I interviewed All I Know About Teacher Li director Zhuzmo at Venice Immersive 2024. Due to the sensitivities of the topic of Chinese censorship, then the director Zhuzmo has requested that he remain anonymous. I did an interview face to face with them in Venice, got a transcript, and then fed the text back into a text-to-speech AI at Eleven Labs in…

I interviewed The Guardians Of Jade Mountain director Hayoun Kwon and producer Richard Turco at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed Play Life (Žaisti Gyvenimą) co-directors Zilvinas Naujokas, Vilius Petrauskas, and Mantas Pronckus at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc2KspZgGRkThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Mamie Lou director Isabelle Andreani at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's her artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJT99fqzyiwThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed Body of Mine director Cameron Kostopoulos at Venice Immersive 2024 about his impact campaign since winning a special jury prize at SXSW 2023 (see my first interview with him here.). He showed Body of Mine as a part of the competition at Venice Immersive 2023, and he was back on the Immersive Island this year pitching his latest projec…

I interviewed Une Eau La Nuit (Bodies Of Water) co-directors Chélanie Beaudin-Quintin and Caroline Laurin-Beaucage with producer Laurence Wells at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here is their artist statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_XVyHOle3YThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of …

I interviewed The Art Of Change co-directors Simone Fougnier and Vincent Rooijers with producer Peter Ariet at Venice Immersive 2024. I had a chance to get an early look at this piece, and I watched it three times before stepping foot on the island. I absolutely loved this piece, and it was at the top of my personal favorites from the festival. I f…

I interviewed In The Realm Of Ripley director Soo Eung Chuck Chae at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnFZyQ3S4vsThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed Project: Lost Worlds director Fins at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed Venice Immersive Worlds Gallery Producer Mike Salmon at Venice Immersive 2024 about this year's selection of 20 VRChat worlds as well as his process of scouting promising leads and trends of world building, music, art, and immersive storytelling.. See more context in the rough transcript below.This is a listener-supported podcast thro…

I interviewed Uncanny Alley: A New Day co-directors Rick Treweek and Stephen Butchko along with Ferryman Collective's Deirdre V. Lyons and Christopher Lane Davis at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Duchampiana director Lilian Hess at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here is their artist statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX8app5_XtIThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed Rencontres director Mathieu Pradat at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVnsFWIUgp4This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed Project_y: Working Title co-directors Yuzo Sugano, Taro Hirai, and Shingo Yoshimura at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-XngO8EebsThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Address Unknown: Fukushima Now director Arif Khan at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's his artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP5rHv7x7goThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed What If…? - An Immersive Story director Dave Bushore at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. What If...? also picked up an Emmy for Outstanding Innovation In Emerging Media Programming as awarded by a juried portion of the Emerging Media Programming Peer Group of the Academy of Television Arts & Scien…

I interviewed Strangeways co-director Adam Lieber, developers Dale P Deacon and Alex Bossman, as well as avatar creator Egbert Harm Westra at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbu54ULcUC0This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR P…

I interviewed Earths To Come director Rose Bond at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's her artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w871q2dmKx4This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed Free UR Head director Tung yen Chou at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcb_EFwm_aEThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed The Gossips' Chronicles director Corinne Mazzoli and producer Marta Bianchi at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuMwoawxscsThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis: Sentience co-directors Tosca Terán and Brendan Lehman at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PzZXrqncsYThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Un Soir Avec Les Impressionnistes, Paris 1874 director Pierre Gable at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJaTpgZEAqAThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Emissive / Excurio co-founder and CEO Fabien Barati at Laval Virtual 2023 after having tried the free-roaming Immersive Expedition edition of Éternelle Notre-Dame, which was really quite incredible. I originally saw the sit-down version of Éternelle Notre-Dame at Venice Immersive 2022, but the free-roaming, immersive expedition versio…

I interviewed Below Deck co-directors Martina Mahlknecht and Martin Prinoth at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tJmhkJC05QThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Somewhere Unknown In Indochina co-directors Asio Chihsiung Liu and Feng Ting Tsou at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. (Note that I'll likely need to manually clean up this rough transcript as WhisperX seemed to be having some difficulties detecting speaker changes on this one.)Here's their artist'…

I interviewed Fragile Home director Ondrej Moravec at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. There were also allegations of copyright infringement that were made within the context of a private WhatsApp group during the festival, and Moravec distributed an official statement privately to selected people privately on …

I interviewed Champ De Bataille director Francois Vautier at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's his artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37k4gIfTdawThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed Ceci Est Mon Cœur (This is My Heart) co-directors Stephane Hueber-Blies and Nicolas Blies at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf3909F8UI8This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Nightmara: Episode 3 director Gianpaolo Gonzalez at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's his artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcgxlKjMN2sThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom creators from Bandai Namco Filmworks including Naohiro Ogata, Kiichiro Inoue, Ken Iyadomi as well as Atlas V producers Arnaud Colinart and Julien Bercy, and technical art director Gaël Chaize at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:http…

I interviewed A Simple Silence director Craig Quintero at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's his artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDqtTyBuuUAThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: FatalityBởi Kent Bye

I interviewed Impulse: Playing With Reality co-directors May Abdalla and Barry Gene Murphy at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's the official launch trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apgQxXwx7WEThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Mammary Mountain co-directors Tara Baoth Mooney, Camille C. Baker, and Maf'j Alvarez at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThEkIrqgDK0This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Telos I co-directors Emil Dam Seidel and Dorotea Saykaly at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's their artist's statement:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVKFzca5jjcThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Garden Alchemy co-directors Michelle Kranot and Uri Kranot at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.Here's the artist's statement.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WgHtYWZoQsThis is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

I interviewed Riven's creative director Eric Anderson and development director Hannah Gamiel ahead of Venice Immersive 2024 since it was being featured within the Best of Selection. See more context in the rough transcript below.This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.Music: Fatality…

The 8th edition of the Venice Immersive 2024 will be kicking off on August 28th, which will be featuring over 28 hours of immersive storytelling and immersive art content across over 70 different projects. This year there area a lot more immersive installations representing over a third out of the total number of on-site projects (18 out of the 52)…

The Night Under Lights Presents: The Seasons at the Moon Pool (replayable VRChat link and video) shown during Raindance Immersive was one of the most immersive music experiences I've ever had in VR so far. It was so awe-inspiring and incredible to see 3 DJ / VJ sets using the SNR Labs particle-screen version of their holographic Apple Global Illumi…

SoftlySteph's The Friction of a Modulated Soul took home the Best Dance Experience at Raindance Immersive in a groundbreaking performance that tells the "story about the different cages that bind us from our authentic truth." It's a piece that completely blew me away with it's technological innovations, her fluid and emotionally-driven dance, a mov…

There was a new holographic shader developed by members of SNR Labs group on VRChat that completely blew me away in how it was used in a couple of performances at Raindance Immersive. It's like a new form of volumetric capture that also has lighting effects, and can be used in translating 2D images into 3D or capturing low-res 3D objects into a sor…

Shadow Canyon: A Puppeteer's Tale is a unique blend of VRChat Worldbuilding by nprowler, immersive dance performances by students of the VR Dance Academy founded by Dust Bunny, and then improv actors and immersive theatre staging led by Mycana. Overall, it was such a unique blend of different disciplines that the curators of Raindance Immersive awa…

FlowersRite (花之祭P) is a music producer, 3D artist, cosplayer, and VRChat world builder who won the Best Music Experience at Raindance Immersive 2024 with her experience called Children of the Seed. Within a couple of days of discovering VR in 2019, she had bought a PC, HTC Vive, and Vive Trackers to do full-body tracking, and has slowly been transi…

Medra is the CEO and founder of the Creator Jam, which is a non-profit that's been consistently organizing weekly and monthly collaborative-building events within the social VR platform of Resonite (and originally within Neos VR) since June 2, 2019. Resonite's technological architecture allows for the rendering and editing of content in real-time i…

The VRChat world Suku took home the Best Art World prize at Raindance Immersive 2024, and it's by Durk van der Meer who is a freelance digital artist, character artist, and VR world builder based in Curaçao. Suku blends together elements of Caribbean culture and geography with Dutch colonial architecture combined with a sort of psychedelic Studio G…

K. Guillory (aka Aemeth) has been writing The Metaculture online magazine since August 13, 2021 with over 70 articles covering the latest trends in arts and culture on social VR platforms such as VRChat. She focuses primarily on the live music and performance scenes, but also has been tracking the historical evolution of the underground clubbing sc…

Doug North Cook is the CEO and Creative Director for Creature, which is both an immersive game studio and label announced a year ago that's representing 10 different XR studios and 16 projects slated as far out as 2027. Creature had four different projects with announcements as a part of the UploadVR Summers Showcase 2024 on June 26th that included…

Thrasher is a really compelling VR game with a very satisfying and magical core game mechanic inspired by ribbon dancing. It's the latest VR game from Brian Gibson, who designed the art and music for the VR rhythm game Thumper, as he teamed up with former Harmonix co-worker Mike Mandel via Puddle Studio. Thrasher was also partially inspired by the …

Laser Dance is a mixed reality game by solo XR game developer Thomas van Bouwel, who previously released minimalist puzzle game called Cubism. I had a chance to try out Laser Dance through Raindance Immersive, and it's one of those types of games that I think will really help define some of the key affordances of successful mixed reality games that…

Madame Kana is a French, transgender woman and VReporter who has been publishing a new documentary about VRChat every 2-3 weeks for the past year on her YouTube channel, and she won the Discovery Award this year at Raindance Immersive 2024 for her short film called New Eden Evergarden; Behind the Magic. She published a 39-minute documentary about l…

BabyBonito is an artist, avatar creator and worldbuilder within VRChat who participant different VRChat communities including a creative collective in VR called GlitchesVR, which has a substack that covers the latest in virtual culture. As a classically trained artist Bonito first got into VR through the process of creating her own avatars, which h…