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 transitioning into becoming a professional 3D artist. She has published 11 VRChat worlds since August 2019, including The Great Inventor Escape, which was featured in the Worlds Gallery at Venice Immersive 2022.
She was building the world for Children of the Seed at the same time as she was composing the music in a creative process where the VRChat world building directly feed into the creation of the lore and backstory that directly inspired the development of the music. The end result is a majestic performance space and auditorium that’s suspended in a dark forest that the audience has to move up in vertical space through a series of ramps and stairs to get it. The audience sits in a semi-circle while she stands on a island-like stage in the middle performing as a DJ / VJ controlling a series of in-world effects like rain as well as circles of light and organic shapes that slowly transition each of the movements that are demarcated with their name in a floating text overlay.
I had a chance to catch up with FlowersRite to get more context about her journey into VR, some of the different VRChat worlds she’s created over the past 5 years, and how her world building creative process influenced the development of The Children of the Seed. At this point, she hasn’t uploaded a replayable version of her musical performance in VRChat yet, but you can listen to her music in this 2D music video of Children of the Seed that has a completely different art style and experience than what was shown in VRChat during Raindance Immersive 2024.
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Music: Fatality
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:11.863] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bai, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So in today's episode, we're diving into the best music experience from Rain Dance Immersive 2024. It's by FlowersRite, and it's a piece called Children of the Seed. So Fathers Right is a music producer and 3D artist and cosplayer, but also a VRChat world builder. And she's been building different VRChat worlds, about 11 of them, since August of 2019, including a number of different horror experiences and a piece called The Great Inventor Escape that showed at Venice Immersive 2022, which has some puzzle game mechanics and a narrative game as well. And so FlowersRite actually started as a musician and music producer. And as she got more and more into building VRChat worlds, then there's this interesting interplay where she is building out these exhibition spaces and virtual worlds for people to go in and experience some of her music. And so it's really going hand in hand as she's using the ability to take people into these other worlds and then how that is kind of feeding back into her music. She had an eight movement piece called Children of the Seed, and she actually has a YouTube link that has a separate animation to it because a lot of the virtual world that she created for this piece just really doesn't translate into the 2D medium. It's really quite an expansive, awe-inspiring place that she created where you spawn into this big building and people are kind of hanging out. And then we all rush up into a series of different stairs and ramps, basically this theater and auditorium that's hanging from the tops of these trees. So it's really quite an awe-inspiring journey to even get into the music performance. And then as she's performing, then she has different lighting effects and rain that comes in, but also the titles of the eight different movements from the introduction, the rain prayers, divine rain. Ritual Dance, Wanderer of the Woods, Awakening Spirits, Guardian of the Great Roots, Overseer from High Above. And so each of these movement titles are giving a sense of the arc of the story that she's telling throughout the course of this piece of music. A lot of the lore is kind of oblique. It's difficult to kind of discern what the actual story is. But I think the point is that there's a huge backstory that's inspiring her to create both the music and the worlds. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Fires Right happened on Thursday, July 11th, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:40.091] FlowersRite: Hi, I'm FlowersRite. I'm a music writer and a 3D artist. I produce original music and post to my music channel on Bilibili, which is a Chinese version of YouTube, basically, and also create a virtual environment and experiences and upload them to VRChat. I've been writing music for 12 years, and I just recently developed my 3D modeling skill after I discovered VRChat about five years ago.
[00:03:06.311] Kent Bye: Great. Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into it. Sure.
[00:03:09.852] FlowersRite: Absolutely. Before VR basically invaded my life, my main art form was music. I played piano when I was a kid, like all other Asian kids. That's how I learned the basic knowledge of music theories. And I believe it was like in year 2011 or 2012. Yamaha announced a Chinese Vocaloid singer, her name was Luo Tianyi. That's when I decided to give it a try and create songs and started uploading music to Bilibili. But yeah, for people who don't know, a Vocaloid is a voice synthesizer and the most well-known one, a singer, being Hatsune Miku. But yeah, I would write music and then collaborate with lyrics writers, 2D artists, and video editors to make a music video of it. But yeah, at first, I would use Vocaloid exclusively for the vocals. But after karaoke-ing a lot with my other friends in later years in VRChat, I discovered that, wow, maybe I can sing too. Yeah, I then started to sing for my own songs. And for my music, actually, in general, I have always been a storyteller when it comes to art. For the same reason I like to create music with lures in it. It's like creating a fantasy world, but with only music and 2D visuals. Even for those instrumental pieces I wrote, I want people to feel like they're on a journey when they listen to them. But sometimes I feel really restrained because I was thinking to myself that, is there maybe a better way of delivering my messages or telling my stories? Or how can I bring people closer to my world? But yeah, I would like to ask these questions all the time to myself. So when I discovered VR, I immediately fell for it, basically. Yeah, that's my music side.
[00:05:08.922] Kent Bye: would you say that you got into building 3d VR worlds and avatars because of your music, or maybe just elaborate a little bit more as to like your early turning points for why you started to get into virtual reality?
[00:05:23.072] FlowersRite: I would say my music was because I only knew music back then. I didn't know other forms of art, basically. And I always wanted to bring people into my world more. So that's why when I discovered VRChat, I realized, oh, wow, I can make people immerse into my world so much more than just my music, which relies more on people's imagination, basically.
[00:05:51.952] Kent Bye: So how did you first come across VR? Just talk a little bit about like, how did you first hear about it? Because going into VR with PC VR and all the different gear, just talk about like, what was the turning point or the catalyst for you to really dive in headfirst into what's happening on the scene and VR chat?
[00:06:07.372] FlowersRite: Of course. So I'd say it was about five years ago, I came across a video about VRChat on YouTube. I was immediately drawn into the concept of being able to create virtual worlds and explore virtual reality with friends. while being in an avatar created by oneself. It was like a dream to me to know such game existed. And it was actually a funny story. I actually went to a local VR game arcade the very next day after I discovered VRChat, and I tried a VR headset for the first time. And I was immediately blown away by the fact that my brain was completely convinced that I was in another world. Yeah, I remember I bought one hour of gameplay in the arcade and then I spent the entire hour being in the tutorial environment, just looking around and look down to my hands and controllers. I would imagine the employees there was really confused when they're looking at the monitor camera. But yeah, after I got off the arcade, I drove to a local PC store and bought a HTC Vive, the first version of it, and then three Vive trackers on the way home. So basically from learning about VRChat to getting a headset and full body tracking took me less than two days. I basically speed ran it.
[00:07:35.490] Kent Bye: Wow. Okay. So you saw something that blew your mind and then you dove headfirst into full body track VR. That may be close to a world record there.
[00:07:45.935] FlowersRite: Yeah. Cause that was my dream from childhood. Always imagine like a game being like this and I suddenly discovered this and then yeah, it made my dream come true basically.
[00:07:56.926] Kent Bye: Okay, back in like June 19th of 2020, I see that you published a VR chat world called Beijing Streets. Was this the first experience that you had uploaded or is there other ones that you had started to make things?
[00:08:09.474] FlowersRite: My first ever world, that was actually an environment world called Flowers Grand Library, I believe. And then that was the first time trying to build stuff in Unity. But yeah, I spent the first few months learning the basics of Unity after I discovered VRChat. And I made the world using a plugin that allows you to do some simple 3D modeling and texturing inside of Unity called ProBuilder, which I do not recommend. I didn't start with Blender right away because I thought ProBuilder was very easy to use. But it turned out that Blender was even easier to use and much more versatile. But yeah, after that, I just tried to create more worlds with storytelling element in it. to a point that I was comfortable enough to make my first horror map called Purify. Yeah, and then from there, I just started my worldbuilding journey. Great.
[00:09:05.812] Kent Bye: And so it looks like that you started to publish some of your first VRChat worlds. August 9th, 2019, you had the Flowers Grand Library. And then just four months later, you had Flowers Grand Castle on December 12th, 2019. And then eventually the Beijing Streets in June 19th of 2020. And so... It sounds like you were using some of the tools and Unity, but then at what point did you start actually modeling things within Blender? Was it in that Purify horror experience?
[00:09:32.244] FlowersRite: I always used Blender for my avatar to merge my clothes and stuff, but I never tried to model stuff in Blender. It was at some point that I discovered that ProBuilder was not enough for me because you can only do so much in the plugin. Whenever you want to do more rounded objects, you can't really do with ProBuilder because It's basically for like a quick level design in Unity. People don't actually use the plugin for like modeling stuff. Yeah, and then actually my first world that I built with Blender is called Vertical Hangar 41, which I published three years ago, I believe. It was like a hangar with some sort of steampunk aircraft parked in the hangar. And then I was just trying to like see what can I achieve with Blender and then how far can I go? And then actually did my first render in Unreal Engine instead of Unity. I did that first. But yeah, just for like maybe my future portfolio. Yeah.
[00:10:39.335] Kent Bye: Okay. And it sounds like that you really also dove in headfirst into actually creating all these different worlds. And so, you know, a big part of creating art is to have other people see it and to get feedback. And so talk a bit about the process of you publishing these worlds to VRChat and what kind of feedback were you getting from publishing all these different worlds?
[00:11:00.354] FlowersRite: Because in my early ages, I always share my worlds to my friends. So initially, because I was using the ProBuilder plugin from VRChat World, and there's an unofficial event called Community Meetup in VRChat, which happens every Sunday. So basically, the event is... It's like an organized world hub, which allows creators to show off their worlds. And then I would just bring my worlds to community meetup. And people usually were surprised that I built my worlds in ProBuilder because generally people don't make the plugin for complicated designs. For example, my Kingdom of Titania world, I built all the buildings in ProBuilder and then... I didn't realize why people were surprised, but after I learned Blender, which is so much easier to do, like all the things I did in ProBuilder, and then I realized that I was making a really big detour in my journey of modeling.
[00:12:06.621] Kent Bye: Okay. And there's a number of different horror experiences that you have in the 11 or 12 experiences that you've published. You have Purify or Horror Escape that you did in July of 2020, Obsession VR Horror that you first published in February of 2021. And then one of your other horror experiences that you published on October 20th, 2023 was Mayfly. And so had you been looking at some of the other VR horror experiences or what was it that drew you towards publishing VR horror experiences on VRChat?
[00:12:37.990] FlowersRite: One of my main goals of making horror maps is that, because usually when you make a horror map, it's easier to gain an audience, basically, because people seek for those worlds. And then back then, horror maps were kind of hard to find in VRChat, especially the good ones are really... really hard to find. So that's why I think to myself that maybe I can learn like more complicated triggers and I can maybe make my own horror maps and then try to gain more audience basically. So I started to look into the SDK2 trigger system and I'm really grateful that VRChat make the SDK2 trigger system very beginner friendly. Especially, I'm really proud of my passcode system, which is really dumb. I use it for so many of my horror maps, and it's only made of on and off triggers. It's basically a caveman passcode system. So what I did was I used Unity GameObjects' folders. And I stack the folders one by one like Russian nesting dolls, whereas the deepest folder contains a trigger that plays whatever happens next. And all the folders are off by default. And then if you input the correct code, you turn on one folder, and then you input the wrong code, it turns off every single folder, which resets everything. But yeah, it's really simple, but works super well. But the only downside is that the order doesn't matter. So you can have the first code and then third code instead of the first one and second one and then the third one. But yeah, it works well for me because a lot of my puzzles are just choosing correct objects from a bunch of other objects. And even when we updated to SDK3, which is Houdon, I used the same logic with silent triggers, which is a... How do I explain this? It's a Unity compiler that imitates the SDK2 style triggers. So basically you can code using the old VRChat SDK2 trigger system style.
[00:14:52.210] Kent Bye: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I know that cyan trigger, he was one of the four ponies that worked on the devouring and a lot of the tools that cyan laser built with the cyan trigger part of the VRC prefabs community. So at what point did you come across the prefabs community in terms of other people that were making these types of tools that you could use?
[00:15:13.280] FlowersRite: I think everything starts with the community meetup events because I go to them very often and like every time I have a new world I will go to the community meetup and I show off my world and I think it's a great event to like connect with all the creators there and then sometimes you see like a really cool world and then people are really accepting too. Yeah, and then that's when I was reached out by one of the members there, and then they invited me to the amazing community, basically. And then whenever I come across a problem, I would just ask them in the Discord. And then, like, always there's someone to help me with my silly issues.
[00:15:57.952] Kent Bye: Nice. And it's certainly a great community and resource for people who are really helpful in sharing their knowledge about how to navigate the VRChat SDKs. Your great inventor escape about Tesla, I had a chance to see that when I was at Venice in 2022. And I guess you released it earlier back in May 1st of 2022. And that was a really ambitious series of puzzles, exploring both the environmental design, but also telling a story and Yeah, just maybe give a little bit more context for how that project came about.
[00:16:30.600] FlowersRite: Of course, yeah. So it was a few years ago, I watched a movie about Nikola Tesla and then I was really inspired by this great inventor. And then apparently people know the car, like Tesla, but like a lot of people don't know the inventor himself. And that's when I decided to do some research and then create a world about him. like the entire project took longer than i expected because the first few months i i had to do research on this person on this inventor and i ended up spending around like three months reading a whole book of him to know what happened to his life and then like what are the main events and then so that i can try to incorporate the stories into puzzles and then i started like modeling inside of blender because there are like several scenes that i remember very vividly from the book and from the movie and then Oh yeah, because initially when I was making the world, that was during the period of me trying to transition from music creator to full time 3D modeler. So actually one of the main goal of making that world is to create a visual portfolio for my future jobs. And that's why I decided to just model everything, like every single mesh in the world was completely modeled by myself. Yeah. And then I was looking at the movie and also the historical pictures of where the main events happened in Tesla's life. And I just make them into like scenes. And then I had to do some adjustments because when you're designing a level, you can't just use a real place for the puzzles. And you have to consider gameplay and then how to incorporate the puzzles inside of the virtual environment.
[00:18:38.407] Kent Bye: Okay. So it sounds like from the very beginning, you really dove head in first and created about a dozen worlds that you had published over the last five years or so. And so have you been able to transition into making more avatars or doing world commissions, or have you been able to translate that into doing more work within 3D?
[00:18:59.918] FlowersRite: Actually, yes. Because by the time I finished my Tesla world, I really had a really full portfolio for my 3D works. And I was selling avatars back then on booth. And I also put that into my portfolio. And then that made me like found a... job at a tech studio where i do like 3d printing and stuff so basically i make figurines and stuff for them to print and then we sell the coloring experience at the workshop and then that also helped me a lot because i actually learned a lot from like 3d printing myself because um One of my job is to like slide models into printable files. Basically, I operate all the like 3D printers there. And that made me think that, oh, maybe I can use this knowledge for my cosplay too, because I am also like a cosplayer. Cosplay is just... One of my hobbies in my free time, I don't really make money from it because making money from cosplaying is really hard, at least in the Western world. But yeah, I just like to go to conventions and then show off my crafting skill. That's one of the main reasons why I cosplay. And then since I work in this 3D printing company, I learned a lot from them because I know how to 3D print now. And then I... I sort of just incorporate my knowledge from 3D modeling to like 3D printing. And then I just started to make my own 3D printed props. Now, because before people just use like foams and like cardboard, like PVC pipes. And it's really hard to make a really accurate prop from using foam. But now if you use like 3D printing, you can make something really accurate from the film or like from the anime. And then also it's actually really sturdy too. Like you can just swing the prop without breaking it.
[00:20:55.359] Kent Bye: Yeah. So were you into cosplay before you got into VR or do you feel like VR and making these avatars created a pathway for you to translate the virtual into physical? Yeah.
[00:21:09.574] FlowersRite: I used to cosplay a little bit before VR, but that was when I was a kid. And then after VR, after I learned all my skills from the company and then all the skill of 3D modeling, I just discovered that I can show off my 3D modeling skill in the real world too. Yeah, that's why I started cosplaying again, basically.
[00:21:32.486] Kent Bye: Gotcha. And so before we start to dive into Children of the Seed, one of your other horror experiences that you published on October 20th, 2023 was Mayfly. So maybe describe a little bit about your latest published work that you have on VRChat.
[00:21:48.055] FlowersRite: I believe Mayfly was my last world that I uploaded in VRChat. That's when VRChat was having this Halloween horror map jam called Spookality. And then I just decided to make a small world to participate. And since I didn't make a world in a really long time since my last world. Yeah, Mayfly is a really short game. experience. It takes around like 5 to 10 minutes to finish. It was all inspired by this one picture that I found on Twitter. There was an artist who's doing weirdly spooky pictures and weirdly spooky signs. And then there was one sign that really stood out to me. I remember that was like in the forest in daytime, broad daytime. And then there was like a sign in the middle saying, do not look away from the sign, basically. And then For some reason, it really made me scared. And one fun fact is that I'm actually someone who is really bad at playing horror games. And I never go to horror games in VRChat. And I only go to them when my friends bring me to. But yeah, that was the horror map, the initial version of the Mayfly.
[00:23:05.922] Kent Bye: Okay, well, that brings us up to speed with your backlog of published VR chat worlds. And so this year at Raindance 2024, you had a piece called Children of the Seed that actually took home the top prize of the best music experience this year at Raindance 2024. So maybe you could take me back to where did this project begin?
[00:23:26.579] FlowersRite: So Children of the Sea, it all starts with the friend group that I hang out with. So we are a private group who does world hops every day and we try to go to every newly uploaded world in the VRChat. in community labs because there's so many worlds being uploaded every day but most of them are just buried by tens of thousands of other worlds at the end of the day and never to be found anymore so just trying to give these worlds a chance to be discovered and sometimes we do find treasures in them but yeah this is the group we hang out with and they're trying to be private so I can't really name the group but yeah we as a group have also been to a lot of like music events and DJ events. And that made me think that I could create a music performance as well with my own music. That's how I started making the piece called Children of the Seed. And initially it was just a private showing for the group, for the front group, and that would have been the end of the story. But after the private show, a very good friend of mine actually went to Joe, Joe Hunting, and talked about my show and my work. And I was then reached out by the ring dance creation team soon after, and then just started the whole ring dance thing.
[00:24:54.383] Kent Bye: Yeah, I had a chance to see it and you've created all of your music and it's in a number of like a whole orchestration and like symphony that you've created. And then at the same time, it's almost like you're in a tree house or you start off in this big Coliseum and then you have all the audience walk up and It reminded me a lot of Return of the Jedi with the Ewoks with their homes that are up in the trees. So you have this whole stage that's suspended in these treetops. But what was really striking was just the journey walking up there, really creating this sense of awe and wonder in me just because there was so much attention to the onboarding of this music experience. And so I'd love it if you can maybe describe a little bit about your process of not just having people teleport directly into... the world, but to create more of a journey and a story that's unfolding as you have people go to their destination to listen to the piece of music that you composed.
[00:25:52.670] FlowersRite: Yeah. And then I think it all goes back to my goal of making people think that like everything is a journey. And also I was also inspired by one DJ world DJ event called, um, What is the name of it? Shelter? Shelter, yes, shelter. And I really love the way it's like a hidden basement. I really like the way they hide the venue instead of a basement. And then you have to go all the way from a building to the ground level, and then you have to find your way to the venue, I think. Going to the venue itself, it's a journey. And I'm also trying to incorporate that to my experience. I'm trying to make that one part of my experience as well.
[00:26:41.411] Kent Bye: Yeah, I know Ghost Club was another in VR that also had that, like you go in and you are outside the building and there's like this matrix like telephone that you pick up and then you have to find your way to the club. And so, yeah, I think it adds to the sense that you are on a journey and that there's a beginning, middle and end where you have to actually go to this place. And so I remember asking you a question after you performed and I was asking like, where did you begin in creating that world? And you said that you had actually created your performance space first, where people were going to actually listen to the music. And so maybe just talk through the process of designing this world and architecting that journey.
[00:27:20.515] FlowersRite: So basically, I made the whole experience all at once. I was making the music part while thinking about the world. And I make the music and the world kind of the same time. So I was making the music while thinking about the world. And it's kind of intertwined. It's not like that I make one part first and then the other part. They're kind of happening in the same time. And for the world part, Actually, in all my worlds, I like to create a vertical level change instead of just making a flat world. Especially when it comes to city designs, I don't want it to be just a flat city where there's no vertical level change and it's just a flat floor for the entire city. I kind of wanted to have a very interesting vertical composition as well. Yeah, that's why when I was making this venue for Treating of the Seed, I don't want the audience to just walk on the soil. I kind of want them to just be on the bridge where it's really high from the ground. And I also want there to be stairs. where you can just go up and down and then you'll find the vertical level change as well. Because when you're in VR, in the 3D world, as a creator, you want to take advantage of the vertical level changes as well. So that's why I was trying to design a really complicated path to lead to this main theater area. It has basically...
[00:28:59.175] Kent Bye: Yeah, I remember there was this anticipation because everybody's in this circular Coliseum marble building waiting for the gates to be opened. And then the gates opened and then there was a race to go to the final auditorium space. But it does weave around and it's just like this sense of discovery and then After the concert, I actually had walked backwards just to recount all the steps and all the ways that you're really paying attention to having something off in the distance that is not quite clear. But as you go to the final destination, you understand more about how the entire world is architected. And then you can look back and see where you were just at. And so I just was really satisfying the way that you had built it. almost like you would have film cutting through these different scenes. It's like you're moving your body through space and you're using architecture as a way of modulating space to be able to tell a story.
[00:29:55.459] FlowersRite: Right, right. And again, it goes back to me wanting people to feel a journey from the moment they enter the world. I want people to start their journey as soon as they enter the world. And I want the entire time when they're in the world to be one journey.
[00:30:15.009] Kent Bye: Yeah, I really, really felt that. And once you're actually playing through the music, so you're streaming it through the audio in the world and you're at this little DJ booth where you're controlling different lighting effects with these circles that are there and you have rain and fog and other stuff that's coming in. And so you're doing the VJ, the visual jockeying or 3D spatial jockeying where you're modulating some of the visual effects that you have throughout the course of your music experience. So maybe you could talk a bit about designing the visual effects with the different circles of rings. It reminded me of the, I don't know if you've seen the show devs where you're in a forest and you see these big circles that are neon lights, but it kind of reminded me of that aesthetic where you're in nature, but at the same time you have these big glowing circular shapes that are very organic looking, but I'd love to hear you expand a little bit about the visual experience, the VJ and the visual effects that you were doing while the music was actually playing.
[00:31:13.484] FlowersRite: Yes, because initially I wanted to have some part of the music to be played live. But it's a really difficult thing to do because it's really hard to sync with the backing track while having them synced for listeners, if that makes sense. So I ended up making everything into one audio file and then just be the DJ of my own music. And then... For the visual part, basically I want my experience to be music focused. I want it to be more of a musical experience other than an audio-visual experience. Because it's a really abstract thing to explain. So I want the whole experience to be about the music.
[00:32:05.785] Kent Bye: Okay. And so is there anything that you wanted to say around just the process of creating the music? Because there's a number of different movements that have different names and then the names are coming up. And so just talk through a little bit about the arc of the music and maybe some of the inspirations for the musical part.
[00:32:25.717] FlowersRite: Sure. So for the music, I really wanted to, as I mentioned before, I really want the whole music to be a full story where you can just follow the music and then see the story. And I put like names for each movement so that you can kind of follow. It just kind of helps you to follow where the story is going. Because without the titles, you're just using 100% of your imagination. With the titles, it just guides you through the journey. Children of the Seed, this piece is actually a fictional world that I've created. Where the seed, like the word seed is the ultimate beginning of existence in this fictional world that I created. But yeah, this world is actually more like a lore instead of like a VRChat world. It's not like a world that I built in Blender, but it's just more like a D&D world I built in the back of my hand. yeah so basically in this world people cherish they fear they pray to and they live on the seed and the seed is basically their everything and then it's also like the root of their religion and um as i mentioned during the q a it's also my interpretation of monism in philosophy so basically whether it be the single substance from materialistic monism or the one mind from idealistic monism so ultimately there exists a fundamental oneness from which everything arises so basically you are me and i am also you and i find this is a really beautiful message
[00:34:18.137] Kent Bye: Yeah, certainly when people think about the ultimate nature of consciousness or even the ultimate nature of reality, yeah, it really gets down into, is there just one substance? Is consciousness fundamental? Is it just all mind, like in an idealism? Or is it all just substance and matter and substance, metaphysics, monism, where everything is just these atoms bumping into each other? Yeah. How did you take that philosophical idea and then start to translate that in? I mean, you described the lore really quite beautifully, but then how do you translate this lore, these stories into the music? Is this just something that you feel inspired by and it's very intuitive or, you know, maybe just step through a little process of how do you connect these stories and these lore back to the music?
[00:35:02.959] FlowersRite: Um, again, this is just like a lore behind the stories and the music itself is more on the story side, if that makes sense. And, uh, yeah. And then the way I name each movement, it's, uh, basically I'm just guiding the audience where like the titles are cues to, um, how to explain, I guess, again, this is a really abstract concept. Yeah.
[00:35:33.072] Kent Bye: Okay. And so this was a really amazing experience. And as you go in, there's a lot of it that is playing as a part of an audio track that's built into the world. And so is this something that you're hoping to perhaps at some point include all the visual effects kind of tied together and like animation and then have it so that people could go and rewatch this as a performance?
[00:35:55.865] FlowersRite: For the performance, I actually made a music video for it, which is going to be released tomorrow on the 11th of July. So it should already be on my YouTube channel for people who are listening to this podcast. But yeah, for the video, I didn't actually record the experience in VRChat because I feel like a flat screen video wouldn't take images of the VR venue that I created for it. I actually did a storybook illustration kind of style for the music video. It's like you're reading a visual novel, but it's narrated through music instead of words.
[00:36:35.402] Kent Bye: And so just to follow up question on that, it sounds like you've created a music video that has a completely different animated storybook style, but will the VRChat world be uploaded and viewable for people if they do want to see it within VRChat?
[00:36:49.517] FlowersRite: I'm actually planning to make a replayable experience of this world and for this moment I'm trying to like figure out how to record my avatar and then put it in the world so that you can see me moving around and then try to like give it more like a performance instead of just like a music visualizer basically. Yeah that's for the world.
[00:37:16.772] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think it would be nice for folks to potentially have the chance to watch it, especially if they missed it at Raindance. And, you know, as it came home with the top prize at Raindance, it'd be nice for folks to go and witness and experience on their own time. So, yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:37:40.361] FlowersRite: Oh, I think VR is a really powerful medium. Having the ability of letting people to be fully immersed into a virtual world still feels like a kind of a superpower to me. It is a really cool piece of technology, but I'm more interested in the human aspect. In real life, people are judged by their skin color, their look, their body shape, their gender presentation, and all that stuff. And it's like a big filter people have in their mind before they decide if they want to make connections with one or not. But in VR, everything is more pure. We skip the filtering part and it's like you are meeting one soul before you even know how their physical presence looks like. It's so much easier to make connections with people without prejudice in our mind. Yeah, so actually one fun fact is that I actually learned most of my English and even French in VRChat since geological limitations do not exist anymore. And one of my first friends I made in VRChat was from France and I was introduced to like more French people and then we would hang out every day and I started to pick up like some French words. But yeah, and then Now, I wouldn't say I'm really fluent in French, but most of the time I can pass as a French person when I talk to French people. And they would think I'm joking when I tell them I'm Chinese, because it's pretty funny in French, like when you say someone is talking nonsense. it would say, you're speaking Chinese, but I'm literally Chinese. But yeah, the point is, I love how VR brings people together, which VRChat does it amazingly. I really want to see what kind of future we are facing with this amazing piece of technology in our hands.
[00:39:41.287] Kent Bye: And so did you not speak English at all before you started to play VRChat? Or are you just saying that it helped to improve the English that you had?
[00:39:49.281] FlowersRite: So before VRChat, I would say my English was really, really bad. I couldn't speak a full sentence without stopping. And I tried to open more and more and then started to be proactive, basically, just to talk to people in VRChat and just talk and hang out with friends. And then naturally, I just gained more ability of my English skill. Yeah, I'd say like VRChat actually helped me so much with everything, my social skill and my English as well.
[00:40:24.158] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:40:31.226] FlowersRite: I think my message to the community is that don't be afraid to make art and experiment things out. When I first started making music, I only knew some piano and that was it. That was everything I started with. I didn't know any tools and I had zero idea of how to make music. And after trying there, I figured things out and made my first song. And also like music, I slowly gained my other abilities of creating 2D art, editing videos, 3D modeling and story writing and world building and all that stuff. But however, sometimes I feel really limited when I'm trying to deliver an experience on a set time because I'm only one person. I really hope more and more creators join the realm of VR, or even just beginner artists, as this is a really welcoming and accepting community. I really hope to see VR to grow, not only its technology, but more importantly, the people in its community.
[00:41:40.313] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Flowers Ride, I really appreciate you coming on to the podcast to help break down a little bit more about your journey into creating these really expansive worlds and including your music with these different productions. And yeah, just a really interesting intersection of all these different worlds. other aspects of your journey into VR and what it's been able to give you from everything from 3d printing to cosplay to other aspects of improving your social skills and different languages in French and English. And so, yeah, just really appreciate, you know, the worlds that you've been able to create and musical experiences that you were able to put together for brain dance. So thanks so much for joining me here on the podcast to help break it all down.
[00:42:18.605] FlowersRite: Thank you so much. It's my pleasure.
[00:42:21.010] Kent Bye: So that was FlowersRite. She's a music producer, 3D artist, cosplayer, and VRChat world builder, and her Children of the Seed piece won the Best Music Experience at Ring Dance Immersive 2024. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, well, I think there's a lot about her own creative process for how VRChat world building and creating these virtual worlds are playing into her production of the music. She's saying that these two are completely intertwined as she's building the world and she's thinking about the music. And as she's thinking about the music, she's thinking about how to build the world. She's got this whole backstory that gets into a lot of metaphysics and monism and either there's materialism versus idealism. And so there's a lot of philosophical motivations for the philosophy that's driving it. And to be honest, a little bit difficult to trace the through line of the story because there are no other narrative or diegetic elements to this. And so you're basically hanging on the titles of these eight different movements that she's going from the introductions, rain prayers, divine rain, ritual dance, wonder of the woods, awakening spirits, guardian of the great roots, and then overseer from high above. And so that's basically the root of the story as you're listening to it. And I think each of the different movements have kind of a different vibe. But I think more than anything else, there's this really interesting interplay between the process of creating a whole expansive virtual reality world that is tailor-made for a very specific piece of art, or in this case, it's music. But she wanted to have this vertical change as you go from spawning into this very tall marble like kind of greek architecture in a way or just something that feels like from another time and place and we're all kind of hanging out in this space waiting to go into what is essentially kind of like this dark forest where it's kind of difficult to know exactly where we're going and so as we go up and do this vertical change then it really felt like i was being transported into like the return of the jedi with the ewok villages where you're In this whole village that's up in the trees, you're kind of winding around and then you get to a point where you have to choose left or right to go up some stairs and you get to the auditorium. And then once you get in the auditorium, then you basically find a place to sit down. Meanwhile, FlowersRite, who is also going that path has another offshoot that takes her into this stage that no one can get onto, but it's got some. controls where she's doing some video jockeying controlling the live visual effects of both the rain that's coming in other effects are built into the VRChat world but also array of different lights that are lighting up and less around using the virtual reality to augment the music experience because I think it's more how does the ambience in the world fit into this overall experience of like Being transported onto the onboarding and then getting to the place and the offboarding, it just it feels like you're going on a whole journey and adventure to even listen to this piece of music. And it wasn't so much that there was a lot of interesting things that were happening while you were listening to music because it was pretty simple relative to some of the different things that I'm seeing with innovations for music. vjs who are doing holographic visualizations that are reflecting off of the ground i mean there's lots of cutting edge stuff that's happening in terms of the music visualization type of stuff and this piece isn't about that as much as more about how do you create this whole adventure and story and lore that's kind of woven into all these pieces creating this as a musical journey that you're being taken on so Really quite interesting to see these blends of how the process of someone who is a VRChat world builder is using her art and practice to really push the edge of her own 3D modeling. She started as a musician, but really wanting to get more and more into the 3D modeling realm. Definitely check out The Great Inventor Escape that showed at Venice Immersive 2022 a couple of years ago, just because that's a real great example of the type of sophisticated world building and modeling that she's doing. And this was more of an environmental build rather than having kind of puzzle game mechanics or other narrative components that are much more explicit for the story that's being told. Yeah, overall, really quite interesting. And I think a lot of people had really powerful experience by just having these two things blended together in this world and having this piece of music that was composed to be played for everybody. So there is a YouTube video of Children of the Seed that you can go watch just to listen to the half hour worth of music with the eight different movements. the virtual world that she created for this piece. It's still at this point unpublished in terms of like whether or not she's going to find a way to like record her avatar, at least have more of a performative element of like it was really like a live music experience for you to be a part of this group. And there's something around being a part of a live audience that is going to go watch this thing at the same time, because I think there is this collective experience of like everybody listening to this piece of music together. But I think it's totally possible for her to potentially record different elements. All the music was already pre-recorded. And so it was essentially just a matter of finding a way of scripting the visual effects that was being shown. And like she said, she didn't want to create a 2D video of herself. her performance because it really wouldn't translate all that well because there's so much around the whole spatial context of being in the space and moving your body through the space to get to the auditorium that's hanging up in the trees. I mean, it's really quite a magical part of the experience that I really don't think it would translate into a video. So I think that's probably the right call to not try to translate that because it really would not give you the sense of what that experience was all about. So... Yeah, really quite interesting to see how both her journey into VR and how that's led to her wanting to become more of a full-time 3D modeler and 3D artist, but also how that plays into her being a cosplayer by working at this day job where she's working in the context of 3D printing and how that's also kind of a thing that's playing into folks who are working with this 3D software and becoming a full-time 3D artist. And so, yeah, I'll leave a link to her VR chat profile where you can go check out some of her other experiences that we talked about. Highly recommend going to check out The Great Inventor Escape. I really enjoyed that piece. And yeah, just very curious to see where she takes us in the future in terms of this idea of taking people on an adventure or telling a story by this kind of world building and moving your body through an architectural space and changing of a vertical perspective and thinking Yeah, just how that has this feedback loop for her own creative process for how she's writing these pieces of music. So that's all I have for today. And I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a list of support podcast. And so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
