VR & Philosophy

In this episode, I'm reading a Matrise piece regarding VR & Lucid dreaming, telling a story of how I dreamt I was in VR triggered a lucid dream. Lucid dreaming, as psychedelics, have a lot in common with VR, and this is what I'm discussing in this podcast.

In this episode, I sit down in Treehouse in the Shade in VRChat to discuss VR Philosophy with Kent Bye. Kent Bye is the host of the no #1 VR podcast: VoicesofVR, possibly the best resource available for anyone that is into the XR space. We discussed Ethics of VR, Experiential Design, the Process Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, Postphenomenology, phenomenology, consciousness, epistemology/knowledge, dialectics, pluralism and much, much more! This was a wonderful experience for me and it was really interesting to be able to "interview the interviewer" and hear Bye's broad strokes as he addresses the mereology of the Virtual Reality industry. Enjoy!

In this episode, I read a Matrise piece concerning the potential for VR to trigger a disorder called Depersonalization/Derealization. Prolonged experience to VR may cause feelings of unreality in real life.

In this episode, I talk with the great and powerful Skeeva from the Between Realities podcast. On his platforms, Skeeva is vocal about how Oculus' mandatory Facebook signup is hurting gamers. Many find themselves in the situation that they can not leave the personal data-selling company without losing hundreds of dollars in games. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the Quest 2, or the biodata theft unit as Skeeva calls it, and what is needed in an Oculus Quest 2 competitor. Moreover, we discuss the pro's and con's of having Apple enter the VR market which is rumored to happen soon. We also discuss Valve's recent explorations of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI). 

In this episode, I read two entries from the VR & Philosophy blog Matrise; namely, Virtual Reality as an Existential Problem, and Hinduism and Virtual Reality. I discuss how VR poses us the question: now that we can do anything, what will we do?, and how this poses us an existential problem that may reveal to our selves who we are. 

In this episode, we read from the Matrise piece "Virtuality & Meaning." The piece discusses whether it is possible to have meaningful experiences in virtual words, engaging with this question from a phenomenological perspective. We discuss Michael Madary's brilliant framing of the story of Qui Chengwei's Dragon Sabre. Read by the author of the original Matrise piece, Joakim Vindenes.

In this special episode of the VR & Philosophy podcast, I have the pleasure of welcoming Bendik Bjørnstad to my home for a great conversation. Instead of doing this podcast in VRChat, we decided to a physical version, which you can view in VR. We discuss how VR in light of Eastern Philosophies such as Hinduism and Buddhism, Psychedelics, and much more. I hope you enjoy the conversation!

In this video, I had a chat with Kai Reaver. Kai is an architect and is currently doing a PhD in Interaction Design, Urbanism, Smart Cities, and Extended Reality at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Reaver is also a teacher at this school and a guest professor at Haute école d'art et de design in Geneva, Switzerland. We had wonderful chat about the future of the Metaverse, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

In this video, I meet up with Sarah Hashkes, CEO of Radix Motion. We had a fascinating conversation about VR, psychedelics and neuroscience; avatars and identification and non-verbal communication, merging of subject and object... and more. Fun!

I had a great discussion with Robin Arnott of Andromeda Entertainment! Robin has been on a long journey creating "SoundSelf: A Technodelic." We really had a great discussion on the potential of VR to induce psychedelic states and topics related to this. I hope you enjoy it!

In this podcast, I talked to David Han from the artist collective Friend Generator. We discussed his art, his direction and philosophies tied up to this. It was a great conversation! Check out his artwork in the Museum of Other Realities. 

In this episode, I hang out with Håkon Garfors, who works as an Innovator for Western Norwegian hospitals and health clinics. We discussed the potential of VR to help for anxiety, psychosis, and much more.

In this episode, I hang out with Alex Meland on a rooftop. We had a great talk! We talked about the podcast he co-hosts, Between Realities, and reflect on numerous topics: social etiquette in VR, meaning and VR, haptic feedback, e-sports, and the use of VR in floatation tanks.

Warning: pragmatism! In this podcast, I am given a tour of the Rainfall offices by my friend, VR/AR Director of Rainfall, Keith Mellingen. Keith Mellingen has numerous years of experience working with immersive productions. We take a look at some of them and discuss the value that VR is bringing to the market right now, as well as discussing the medium in general.

In this episode of VR & Philosophy, I meet up in a trashy futuristic bar with indie developer / VR youtube Lucas Rizzotto. Lucas is known for having created Where Thoughts Go, an application offering social- and emotional connection (link below)). In this video, however, we also discuss his newest YouTube project, the channel "Lucas Builds the Future" (link below) and his first episode detailing his development of a Personal Time Machine. This was a great talk and be sure to check out Lucas Builds the Future and subscribe to his new adventures of exploring the possibilities of VR through video form.

In this video, we sit down with Aaron Ralby to discuss VR Memory Palaces! Aaron Ralby is Founder and CEO of Linguisticator, a company that creates electronic mnemonics, such as Munx VR⁠—available with a free demo at Steam⁠ (link below)—where users can create Memory Palaces in VR.

In this episode, we enter the beautiful Museum of Other Realities (MOR) with one of its architectural creators: Samuel Arsenault-Brassard. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of virtual architecture, how places affect us, and especially what a powerful tool VR can be in investigating our relationships to places. We take a tour around and discover new elements of the Museum of Other Realities as we talk. We also have a brief celebrity guest appearance of Kent Bye behind the VoicesofVR podcast, discussing the sometimes challenging privacy settings in the MOR.

In this podcast, I meet up with Fabien Benetou in his own VR wiki, where he stores and works with the information of his life. We discuss VR Memory Palaces, Mozilla Hubs and how we can extend our minds into the virtual. Is there a possibility to port the whole of Wikipedia into VR, and go exploring the information visuo-spatially?

In this episode, we meet an anonymous Reddit user who frequents the subreddit: RiftIntoTheMind. At this particular location in Cyberspace, users gather who're interested in the use of Psychedelics AND Virtual Reality. This has always fascinated me, so I posted there to find some enthusiasts to have a discussion. I very much hope you enjoy it!

In this pod, I sit down in VR with my friend and conversation partner Tommy Rasor. We discuss the possibility of Cyberdelics and the potential of psychedelic treatment in Virtual Reality.

In this first episode of our podcast (which you can also see recorded in VR at our "AltVR" YouTube channel), I sit down my friend and conversation partner, Ben the Anonymous Philosopher! We have an informal discussion about VR and immersion, related to amongst others philosophers such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.