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PODCAST

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.

technology design

All Episodes

24:29

#1168: “The Anticipation of Rain” Combines Open Brush...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

After suffering a paralyzing viral infection, XR Director Naima Karim started to notice the natural world around her in a more visceral way, She “experienced the monsoon even more intensely than usual: the initial gusts of wind, the rapidly darkening sky, the oppressive humidity and finally the downpour of rain, which washes everything clean and leaves behind a fresh scent.” A painter by trade, she took up virtual reality painting with Open Brush, and created a romantic and poetic sim tribute to

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48:21

#1167: Countering the Bystander Effect of...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

Missing 10 Hours VR is an interactive immersive narrative designed to counter the bystander effect by recreating different social dynamics and peer pressure as your virtual friend attempts to spike a woman’s drink with a date rape drug GHB and then isolate her by the end of the night. Here’s a description of the piece: In this interactive VR piece, the viewer is led on a night out by Greg, a big-headed guy with bad intentions. He spikes 22-year-old Mara’s drink with the drug GHB, and she gradually

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52:33

#1166: Sarah Wolozin’s Journey to Directing the MIT...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

Sarah Wolozin is the director of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, and I had a chance to catch up with her at the IDFA DocLab 2022 in order to record her journey from being a storytelling to working at MIT’s Open DocLab. Here’s the mission statement of the Open DocLab: “Drawing on MIT’s legacy of media innovation and its deep commitment to open and accessible information, the MIT Open Documentary Lab brings storytellers, technologists, and scholars together to explore new documentary forms with a

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27:58

#1165: XR Installation “Ikhet (Sound Pyramid)”...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

Ikhet (Sound Pyramid) is a 14-channel spatial audio installation that included ButtKicker Haptics, LED tubes with diffractive glasses giving a ghostly, analog Holographic effect, experimental field recordings, and a harsh electronic music track that reflected the artist Ali Santana’s strained emotions throughout the pandemic. I had a chance to chat with Santana to unpack his journey and process in creating this piece. Here’s his description of his immersive installation, which details more of the

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54:50

#1164: Live XR Sketch Comedy “Bag of Worms” Blends...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

Bag of Worms is a live XR sketch comedy performance developed by Matt Romein in collaboration with Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey that showed as a part of the ONX + DocLab MoCap Stage at IDFA DocLab 2022. It’s difficult to fully describe the surreal quality of Bag of Worms, but their synopsis does a pretty good job of summarizing the key points, “Wearing motion capture suits, Bag of Worms uses technology to create a new kind of hybrid performance, with the performers constructing and

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1:03:34

#1163: Live XR Performance Experiments with ONX...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

The ONX + DocLab MoCap Stage at IDFA DocLab 2022 featured a number of experimental XR performances using a high-end OptiTrack – Motion Capture System within a theatrical stage with a screen that was projecting the virtual representations. Each of these projects are exploring how to blend aspects of the virtual and physical in the context of a live performance. I had a chance to get the backstory and more details on all of the featured projects from Matthew Niederhauser and John Fitzgerald, who are

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56:19

#1162: Talk on Motion Capture in Immersive Stories +...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

I was invited to give a keynote at the Capturing Reality in Motion session as a part of the ONX + DocLab MoCap Stage. I gave a 20-minute talk reflecting on how some of the different projects on the film festival circuit have been using motion capture technology either in the display, production, and live performance of their piece. [Video of this talk is coming soon]. There was also a 5-minute introduction to this session by Sandra Rodriguez (Creative Director & MIT Open DocLab Fellow), but

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1:15:08

#1161: The Many Immersive Documentary Innovations of...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is a landmark immersive documentary that seamlessly integrates so many different immersive storytelling techniques and XR modalities earning it the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. You’re transported back into the 1989 Underground Acid Rave Scene in Coventry and West Midlands where you go on an epic journey retracing the convoluted steps to avoid detection by the police in order to make it to a warehouse of dancing bodies. Director Darren Emerson from East

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1:18:24

#1160: Interview with MIT Co-Creation Studio’s Book...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

The book Collective Wisdom: Co-creating Media for Equity and Justice by the MIT Co-Creation Studio founder Kat Cizek & MIT Open DocLab founder William Uricchio was the named as the recommended book of 2022 by IDFA. They held a launch party during DocLab as well as a couple of different sessions, and I had a chance to catch up with Cizek and Uricchio in Amsterdam on the day of the launch party to get an overview of what they’re covering in their book. This definition of Co-Creation that they provide

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52:36

#1159: “With These Hands” VR Installation Explores...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

With These Hands is a VR installation that “shares challenging, complex and under discussed stories of sexual assault and recovery. It explores the role of listening in the recovery of both survivors and those responsible for sexual harm.” It was produced by Tessa Ratuszynska in collaboration with Survivors Leading Essential Education & Change (SLEEC), which is a “survivor-run organization that changes systems, supports survivors and dismantles the roots of male violence.” The primary mode the

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48:39

#1158: Searching for Post-Colonial Identity in an...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

Ghana Airways by Hakeem Adam was shown at IDFA DocLab 2022 as an experimental, non-linear audio installation with accompanying visuals, but it is also available online on Bandcamp as a linear, one-hour, 3-part audio series. The piece is Adam’s search for his post-colonial Ghanaian identity, and he’s interested in exploring unique modes of sound design to capture what he refers to as “oral knowledge.” There was a lot that I did not quite understand when I first listened to this piece, and I got a

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27:56

#1157: Capturing the Digital Culture of a Virtual...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

New Update Available - Version 2.1 is a VR installation piece that blends contemporary audio documentary recordings of computer help sessions for the elderly, but then recreates these characters in VR within a speculative future where elders gather together within a virtual space in Metaverse with avatars in all in order to get their weekly computer questions answered. It's a unique approach of capturing a segment of digital culture that asks the user to reflect upon a time in the future when

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59:04

1156: Winner of IDFA DocLab Digital Storytelling...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

Taylor McCue’s He Fucked the Girl Out of Me (play for free on itch.io) won the IDFA DocLab Digital Storytelling Award at DocLab 2022. It is a deeply personal story and powerful exploration of shame and trauma that uses a unique blend of retro 2D Game Boy aesthetics, graphic novel, narrative game walking simulator, with structural inspirations from Bagenzo’s Madotsuki’s Closet, which a fan fiction game of Yume Nikki. I found it to be a deeply moving piece and unlike any other interactive narrative

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51:44

#1155: Polymorf’s Multi-Sensory “Symbiosis” Explores...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

Polymorf's Symbiosis is a multi-sensory VR experience that uses soft-body haptics, a bespoke, microdose smell dispersal system, and different tastes. The piece debuted at IDFA DocLab 2021 (see my previous interview here), and it has a sold out run in Portland, Oregon from November 12 to February 12 at the Portland Art Museum's Center for an Untold Tomorrow (PAM CUT). There are 6 different characters that you can embody in this "speculative fabulation" inspired by the last chapter of Donna Haraway's

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36:58

#1154: Visualizing Melting Glaciers in 360 Video...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/22

Once a Glacier is a 360 video that visualizes the before and after a glacier melts over the course of a single human life time. Director Jiabao then expanded this piece as a part of a live motion capture dance performance that showed at The ONX + DocLab MoCap Stage at IDFA 2022. I interviewed her at IDFA to talk about the evolution of this project, working with indigenous poet Joan Naviyuk Kane, recording sounds of a melting glacier, and how she wanted to juxtapose geological time with the time of a

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56:13

#1153: Imagining the Future of a 15-year old in 30...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/12

Horizon is a one-on-one immersive theater piece where an audience member is asked a series of questions by a 15-year old to imagine their future 30 years from now in 2052. It ends up being a world building exercise where the audience has to create an imaginal future for the next generation, but it also works as a broader metaphor for the intergenerational legacy that will be inheriting by future generations. I found it to be both very challenging and confronting to translate my thoughts about the

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1:14:43

#1152: Provoking Deeper Questions about the...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/12

This episode kicks off my 18-episode coverage from International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA) DocLab, which features the latest innovations of immersive storytelling from the documentary community. Okawari VR is an immersive experience exploring overconsumption, and asks some deeper questions about the ecological sustainability of XR technology. The co-directors of Landia Egal (Tiny Planets) and Amaury La Burthe (Novelab) are challenging the inevitability of technology evolution and

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51:33

#1151: Shooting an Immersive Doc the War on Ukraine’s...

Voices of VR ·

2022/12/01

You Destroy. We Create: The War on Ukraine’s Culture is a 360-video documentary by NowHere Media & Meta’s VR for Good that was released on Meta Quest TV on November 30th. Shot over the course of 2 weeks and a distance of 4000 kilometers by co-directors Gayatri Parameswaran and Felix Gaedtke (producers of Home After War and Kusunda), this piece documents the story of how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegally targeting cultural heritage sites and shows how artists and museums are reacting to the

en-US

1:02:17

#1150: Innerworld VR: Scaling Peer-to-Peer Counseling...

Voices of VR ·

2022/11/10

Noah Robinson’s Inner World launches today on the Quest Store after slowly cultivating an engaged peer-to-peer counseling community that is providing affordable mental health interventions across multiple social VR and 2D platforms on Mac, PC & iOS. Robinson is getting his Ph.D. in clinical psychology, and Inner World is a research project studying how the effects of what he calls “Cognitive Behavioral Immersion,” which is an adaptation of Aaron T. Beck’s Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Model. Robinson

en-US

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