Voices of VR

Kent Bye
  • 4.8 (172)
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  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY
Voices of VR

Since May 2014, Kent Bye has published over 1000 Voices of VR podcast interviews featuring the pioneering artists, storytellers, and technologists driving the resurgence of virtual & augmented reality. He's an oral historian, experiential journalist, & aspiring philosopher, helping to define the patterns of immersive storytelling, experiential design, ethical frameworks, & the ultimate potential of XR.

  1. DEC 2

    #1494: Innovative VR Opera “From Dust” Combines GenAI Prompts, Digital Serenading, & Personality Branching

    From Dust is a 24-minute VR Opera by composer Michel van der Aa that is premiering this week at the Rotterdam Immersive Tech Week, and I had a chance to get a sneak peak at the end of my trip covering IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam. The emotional core of From Dust is the top-notch composition from van der Aa and brilliant musical performance by Sjaella. It was a really powerful and moving immersive journey that seamlessly integrated my GenAI prompts creating a personalized experience. I can highly recommend checking it out to see where immersive music experiences are headed here in the future. The throughput of this piece is only 3-4 people per hour, and so it may be hard to be able to see it once they start touring it around Europe to different musical festivals. van der Aa told me that this is the lease commercial project that he's had a chance to ever work on, and acknowledges that this is a piece of subsidized art. There have been a lot of broader discussions happening within the XR industry about the sustainability of these types of location-based experiences, and the need for creators to understand some of the more pragmatic financial constraints for exhibition taking into consideration earlier in the production process. I'm in the process of finishing up the public report from the Think Tank at Venice Immersive this year on this very issue, and the MIT Open Documentary Lab is also actively starting to study these types of distribution questions as well at the R&D Summit at IDFA DocLab this year. But at the same time, it's also great to see artists who are able to get this type of work funded who are willing to push the virtual reality medium to the limits of creative expression despite some of the financial impracticalities of exhibition. Especially as it may drive the adaptation of this type of work into a format like the Apple Vision Pro or PCVR where it can be within a form factor that is a lot more scalable, even if there are compromises on fidelity or on the GenAI elements using the open source LLM of Flux that can not be distributed Steam due to Valve's restrictions on AI integrations within games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig9VqdLW9X0 I had a chance to catch up with van der Aa last week in order to get more context on his journey and process on creating the piece, as well as get some elaboration on the degree on some of the branching mechanics. There are some questions that they ask during the onboarding process that categorize the user's Big Five Personality characteristics, and then they are creating some invisible branching of my experience that was completely imperceptible to me. van der Aa told me that about 75% of the musical experience is the same for everyone, but that there are some explicit and implicit branching that is happening musically, but also a bit more visually as they are integrating my GenAI prompts in 4-5 different places throughout the experience. It's certainly an innovative and ambitious piece that has some GenAI parallels to Tulpamancer from Venice 2023, but one that shows the potential of combining musical composition with these types of immersive adventures that are able to tell a much richer story when combined. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    57 min

  2. NOV 14

    #1493: “About a Hero” Doc Written by AI Trained on Werner Herzog Corpus Blends Realities and Opens IDFA

    About a Hero is a documentary that reenacts an imaginal, true crime documentary script written by an AI language model that was trained on a corpus of Werner Herzog content. It's a film that blends and blurs the lines between what's physically-captured, documentary material versus completely constructed and fabricated content generated by AI. It's the opening night documentary film at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam, and it's also featured within the DocLab Spotlight. I had a chance to talk with director Piotr Winiewicz and producer Mads Damsbo about the process of making this piece as well as the set of rules that they created for themselves in order to make it a true collaboration between man and machine.Also be sure to check out my interview with the DocLab curators talking about all 28 projects in this year's selection. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    36 min

  3. NOV 13

    #1492: IDFA DocLab Curators Preview 2024 Slate of AI & XR Immersive Documentaries

    I speak with the curators of the 28 immersive documentary projects being featured at the 18th edition of IDFA DocLab including Caspar Sonnen, Nina van Doren, and Toby Coffey. The theme of this year's program is "This is Not a Simulation," and there were many immersive projects that featured AI this year. We talked about each of the experiences in this year's program, except for the three projects I've previously covered at Venice Immersive 2024 (All I Know About Teacher Li, Fragile Home, & Impulse: Play with Reality) . We also briefly discussed the IDFA campaign around being complicit and challenging neutrality. For more information on each of the pieces in this year's program,, then be sure to check out the time stamps below to hear what the curators have to say. 12:15You Can Sing Me on My Way 15:01AI & ME 17:59About a Hero 22:54Oryza: Healing Ground 26:26Future Botanica 27:42Ancestors 31:00Drift 32:58Burn from Absence 36:13Sincerely, Victor Pike 37:22Limbophobia 40:20Ancestral Secret VR 41:04Drinking Brecht: an Automated Laboratory Performance 45:21Dollhouse for Queer Imaginaries 46:36The Liminal 49:38Me, A Depiction 53:55Walking Alone, Text You When I’m Home 56:00Rapture II – Portal 57:12ROAMance 60:02Speechless Witness of a Wandering Tree 61:52Thanks for Being Here 66:41Entropic Fields of Displacement 70:08Google Volume 2 71:46Sena, and Their Garden 73:20Töngö Sondi 75:33Bad Trip This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    1h 25m

  4. NOV 13

    #1491: Film Gate Interactive Media Festival 10-Year Retrospective

    Film Gate Interactive celebrated their 10-year anniversary in 2023, and I had a chance to get a retrospective recap from founder and curator Diliana Alexander as well as with board members Savannah Niles and James Powderly. Their 11th edition of Film Gate Interactive is happening December 4-8th, 2024 and so be sure to check out their sponsorship deck for more context on the many different partnerships and collaborations that Alexander has set up in this unique regional immersive festival. We talk about the curation process, the unique character of Miami and the various immersive excursions to explore the city, and a retrospective look at the founding and evolution of this cultivation of the immersive community within the unique cauldron and culture of Miami. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    27 min

  5. OCT 31

    #1490: “Any War Any Enemy” is a Beautiful Anti-War, Immersive Poem About Nuclear Annihilation

    Lena Herzog's Any War Any Enemy is a hauntingly beautiful spatial poem that takes us on a liminal journey about nuclear annihilation. Rather than disassociating and letting power structures sleepwalk us all into catastrophe, she explores a new form of transcendental anti-war protest by leaning into an underlying existential angst that doesn't turn away from the human costs. It's a cautionary tale that serves as a wake-up call about the insanity of mutually-assured destruction, and an opportunity to use VR to ground apocalyptic abstractions into an embodied experience that allows us to bear witness to possible futures that should be avoided at all costs. I previously spoke with Herzog about her first VR piece Last Whispers in 2019 about the extinction of languages. This piece is about the potential extinction of all of humanity via nuclear annihilation, and she's working in the third piece in her trilogy that is aiming to end on a more positive and optimistic note. I had a chance to catch up with Herzog virtually to unpack more about her process of creating this piece, and how she's exploring the more poetic and metaphoric dream logic within her immersive, anti-war poem.

    1h 7m

  6. OCT 6

    #1489: “Gorilla Tag” Design Philosophy & Embodied Gameplay Deep Dive with Kerestell Smith

    I interviewed Kerestell Smith, Chief Creative Officer at Another Axiom and original solo creator of Gorilla Tag, at Meta Connect 2024. Another Axiom announced in June that Gorilla Tag has surpassed $100 million in lifetime revenue. We talk about the journey into creating Gorilla Tag, the underlying design philosophy of emphasizing embodied gameplay and proprioceptive consistency, as well as what's coming next in their follow-on title of Orion Drift. See more context in the rough transcript below. Since this is the last episode in my series from Meta Connect 2024, then here's a list of all 20+ interviews and 12+ hours of my coverage from this year: #1468: Kickoff of Meta Connect 2024 Coverage with Orion AR Glasses Hands-on Impressions with Tested's Norm Chan & CNET's Scott Stein #1469: Analyst Anshel Sag on Meta Connect Announcements & Orion Glasses Impressions #1470: Meta's Hyperscape Serves Cloud-Rendered, Photo Gaussian Splat Captures #1471: Tyriel Wood & Zimtok5 on Oculus Quest 3S Tradeoffs with Quest 3 #1472: VR Training Trends Using AI with Virti's Courtney Harding #1473: Learn XR's Dilmer Valecillos on Teaching XR Development & Meta Connect Announcement Impressions #1474: Teaching Immersive Storytelling at ASU's Narrative and Emerging Media Program with Nonny de la Peña & Mary Matheson #1475: A-Frame's Diego Marcos on WebXR Momentum and Integrations with Open Source AI #1476: UploadVR Editor Ian Hamilton's Deep Reflections: AR vs VR, Ethical Dilemmas, & Future of Meta's Algorithmic Realities #1477: Flat2VR Studios' Journey of Bringing 2D Games to VR with Eric Masher #1478: Agile Lens 2018: The Intersection of Architecture, Theatre, & Storytelling with Alex Coulombe #1479: Agile Lens 2023: Selling High-End Real Estate with VR, Unreal's Meta Humans. Pixel Streaming, & AI Experiments #1480: Agile Lens 2023: Hands on with Four Seasons VR Demo & A Christmas Carol VR 2023 #1481: Agile Lens 2024: Context on Boz's Apology to VR Devs, Orion AR Glasses Impressions, & Unreal Engine Mediation with Apple/Meta #1482: Mixed Reality Gameplay Innovations & Design Insights from "Starship Home" Co-Directors Mark Schramm & Ashley Pinnick #1483: Dimensional Double Shift Combines Multi-Player Co-Op, "Job Simulator" Gameplay, & Hand Tracking #1484: Cas & Chary on Meta Connect Announcements & Using Ray-Ban Meta Smartglasses to Stay Connected #1485: Fitness Flow States with "Starwave" Design Innovation Leads & Finding Love within VR #1486: Going All in with Gaussian Splats: Gracia's Viewer, AI Training, & Photoreal Capture with VR Fund's Tipatat Chennavasin #1487: XR Evangelists JoyReign & JDun on Horizon World Trends & Meta Connect Announcements #1488: Nima Zeighami on Delivering WebXR Content with Infinite Reality's Ethereal Engine Acquisition #1489: Gorilla Tag Design Philosophy & Embodied Gameplay Deep Dive with Kerestell Smith Here's the launch trailer for Gorilla Tag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivwQ2DUjcHI Here's a developer snapshot preview of their next title of Orion Drift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xjnw_skc9g This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

    1h 6m

  7. OCT 6

    #1488: Nima Zeighami on Delivering WebXR Content with Infinite Reality’s Ethereal Engine Acquisition

    I interviewed Nima Zeighami, VP of Product at Infinite Reality, at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    14 min

  8. OCT 6

    #1487: XR Evangelists JoyReign & JDun on Horizon World Trends & Meta Connect Announcements

    I interviewed XR Evangelists JoyReign Creator of Joy In The Morning Show and CEO of Onyx Leaf Media as well as JDun of the Getting Things Dun YouTube channel, Get'Em To The Metaverse Podcast, & Chief Metaverse Officer of Onyx Leaf Media, at Meta Connect 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's the Question HDMI video that JDun mentioned in the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8QDvoEJLps This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

    46 min
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4.8
out of 5
172 Ratings

About

Since May 2014, Kent Bye has published over 1000 Voices of VR podcast interviews featuring the pioneering artists, storytellers, and technologists driving the resurgence of virtual & augmented reality. He's an oral historian, experiential journalist, & aspiring philosopher, helping to define the patterns of immersive storytelling, experiential design, ethical frameworks, & the ultimate potential of XR.

Information

  • Creator
    Kent Bye
  • Years Active
    2014 - 2024
  • Episodes
    199
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Voices of VR

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