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#1529: SXSW 2025 XR Experience Selection Sneak Peak with Programmer Blake Kammerdiener

March 6, 2025by kentbye

The SXSW XR Experience Selection runs from March 9-11 and contains 15 pieces in competition and 16 pieces in the spotlight, and I had a chance to chat with SXSW’s XR programmer Blake Kammerdiener about each of these pieces. He provides some highlights from the XR Track Sessions at SXSW, and also mentions that there is an immersive piece called NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) that is showing on March 11th & 12th. See down below for some more links to different SXSW events.

Here is a list of the XR experiences being shown at SXSW, and I will update this post as I post my Voices of VR podcast interviews as I’ve featured a dozen projects in my previous coverage.

SXSW XR Experience Competition

SXSW XR Experience Spotlight

SXSW XR Events

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

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Rough Transcript

[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So in today's episode, we're going to be unpacking each of the different XR experiences that are being featured at South by Southwest this year as a part of the XR Experience Competition, as well as the XR Experience Spotlight. So I have Blake Comandiner, who is the XR programmer for South by Southwest, and we go through each of the different experiences and he has a few words to say about them. And we also talk about some of the other trends that he's seeing and also some of the other events that are happening in and around South by Southwest this year. So I always love to go to South by Southwest. It's probably the most chaotic of the film festivals because it's first come first serve. Everybody's rushing in the morning trying to get all their slots. And so it's a bit chaotic and it can be frustrating if you come later in the day, then everything ends up getting booked up. So you really do have to like show up early in the morning, get your name into the different experiences. However, there are a number of different experiences that even if you come late, you should be able to get into because there's like a dome experiences with larger capacities. There's smartphone orchestra has some experiences with larger capacities. So just a good idea to be there when it opens up each day at 11 a.m. Get your name on the list and then try to see as much of the different experiences as you can. And maybe like do some standby if people are not showing up for their different slots. and it's also a festival that has probably the most integration from an audience of technology enthusiasts. You do have to kind of go out of your way to go to the Fairmont, and it's not necessarily on the path towards just people dropping in, so it is a bit of a destination that you have to go to for South by Southwest, but all the different XR programming is happening there across the third, fourth, and fifth floors, and then there's all these talks that are happening up on the fifth floor that are happening from Sunday, March 9th to Tuesday, March 11th. So I will be there from Friday, March 7th up until the 12th. I'll be doing interviews with folks, be seeing all the different experiences. And yeah, just kind of also milling about mostly in the evenings will be a lot of my free time. So very much looking forward coming back to South by Southwest, and you can take a listen to Blake talking more about all the different programming, and I'll include some links down below for you to track down some of the other types of XR events that are happening within the context of South by Southwest. So that's it for coming on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Blake happened on Friday, February 28th, 2025. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.

[00:02:46.130] Blake Kammerdiener: Hi, I'm Blake Kammerdiener. I am the senior manager for film and TV and XR programming at South by Southwest. And I oversee all of the immersive programming for our exhibition, the XR experience, as well as the XR track in our conference with some other things here and there in the film and TV festival area.

[00:03:04.189] Kent Bye: Very cool. And maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into this space.

[00:03:09.124] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, absolutely. So I started working events at South by Southwest in 2005 as a volunteer and kind of like started working my way up the ranks through the production side of things, event production side of things for the film festival. Came on in around 2010 as a full-time employee as production coordinator and then started diving into programming. I first started programming kind of small out-of-the-box things like title sequences, actually, which was a lot of fun. And then in 2015 and preparing for our 2020 16 event, Hugh Forrest, our president and chief programming officer decided that we had enough content to have our own track for VR and AR in the conference. And so we started kind of talking about that. He asked for some people who were interested and wanted to jump on a team to help program that. And I instantly raised my hand and coming from that festival side of things, I was like, well, can we show some things too? And so they were like, sure, Blake, have this room, put some stuff in it. And so for our 2016 event, it's kind of where we started it up with our first little experimentation. And I guess the rest is kind of history. It's been 10 years now. This will be our 10th version. If you include our little experimentation year, we officially came online with the exhibition in 2017. We called it the virtual cinema at the time. And now we've moved to the XR experience a few years back, I guess. It's been a while now. And yeah. It's always just like I was lucky enough to try some VR in the first wave when I was a little youngling. I was 10 years old when I tried my first VR piece and was kind of an addict ever since, so.

[00:04:43.732] Kent Bye: Very cool. Well, happy anniversary. I know I had my 10 year anniversary for the voices of VR back last May, and I'll be coming up here my 11th year. So I know that we're kind of in that era where there's lots of 10 year anniversaries for folks in the XR industry. And so always very excited to come out to South by Southwest because, you know, you are doing a really robust curation of the latest and greatest of all the different XR experiences that are out there with a full competition, as well as the best of spotlight where you're able to feature a lot of the projects that you saw over the course of the year that may not be world premieres, they may have already shown, but you still want to include it within the exhibition. And so I'd love to hear some initial thoughts of this year's selection. And, you know, I know last year you had some more AI projects. I didn't see as many AI projects as there were last year, but I'd love to hear some initial thoughts on this year's selection.

[00:05:34.048] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, it's very interesting. I expected a little bit more AI as well. We do have some generative AI projects and generative AI work. But really this year, I feel like you could kind of see... You know, somewhat, if you will, the weight of what is on people's minds, right? And so it's like really artists kind of utilizing the different mediums within XR to really dive into some important stories and important subject matter for themselves. And so you'll find a decent amount of social impact within the work this year. I think also... We were able to go a little bit wider as well, including our first full dome project within the official competition. We've had dome work tangentially around the festival, but this is our first full dome project within the actual competition in a full dome. We're going to have some interactive projection stuff. So that was kind of an interesting evolution. We had that golden key last year, which was a kind of a projection based project, but we have a little bit more of that this year. which I found interesting and just different ways that people are utilizing technology to kind of like explore how they can bring their art to life. AVP, the Apple Vision Pro, we're going to have a few more projects this year. Last year, it had just launched a few weeks before the festival. We were able to have one project on the Apple Vision Pro last year, which was really nice to be able to showcase that. And this year, there's going to be more. So I'd love seeing people utilizing the new tools and the new technology to kind of like see what they can do in there.

[00:07:07.363] Kent Bye: Very cool. Well, I know that it's always like a mad rush to see all the different experiences from March 9th to 11th. And there's industry time there as well. But I know it's always a great selection of what's happening. And also there tends to be a little bit more music based projects here at South by Southwest than I see in the rest of the festival circuit. But maybe it's worth to start to dive in and talk about the competition at first and go through some of the projects that you've curated this year.

[00:07:34.670] Blake Kammerdiener: Great. I think last year we did Alpha. Let's do Alpha again this year. I think it's a good, easy way to sort through everything. We'll start with 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre. This is a new project by Nani de la Peña. We're excited to have her back officially. You know, she's always touching and having a part in new projects, but it's been a while since we've had one of her projects that she's directed in the competition. So excited about that. It's an AR project, augmented reality project. exploring kind of what I find was little known, you know, story around a race massacre that happened within really a fluent Black community in Atlanta, kind of fueled by the media at the time. As I was seeing it and going through it, the story really like had a relevance for today. You know, we want to make sure not to forget our history so it doesn't repeat itself.

[00:08:25.080] Kent Bye: Hmm. Nice. I know Lena Herzog had a chance to see this piece, Any War, Any Enemy. It's a really great piece that starts to dive into threats of a nuclear annihilation. And it's really like a poem. It's like an activist poem that is speaking out against the complacency around the fact that we live with the threats of nuclear annihilation. And yeah, just a really beautiful kind of still life and surrealistic depiction, very poetic and really quite powerful as well. And

[00:08:52.606] Blake Kammerdiener: I'm a big fan of Lena's as well. We had a project of hers in 2019 called Last Whispers, which was to this day, honestly, one of my favorite projects, VR projects ever. Honestly, like it was one that just always stuck with me. And so I'm really, really excited to have her back and to be able to premiere this project.

[00:09:09.070] Kent Bye: Great. And then we have Cosmos in Focus.

[00:09:11.211] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, this is going to be one of our Apple Vision Pro pieces. I really love it because they brought together some of the like scientists working with the James Webb telescope, bringing in the data front that they've been working with, looking at it in comparison with data from the Hubble and being able to put it in your space, be able to explore it. I'm excited to see it expand and see how far they can take this and how much they can integrate to it. But it's a really good first touch point. using that fidelity in the Apple Vision Pro to let you kind of explore the cosmos. Super exciting.

[00:09:47.589] Kent Bye: Yeah, and Currents, they describe it as a live action VR crafted for the Apple Vision Pro. So another Apple Vision Pro within the context of a piece by Jake Olson.

[00:09:57.153] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, and it really caught me off guard, honestly. As I was watching it, I really didn't expect it to kind of take me where it did. And it's really a beautiful kind of journey of the lead character kind of through change right through as she kind of goes from this farm home style back home you know into the big city it really is kind of a poetic way to show this journey it's a ride it's really really beautiful beautifully crafted integrating some different mediums within that it's a lot of fun i'm excited for people to see it

[00:10:31.516] Kent Bye: We have the return of Tender Claws, one of my favorite storytelling development shops, Dana Cannizzaro and Samantha Gorman, a comedy experimental interactive eye track VR experience. So I'm very curious to see how they're starting to use eye tracking in the course of face jumping.

[00:10:48.991] Blake Kammerdiener: It's going to be a highlight. Everybody's going to want to try this one. Tender Claws in general, I agree. We've never had them in competition. They've been around the festival a lot. They've been in different components, our innovation awards, our gaming sections. And we've had them speaking in the conference a lot over the years. But I think this is from my memory. I was like, I was trying to look. I was like, I'm pretty sure this is our first time to have them actually in our competition and the XR experience. So super excited about it. It's going to melt people's brains. They're going to just have the best time. And that's like one of the things I love about their work is like how much fun you can have in it while exploring through everything. I mean, they're just fantastic. And this is no different.

[00:11:30.049] Kent Bye: Nice. Yeah, definitely. Then looking forward to checking out the face jumping. It'll be top of my list of things to check out. So we have a piece called Honey Fungus, which is an interactive VR experience with tags of experimental fantasy, sci-fi and sustainability by Jonah King. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about Honey Fungus.

[00:11:47.428] Blake Kammerdiener: Honey Fungus. Yeah, I think I'm trying to remember how it was first described to me. Like, erotic environmental piece or something like that with utilizing really like diving in to the life of fungus and how it really has its fingers in everything in our world and in our planet right it's like it really does it's an interesting thing the theme within immersive artists is utilizing mushrooms and fungus and kind of how that has permeated through a lot of immersive artists over the years. But it works so well in the context of the technology and how it can integrate in the stories that they can really dive into and how you can kind of see the layers that you couldn't see otherwise. It's a lot of fun.

[00:12:32.628] Kent Bye: All the pieces that we've talked about so far are in the Congressional Ballroom, but there are a number of pieces that are going to be in other locations. I noticed that the next piece of Cameron Costopoulos' In the Current of Being, which is a haptic VR experience, is actually going to be at the Hamilton Pool. So this is a documentary experimental social impact and coming back after the special jury award back in 2022 for Body of Mine. And so I had a chance to have a brief conversation with Cameron, getting a little bit of a sneak peek about this latest project. He was at the Venice Production Bridge presenting it there. So I'm really excited about this piece, but I'd love to hear you elaborate a little bit more around what it's about.

[00:13:12.375] Blake Kammerdiener: So it's a documentary story, actually. So it documents the story of someone who went through conversion electroshock therapy. And it really shows his growth, I think. It's like when I saw it, I instantly was like, wow. First and foremost, I was a huge, huge fan of Body of Mind. I thought it was absolutely fantastic, especially coming from a young student project at the time. It was his thesis project. And then to see this evolution in his storytelling, in his visual nature of what he's done, it's absolutely jaw-dropping. It puts you there. I love how he experiments to bring in all these different kind of... You know, the Body of Mind was full body tracking. This is now full body haptics. And it is... Just exciting to see kind of how he's always trying to look to integrate more and do more to deepen your connection with the story. And this is no different. And it is another step up from Body of Mind. So I think people are going to go nuts over it. And speaking of it being in Hamilton Pool, so we did kind of expand the footprint. We had some projects in different locations last year, and we've kind of added just a couple more. So Hamilton Pool is right across the hall from Congressional Ballroom. And we'll have another project beside it that we'll talk about, Origins. And we'll go up to the stairs to the fourth floor. We're utilizing the same two rooms up there. And then that big room on the fifth floor, Manchester C, where we had the Golden Key last year, we'll have another project in there this year.

[00:14:39.656] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah. The next project actually is in the Manchester Ballroom C. We have proof as if proof were needed. It's an interactive single screen video installation by Ting Tong Chang and Matt Adams. It's an experimental piece. That's a co-production from United Kingdom in Taiwan.

[00:14:55.856] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, I cannot wait to see how audiences react to this. Basically, I don't know how much, I don't want to give away too much. It's multi-user. It is this projection piece. The audience will determine what they see on the screen by where they are watching from, right? So there's a lot to it. So it's tracking everybody and it kind of is gonna let the audience kind of debate to see what they wanna see from where, right? I mean, it's this mystery as you go through and have the two lead characters looking to find the secret from the other. So the audience will actually help determine what you see. And you could watch the audience doing it from a participant standpoint many times and never see it the same way. And so I'm really excited about that.

[00:15:46.460] Kent Bye: Very cool. Very much looking forward to that one. Okay, so the next piece is called Reflections of Little Red Dot. They describe it as a mixed reality experience that animates the artist's personal archive of recordings from Singaporeans in 2015 by Chloe Lee. It's a documentary experimental with community elements and co-production out of Germany and the United States.

[00:16:08.487] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah. And this is the second project by Chloe Lee we played. Last time we had her here was with her project Temporal World, Haptasonic Virtual Reality Memory World, which had this like crazy haptic jacket. It was in our spotlight section in 23, I believe so. Really excited to have her back. Really excited to have her in competition. I think she's just a fantastic artist. And this is completely different, right? While also still keeping to her aesthetics. So really being able to kind of explore the stories around these kind of individual people that she's going through and interviewing and talking about the culture and bringing the culture from Singapore kind of to light. And it's just wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful.

[00:16:50.896] Kent Bye: Very cool. Remember that piece and did an interview with Chloe back in 2023. So next piece is Shelter. It's a virtual reality documentary, 360. It's Schwarz, Swieriska, and Ivana Kakastanka. I kind of regret trying to pronounce all these names now. It's a documentary. It's about war, social impact, and out of the Netherlands. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about Shelter.

[00:17:14.349] Blake Kammerdiener: This is a project about the Ukrainian war. And really, what I found so incredible about this is it explores the day-to-day life of normal individuals as they're living in a war zone. So you spend time in a maternity ward. It's in an underground shelter. You spend time with elementary school students sitting underground in a shelter playing games together. You know, you explore some of the more atrocities of war, but really the focus is on this kind of day-to-day life. And it was just beyond touching and it just... stuck with me from the moment I saw it. And so, you know, in programming, we always have some really tough decisions to make when we go through things. But this was one that really like stuck out to me as something that I think will really touch the audience.

[00:18:05.489] Kent Bye: Yeah, and we have a return of Joanne Popinska with The Choice chapters 2 and 3. I remember seeing The Choice chapter 1 back in, I believe, 2022, which was the topic covering how abortion rights within the context of Texas were slowly being eroded. And it seems very prescient with all of the retractions of reproductive rights across the entirety of the United States, as well as with the Trump administration and everything that's happening across these individual states. It seems like a very timely film to be coming back to chapters two and three. But I remember there was this volumetric interactive conversation. They describe it as uses minimalist animation, immersive VR and lifelike volumetric. So previously they had some cool animations in there as well, but it's a documentary activism, social impact from United States, Canada and Poland. So this seems like, you know, one of those very timely projects to be shown, especially in the context here in Austin, Texas. Yeah.

[00:19:02.338] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, absolutely. And not only that. So what they've done in these different chapters is kind of given you a different... scenario because there's so many different circumstances that people are in and reasons why they have to make the choices that they do. So it's that similar style, right? In terms of the volumetric conversation that you're having with that minimalist and beautiful animation surrounding it, the chapter two is going to actually explore the situation with a Chapter three explores kind of a different scenario with a couple. So you're actually the interviews with two individuals and showing the effects and the decisions that they're making and how they're going through that process and the difficulties around all of it in any different kind of situation.

[00:19:56.310] Kent Bye: Yeah. And going back to chapter one, what I really remember from that piece was that with the interactive components, it really makes you feel like you're having a conversation with them, that you're able to explore different branches of their story that you really want to dig into. So it's kind of like a branching path, interactive oral history that is really quite well done. So, and also, like I said, very timely. So very curious to be diving into that. The next piece is called The Last Practice. They had a picture of the Apple Vision Pro. It sounds like an Apple Vision Pro piece by Phil McCarty. It's a drama music experimental out of Portugal and the United States. So I'd love to hear a little bit more around The Last Practice.

[00:20:32.796] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, it is Apple Vision Pro mixed reality project. And it's just hits so many different components of what South by is from the utilization of the technology, kind of the music story. You get to help write a song with this band who's like kind of on the verge of breaking up. Then you get to go and perform it. It's a lot of fun. And I think people are going to love it.

[00:20:56.052] Kent Bye: Very cool. Well, the next piece is called The Secret Life of Monsters, The Gateway Experience. They describe it as a mixed reality adventure by Emile Aragon. It's a sci-fi genre and a tag of experimental out of Canada.

[00:21:09.216] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, so this one is the perfect kind of example of mixed reality gaming and world building, right? And so this is kind of the first component, if you will, of what could be, and I'm hoping will be, a much, much larger world that they'll build. Beautifully crafted and really kind of utilizing not only set design, but, you know, kind of like the blend of mixed and virtual realities to really like take you from where you're at into this new and kind of fantastic world.

[00:21:41.204] Kent Bye: Very cool. Next piece is called Traces the Grief Processor. It's a multi-user interactive VR experience by Vali Fugulin. It's an animated documentary experimental and the tag of experiential.

[00:21:55.307] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, so this is super interesting because it brings together, you know, actually we found just over the course of programming through many different kind of sections that grief was a subject that people were really interested in. And then this popped up even after we had kind of seen that coming through. And I love that it's multi-user because it allows people to kind of like experience this together. It personalizes the experience as well. It allows you to bring your own grief at whatever level, right? to help deal with it and really help experience it together and there's parts where you go in by yourself, there's parts where you're interacting with others. It's a really, really interesting way to kind of explore this idea of how to process grief.

[00:22:37.898] Kent Bye: Wow. Yeah, I think having VR as a way of finding new grief rituals, I think is super powerful. So very much looking forward to Trace's The Grief Processor. Okay, so the final one that's listed here in competition is called Ways of Knowing a Navajo Nuclear History. It's an immersive documentary about Navajo resilience by Kayla Briette. It's a documentary with the tags of activism and social impact out of the United States.

[00:23:04.548] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, it's a story I did not know about. And it's a 360 video kind of beautifully shot in the desert where the US had been mining uranium for a long time and with little to no thought for the side effects that go along with that and using the Navajo people to do so. I'm very excited that we're able to tell this story. And it's something that I had never known about. And, you know, is definitely something that we, again, going back to like, let's not repeat our history, like we need to be able to know these stories and hear these stories to make sure these things don't happen again.

[00:23:44.940] Kent Bye: Very cool. Well, we just got through all of the South by Southwest experience competition pieces. So very much looking to see all of these. And then we're going to start going through the XR experience spotlight, starting with Address Unknown, Fukushima Now, which I first saw at Venice Immersive in 2024. It's an immersive VR documentary by Arif Khan. It's an animated documentary, history, social impact. It's a co-production out of Japan, United States and Taiwan. And showing a lot of point cloud representations and taking these oral history journeys through these different towns. And as you see the impact of the nuclear fallout across Fukushima and different cities, telling this story in a spatial context of actually going to these cities to give you the sense of this ghost town nature in the context of Japan.

[00:24:31.630] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, we're so excited to have Arif back. Beyond the fact that he's just lovely, we were able to show his first project, Black Ice, back in 2022. And so we're super excited to have him back. And this piece is beautiful. You know, everything you said and more, it's just being able to kind of go through these spaces and hear these stories. It's super powerful.

[00:24:56.960] Kent Bye: Yeah, and all I know about Teacher Lee was one of my favorites from Venice Immersive 2024. It's an interactive mixed reality documentary by an anonymous creator named Jusmo. It's an animated documentary, activism and social impact. And the interesting thing about this piece for me, one is that I love these little subtle embodied interactions that How do you get a sense of what it feels like to have your voice silenced in social media? And so just by throwing this like little paper airplane and these metaphors, you get a real embodied experience of the story that's being told, but also a story that I wasn't that aware of. in just the way that using the latest technologies of being able to translate existing 2D media into stereoscopic footage of this whole protest movement that happened across China protesting against the COVID lockdowns. Another little interesting note around all I know about Teacher Li is that when I did the survey with XR Must in terms of seeing what was the highest rated project, this was actually like the top of the list in terms of the highest rated project that people had seen So a really beloved project that I think is a really powerful story and using the medium in a way that is also really quite effective.

[00:26:08.913] Blake Kammerdiener: I 100% agree. I did not know about that rating, but I'm not surprised. It definitely affected me the most out of all the projects at Venice this year. I was completely caught off guard by it. Like from even just like reading the synopsis and then like I didn't see it for a little while and like I was not expecting it. And then when I saw it, I was just completely taken over by the emotion from it all. And it was a story I didn't know about either, you know, as well, or very little about. And it's so powerful. It is so powerful. Like, I'm super excited to be able to share this one with our audience.

[00:26:42.005] Kent Bye: Another fun fact about all I know about Teacher Lee is that the creator is anonymous, but I had a interview that I did with Jusmo that I then took that interview, transcribed it, had AI read it so that we could protect their identity. So if you want to check out the piece and then listen to the conversation that I had, because yeah, just really- I would recommend that. Yeah. So ancestors, I saw at if a doc lab, were you at doc lab this year? I didn't see you there.

[00:27:09.384] Blake Kammerdiener: Unfortunately, no. Okay. My deep programming time is like right when I'm like in the thick of it all.

[00:27:15.598] Kent Bye: Okay, well, I saw it if a doc lab, it's by Staya Halema by the Smartphone Orchestra. And this was a really interesting and fun type of group experience where you kind of use elements of face mashing with AI, where you take a selfie of yourself, and then you do these kind of like interactions where you're matched up with other people, and you essentially are producing virtual children with other people in the audience. And then You go through these different phases where by the end, as a collective group, you produce one virtual child. So that's an interactive experience that you're doing with your smartphone. So it's experimental, fantasy, sci-fi, community, social impact.

[00:27:52.066] Blake Kammerdiener: Performance as well. There's some performance aspect to it. And if you've never done a smartphone orchestra project... This should be top of your list because I've had some of the most like unexpected fun times in a smartphone orchestra experience. And, you know, this one's no different, I think.

[00:28:10.290] Kent Bye: So we're also getting into, with Ancestors, it's in a different location, Verbena. Are there going to be tickets for this event? Because it is kind of like a group event. Or how are you doing the screen?

[00:28:20.272] Blake Kammerdiener: We'll do it similar to how we've always done it. So there'll be sign-ups. We do sign-ups day of for the rest of the day. So you go in, you sign up for your time slots, kind of get your schedule together for the day. And then you come back and do that the next morning as well. So you try and get in as much as you can. This one, there will be... A lot of space in this. So this is a great one to go to if for some reason you can't get into some other projects or anything that might have less availability. I think we can put up to 34 people or something like that in through this per time slot. And we'll have three to four experiences a day depending on the day, the time.

[00:28:55.703] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah. It's probably 32 because that's a base two, but it works with numbers that are not precisely 32 as well. He's got ways of accounting for all that. So Anushka was actually at IFA doc lab of 2023, which was an award winning there. It's a mixed reality story by Tamara Shogolu. It's animated experimental music, activism community. It was like a, they had a whole installation part at IFA doc lab back in 2023, where they actually went outside and like a garden to do that. And it says this is listed in the congressional ballroom and you need quite a lot of space for this. And so how are you handling that?

[00:29:31.552] Blake Kammerdiener: You know, we talked to them about that. That was definitely like the first thing I hit him up about. I was like, so how could you do this inside? Well, they'll have like one of our like larger footprints, but they're able to kind of scale it around and kind of being able to kind of move. And they've done a lot of work on it since that time. I think this is such a beautiful piece and I'm excited to see kind of how it continues to evolve and develop and Cause it's a beautiful story told in a beautiful way, starting kind of very personal and kind of then moving to this like larger scale conversation, you know? And so I think that it's super interesting, super effective and really beautifully done.

[00:30:09.571] Kent Bye: Nice. Well, A Number from a Ghost is like a web-based project. It's an innovative multimedia project that builds a virtual environment for listening by Peter Adams. It's like an experimental fantasy music sci-fi out of the United States. And so I had a chance to do this just on the 2D, and I'm looking forward to doing the more WebXR version of this, which sounds like a number of different music video songs that are really quite beautiful. navigating around this virtual world space and just all the ways that the space has this vibe and look and feel, but also the way that it's modulated throughout the course of the song. Really quite beautiful, at least the one song that I've seen so far. I'm really looking forward to checking out more of this project.

[00:30:51.775] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, this is kind of... A special one for me, you know, it's like it caught me in that way where that visual exploration of music, right? Like how musicians can utilize immersive tech to bring a different dimension to their art and music. like it's one reason why i play so many different music based projects like i absolutely love it and i think that anytime you can kind of expand on your art and show it in different ways and explore it in different ways it kind of brings the different levels of depth to it and this one was just in that vein where i kind of started diving into it and you know like I wasn't sure how people, because it's minimalistic. You know, like you said, it's this WebXR. You can go do it right now. You can even do it in a headset right now, actually. Like you can dive in and do it in a Quest, you know. But I thought that the music is beautiful, is gorgeous. And so I thought like our audience is perfect for this. This is right where our audience likes to be, where they can kind of find different ways to explore art. And this one touched me in kind of a special way, I think.

[00:31:59.298] Kent Bye: Yeah, really powerful music and also a very chill experience in terms of, it's a good one to go cool down with if you see it a particularly intense experience.

[00:32:08.944] Blake Kammerdiener: Absolutely.

[00:32:10.065] Kent Bye: So we have the return of Jaibo Li in collaboration with Bolau Amber Hu and Matt McCorkle with a piece called Echo Vision. That sounds really fascinating. It's a mixed reality experience that allows participants to experience the world of bats using sound visualization techniques. With the genre of animated experimental music and with the tags of social impact and sustainability out of the United States.

[00:32:32.658] Blake Kammerdiener: You know, I don't know how many people know that like Austin is kind of known as a bat city. We have the largest inner city bridge dwelling bat colony in the world. They live underneath the Congress Bridge. There's, I think they say something like 3 million bats or something live underneath there. And this is just the time of year, March, whenever they start coming back and you can go stand on the bridge and watch them leave during it. sunset every night to go feed. It's really, really fascinating. And so this kind of felt like a perfect piece for us just in general, outside of it just being gorgeous, beautifully crafted, really interesting and unique. And I'm excited to be able to share it. Yeah.

[00:33:09.602] Kent Bye: And Jabo also has this like working with non-human intelligence with animals and seeing how there's different levels of collective wisdom out of that. There was a piece that she had at DocLab a couple of years ago, back in 2023, where there was a rat that was running and she built a whole app that you're racing against this rat. And so, yeah, just all the ways that she's looking at using technology to have more of an affinity or connection to the world around us. And so- Very curious to see echo vision of seeing what the bat seat reminds me of the marshmallow laser feast piece that was at Sundance back in 2016.

[00:33:45.799] Blake Kammerdiener: Definitely has relations to that for sure. Yeah.

[00:33:50.482] Kent Bye: Nice. Uh, next piece is called fly to you. It looks like it's like a point cloud virtual reality by young young song and Sigma Lee. It's documentary drama, family, social impact out of Korea.

[00:34:01.229] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited to have Sun Mu back or around. We're going to have 9VR, I believe, in 2020. And so I'm really excited to actually have him come. And it's some of the most beautiful point cloud I've seen in a long, long time. It's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. And it's such a touching story. You know, family separation during the Korean War and what war does to people and how... you know, these unexpected things affect our entire lives. So it's beautifully crafted, beautifully crafted.

[00:34:34.987] Kent Bye: Nice. So the next one, we have the return of polymorph, which for fans of South by Southwest 2023, they had symbiosis where you had these really intense body suits and haptics and, but they're coming back this year with an AR piece that just premiered over at if a doc lab 2024, uh, It's called Future Botanica. And so this is interesting because it's the use of generative AI with an app-based approach of, like you're making selections for what kind of plant that you want. And then it's on the backend, sending it all of this prompt engineering to then generate a vision of these plants. And then they have this whole other mixed reality component where the plant lives within the context of an ecosystem and it's in relationship.

[00:35:16.067] Blake Kammerdiener: And so- And you have multiple ecosystems to choose from, like as you're building and that kind of feeds into your, choices and decisions for building your plants. And there's this like interesting interaction there as well. Yeah.

[00:35:29.996] Kent Bye: Yeah. So it's, it's one of these kind of foam based AR pieces and they had a video installation component at, at the doc lab as well. And I noticed that this is in the violet room. Where's the violet room.

[00:35:39.941] Blake Kammerdiener: It's going to be on the fourth floor, right next to ancestors. Actually we had Paul there last year, which was kind of that interactive music piece.

[00:35:47.805] Kent Bye: Is there going to be a, like a video installation component as well?

[00:35:50.902] Blake Kammerdiener: We will see. We'll see.

[00:35:52.504] Kent Bye: Okay. Well, there was a doc lab and that was really nice because whatever plants that you're creating end up showing on the screens for other people to see, which provides some design inspiration. So it's by Marcel van Brackel and Hazel Turken. I had a chance to do an interview with them at doc lab and they, Yeah, it's one of those examples of using AI within this kind of documentary experimental context and it's out of the Netherlands.

[00:36:14.631] Blake Kammerdiener: Polymorph, they do fascinating work and it's gorgeous. Like how it's crafted, everything that's crafted is really beautiful.

[00:36:23.018] Kent Bye: Nice. Well, the Just For You trilogy is the three pieces from Quake and Tarot that premiered back at 2022 at Venice and then 2023 and then 2024. So it's been basically coming out with one of these per year. So showing all three of those of All That Remains, Over the Rainbow. And then a simple silence. And so, yeah, each of these, I'd say that Craig is unique in terms of these are 360 videos, but they are deliberately trying to pervert your expectations. So it feels like as you're watching it, it's like this one-on-one immersive theater encounter that is captured in VR. Exactly. there's all this looking at these actors, but then it'll go in directions that you will have no idea where it's going to be going next. And I think that's the point that it keeps perverting your expectations for how it's going to continue to develop. And it, it put me into this altered state of consciousness when I first saw all that remains back at Venice immersive 2022. So yeah, these, these are really great, really solid pieces that I think will be some crowd favorites, but love to hear some of your thoughts on,

[00:37:26.040] Blake Kammerdiener: It's the first time that they've played all three at one time, which we're excited to be able to do. In 22, All That Remains blew my mind, honestly, because of that. performance for one aspect to it and the twists and turns that he puts you through. It's super high concept art that it's unpredictable. It does come full circle, which that's one thing that I'm super excited for people to be able to see all three at once is you do get these callbacks in different ways throughout. And I think that people really enjoy being able to kind of like get that full circle experience. And yeah, it's mind bending for sure.

[00:38:05.711] Kent Bye: Very cool. Well, we have Origins Life Apex Journey. They describe it as an awe-inspiring, immersive film by Marcos K. It's an experimental space out of Germany, and it's going to be taking place in the Lady Bird Lake Room.

[00:38:17.768] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, and that's going to be right beside Hamilton Pool, which is right across the hall from Congressional Ballroom. So Origins, Life's Epic Journey, is going to be another projection-based piece, right? We're showing it in kind of a different format than its original intent, just due to the constraints of our spaces, but it's extremely beautiful. Think Tree of Life, this kind of epic journey from the beginning of existence through in the big bang and all the way through to life today in the most beautiful way yeah and so it'll be like a three screen kind of surround projection is this one

[00:39:00.865] Kent Bye: Okay. AutosPlanet picked up second place at the Venice Immersive this past year. And so it's the interactive VR experience that really beautiful tabletop experience by Gwendolyn Franco, distributed by Atlas V. Animated fantasy, sci-fi, experimental, co-production out of France, Canada, Luxembourg. Really beautiful, immersive, interactive story. Short and simple, beautiful, well-told story. And I think uses the VR in a unique way as well.

[00:39:28.268] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, absolutely. I love being able to get the whole story and this whole world in this one view that you're able to kind of like twist and turn to explore and view from different vantage points. And it really is that high level immersive storytelling that we often expect from projects from Atlas V. So, you know, it's beautiful. It's great.

[00:39:50.865] Kent Bye: Nice. Then we have Resolution, a cinephonic rhapsody for the soul. It's an immersive film by Scott Berman, animated drama, experimental fantasy musical that is out of the United States.

[00:40:01.721] Blake Kammerdiener: This is the Full Dome Project and is the partner piece to the latest Polyphonic Spree album. It's a kaleidoscope of different animators, each kind of with a song, all threaded together. I'm super excited for this piece, super excited to be able to have it on the floor in the Congressional Ballroom. So it's another piece that will be able to hold a larger number of people. and people are going to go ape for it. It's going to be great.

[00:40:33.517] Kent Bye: Wow. It's 43 minutes, so it's pretty long too. So very much looking forward to being able to check that out with some folks there. Okay. So the next piece is called Sweet, which they describe as an immersive AI-driven candy store. So I don't know if it's going to have actual candy, but it's very intriguing. It's a Rene van Egelenburg and Gesken Kat. It's experimental and out of Netherlands.

[00:40:56.545] Blake Kammerdiener: yeah so i don't know how many people got to experience their project it wasn't in the xr experience but last year it's a company called drop stuff they do these crazy big installations and they had an entire wall of the trade show last year in the south by expo which was like guided audio tour through these giant blow-up pieces to go through this story and it was really really fascinating and so they do these crazy performances and this one i'm super excited about because it's like i mean there is candy there is candy and it really explores how color can determine a lot of our decision-making, you know? And it's really fascinating, you know, how color affects our thought processes and all of this. I'm really excited to see how people kind of react to this.

[00:41:54.861] Kent Bye: Very cool. Yeah, look forward to checking that out. So Symfony is actually going to be releasing, I saw, on March 6th, so just before South by Southwest. So folks who are trying to be completionists like I am, if you check this out on March 6th, before the actual launch of the South by Southwest Festival, you can check this out. It says it transforms classical music into a rhythmic adventure. With a conducting wand in hand, players can cast spells and open portals to audio-reactive worlds, embodying magical personas from fairies of light to wizards of darkness. So this is by Ingram Mao. It's a fantasy music piece out of the United States.

[00:42:31.818] Blake Kammerdiener: This one also kind of took me off guard because it was one of those where I like started it. And then I couldn't stop, you know, like I just started playing and it's beautifully crafted mixed reality. And I don't want to compare it to other games or anything, but like at the same time, like there's there, it gives you a kind of thoughts of how you can interact with music. It's really focused on these different classical orchestra pieces, but I'd just be like, okay, one more song. Okay. Yeah. Just, just one more slide. I literally, I played it for probably like an hour, hour and a half in the midst of the time. I'm not supposed to be spending that much time on one piece, you know, but I just kept going. I just kept going. It was completely addictive and I, I really, really enjoyed it.

[00:43:13.340] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, that'd be a good one for folks to check out before they come into the exhibition, because you're going to have a limited constraint there on the floor. So you can play it as long as you want when you're at home. Okay, so The Art of Change. This happened to be my number one piece out of Venice Immersive last year. It's an immersive audiovisual journey. It uses Quill. It's basically like there's an album also named The Art of Change by Vincent Rogers, Drolo, and Simone Fournier. he was creating concept art for each of the, every song of this album. And then when Michelle react came to them to see if they had anything to present last year at Venice, he created like this music video and there's a really beautiful narrative component to the concept album around time and the I just, I just really loved both the music video experience, the immersive nature and the story. And I've literally been listening to the art of change so much. I downloaded it on band camp and I've just been listening to it on repeat. It's an amazing album, but I recommend checking in this little, little, yeah, it was probably my favorite out of Venice as well.

[00:44:24.109] Blake Kammerdiener: I was talking to one of the producers, Peter, and I was like, So there's a whole album, right? Y'all are going to make like a whole album. There's going to be more? Can I do more? You're going to expand this, right? He was like, good to know that you'd like it. I was like, yes, please, please, please. I could sit in that forever. It's fantastic.

[00:44:45.888] Kent Bye: Yeah, and we come to the final piece that we have on the spotlight, which is Uncanny Alley, A New Day. It's a live theater in VR. The Ferryman Collective coming back to another exhibition of, you know, this is a collaboration with Rick Trerek, also known as Metagrick, and VRChat. And this world that was at Venice Immersive and Competition back in 2023, they came back, they expanded out the lore, telling this whole story within the context of this VRChat world. So this is like a live immersive theater within VRChat.

[00:45:15.988] Blake Kammerdiener: action comedy drama sci-fi experimental between the united states and south africa so to me it really shows the power of like vr chat world building mashed up with the power of immersive theater and being taken on this whole narrative adventure it's my favorite of the ferryman collectives projects to date and you know we premiered gumball dreams back a few years back and love that but to see kind of how their process and how their art and craft has kind of grown is wonderful I wanted to be one of the little fairies so bad, you know, the door to the club. Like I was just like, can I have that avatar please right now? It's amazing. I absolutely loved it. It is so much fun and I'm really, really excited to have them back.

[00:46:03.597] Kent Bye: Very cool. Well, I know in the past you've had some special events that were kind of hidden or not shown. Are there any other live events or anything else that we missed that you have this year?

[00:46:12.421] Blake Kammerdiener: Um, There are going to be like a couple little things here and there, I believe. They're not going to be listed under the XR experience, but we will have some more kind of immersive projects. There's one, and this won't be, I don't believe, open to everybody. We're just working on it now. But Andrew Schneider, who was one of the creators of Eclipsed that we played last year, the audio walk, which was amazing. Did you get to see Eclipsed?

[00:46:43.223] Kent Bye: I wasn't at, no, I didn't make it out to South by last year.

[00:46:45.864] Blake Kammerdiener: Oh my goodness. So, okay. Eclipsed was built around the idea of the eclipse and they do these walking tours. They did one in New York, but then they did this one here. They have a acting troupe that interacts with you at timed moments, kind of out of the blue. You started at the Long Center and then you walked around the river and and kind of back. And these actors would pop up doing things as you're listening to this immersive audio story being told by Andrew and Annie Saunders. Those were the two directors and they were telling you the story. Well, Andrew is coming back this year with a piece called NOWISWHENWEARE. So it's basically a light installation. It's going to be happening at the University of Texas. And there's going to be a couple of days that will be special and open to our badge holders. It's going to be crazy. And I really think it's going to be a fantastic thing. Let me see if we actually have it.

[00:47:48.512] Kent Bye: Is it on the schedule?

[00:47:49.977] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah.

[00:47:50.697] Kent Bye: Oh, okay. I just went through and looked at the XR exhibition.

[00:47:53.879] Blake Kammerdiener: Yeah, because it's not tagged XR as part of the XR exhibition. It's kind of a special offshoot offering to some of our badge holders at the Texas Performing Arts Center. And it's like tagged XR, but not as part of the XR experience. So it's going to be epic.

[00:48:12.486] Kent Bye: So it's called now is when we are the stars interactive performance installation. So it looks like it's playing on an afternoon evening on both the March 11th and 12th that's happening. So, okay, well, that's good to know. Glad to ask because, you know, it's sometimes it can be a little hard to track down all the events.

[00:48:28.558] Blake Kammerdiener: It's hard. There's a lot of things that are happening. Be sure this year, I think, a little plug for the XR track and the conference. We're going to have robots. We have astronauts doing VR demos on stage. It's going to be a pretty epic kind of year in the conference. We also are going to have ILM doing kind of a look at their work. And we're going to have John Karafan from Lightfield Lab is going to be talking about the future of holograms. They are just doing fantastic work. He'll be talking with Charlie Fink. There's so many other great things, of course, across South by Southwest. So be sure and dive into the schedule and go see your favorite bands or find your new bands. And there's going to be some killer films. So...

[00:49:13.351] Kent Bye: I'm looking forward to The Age of Disclosure, which is going to be talking about all the discussions around secret hidden reverse engineered programs in the United States. There's a pretty big prominent film called The Age of Disclosure that's going to be showing. I'm looking forward to that myself.

[00:49:29.428] Blake Kammerdiener: It's going to blow people's minds.

[00:49:32.391] Kent Bye: So... I'm going to try to go check it out. We'll see. But there's going to be plenty of other stuff to cover. And just to kind of wrap up in terms of the actual XR content. So the show is happening from officially 9th, 10th, 11th. There's an industry day on the 8th. When is the actual talks that are happening?

[00:49:47.358] Blake Kammerdiener: The talks happen simultaneously. So they're going to happen March 9th, Sunday, March 9th through Tuesday, March 11th on the fifth floor of the Fairmont in Manchester A and Manchester B. There's also some game industry content happening right across the hall on that same floor. And I think our sessions run from about 10 a.m. So you can kind of get into kind of a first slot before you go watch some XR projects. And then they run until about five o'clock.

[00:50:15.543] Kent Bye: Yeah, and typically what I've seen is that people start lining up at 9.30 or 10 just so that they get in and try to get on the list. There's a bit of a mad rush at the very opening each day. So I recommend folks to get there early and to scout out the things you want to see, get on the lists, and yeah, best of luck trying to see all the things. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to seeing you all. Very cool. Well, Blake, we managed to make through the whole program. I'm so stoked and excited to come out again and check it all out and talk to all the creators. So I guess before we do wrap up, I'm just curious to hear your latest thoughts on what you think the ultimate potential of XR and immersive storytelling and immersive interactive art might be and what it might be able to enable.

[00:50:54.768] Blake Kammerdiener: I really look forward to seeing the continued slow and steady growth of all things immersive. You know, I think the Apple Vision Pro has been another boost level. I'm really excited to see what Meta is doing with all of that. secret talks that have, you know, like they've been leaking out in terms of kind of what they were working on and developing and seeing kind of where they go with that. I like how things are shrinking. I like the people's exploration with AR wearables and, you know, like I'm excited to see the continued exploration of all things immersive and immersive art.

[00:51:29.224] Kent Bye: Hmm. What are the things for meta that were leaking? I'm not sure if I've seen that.

[00:51:33.447] Blake Kammerdiener: Oh, you know, they talked about the Orion Project, I believe, which are their AR glasses that they've been working on, like interactive AR glasses. I saw news of work on Quest 4, possible new Pro Edition. You know, it's good to see that they're still kind of like exploring and seeing how they can integrate and upgrade everything there at Reality Loves.

[00:51:56.616] Kent Bye: Very cool. Well, again, I'm really stoked to come out to South by Southwest. It's always a highlight of the year. It's one of those festivals in the film festival circuit that really has the closest intersection to like the wider tech sphere. People do have to go out of their way to go to the Fairmont, but at least it's in the same place and time of all the other South by Southwest busyness and stuff. things that are going on. There's always way more things going on than you can have time to see. But if you make your way over to Fairmont, either seeing the immersive experiences or hear some of the talks, that's the place to be if you're in the XR industry. And it's always a great gathering of the entire field and just kind of get updates and get people's sense of what they see is happening right now. So really looking forward to being there and checking out all the different experiences. So thanks again for joining me here to help break it all down. Thanks a lot, Kent. So that was Blake Commendeater. He's a senior manager for film and TV and XR programming at South by Southwest. So of a number of different takeaways about this interview is that first of all, well, it's great to see that the XR programming is still going really strong and I'm really excited to see this year's program The actual setup for South by Southwest does have the competition, the spotlight kind of intermingled. So there are some of those different spotlight experiences that are available. I'll try to make a note of what is available. I've done some interviews with a number of these different projects as well. I'll put some links to all the different projects as well as links to the interviews that I've already published from mostly the stuff in the spotlight. So yeah, I'm always excited to see the latest innovations of immersive storytelling art when I go to festivals like this, but also just to get a little bit of a vibe check from the broader XR industry and the community, see what kind of other emerging trends that are happening. And I'll do my best to try to do some other podcast interviews to kind of like take a little sampling of what people are thinking about. Sometimes when I go to these different festivals, it'll be a little bit more of like off the record vibe checks sometimes. where people aren't always willing to go on the record to give all their thoughts around the current state of the industry. But if you do have some strong opinions around what's happening in XR, if you want to catch up and meet up, look for me at the different after events, because like I said, I'll be mostly doing interviews from like 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. for each day from Monday to Wednesday and then seeing mostly experiences on Saturday and Sunday. So it's already a pretty booked schedule, but I'll do my best to kind of check out all the different things that are happening across South by Southwest and see what some of the emerging trends are. So I'll be there from March 7th to March 12th. And yeah, hope to see you there in Austin. So that's all I have for today, and I just want 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 listener-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.

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#1529: SXSW 2025 XR Experience Selection Sneak Peak with Programmer Blake Kammerdiener