that's titled "Impulse Research Study Detail and Results" that was also written by Sierra (it is in the process of being made available). The study tracked the behavioral shifts of over 100 people across three different cohorts who watched the Impulse: Playing with Reality immersive documentary experience that was first launched in 2024. You can check out my previous interviews covering this experience in episodes #1378 and #1421. But I had a chance to speak with co-director May Abdalla about some of her highlights of this study, as well as some deeper reflections as an artist what it means to have pieces of art quantified and evaluated with such rigor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJIdBEKnniA This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1720: Immersive Impact Review is a Hybrid Journalism and Academic Magazine on XR Impact

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2026 62:48


    The Immersive Impact Review launched on March 13, 2026 at 4p CDT in Austin Texas during SXSW, and they describe themselves as "a hybrid journalistic and academic magazine examining immersive media's strive for social impact." The first issue theme is titled “Value(s) in Practice: Impact and Sustainability in XR,” which is investigating the following questions: "How do we measure and demonstrate social impact? How do we justify costs and tradeoffs in immersive vs. more traditional media?" I spoke to managing editor Michael Epstein at SXSW four days after their launch to get a bit more context on their founding with support from Agog, and we unpack some of the articles from the first issue. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1719: RIP Rec Room: Reflections & Memories with Shawn Whiting

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2026 99:57


    On March 30, 2026, Rec Room announced they would be closing on June 1, 2026 at noon PDT. I had a chance to speak to former Rec Room employee Shawn Whiting, who previously the roles of Head of Creators, Head of User Acquisition, and Head of Community. He shares some additional context for the past decade of Rec Room including reflections of some of their top milestones, riding the Metaverse hype, the benefits of costs of being available on so many different platforms, the impact of Meta's competing Horizon Worlds, and the challenges of monetization. We also share some of our favorite memories of the platform, and Whiting's time working for Rec Room. Rec Room is officially are closing everything down today at noon PDT, and you can check out their final AMA that was posted yesterday. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1718: Primer on “The Transformation Economy” with Joe Pine: When Experiences Fulfill Aspirations, Meaning, & Flourishing

    Play Episode Listen Later May 12, 2026 80:17


    On February 3rd, 2026, Joe Pine released The Transformation Economy, which is a follow-up to The Experience Economy co-written with James Gilmore and published in 1999. They identified a key pattern of how economic offerings have evolved beyond commodities, goods, and services, and moved into experiences as well as transformations. Their prescient predictions about these underlying patterns in the late '90s took many years of convincing businesses of their merits. But after a few decades, their core ideas of The Experience Economy have taken root, and now it is much easier to see how consumers have shown that they are willing to pay for memorable experiences. Now Pine is back at it again with The Transformation Economy with ideas that have been there from the very beginning, but he told me that the world wasn't ready yet, and he wasn't ready either. About 5-6 years ago, Pine started to hear from designers at World Experience Organization events talking about the transformative intent behind their experiences. This was the catalyst indicating to him that it was time to finally write this book, and he started researching the topics of aspiration, positive psychology, human flourishing, and the dynamics of transformation. I had a chance to interview Pine about The Transformation Economy, and in my write-up below I provide an overview of some of his biggest ideas, some of my personal reactions, how they relate to the XR industry, and finally some of my disagreements on where value comes from. Despite some of my philosophical disagreements with Pine, I still see a lot of value in the frameworks laid out in his book. He describes a roadmap towards a future where the core values driving a critical mass of businesses have evolved to focus on helping their customers fulfill their deepest aspirations, find meaning and purpose, and promote human flourishing. Progression of Economic Value Pine & Gilmore first theorized about a hierarchy of economic value in a 1997 article titled: "Beyond Goods and Services: Staging Experiences and Guiding Transformations." They originally called it "The Economic Pyramid," and described it by saying, "The inexorable march of competitive forces drives the advancement of economic offerings over time: commodities are extracted from the environment to make goods, then delivered as services, which are scripted to stage experiences, which then guide those persons or enterprises in a transformation." "The Progression of Economic Value" figure from page 3 of Pine's The Transformation Economy (2026). Within their "Welcome to the Experience Economy" article in the 1998 issue of Harvard Business Review and in their 1999 book The Experience Economy, they started calling it "The Progression of Economic Value" as shown in the figure above. In The Transformation Economy on page x, Pine describes each of the five distinct economic genres as well as their associated verb / function, Extract Commodities (fungible stuff) Make Goods (tangible things) Deliver Services (intangible activities) Stage Experiences (memorable events) Guide Transformations (effectual outcomes) There is an inevitable gravity towards commodification, and the antidote is customization. This insight first came to Pine in 1994 after he wrote a book in 1993 titled Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition that explored how Mass Production was moving into Mass Customization. When customization is applied to a service, then it yields an experience. When customization is applied to an experience, then it has the potential to yield a transformation that could be life-changing. Here's how Pine & Gilmore described this progression to transformations in their original 1997 article, "The way out of the commodization trap in which so many service companies find themselves is to move up an echelon of value and stage an experience. But experiences are not the utmost in economic offerings. Just as customizing a good automatically turns it into a service, so customizing an experience turns it into something distinct. If you design an experience so in tune with what an individual needs at an exact juncture in time, you cannot help but change that individual — guiding him to (and through) a life-transforming experience. Transformations are a fifth economic offering, whose value far exceeds that of any other." Pine also says in The Transformation Economy that "Eliminating human contact is a surefire way to commoditize yourself." Technology has an inclination to move more and more towards automation and creating "frictionless experiences," but I see the value of human intuition, emotion, relationality, community, and meaning being a differentiating factor in the transformation economy. I suspect that it will be really beneficial to deliberately embrace friction and tension that comes from interacting with other humans as explored in the piece called Deep Soup. I see the movement towards the transformational economy as a bit of an argument against automating too many things with AI because people will be craving authentic human contact. Key Concepts and My Personal Experience of The Transformation Economy The Transformation Economy book is written with the intention to become a transformational experience within itself. There are many pointed questions throughout the book that helped shape my overall framing through the lens of my business. My first reading of the book was focusing on trying to understand the origin, development, and evolution of Pine's provocative ideas to explore within my interview with him. My ongoing second reading of the book has catalyzed me to reconceive some fundamental notions around my identity, as well as the story of why I do what I do with The Voices of VR Podcast. So much of my work has been driven by a fundamental impulse to bring about change in the world. My motivation to cover the frontiers of emerging technology with XR, AI, immersive storytelling, and experiential design has been because I've seen the transformative power of embodied and immersive experiences to potentially bring about some meaningful changes in the world. I'm also very much drawn to philosophical frameworks like Process Philosophy that provide some key metaphysical foundations leading to a paradigm shift around the underlying nature of experience and reality itself. Here's a graphic from Andrew Davis' upcoming Whitehead's Universe book that lays out some of the scaffolding of this paradigm shift from substance metaphysics to process-relational metaphysics. Davis, Andrew M. (Forthcoming in 2026). Whitehead's Universe: A Prismatic Introduction. Orbis Books. One of the key concepts that really stuck with me from Pine's The Transformation Economy was at the beginning of the third chapter that says, "All transformation is identity change." Pine cites Suzy Ross' definition of identity as "all the ways you can complete the statement ‘I am . . .' " He says "From / To" statements are also key where you might say, "I was X, now I am Y." I really resonate with these definitions of identity since they're very flexible and practical. Once I became aware of these "I am ..." statements, then I started to hear them all the time. I found myself naturally making and reflecting upon identity statements, which provide clues to changes that I aspire to. As an example, I've often found myself saying something to the effect of "I'm more a knowledge artist than a viable business person." So in essence, my aspirational, identity-transformation statement is "I am a terrible business person, but I aspire to become a thriving independent scholar and transformational change agent." Reading through The Transformation Economy has been really inspiring since it's the first business book I've ever read where I can really see myself in these frameworks. Pine has been giving me language to articulate the possible futures that I'd love to live into, but yet the business models around the transformation economy are still nascent, uncertain, not very well specified, and rapidly developing. Each business will have a unique blend of commodities, goods, services, experiences, and/or transformations that they'll be offering, and so it is unlikely that there will be a universal formula that works across all contexts. I'm still meditating on this statement where Pine claims that your business is what you charge for. He says on page 22, "A business ultimately defines itself by what it charges for. If you charge for undifferentiated stuff, you're in the commodities business. If you charge for tangible things, you are in the goods business. If you charge for the activities your people do, you are in the services business. So, economically, you are in the experience business if and only if you charge for the time customers spend with you." Pine says that experiences are inherently ephemeral, and sometimes the only thing you keep from it is the memory, which can fade over time. He contrasts this with his definition of transformations, which he shares on page 10 as, "Transformations are effectual outcomes that change individuals in a lasting way. Where experiences are memorable, transformations are effectual." This implies that the business offering of transformations actually has more of an ongoing time commitment. Businesses in the transformation economy will be helping "aspirants" (Pine's preferred term for customers in the transformation economy) achieve their aspirations of transforming from one state into another state over longer periods of time. Aspirants will need to invest time, be patient with results, make progress, but also deal with periodic regressions. I've been reckoning with how I am what I charge for, and I can't help but think about the logistical difficulty in trying to escape the real-time accounting of how we've conceived of value delivered

    #1716: “Human Spatial Computing” is a Human-Rights-Centered Textbook for XR Design

    Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2026 88:07


    The Human Spatial Computing book was published by Oxford University Press on February 5, 2026, and I had a chance to interview the co-authors Reginé Gilbert and Doug North Cook a few weeks after it launched. They alternative as the lead author on each chapter, which provides a comprehensive overview of designing for XR through a variety of different lenses. The entire book is grounded in human rights and ethics, with a recurring focus on how to design experiences that are inclusive and accessible to as diverse of an audience as possible. There's a helpful recap of the history of human computer interaction that goes way back to desire to recreate reality with the Leonardo da Vinci paintings and the imaginative worldbuilding creating new realities by science fiction writers. Other topics covered include insights from universal design principles, industrial design affordances, architecture, neuroscience, and ethics. Here's a list of the chapters of the book, which we also do a brief recap and overview throughout the course of this interview. Why Should We Care about Ethics? The Story of Human–Computer Interaction What Connects Us All Universal Design for Spatial Computing Merging Human Creativity with Technology The Body Affordances of Immersive Technology and the Future of Computing Spatial Computing and the Brain Where Do We Go From Here? There are also a lot of questions and activities at the end of each chapter, which makes this Human Spatial Computing book a compelling textbook option for folks teaching XR design. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1715: “BurnerSphere” Combines Immersive Documentary, Social VR, and Digital Twin of Burning Man

    Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2026 67:51


    BurnerSphere is part immersive documentary, party social VR platform, and part digital twin of Burning Man. It's a standalone VR experience that launched in early alpha for both Quest and Steam on July 22, 2025. It's an evolution of the original Burning Man on AltSpace that I covered back in episodes #940, #960, & #1192, and now they have their own standalone social VR platform that has a digital twin of Burning Man that creates a spatial context for a ton of immersive documentary content that's shot in 360-degree video, stereoscopic 180-degree video, gaussian splats, 3D-modeled recreations, 3D photos, and 2D photos and videos. It's a vast archive that has a taster that is completely free, but you can also pay camp dues to become a member to get access to all of the footage as well as special events. I interviewed the cofounders of Big Rock Creative (BRCvr) Athena Demos and Doug Jacobson back in November 2025 to get the latest updates in what's happening with their hybrid immersive documentary archive and nascent social VR platform. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1714: Lincoln Center for Performing Arts Immersive Programming Overview with Jordana Leigh

    Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2026 45:00


    The Lincoln Center for Performing Arts has been stage a variety of different types of immersive experiences as a part of their interdisciplinary programming, and I had a chance to catch up the lead immersive programmer Jordana Leigh at Venice Immersive in order to get an overview of what they've been showing, XR experiences they've commissioned, how audiences connect to each other about the unique transportive affordances of experiences presented there, and generally how they're using XR to bring new and diverse communities together in New York City. We also talked about their Lincoln Center Collider Fellowship for XR artists to advance their artistic practice through a range of either open-ended R&D or time and space for innovative experimentation. Leigh was scheduled to present at the IDFA DocLab R&D Summit, but had some travel delays. Hopefully this conversation helps to explain the many ways that the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts is totally in alignment with some of the broader themes of providing opportunities to de-isolate and revitalize civic society that is covered extensively in this report. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    1713: CIIIC’s €200 Million in Public Funding: The Creative Industries Immersive Impact Coalition

    Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2026 42:43


    The CIIIC is the Creative Industries Immersive Impact Coalition based out of the Netherlands, which will be spending about €200 Million in Public Funding over the next five years. It is a really exciting development in Europe that is promoting the development of Immersive Experiences (which they abbreviate IX). They will be cultivating knowledge and methods of experiential design, developing immersive talent and human capital, cultivating immersive ecosystem and facilities, catalyzing innovation via various projects, and creating an over synergy across all of their efforts. For a comprehensive recap of CIIIC and what they're doing, then also be sure to check out the CIIIC section starting on page 62 of the extensive 121-page IDFA DocLab Think Tank Report that I wrote, which was recently published on April 21, 2026. I provide a bit more context to this report in the intro and outro of this episode, which is an oral history interview with CIIIC Program Director Heleen Rouw at UnitedXR in December. This conversation forms the basis for that section, but also has some additional updates on their various efforts including: Artistic & Design Research for Immersive Experiences (ADRIE) (5 projects) Phase I of Innovation Impact Challenge: IX in Urban Development (17 projects) Phase II Innovation Impact Challenge: IX in Urban Development (10 projects) The "Shared Realities" consortium is part of the initial ADRIE cohort, which includes a collaboration between IDFA DocLab, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, MIT Open Documentary Lab, PHI, ARTIS Planetarium, and a number of XR studios based in the Netherlands including POPKRAFT, Polymorf, Studio Biarritz, WeMakeVR, ALLLESSS (Ali Eslami), Ado Ato Pictures (Tamara Shogaolu), and Cassette (Nu:Reality). Be sure to check out episode #1697 to hear more about how the Shared Realities initiative will be facilitating experiential designers and artists collaborating with researchers to see if immersive art can help to revitalize civic society. This interview with Rouw provides an overview of the CIIIC, how they're defining "immersive" to be much broader than any single technology, and why they think immersive will be the next big wave of innovation that can help promote public interest values. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1712: Preview of SXSW XR Experience 2026 with Blake Kammerdiener

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2026 64:09


    I interviewed SXSW XR Experience 2026 curator Blake Kammerdiener about this year's selection, and how immersive artists are using Generative AI in a series of different projects. Below is the selection (ordered from longest to shortest). This year's program runs from 11a to 6p CDT from Sunday, March 15-17, 2026. XR Experience Competition Escape The Internet (Part 1) (50 min) Inter(mediate) Spaces (45 min) Winterover (45 min) Fabula Rasa: Dead Man Talking (30 min) Frustrain: Trainman (30 min) The Forgotten War (30 min) Watsonville (30 min) Fillos do Vento: A Rapa (28 min) Crafting Crimes: The Mona Lisa Heist (20 min) Love Bird (20 min) The Baby Factory is Closed (20 min) Lionia Is Leaving (18 min) Body Proxy (15 min) Cycle (15 min) The Great Dictator: A participatory AI installation about power, rhetoric, and memory (15 min) XR Experience Spotlight The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up (62 min) The Great Orator (50 min) Lesbian Simulator (40 min) A Long Goodbye (35 min) Dark Rooms (35 min) Lacuna (34 min) The Dollhouse (24 min) Reality Looks Back (21 min) Insider Outsider (12 min) loss·y (10 min) Lost Love Hotline (10 min) Out of Nowhere (10 min) Spectacular: The Art of Jonathan Yeo in Augmented Reality (10 min) Ascended Intelligence (9 min) MIT Open Documentary Lab's AR and Public Space Artist Collective Layers of Place: Austin [90 min total] ORYZA: Healing Ground (15 min) The Founders Pillars (15 min) Open Access Memorial (15 min) Paper Boat (15 min) Humble Monuments (15 min) Moving Memory (15 min) This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1711: Mission Responsible 3: Discussion on AI Ethics with 6 Winners of Polys Ombudsperson of the Year

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2026 52:07


    This is the panel discussion of Mission Responsible 3 featuring the winners of the Polys Ombudsperson of the year including: Kent Bye (2020), Avi Bar-Zeev (2021), Brittan Heller (2022), Micaela Mantegna (2023), Ingrid Kopp (2024), and Nonny de la Pena (2025). Introduced by Renard T. Jenkins. The big topic this year was AI, but lots to say about XR as well. Here are some links that I mentioned in the introduction that were referenced within the show: "Freedom of Expression in Next-Generation Computing" by Brittan Heller XR Guild's Principles US sanctioning individual ICC judges for decisions they don't like. The Polys 6th Annual Immersive Awards takes place next weekend on Sunday, March 22, 2026 at SVA Theatre in New York City. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1710: When Integration Becomes Subordination: Big Tech Parallels in Carney’s Davos Speech & Untethering from the AI Big Brother

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 14, 2026 53:59


    Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a rousing speech at the World Economic Forum on January 20, 2026 about the rupture of the rules-based order of the globalized economy, and he emphasized the need to build new coalitions to sustain the pressure coming from the United States' emerging authoritarianism. Carney said, “Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.” Just as globalized, economic integrations are being weaponized by the United States, then Big Tech's integrations woven throughout our lives will continue to become the source of our own subordination, especially as surveillance capitalism heads towards it's logical conclusion of an all-pervasive, AI Big Brother, perhaps eventually explicitly tied into authoritarian governments. The AI Big Brother has already started within the context of private companies, but with the outdated Third-Party doctrine of the Fourth Amendment, then any data given to a third party has "no legitimate 'expectation of privacy'." From UNITED STATES v. MILLER (1976): "The Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities." So the US government can request almost any data shared with a third party without a warrant, and given Big Tech's cozy relationship to a democratically-backsliding US government, then who knows what kinds of backroom deals are being made to automate data sharing. We're already in an era where almost all data given to a third party is not considered to be private, and you can start to see some early indications for how this can go wrong in Taylor Lorenz's interview with 404 Media's Joe Cox about ICE's surveillance technologies. It seems likely that we are entering into the very early phases of Orwell's worst nightmare of a 1984 surveillance state powered by Big Tech's AI. In this op-ed podcast episode, I connect some dots between Carney's Davos speech about the hegemonic forces in the geopolitical sphere and the parallels with Big Tech's push towards "contextually aware-AI," which is just an always-on AI that is surveillance capitalism on steroids. Carney's speech provides a lot of insights for how Canada is navigating this new reality where the rules-based order on the International stage seems to be dissolving. One of his deepest insights is to simply name the truth, and to describe precisely what is happening. He refers to a powerful story from Vaclav Havel's The Power of the Powerless where shopkeepers eventually "took their [propaganda] signs down" during communist rule after they were no longer willing to live within a lie. Carney says: "The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down." Taking down metaphoric signs breaks the spell of the collective performative ritual that sustains the power of an authoritarian regime. Taking a sign down is also the embodiment of the first lesson of Timothy Synder's On Tyranny, which is "Do Not Obey in Advance." This lesson is certainly easier said than done, and I've been surprised how pervasive and powerful the chilling effects to remain silent can be. I find myself self-censoring, going dark on social media, and just generally not speaking the full truth as I see it. So this episode is a step in that direction of trying to name things as I see them, but also drawing the parallels between these broader political contexts and how they're collapsing into the technological contexts.

    #1709: Ian Hamilton on Getting Fired from UploadVR & Concerns on AI Authorship in News

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2026 95:24


    On Wednesday, January 28, 2026, Ian Hamilton announced on Bluesky that "I've been fired from UploadVR." He was the editor in chief at UploadVR, and he wrote a Substack post titled "Ian is Typing" on January 30th detailing how is co-workers were pushing to do a test of a "clearly disclosed AI author for UploadVR," and that he had three specific concerns that it be brief, for the ability for readers to turn off and hide all AI-authored posts, and for human freelancers to have the right of first refusal. Hamilton claims to have tried to raise these concerns in the context of Slack, but that the experiment was going to proceed regardless. He writes, "Unable to shift the direction of my colleagues and out of options to affect what was coming, I stepped out of Slack and sent a final email to them on Wednesday morning with a number of my contacts in the industry copied, raising some of these concerns. Not long after, I was called by my boss and fired." I spoke with Hamilton last Friday after his Substack post in order to get more context that led to his departure. Hamilton claims that UploadVR Editor & Developer David Heaney and UploadVR's Operations Manager Kyle Riesenbeck were behind the push to test this clearly disclosed AI author on UploadVR, and that ultimately the proposed test was a business decision made by Riesenbeck. It was a decision that Hamilton ultimately disagreed with, and he cites it as the primary factor that led to behavior that ultimately led to his firing. (UPDATE Feb 5, 2026: It is worth noting here that UploadVR has yet to run this AI bot author test, but that it was the proposed test that was the catalyst for Hamilton's behavior). The specific reasons and circumstances around Hamilton's firing are publicly disputed by Heaney, who reacted on Twitter after Hamilton's Substack post went live by saying, "It is indeed only one side of the story. And an incomplete telling of it, with key omissions and wording choices that serve to paint a misleading picture." In another post Heaney says, "I can't get into it more at this point for obvious reasons, but don't believe everything you read, especially a single side of a complex story." I asked Hamilton for his reaction to Heaney's claims that he's being misleading during our interview, and he did provide more context in our conversation that lead up to his firing. Ultimately, it does sounds like the proposed AI bot author test was the primary catalyst for Hamilton, and that this disagreement may have led to other behaviors and reactions that could also be reasonably cited for why he was fired. UploadVR may have a differing opinions as to what happened, but no one from UploadVR has made public comments beyond what Heaney has said on Twitter. I have extended invitations to both Riesenbeck or Heaney to come onto the podcast for a broader discussion about AI, but nothing has been confirmed by the time of publication. My Personal Take on AI: Technically, Philosophically, Legally, and Culturally Public discourse around AI has split into a binary of Pro-AI vs Anti-AI, and while my personal views can not be easily collapsed into one side of the other, I'd usually take the Anti-AI side of a debate if given the opportunity. I do think some form of AI is here to stay, and will be around for a long time, but that right now there is a lot of hype and deluded thinking on the topic. I see AI as a technology that consolidates wealth and power, and so a primary question worth asking is “Whose power and wealth is being consolidated?” Karen Hao's The Empire of AI elaborates on how the past patterns of colonialism are replaying out within the context of data and the field of AI, as well as how scaling with more compute power has been the primary mode of innovation in AI, and that Gary Marcus has been pushing against the "Scale is All You Need" theory for many years now. Technically speaking, I'm more of a skeptic in the short-term around LLMs along the lines of Stocha...

    #1708: How Process Philosophy Centers Experience. A Prismatic Tour of “Whitehead’s Universe” by Andrew M. Davis

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 100:34


    I interviewed Andrew M. Davis about his forthcoming book titled Whitehead's Universe: A Prismatic Introduction on Thursday, December 4, 2025. It's absolutely the best introduction to Alfred North Whitehead's work in Process Philosophy, and I can't recommend it enough. The worst part is that it isn't set to release until sometime next year, but you can get an early look at some drafts if you sign up with some of Davis' upcoming Whitehead's Universe courses that are being offered in January and February 2026. Whitehead's Process Philosophy centers the human experience at the center of it's philosophy, and therefore focuses on the dynamic flux and flow of experience as we inherit past memories, anticipate the future, decide what actions to take moment to moment, and synthesize it all through our feelings which help to solidify our core memories through the peak emotional experiences of our lives. Davis helps us navigate through Whitehead's neologisms, which are attempting to rewire our brain to think about the nature of reality in a completely new and different way. The subject-predicate and noun-emphasized object-oriented structure of the English isn't doing us any favors, but thankfully the immersive experiences that are offered through immersive art and entertainment is very much oriented into the dynamic flux of our experience, through what is theorized as presence theory in virtual reality. I have my own elemental theory of presence, and in this conversation with Davis I discovered that there's a lot of resonance with how Whitehead is reconceptualizing the nature of reality into a more verb-based event ontology. This is my fifth deep dive on Process Philosophy, and so be sure to check out my other conversations here: #965: Primer on Whitehead's Process Philosophy as a Paradigm Shift & Foundation for Experiential Design #1147: Thirteen Philosophers on the Problem of Opposites: Grant Maxwell's Integration & Difference Book & Archetypal Approaches to Character #1183: From Kant to an Organic View of Reality: Scaffolding a Process-Relational Paradigm Shift with Whitehead Scholar Matt Segall #1568: A Process-Relational Philosophy View on AI, Intelligence, & Consciousness with Matt Segall #1708: How Process Philosophy Centers Human Experience. A Prismatic Tour of “Whitehead's Universe” by Andrew M. Davis This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1707: War Journalist Turns to Immersive Art to Shatter Our Numbness Through Feeling. “In 36,000 Ways” is a Revelatory Embodied Poem by Karim Ben Khelifa

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 46:48


    I interviewed Karim Ben Khelifa about In 36,000 Ways on Sunday, November 16, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Here are the 26 episodes and more than 24 hours of coverage from my IDFA DocLab 2025 coverage: #1682: Preview of IDFA DocLab's Selection of "Perception Art" & Immersive Stories #1683: "Feedback VR Antifuturist Musical" Wins Immersive Non-Fiction Award at IDFA DocLab 2025 #1684: Playable Essay “individualism in the dead-internet age” Recaps Enshittification Against Indie Devs #1685: Immersive Liner Notes of Hip-Hop Album "AÜTO/MÖTOR" Uses three.js & HTML 1.0 Aesthetics #1686: 15 Years of Hand-Written Letters about the Internet in "Life Needs Internet 2010–2025" Installation #1687: Text-Based Adventure Theatrical Performance "MILKMAN ZERO: The First Delivery" #1688: Hacking Gamer Hardware and Stereotypes in "Gamer Keyboard Wall Piece #2" #1689: Making Post-Human Babies in "IVF-X" to Catalyze Philosophical Reflections on Reproduction #1690: Asking Philosophical Questions on AI in "The Oracle: Ritual for the Future" with Poetic Immersive Performance #1691: A Call for Human Friction Over AI Slop in "Deep Soup" Participatory Film Based on "Designing Friction" Manifesto #1692: Playful Remixing of Scanned Animal Body Parts in "We Are Dead Animals" #1693: A Survey of the Indie Immersive Dome Community Trends with "The Rift" Directors & 4Pi Productions #1694: Reimagining Amsterdam's Red Light District in "Unimaginable Red" Open World Game #1695: "Another Place" Takes a Liminal Architectural Stroll into Memories of Another Time and Place #1696: Speculative Architecture Meets the Immersive Dome in Sergey Prokofyev's "Eternal Habitat" #1697: Can Immersive Art Revitalize Civic Engagement? Netherlands CIIIC Funds "Shared Reality" Initiative #1698: Immersive Exhibition Lessons Learned from Undershed's First Year with Amy Rose #1699: Announcing "The Institute of Immersive Perservation" with Avinash Changa & His XR Virtual Machine Wizardry #1700: Update on Co-Creating XR Distribution Field Initiative & Toolkits from MIT Open DocLab #1701: Public Art Installation "Nothing to See Here" Uses Perception Art to Challenge Our Notions of Reality #1702: "Coded Black" Creates Experiential Black History by Combining Horror Genres with Open World Exploration #1703: "Reality Looks Back" Uses Quantum Possibility Metaphors & Gaussian Splats to Challenge Notions of Reality #1704: "Lesbian Simulator" is an Interactive VR Narrative Masterclass Balancing Levity, Pride, & Naming of Homophobic Threats #1705: The Art of Designing Emergent Social Dynamics with Ontroerend Goed's "Handle with Care" #1706: Using Immersive Journalism to Document Genocide in Gaza with "Under the Same Sky" #1707: War Journalist Turns to Immersive Art to Shatter Our Numbness Through Feeling. "In 36,000 Ways" is a Revelatory Embodied Poem by Karim Ben Khelifa This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1706: Using Immersive Journalism to Document Genocide in Gaza with “Under the Same Sky”

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 55:04


    I interviewed Khalil Ashawi, Sami Sultan, & Hail Khalaf about Under the Same Sky on Saturday, November 15, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1705: The Art of Designing Emergent Social Dynamics with Ontroerend Goed’s “Handle with Care”

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 69:17


    I interviewed Alexander Devriendt about Handle with Care on Wednesday, December 3, 2025. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1704: “Lesbian Simulator” is an Interactive VR Narrative Masterclass Balancing Levity, Pride, & Naming of Homophobic Threats

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 55:52


    I interviewed Iris van der Meule about Lesbian Simulator on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1703: “Reality Looks Back” Uses Quantum Possibility Metaphors & Gaussian Splats to Challenge Notions of Reality

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 59:04


    I interviewed Anne Jeppesen & Omid Zarei about Reality Looks Back on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1702: “Coded Black” Creates Experiential Black History by Combining Horror Genres with Open World Exploration

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 64:41


    I interviewed Maisha Wester about Coded Black on Monday, November 17, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1701: Public Art Installation “Nothing to See Here” Uses Perception Art to Challenge Our Notions of Reality

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 45:22


    I interviewed Celine Daemen about Nothing to See Here on Monday, November 17, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1700: Update on Co-Creating XR Distribution Field Initiative & Toolkits from MIT Open DocLab

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 45:23


    I interviewed Sarah Wolozin, Scarlett Kim, Julia Scott-Stevenson about MIT Open DocLab's Co-Creating XR Distribution Field Initiative on Wednesday, November 19, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1699: Announcing “The Institute of Immersive Preservation” with Avinash Changa & His XR Virtual Machine Wizardry

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 55:46


    I interviewed Avinash Changa about The Institute of Immersive Perservation on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1698: Immersive Exhibition Lessons Learned from Undershed’s First Year with Amy Rose

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 54:44


    I interviewed Amy Rose about first year of the Undershed at the Watershed on Saturday, November 15, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1697: Can Immersive Art Revitalize Civic Engagement? Netherlands CIIIC Funds “Shared Reality” Initiative

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 35:23


    I interviewed Martijn de Waal about revitalizing civic engagement through immersive art on Sunday, November 16, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1696: Speculative Architecture Meets the Immersive Dome in Sergey Prokofyev’s “Eternal Habitat”

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 65:13


    I interviewed Sergey Prokofyev about Eternal Habitat on Monday, November 17, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1695: “Another Place” Takes a Liminal Architectural Stroll into Memories of Another Time and Place

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 57:23


    I interviewed Domenico Singha Pedroli about Another Place on Saturday, November 15, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1694: Reimagining Amsterdam’s Red Light District in “Unimaginable Red” Open World Game

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 63:07


    I interviewed Vitor Freire & Monique Grimord about Unimaginable Red on Wednesday, November 19, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1693: A Survey of the Indie Immersive Dome Community Trends with “The Rift” Directors & 4Pi Productions

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 56:28


    I interviewed Janire Najera & Matthew Wright about The Rift on Monday, November 17, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1692: Playful Remixing of Scanned Animal Body Parts in “We Are Dead Animals”

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 37:38


    I interviewed Maarten Isaak de Heer about We Are Dead Animals on Saturday, November 15, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1691: A Call for Human Friction Over AI Slop in “Deep Soup” Participatory Film Based on “Designing Friction” Manifesto

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 58:56


    I interviewed Luna Maurer & Roel Wouters about Deep Soup on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. You can also check out their Designing Friction Manifesto. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1690: Asking Philosophical Questions on AI in “The Oracle: Ritual for the Future” with Poetic Immersive Performance

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 51:53


    I interviewed Victorine van Alphen about The Oracle: Ritual for the Future on Wednesday, November 19, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1689: Making Post-Human Babies in “IVF-X” to Catalyze Philosophical Reflections on Reproduction

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 60:36


    I interviewed Victorine Van Alphen about IVF-X on Saturday, April 8, 2023 at New Images in Paris, France. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1688: Hacking Gamer Hardware and Stereotypes in “Gamer Keyboard Wall Piece #2”

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 46:40


    I interviewed Sjef van Beers about Gamer Keyboard Wall Piece #2 on Saturday, November 15, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1687: Text-Based Adventure Theatrical Performance “MILKMAN ZERO: The First Delivery”

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 21:44


    I interviewed Matt Romein about MILKMAN ZERO: The First Delivery on Monday, November 17, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1686: 15 Years of Hand-Written Letters about the Internet in “Life Needs Internet 2010–2025” Installation

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 50:19


    I interviewed Jeroen van Loon about Life Needs Internet 2010–2025 on Wednesday, November 19, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1685: Immersive Liner Notes of Hip-Hop Album “AÜTO/MÖTOR” Uses three.js & HTML 1.0 Aesthetics

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 54:45


    I interviewed Albert Johnson about A Ü T O / M Ö T O R on Sunday, November 16, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1684: Playable Essay “individualism in the dead-internet age” Recaps Enshittification Against Indie Devs

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 53:45


    I interviewed Nathalie Lawhead about individualism in the dead-internet age: an anti-big tech asset flip shovelware r̶a̶n̶t̶ manifesto on Monday, November 17, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1683: “Feedback VR: An Antifuturist Musical” Wins Immersive Non-Fiction Award at IDFA DocLab 2025

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2025 58:59


    I interviewed Claudix Vanesix, Cocompi & Aaron Medina about Feedback VR, un musical antifuturista on Sunday, November 16, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Here are the 26 episodes and more than 24 hours of coverage from my IDFA DocLab 2025 coverage: #1682: Preview of IDFA DocLab's Selection of "Perception Art" & Immersive Stories #1683: "Feedback VR Antifuturist Musical" Wins Immersive Non-Fiction Award at IDFA DocLab 2025 #1684: Playable Essay “individualism in the dead-internet age” Recaps Enshittification Against Indie Devs #1685: Immersive Liner Notes of Hip-Hop Album "AÜTO/MÖTOR" Uses three.js & HTML 1.0 Aesthetics #1686: 15 Years of Hand-Written Letters about the Internet in "Life Needs Internet 2010–2025" Installation #1687: Text-Based Adventure Theatrical Performance "MILKMAN ZERO: The First Delivery" #1688: Hacking Gamer Hardware and Stereotypes in "Gamer Keyboard Wall Piece #2" #1689: Making Post-Human Babies in "IVF-X" to Catalyze Philosophical Reflections on Reproduction #1690: Asking Philosophical Questions on AI in "The Oracle: Ritual for the Future" with Poetic Immersive Performance #1691: A Call for Human Friction Over AI Slop in "Deep Soup" Participatory Film Based on "Designing Friction" Manifesto #1692: Playful Remixing of Scanned Animal Body Parts in "We Are Dead Animals" #1693: A Survey of the Indie Immersive Dome Community Trends with "The Rift" Directors & 4Pi Productions #1694: Reimagining Amsterdam's Red Light District in "Unimaginable Red" Open World Game #1695: "Another Place" Takes a Liminal Architectural Stroll into Memories of Another Time and Place #1696: Speculative Architecture Meets the Immersive Dome in Sergey Prokofyev's "Eternal Habitat" #1697: Can Immersive Art Revitalize Civic Engagement? Netherlands CIIIC Funds "Shared Reality" Initiative #1698: Immersive Exhibition Lessons Learned from Undershed's First Year with Amy Rose #1699: Announcing "The Institute of Immersive Perservation" with Avinash Changa & His XR Virtual Machine Wizardry #1700: Update on Co-Creating XR Distribution Field Initiative & Toolkits from MIT Open DocLab #1701: Public Art Installation "Nothing to See Here" Uses Perception Art to Challenge Our Notions of Reality #1702: "Coded Black" Creates Experiential Black History by Combining Horror Genres with Open World Exploration #1703: "Reality Looks Back" Uses Quantum Possibility Metaphors & Gaussian Splats to Challenge Notions of Reality #1704: "Lesbian Simulator" is an Interactive VR Narrative Masterclass Balancing Levity, Pride, & Naming of Homophobic Threats #1705: The Art of Designing Emergent Social Dynamics with Ontroerend Goed's "Handle with Care" #1706: Using Immersive Journalism to Document Genocide in Gaza with "Under the Same Sky" #1707: War Journalist Turns to Immersive Art to Shatter Our Numbness Through Feeling. "In 36,000 Ways" is a Revelatory Embodied Poem by Karim Ben Khelifa This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1682: Preview of IDFA DocLab’s 2025 Selection of “Perception Art” & Immersive Stories

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 13, 2025 86:20


    IDFA DocLab is the immersive selection of non-fiction digital and immersive stories that is a part of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), and they're having their 19th selection this year. DocLab founder Caspar Sonnen has been doing an amazing job of tracking the frontiers of new forms of digital, interactive, and immersive storytelling since 2007, and he joined me along with his co-curator Nina van Doren to talk about the ten pieces within the DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction as well as the nine pieces within the DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling as well as portions of their DocLab Spotlight as well as the DocLab at the Planetarium: Down to Earth program, DocLab Playroom prototype sessions as well as the DocLab R&D Summit. In trying to describe the types of immersive art and storytelling works that DocLab curates, then they have started to use the term "Perception Art" in order to describe the types of pieces and work that they're featuring. This year's theme is "Off the Internet," which speaks to both the types of works that critique and analyze the impacts of online culture on our lives, but also taking projects that were born on the Internet and giving them an IRL physical installation art context to view them. I'll be on site seeing the selection of works and also be interviewing various artists who are on the frontiers of experimentation for these new forms of "perception art." This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1681: VRChat Worldbuilder DrMorro on His Epic & Dreamlike Masterpieces

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2025 69:25


    The VRChat worlds by DrMorro are truly incredible. They're vast landscapes made of surreal mash-ups of various architecture styles and symbols that feels like you're walking through a waking dream. His Organism Trilogy (Organism, Epilogue 1, and Epilogue 2) is a true masterpiece of VR worldbuilding. And his latest Ritual is one of the biggest and most impressive single worlds on VRChat that feels walking through a fever dream, and probably the closest thing to Meow Wolf's style of immersive art. And his Raindance Immersive award-winning Olympia was his truly first vast world, and they've been getting bigger and bigger and more impressive ever since. He's got a keen ear for sound design and a sound track that will help set the eerie mood of his sometimes unsettling and liminal worlds. In short, the experience of spending 4-5 hours going through one of DrMorro's worlds is a completely unique and singular experience, as he's in a class of his own when it comes to VRChat world building. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4AfYsmHQB8 I have long wanted to conduct an interview with DrMorro doing a comprehensive retrospective of his works, but he's an anonymous Russian artist who doesn't speak English. He's only done one other interview with Russian Del'Arte Magazine, but otherwise he's a pretty mysterious and cryptic figure. I managed to got ahold of him through a mutual friend, and he suggested that we do a "19th-century-style written correspondence" where I would send questions over text chat over the course of a week. He would use an AI translator to translate what I said into Russian, and then he would then translate his Russian response back into English. For this podcast, I used the open source Boson AI Higgs Audio with Russian actor Yul Brynner's voice to bring DrMorro's personality to life, but the full transcript of our edited chat is down below if you prefer to read it as I had experienced it. You can support DrMorro's work through Boosty, and you can support the Voices of VR podcast through Patreon. Kent Bye: Alright! Can you go ahead and introduce yourself and what you do in the realm of VR? DrMorro: Hello! The name's DrMorro – or well, that's my alias, to be precise. That's the name I'm known by as the creator of all those strange worlds in VRChat. For now, that's my only real achievement in the VR sphere. Other than that, I'm a 2D and 3D artist, which is my main profession. Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, this is my first interview that I've done via text. Can you give a bit more context for why you prefer to do the interview in this way? DrMorro: Honestly, I'm a pretty closed-off person, and it's easier for me to write than to talk. It's just a character trait. Especially since I can't even imagine communicating through a voice translator. When I write, I can at least somehow control the translation. I don't know spoken English, but I manage fine in writing. So, no conspiracy theories. It's just how I'm used to communicating. Though it's strange because by nature, I'm a staunch introvert and I make worlds about total solitude. In ORGANISM, how many entities did you even find there besides the hat-wearing figure? And then suddenly, this popularity falls on me, and constant communication becomes the norm. Aaaahhh! Kent Bye: Well, I very much appreciate you taking the time to do what you describe as a “19th-century-style written correspondence” with me over the next week or so. And it makes sense that you could have a little bit more control in how you can express yourself via written text through a translator. Alight. So I always like to hear what type of design disciplines folks are bringing into VR, and so can you provide a bit more context about your background and journey into working with VR? DrMorro: To put it briefly, my journey is that I essentially work in architectural visualization. But that's more of a day job to keep myself afloat and pay the bills. My main interest,

    #1680: Charlie Melcher’s “The Future of Storytelling” Book Surveys Over 50 Living Stories

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2025 77:56


    Charles Melcher's new book "The Future of Storytelling: How Immersive Experiences Are Transforming Our World" was released on November 4, 2025, and I had a chance to take an early look and interview Melcher. The book is broken up into six main chapters where Melcher argues that the future of storytelling is agentic, immersive, embodied, responsive, social, and transformative. Melcher covers over fifty different "living stories" across different genres including virtual reality stories, location-based entertainment, immersive stories, immersive theatre, immersive art, experiential brand activations, and interactive experiences. He told me that he's had a chance to experience around 80 to 85% of the experiences that he features in his book, which most of them are site-specific and many times time-limited, immersive exhibitions that are not always easy to get into. He's been traveling to different locations around the world with his Future of Storytelling Explorer's Club to see many of these experiences, as well as engage with the creators behind the experiences. In his book, he shares some brief trip reports on over 50 different experiences, as well as some very high-quality, official photo documentation of these projects. It serves to provide some documentation of many of these ephemeral projects, but also tie together some of the common elements that helps to define and elucidate what exactly is meant by "immersive." Melcher and I also talk about the founding of The Future of Storytelling Summit back on October 2012, as well as the start of his Future of Storytelling podcast on March 2020 that has published over 120 interviews since it started during the pandemic. Around 20% of the projects and creators that have appeared on his podcast are featured in his book as what he considers to be a canon of work that exemplifies these deeper trends of immersive storytelling and living stories. While the book does provide a lot of valuable documentation, one complaint that I have is that it is not always easy to tell where Melcher is sourcing his quotes from project creators. The majority of quotations are coming from either private interviews that he personally conducted or from public conversations that he's featured on his podcast. But sometimes he uses quotes of creators from other publications without full attribution. So if there's a second edition, then I hope to see a more detailed set of footnotes and perhaps an index to make it an even more useful piece of documentation. The way that Melcher is breaking down the different foundational qualities of immersive experiences also closely mirrors my own elemental approach, but with some slight deviations or different categorizations. His agentic qualities are equivalent to what I call active presence, his embodied is the same as my embodied presence, and his social is the same as my social presence. I also have emotional presence and environmental presence, which he classifies as emotional and physical subsets of immersive qualities. Melcher also has a participatory subset under immersive qualities, which I consider to just be a part of active presence and what he is already classifying as agentic. For me "immersive" is more of an umbrella term that includes all of the various qualities of presence, and Melcher proposes a sort of rating system judging the degree of immersiveness rated across the different physical, emotional, and participatory dimensions. But Melcher doesn't list social as it's own vector of immersiveness as he told me that he considers social to be a subsection of emotions, but I consider social qualities to be distinct from emotional ones. Melcher also highlights the "responsive" qualities of a piece of work, which I see as both connected to ways of amplifying agency, but also something that contributes to Slater's Plausibility Illusion of an experience or a suspension of disbelief, which I classify under mental presence.

    #1679: The Matrix at Cosm Expands Film Beyond the Frame with Cinematic Shared Reality

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2025 31:28


    The Matrix at Cosm in LA opened on June 6th, 2025, which leverages Cosm's 87-foot, 12K+ LED immersive dome to show this classic film within a 16x9 frame while the additional space beyond the frame was filled with over 50 different scenes thereby expanding the worldbuilding beyond the frame. I finally had a chance to see it last month, and was really impressed with how much this additional space was able to increase the level of immersion, to amplify key emotional beats within the film, and create some truly awe-inspiring moments. I had a chance to speak with Alexis Scalice, Cosm's vice president of business development and entertainment, about Cosm's collaboration with Little Cinema, MakeMake, and Warner Brothers to launch their inaugural "Cinematic Shared Reality" immersive experience. The Matrix has a few more weeks of screenings before their second film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) opens on November 21, 2025. You can also hear more context from in Noah Nelson's No Proscencium podcast interview with Little Cinema's Jay Rinsky conducted ahead of the world premiere. And I also share some impressions of the two enhanced cinema productions of The Black Phone and M3GAN within Blumhouse Enhanced Cinema Quest App. These films have some similarities to what The Matrix at Cosm is doing, but at a much smaller scale and not nearly as effective as the expanded immersive worldbuilding in one of the greatest science fiction films of all time. The Matrix at Cosm is setting a quality high bar for this type of format that is going to be difficult to match. You can see more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1678: Wevr on VR LBE as a “New Cinema,” a 10-Year Retrospective

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2025 52:57


    I had a chance to catch up with Wevr's CEO and co-founder Neville Spiteri, which has been making location-based VR experiences for the last decade in what he calls a "New Cinema." See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1677: Snap’s AR Developer Relations Plan for 2026 Specs Consumer Launch with Joe Darko

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2025 47:35


    I did an interview with Joe Darko, Global Head of Developer Relations at Snap, at Snap's Developer Conference of Lensfest. See more context in the rough transcript below. You can also check out all 11 episodes in this Snap Lensfest series here: #1667: Kickoff of Snap Lensfest 2025 Coverage & SnapOS 2.0 Announcements #1668: Snap Co-Founders Community Q&A about Specs 2026 Launch Plan #1669: Snap's Resh Sidhu on the Future of AR Commerce & Developer-Centered Innovation #1670: Snapchat's Embodied Gaming Innovations with AR Developer Relations Head #1671: Reflecting on Snap's AR Platform & Developer Tools Past and Future with Terek Judi #1672: Niantic Spatial's Project Jade Demo Shows Latest Location-Aware, AI Tour Guide Innovations #1673: Snap Lensfest Announcement Reflections from AR Gaming Studio DB Creations #1674: 3rd Place Spectacles Lensathon Team: Fireside Tales Collaborative Storytelling with GenAI #1675: 2nd Place Spectacles Lensathon Team: CartDB Barcode-Scanning Nutrition App #1676: 1st Place Spectacles Lensathon Team: Decisionator Object-Detection AI Decision-Maker #1677: Snap's AR Developer Relations Plan for 2026 Specs Consumer Launch with Joe Darko This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1676: 1st Place Spectacles Lensathon Team: Decisionator Object-Detection, AI Decision-Maker

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2025 32:52


    At Snap's Developer Conference of Lensfest, I did an interview with 1st place team in the Snap Spectacles Lensathon named Decisionator including Candice Branchereau, Marcin Polakowski, Volodymyr Kurbatov, and Inna Horobchuk. I also summarize the other 10 Spectacles Lensathon projects after serving as a preliminary judge for the competition. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1675: 2nd Place Spectacles Lensathon Team: CartDB Barcode-Scanning Nutrition App

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2025 42:16


    At Snap's Developer Conference of Lensfest, I did an interview with 2nd place team in the Snap Spectacles Lensathon named CartdB including Guillaume Dagens, Nigel Hartman, and Uttam Grandhi (the other team member Nicholas Ross had some prior commitments). See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1674: 3rd Place Spectacles Lensathon Team: Fireside Tales Collaborative Storytelling with GenAI

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2025 30:54


    At Snap's Developer Conference of Lensfest, I did an interview with 3rd place team in the Snap Spectacles Lensathon named Fireside Tales including Stijn Spanhove, Pavlo Tkachenko, and Yegor Ryabtsov. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1673: Snap Lensfest Announcement Reflections from AR Gaming Studio DB Creations

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2025 26:47


    I did an interview with DB Creations co-founders Dustin Kochensparger and Blake Gross at Snap's Developer Conference of Lensfest. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    #1672: Niantic Spatial’s Project Jade Demo Shows Latest Location-Aware, AI Tour Guide Innovations

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2025 30:22


    I did an interview with Alicia Berry, Executive Producer at Niantic Spatial, and Asim Ahmed, Head of Product Marketing at Niantic Spatial, at Snap's Developer Conference of Lensfest about their latest Project Jade Spectacles demo. See more context in the rough transcript below. https://twitter.com/tweetsfromasim/status/1981830288771887606 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

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