Ali Eslami is an Iranian artist who has been working with VR since 2014 & living in Amsterdam since 2018, and we talked about these projects that have been featured at DocLab since 2016:
Roel Wouters is a founding partner of Moniker, which is a small tight-nit studio doing projects on how people relate to technologies, social impact of technologies, and the side effects to our lives. We talked about many of their social experiments and interactive projects featured at IDFA DocLab since 2016:
Victoria Mapplebeck has been a storyteller for more than 30 years across different platforms, genres, and technologies. She’s a self-shooting director who shifted to smartphone filmmaking, & more recently immersive 360 video & immersive sound. We talked about these projects that have shown at the IDFA DocLab over the years:
May Abdalla & Amy Rose are co-founders of Anagram, which has been exploring ways of telling non-fiction stories experientially using technology. There some of my favorite creators in this space, and they also think very deeply about the medium. We talk about their journey into this space and some of their highlights over the past 6+ years.
Tamara Shogaolu is an interdisciplinary artist & director who works in film and as a creative technologist that mixes analog with digital including VR, AR, and mixed media forms. We discussed these following immersive projects that she has had at DocLab, and her journey into immersive storytelling and AR installations.
Rahima Gambo is a multimedia journalist based between Abuja, Nigeria & London, UK, and presented “A Rest Guide for a Tired Nigerian Artist,” which is a both a podcast series, series of book, and an immersive experience that was presented at DocLab 2021. Her previous experience of Tatsuniya was presented at DocLab 2017.
The IDFA DocLab is celebrating it’s 15th year anniversary, and I collaborated with DocLab to produce a series of a dozen interviews reflecting on the evolution of immersive storytelling and interactive documentaries since 2007. I’m kicking off the series with an interview with DocLab founder Caspar Sonnen, who takes us back to the very beginning of featuring web-based, digital projects, then onto theatrical screenings of interactive pieces, and now full-on exhibitions, immersive performances, and interactive documentaries.
This conversation was recorded on Friday, December 3, 2021
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I caught up with the XR Safety Initiative CEO & Founder Kavya Pearlman as well as Kristina Podnar, who is an independent Digital Policy Consultant, XRSI’s Global Digital Policy Advisor, & the chair of XRSI’s Metaverse Reality Check. We talked about the landscape of tech policy issues including child safety in VR and what Antony Vitillo has called “the kids issue” within VR with an influx of children less than 13 years old after Christmas. We also talk about Privacy, and the overall tech landscape, and do a recap their recent XR Safety week.
XRSI also has a wide range of positions and strategies that can also be confusing to know how to classify them within the broader tech policy ecosystem. Most of the time XRSI sounds like a consumer advocacy organization about issues on child safety, privacy, or cybersecurity. But then other times Pearlman will advocate for more experimental blockchain strategies using Decentralized Autonomous Organizations for taking collective actions on privacy issues. Or then other times they will emphasize prioritizing innovation or emphasizing uniform approaches to legislation, which could amount to a more business-friendly position depending on the specifics of the proposal.
(Update: January 7, 2022) Perlman clarified the scope of their work by saying, “Uniform Commercial Code and Emerging Technologies: The American Law Institute and the Uniform Law Commission joint committee is advised via recommending amendments and revisions to the Uniform Commercial Code with a view to accommodate emerging technological developments such as digital currency and virtual goods. XRSI contributions are specifically focused on commerce in the Metaverse and the legal impact of emerging technologies such as Non-Fungible Tokens(NFT) and cryptocurrencies. New laws are expected to be made public by Fall 2022.”
Broadly speaking each of these organizations are aspiring to create a uniform approach by creating model laws that could be potentially adopted by state legislators in order to simplify the regulatory landscape.
In looking more deeply into one of the Uniform Law Commission’s previous proposals around privacy called the Uniform Personal Data Protection Act (UPDPA) after this interview, I found that the UPDPA was widelypanned by privacy advocates. I’m not convinced that uniformity of laws is always the best design goal, especially if it is prioritizing business’ needs over consumer protection as appears to be the case for Uniform Law Commission’s UPDPA.
(Update: January 7, 2022) The scope of XRSI’s collaboration with the Uniform Law Commission and the American Law Institute appears to be limited to advising amendments and revisions to the Uniform Commercial Code and Emerging Technologies’ joint committee on policies around virtual goods, digital currencies, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs. Drafts of these proposals will be made available in the Fall of 2022, which is when the full scope of this effort can be evaluated through the lens of consumer advocacy verses the interests of businesses. Hopefully XRSI’s feedback will help tip the scales towards legislation that is able to add additional protections for consumers.
All of these discussions are also happening within the context of a technology pacing gap & Collingridge Dilemma where technology is advancing far faster than tech policy can keep up with understanding it or regulating it. There is no one consumer advocacy group, trade organization, company, or legislative body has really fully figured out a comprehensive strategy for how close this technology pacing gap or to find the perfect point of equilibrium point within the Collingridge Dilemma that balances technological unpredictability for innovation with the legislative desire to prevent harms without inadvertently stifling innovation.
So it is within this broader context where XRSI’s consumer awareness campaigns like XR Safety Week are very much a needed part of the larger process of informing the public, XR developers, lawmakers, and businesses about some of the biggest harms from immersive technologies.
XRSI passed along some additional show notes and reference links to some of the other frameworks and specific policy issues:
Felix & Paul Studios just released Episode #3 of their Space Explorers: ISS Experience, which features some absolutely stunning & breathtaking shots captured outside of the International Space Station. They gave a sneak peak of some of this footage at the end of Meta’s Connect 2021, and some of those shots are included in Episode #3 titled “Unity,” and there will be more space walk footage included within Episode #4 launching later in 2022. In October, they also released a 7-minute montage of clips called Home Planet shot from the ISS Cupola Observation Module of the ISS view of the Earth. So in total there’s over 100 minutes of really compelling documentary footage that gives a visceral sense of what life on the ISS is like through the stories and phenomenological experiences shared by astronauts.
Felix Lajeunesse & Paul Raphaël won a 2021 Emmy for Outstanding Interactive Program for the first two episodes of Space Explorers: ISS Experience, and I had a chance to speak to them after the premiere of the 2nd episode at SXSW in March 2021. This series represents a culmination of everything they’ve learned both technically and the perspective of immersive storytelling as it’s some of the most compelling and engaging 360 video content that I’ve seen so far. We talked about building trust with NASA over many years, how they had to plan out story arcs over 6-month missions, the technical challenges of shooting 360 VR video in space, and the themes of diversity as they shot the first-ever, all-woman space walk.
Felix & Paul have also been experimenting with taking the 360-degree panoramic video shot in Space and creating television, IMAX, dome, and large-scale, location-based entertainment experiences — specifically The Infinite, which just recently opened up in Houston, Texas on December 20th.
The Space Explorers: ISS Experience is one of the more amazing 360 videos produced up to this point, and releasing a new episode just in time as VR gets a new batch of users from the holiday season.
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