K. Guillory (aka Aemeth) has been writing The Metaculture online magazine since August 13, 2021 with over 70 articles covering the latest trends in arts and culture on social VR platforms such as VRChat. She focuses primarily on the live music and performance scenes, but also has been tracking the historical evolution of the underground clubbing scene in VRChat, virtual fashion, as well as many other artistic trends from painting in VR to film in VR to VTubers. In fact, I mention some of her intrepid work in my own interviews with Starheart on VTubing and BabyBonito on painting within VR as her previous interviews on these topics and coverage on these trends came up they were continuing to evolve and be featured at the Raindance Immersive festival in 2023 and 2024. Guillory has been ahead of the curve in terms of tracking some of these trends of virtual culture before they get picked up and highlighted by other curators and virtual cultural critics and essayists.
Guillory was inspired to start The Metaculture magazine from a conversation that I had with her on July 24, 2021 at Nanotopia’s Mycelia exhibition in VRChat as a part of the AMAZE festival. She was sharing with me all sorts of insider tips on the underground dancing and clubbing scene with VRChat, and so I suggested to her that she find a way to archive, document, and publicly share more of this oral history knowledge as most of the information about the nuances of these hidden corners of the VRChat cultural scene were scattered across disparate Discord servers, ephemeral Twitter announcements, as well as insider community knowledge from knowing someone who knew someone about it all.
Starting in 2021 and 2022 there started to be more and more YouTubers creating documentaries about VRChat’s underground clubbing scene trend with Straszfilms’ The Virtual Underground: An Introduction to VRChat’s Rave Scene published May 5, 2021. Then Phia’s The EXPLOSIVE Rise of VRChat Clubbing published her take on it on her The Virtual Reality Show channel on Mar 12, 2022. Then I actually conducted this interview with Guillory featured here on March 25, 2022 right as the zeitgeist about the clubbing scene started to explode. I knew she was tracking it very closely, and I wanted to get a bit of an insider’s perspective on it all.
Then a few weeks after I recorded my chat with Guillory, PBS Voices published their I Went Clubbing in Virtual Reality: Raves of VRChat on Apr 6, 2022, and then Guillory/Aemeth was featured as a subject matter expert on Resident Advisors’ piece The music, venues and creators driving virtual reality clubbing that was featured on Sep 28, 2022. You might able to detect some of the parallels of how she tells me the story in this interview as well as some of the points that she also makes within the Resident Advisor video.
The Origin Story of VRChat
In the process of producing this episode, I came across this documentary by YouTuber Twice about the History of VRChat 2014-2022 that does a really great job of establishing the major platform developments, UI/UX changes, as well as turning points in the cultural evolution of the VRChat platform. Twice first came across VRChat in 2017, and so his video aggregates some archival footage before he started creating his own content, but for everything after 2017 he weaves his own personal history, footage, and memories on the platform to help flesh out the broader story of VRChat as a platform.
This documentary inspired me to go on my own trip down memory lane as well as a entering into a bit of a rabbit hole of research into the origin story of VRChat itself, and so I wanted to share some of the results of my archeological dig here.
I first ordered my Oculus Rift DK1 on January 1, 2014, and I received it about a week later. I along with many VR enthusiasts and VR developers ended up obsessively following the /r/Oculus subreddit as this where a critical mass of the community was congregating to share the latest VR demos, discussing feedback, commenting on VR news articles, and connecting as a community. It planted many seeds for what would evolve into the much more professionalized immersive XR community, but it was also the intersection where VR gaming enthusiasts could interact with the indie VR developers who were producing this content. I remember r/Oculus being the epicenter for the nascent VR community.
Graham Gaylor posted the first official VRChat v0.1 Released announcement to the r/Oculus Subreddit on January 15, 2014 at 11:41:55am CST from Nashville, TN when he was a senior at Vanderbilt University. Gaylor originally started blogging about his VR development explorations when was still a junior on April 1st, 2014 where he said, “I backed the [Oculus Kickstarter] project on day 1 but didn’t do so until 5pm that evening, so I’m like order #1900ish. They are supposedly shipping ~1000 to ~1500 units a week so hopefully mine will be arriving soon!”
At the end of his first post about the Oculus Rift on April 1st, Gaylor wrote “That’s all for now but I’ll be posting a bit more on a project I’ve been working on for the Rift soon!” He had just attended the HackVandy Hackathon that took place place March 29-31, 2013 on Vanderbilt’s campus in Featheringill Hall organized by the VandyMobile student group of mobile app developers. This is where Gaylor built the very first prototype demo that he called “VRChatroom”. He uploaded a VRChatroom demo video to Vimeo on April 2, 2013 at 1:08 am CST where he said, “I built this demo at a Hackathon this past weekend. The idea was to get a basic VR Developer’s Lounge where Rift developers could meet and chat about projects in a virtual space. I’m using Unity3D (free version) at the moment and have networking, voice chat, a message board and portals to other games working. Although it doesn’t look very pretty (I don’t have an artist) it’s quite functional.”
On May 31st, he wrote a post titled A Month with the Rift where he said, “I finally got my hands on my Rift Developer Kit back in April and man was it a glorious day. Unfortunately I was in the middle of studying for finals so I could only play around with it so much.” He shared some of his early experiences and said at the end of his post, “Currently, I’m still brainstorming for a Summer project dealing with the Rift. Hopefully I’ll think of something soon.”
Three weeks later on June 22, 2013, Gaylor elaborated on his idea for VRChat for the first time in a blog post titled Developing for the Rift. The idea for VRChat crystallized at the March 29-31 HackVandy hackaton before his Rift had actually arrived. But he also lacked key 3D modelling skills, which would limited his theoretical explorations. He gushes over the Rift DK1 by saying:
“I’m head over heels for this thing and seeing such a strong and passionate community behind the Rift and VR have inspired me to dive in head first. I decided I wanted to create a game or experience for VR. My first instinct was to build a VR chatroom for people with developer kits to communicate in a virtual world about development for the Rift. I built a rough proof of concept VRChat at a Hackathon over a period of 3 days using the Unity3D game engine. It was my first time using this software so it took me a while to figure out what I was doing, but I was able to get a basic networked virtual reality chat room working. I didn’t have the Rift at this point (end of March) so I was just planning for the future when I got my Rift. The demo worked well enough but it doesn’t show the real potential of the Rift (I’m not an artist so my assets are all pretty plain). I decided to try something else.”
Gaylor posted Building a VR System Using Consumer Grade Products on September 26, 2014 where he said, “I’m finally back at school to finish my senior year and one of the main things I’m excited about is doing research with the Oculus Rift! I’m working under Bobby Bodenheimer and attempting to build a VR system using low cost hardware currently available to consumers.”
During the Fall of 2013, the About page for Gaylor’s blog said, “At this point, I’m trying to find a project to settle down on that I’m really passionate about. Haven’t quite figured it out yet but hopefully I will soon.” Then sometime in late January or early February after launching the initial 0.1 version of VRChat on January 15, 2014 he updated his About page to say, “I finally settled down on a project Winter 2013 and have been working on it ever since. Besides school, VRChat has become my full time job and I hope to continue working on it for as long as possible. In a perfect world I’d work full time on it post-graduation, but I need to figure out a way to support myself!”
Kyle Riesenbeck (aka ReverendKyle) was a key figure in helping to promote what he found to be really exciting about VR in both video and podcasting forms. He started his YouTube channel in February 2011 primarily focusing on Android technologies, but then he pivoted into covering consumer virtual reality with his first video called What is the Oculus Rift? posted on August 2, 2013. He also started the Rev VR podcast (link to first audio of first episode) on August 6th, 2013 where he would interview key VR developers in the community and talk shop. He also happened to be an aspiring VR developer himself showing off an Alpha build of Teddy Bears VS Land Sharks on August 11, 2013.
Ninety-five minutes after the initial announcement of the VRChat 0.1 release went live, Riesenbeck posted a 15-minute video titled VR CHAT – Oculus Rift App – Day Zero Video Footage to YouTube that showed the very crude beginnings of VRChat with users spawning into a coffee shop 3D model from the Unity asset store and everyone had the same avatar model that was stuck in a T-pose. But the killer feature was to communicate in real-time with people from around the world via networked virtual worlds with spatialized audio effects. It’s also worth mentioning that Chiara Coetzee of the eVRydayVR YouTube channel (who was my very first Voices of VR podcast episode that I published) posted footage of the first 24 hours of the VRChat 0.1 launch on January 16, 2014 at 4:09pm PST.
Riesenbeck also published a Rev VR podcast interview with Gaylor within 24 hours of the initial 0.1 launch on January 16, 2014 (direct link to audio of episode). Riesenbeck was very excited about the initial launch of this nascent VR platform by writing in the show synopsis, “VR Chat is, in my opinion, is one of the “killer apps” that Oculus Rift owners have been dying to try.”
Gaylor told Riesenbeck that he had been developing it so far as a solo project, but was definitely open to other collaborators and 3D artists. He said, “I would love to work with other people. My biggest thing right now is the model that you see, that coffee shop is also from the asset store. I’m not a graphic designer. I’m not a 3D modeler. So that’s one of the things I’m going to reach out to the community for are other environments and other avatars. Because right now the avatars are very strange looking. The arms spread out in the T form or whatever. ” He also said that he “would love help on the actual coding side of things” as well. See below what is most likely the very first VRChat group photo uploaded on January 16th and taken by u/Routb3d.
Then Gaylor and Riesenbeck talked about a number of features that would eventually become a key part of VRChat including both arm-tracking and subsequent full-body tracking, building virtual cameras to enable Twitch streaming, and custom environments and eventually avatars. The dev log for the 0.1 VRChat launch published on January 15, 2014 also shared some technical details such as “The two libraries I used were TNet (for networking) and USpeak (for voicechat). I also found a sweet Coffee Shop environment on the Unity Asset Store.”
By the time I met co-founder and CTO Jesse Joudrey at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference and Expo on May 19-20, 2014, he was already representing VRChat publicly. He told me:
“Being in VRChat is almost the same as being in reality. You show up at a coffee shop to hang out with your friends, you see your friends, you talk to your friends, and you have all the same experiences you would have meeting people in real life. In fact, it’s some of the most compelling virtual reality experiences we have so far because the fact that the other characters in your environment are actually other people from around the world, you automatically feel their presence in the room, and their presence in the room affects your presence in the room, and you feel like you are in a real place talking to real people.”
Joudrey’s first official public association with VRChat was when he implemented the ability to upload custom avatars for the 0.3.5 release of VRChat on March 16, 2014. He posted an extended developer log titled VRChat: Now with Custom Avatars on March 15, 2014 with detailed instructions. He starts his post by saying, “VrChat is a great VR application (http://www.vrchat.net). Many enthusiasts and developers meet up in there after Cymatic Bruce’s Sunday afternoon stream. This last week I’ve had the priviledge of working with it’s creator Graham Gaylor on a new feature. It’s one of the corner stones of virtual reality and any cyberpunk offshoot… Customization.”
I think it’s really striking to see how custom avatars were implemented within the first 60 days of existence, especially since that’s become such a key feature of the platform for users to have so much control over how they represent their identity in virtual worlds. But in looking at Gaylor and Joudrey’s digital footprint across social media and their public blogs from January to May 2014, then it was still a bit of a mystery to me about how exactly Joudrey came onboard as a co-founder and CTO.
Then I came across a Rev VR podcast interview with Joudrey about his Snow Drift game that was published on Friday, February 14, 2024 in episode #46. They ended up first meeting up in VRChat since they had some technical difficulties, but Jourdrey also talked about some VRChat topics and the potential implications for using Razer Hydra Dual 6 Degree-of-Freedom Motion-Controller within a program like VRChat. Jourdrey told Riesenbeck on the podcast,
“Imagine what it’s going to be like when it’s fully animated, or it could be an avatar from somebody else. For example, when VRChat, eventually if it gets… Hydra support, right. Or [Sixense] STEM support. You don’t need to pick up objects in the world for that to be valuable because you’ll be able to point at people. You’ll be able to talk with your hands. And like I was in there this last week and my name, Jespionage, my company name was above my head and I wanted to refer to it. And sitting here in my office, I put my hand above my head and I moved it back and forth, indicating the thing that was above my head in virtual reality. But if I had a Hydra, my character would do that.”
The public-facing specifics for how this collaboration between Gaylor and Joudrey came about have been a bit murky, and so I followed up with Gaylor to get a bit more details. He passed along a couple of photos of emails that were included as a part of an internal presentation about the history of VRChat. After listening to Jourdrey on the Rev VR podcast on February 14, 2014, Gaylor sent an email to Jourdrey saying, “Just listened to your interview on Rev’s podcast and you have some really cool ideas. Not only is SnowDrive awesome, but you had some interesting things to say about VRChat. If you have any free time I’d love to chat with you, just to spitball ideas and what not.”
Then after Joudrey got back from his trip to IndieCade East 2014, then he replied to Gaylor on March 5, 2024 saying:
I’ve been thinking about VRChat lately and I’ve come up with a couple of features for it. Hydra support is something we’ve already talked about, but I also recently proved out out the tech for custom avatars. This second feature would allow anyone with Unity pro to build custom model, package it, put it on the web for anyone who joins their session to see. Later support could be added for other model types.
I know you’re busy with your own features so I figure I’d offer to develop these for you. I wouldn’t need any money, all I’d look for is some recognition (name in credits, for example).
I’d understand if you didn’t want to distribute your source to third parties, or if you felt that these features were not the direction you were hoping to take the project, so if you want to say no I won’t be offended.
I followed up with Graham ask when Jesse had actually become a formalized co-founder and he replied by saying, “I believe we formalized the company Jan 1, 2015 but Jesse was effectively a co-founder once we started working together in 2014.”
I’m sure that there’s a lot more to the specifics of the VRChat origin story that’s not been fully told, but I wanted to at least capture a little bit more of the breadcrumbs that I was able to dig up online as well as following up with the co-founders. It’s really amazing to me how many of the core values and differentiating features of the platform took shape so quickly. VRChat certainly was at the right moment at the right time, and closely listened to the community as they rapidly iterated on the development of the core of their social VR platform.
Just ten days after Joudrey and Gaylor released the ability to upload custom avatars to VRChat 0.3.5, then on March 25, 2014 Facebook announced that they were buying Oculus for what was reported at the time as $2 billion, but ultimately ended up being closer to $3 billion. It was a shocking turning point and most folks on /r/Oculus subreddit did not take it as good news as thousands of early adopter enthusiasts weighed in on the implications, and the general mood was pretty incensed. Joudrey on the other hand was pretty optimistic in how it was validating the overall market as he commented on X (formerly Twitter) that “Facebook just bought Oculus and took over first place in the VR Race!” and he also said “#VirtualReality Two weeks ago it was a product, now it’s an industry!”
As K. Guillory / Aemeth and artists from Raindance Immersive have been illustrating, there’s so much potential for creative expression through different artistic and cultural practices that have been built on top of their platform. Be sure to check out TheMetaculture.co for how she’s been capturing different elements and strands of the cultural history of social VR platforms like VRChat.
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 future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So in today's episode, I'm going to be diving into a conversation I had with K. Guillory, also known as Aemeth, in VRChat a couple of years ago. And she runs an online magazine called TheMetaculture.co, where she covers arts and culture on online social VR platforms like VRChat, but also other multi-user virtual worlds as well. So she's been writing the mediculture since August 13th, 2021. So she's done around 70 articles over the last three years or so. And actually kind of born out of a conversation that I had with her within VRChat a month earlier in July of 2021, we were at this Nanotopia mycelium performance within VRChat. And At that time, I was a few years into the pandemic and, you know, I had heard about this whole underground scene of what was happening in different clubs and different performances and came across Rizumu Club in May of 2020. During the pandemic, I was at the virtual market and someone kind of like said, hey, I got to show you what's happening in this underground scene in VRChat. And I went in and I met Aliquem. But at the time, I didn't really dive into what was happening with that scene. Well, Aemeth was attending a large part of this whole live music and performance and clubbing scene for the last number of years. And so she basically did a whole brain dump of all the things that were happening. VR chat were in this kind of underground movement of arts and culture. And I just told her, I said, hey, you know, should really consider just like archiving or documenting all this knowledge somewhere, because it'd be just great to have. a resource to help understand what was happening. This is before the groups had launched on VRChat later in November of 2022. So yeah, she started writing and covering all these different events. Actually, I came across a couple of her articles as I was preparing to do interviews with artists that are being featured at this year's Raindance. She had a really great interview with Starheart and also she was talking about painting within virtual reality, which she calls Grittism, which is essentially making art around virtual worlds or virtual spaces. painting in particular, either in painting in VR or painting on physical media. So she's also done a number of different interviews with folks like TFM Johnny and Roo and covering the early beginnings of the VR film scene and the VJ silent and the history of the clubbing scene within VRChat. All of these are topics that I'm covering more in depth now, like two years later. So she's kind of on the bleeding edge of covering what's happening in the arts and culture scene within social VR platforms on VRChat. And I wanted to dig in this conversation just because I was referencing a couple of her conversations that I had. Also, I just haven't had a chance to air this conversation that I had. I think during the pandemic, I was still trying to figure out how I cover things that are happening in these online social VR spaces. My coverage of the voices of VR has typically been me going to different events and talking to people. So I remember meeting the founders of VRChat at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference in like 2014, all the way up from like 2014 and 2019. I was doing interviews with the co-founders of VRChat once a year, but I wasn't really embedded as a community member within VRChat. I had gone into a number of different events, but it wasn't until the pandemic hit that I really jumped into the scene of VRChat and started to participate a lot more into what was happening there. That's when Maria from Raindance brought me on to be a juror for some of the best VRChat worlds, where I had a chance to do the devouring for five hours with Joe Hunting, who went on to become a curator of Raindance, as well as with Mike Salmon, also known as Minglebird, who has gone on to be a curator for the VRChat worlds within Venice. And Mike was actually the one who pointed me to Straz's documentary that came out around the virtual underground, an introduction to the VR chats rave scene. That was released on May 5th of 2021. And then the AmazeFest was happening on Saturday, July 24th, 2021. This is where Mike Salmon again gave me a heads up with this amazing Nanotopia Mycelia project where she had like these mushrooms and fungi where she was hooking up these electronics and doing biosonification where she was having these mushrooms make music. And then being translated into like audio reactive shaders within VRChat. It's just like this really wild project that I did an interview with her later because it actually also ended up showing at both Venice and Raindance Immersive, where I saw it a second time in November. And then March 12th of 2022, Thea had just published a whole documentary on the explosive rise of VRChat clubbing. And then a few weeks later, PBS Voices did a whole A1 Clubbing and Virtual Reality, Raves of VR Chat. And then later in the fall, in September 28, 2022, Resident Advisor did a whole deep dive on the music venues and creators driving virtual reality clubbing. So I had a chance to talk to Kate Golary right in the midst of all these documentaries that were coming out. In fact, if you go watch the Resident Advisor documentary about the music venues and creators driving virtual reality clubbing, Aemeth is featured quite prominently within that in terms of helping to set the broader context, because she is somebody who was there and helping track some of the history of this scene. And so in this conversation, I was trying to get both an insight for some of the different trends that she was seeing in the art chat music scene and giving a little bit of the history, as well as how she's starting to think about the different fashion trends, both in what types of avatars people are wearing, but also the types of clothes that they're wearing. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with K. Guillory happened on Friday, March 25th, 2022. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:05:46.496] K. Guillory: My name is K. Guillory, Kelly Guillory. Some people know me as Aemeth. And what I do are actually a couple of different things. My main thing is writing for a small publication called The Metaculture. And what The Metaculture does is it covers various phenomenon and instances of culture that are happening within social multi-user spaces. So any place where there are multiple users, most of the time it's going to be concentrated on VR. But any place where there's multi-user spaces and there's something interesting happening, I like to dig in and find out what's going on and why.
[00:06:28.868] Kent Bye: Great, great. And maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into this social VR multiplayer worlds that you're covering. Sure.
[00:06:39.332] K. Guillory: Oh, that's true. So I started out actually writing just regular fashion and things like that for Second Life. And I wrote that for about 10 years and I wrote it for a blog called Juicy Bomb. And that was actually my friend's blog, but she gave me like guest posts and things like that. So it started out being about fashion, but then I started journeying into art and culture and, you know, really cool things that I thought readers should pay attention to and And then also about certain things about that virtual society that I felt should improve. And from there, I ended up leaving Second Life and going to VRChat to kind of like move and be my home. And then after a while, I thought, you know, I should write again because of course it was actually you that encouraged me to do it. So I opened up the website and I've been doing that ever since. Yeah.
[00:07:33.114] Kent Bye: When did you start getting into Second Life then?
[00:07:35.931] K. Guillory: I would say that was back in like 2009. And to musically date that, because we'll probably be talking about music later, that was at the very, very beginning of when, before Skrillex even got into dubstep. So it was before all the Americanification of dubstep and all the wah, wah, that would get into the sound and all that. Back then, it was just about this chill step kind of thing. It wouldn't scream. And when Amika were doing their thing, it was a very cool time in music. It was also a time when indie folk... pop music was flourishing. So a lot of people were into like the hipster style. A really big radio station back then was Pig Radio. And so I was hanging out in Second Life in this cyberpunk style sim. And we were all just listening to like indie music and stuff. So music has been a part of that journey for a very long time.
[00:08:34.830] Kent Bye: Okay, and I know that you do some comic book illustrations and perhaps even some avatar design and you're talking about fashion. So maybe you could give a bit more context to some of your art background and comic books and other things that are informing the way that you cover these virtual worlds.
[00:08:49.778] K. Guillory: Right. So I also, even back when I was playing Second Life, I also did a lot of avatar work. I come from a background of having been good at art all my life. And before I actually got into Second Life, I was doing... a lot of painting, beginner painting. I was doing oil paintings back then and I was living in Detroit. So I was part of the fine art world there, which is a very close-knit familial type of scene where everyone knows everyone and your styles are all meshing and influencing the other person. So I did that for a very long time. And then I started encountering the challenge of, hey, I can take my art and I can put it on this 3D person and let that be my canvas. And so I started approaching that as a challenge. It was a very interesting challenge because with Second Life, they don't have custom shaders, really. And so your work is being seen by other people by the shaders that they define it as, which is not always pretty. So I kept trying to perfect that for a very long time and it never really quite worked. But when I moved to VRChat, suddenly I had all these shaders where avatars and things that I could make my work look better the way it was intended to look. And then also I found that my work was very good looking on Vroid basis. Every failure that I had experienced over time, I had tried to sell like avatar skins in Second Life and people always hated them. It's very funny. But as soon as I got into Vroid, I took all of my failures and I pasted them as a face. on this V rate avatar and I blended them together. And now to this day, you will see edits of my face on various V tubers. Like it's just gone down the line with these child edits that you can see, like you could look at a streamer and say, that's my nose. Those are my lips. Those are my eyes. And I still see that from time to time, which is amazing.
[00:11:02.557] Kent Bye: Are you saying that the avatars that you either posted or are selling on booth.pm or these are things that other VTubers are using? What do you mean that you're able to trace those body parts?
[00:11:13.612] K. Guillory: So an avatar has a couple of different components. So there's the mesh part of an avatar, which is like the 3D. And then there is the texture. So what I do is I'm a texture artist. I love taking things and I love repainting them. So I put the textures, custom textures up on Booth. And I say, you can put these on V-Ray avatars and you can use them for whatever you want. And then people take them. And because I've given permission to edit them, people... we'll take them and edit them into a new face. And so then I would look on like Instagram and social media and I'd find all these people that have done edits and edits and edits. And then, so it just kind of goes down the line and you can see where people have put different edits of various skins together, which I find that really fascinating.
[00:12:05.310] Kent Bye: Okay, yeah, and I think I ran into you at the Mushroom Nanotopia music show, and I think you told me about some other things that were happening in VRChat. So I kind of see you as somebody who is going around to a lot of these different events and club scenes and music shows and really on the frontiers of tracking what's happening from a cultural perspective in these different areas. online spaces. And so maybe you could take me back to the point where you wanted to, first of all, participate in the culture, but then start to reflect and describe some of the scenes and trends that you were seeing within these social VR worlds like VRChat.
[00:12:40.452] K. Guillory: I think that my fascination for the movement and crowds and what they're doing probably comes from where I come from as hereditary. I'm Creole, Louisiana Creole. And so a lot of where my people come from and individual bloodlines actually are a mystery. If you look into the history of certain towns, you can see there were groups of people that were previously in that town that are no longer there. As a child that was told stories about things kind of in a mythological perspective. Like once there was a time when my stepmother told me that a tribe had gone through a in like the late 1800s. And she just called it the chaotic time. That was literally what she called it, the chaotic time. And they came through and they swept through and they killed everyone in their path. And it was not like, just like man, woman, and child. It was like that they were moving in. It was like a conquest or some kind of war. And some of the other tribes were terrified and they ran, they abandoned where they lived and they changed their name or they integrated into society somewhere else. And I know this is kind of a horrific start, but sometimes those things really fascinate me. I think that going through Louisiana on trips with my parents, because we lived in Texas But they were all from like a small town called Appaloosa, Louisiana, which, by the way, has no Creoles and Cajuns really living there anymore. They're pretty much gone. So it's very interesting how the crowds kind of shift and cycle through. And as we would drive through Louisiana, we would see like old markers and ancient things that we had no clue where they came from. We didn't know the dates about them. So there's a lot of information that was missing there. And I always find that really, really interesting. And I think that kind of interesting curiosity about what happened here, what's going on here. I think that it's something that I'm actually kind of fascinated with now. Even when it comes to small currents of movements and things that like a group of musicians might be doing or a group of artists might be doing, I find that interesting because little things often build to big things. Like you can see where a small movement can start and then it just eventually snowballs and it becomes like the greater sentiments on something. And that's fascinating. So I think that's why I'm always like interested in something like that.
[00:15:17.884] Kent Bye: So tell me a bit about your process of either tracking down these movements and seeing the early seeds. Like, are you in VR chat, like every day checking out stuff and like, how do you hear about things? Maybe you could just talk about your process of how you either discover or find, or go to these different places and events and these virtual spaces.
[00:15:37.799] K. Guillory: It's actually kind of funny because I just kind of bump into them. So I think the biggest place that you want to look if you're looking on purpose for any kind of interesting cultural event is Twitter. A lot of users in VR and other games as well, like Final Fantasy, they communicate with each other on Twitter. That's where they announce things. And then they say, join this Discord server for more information. So you end up keeping tabs on Twitter and Discord, and then there will be a general calendar of events and times like Vero Chat Party Hub. That's a thing. They announce the parties for the day, which is such great work. I really have to thank Captain Duck for that. He does tremendous work every day on that. But you could look at daily chats and see where memes and like songs catch on and then people get fascinated. I really like the Dieselworks Discord, for example, they're really into like drum and bass and jungle. And I noticed as I was hanging out at some of their music events that they've been sampling, sometimes they'll catch samples of Anita Baker. And so I thought to myself, what if Anita Baker becomes more associated with jungle and drum and bass? What if that happens? That would be very interesting. So little things like that, they happen, they snowball over time. But yeah, I would definitely say Twitter and Discord are two of the places that you would look. But other than that, I just kind of let myself go. I just follow my interest. I meet people. And it's not for the purpose of, I want to find out what this person is doing. It's just more like, this is really cool. I just want to go there. And then anytime I'm there, I'm at an event, I'll dance and I'll just hear people talking about stuff. And if something catches my eye, I'll be like, oh, I wonder what that is. And then I'll just go there. So it's really just kind of a quote unquote wandering mentality. I just wander.
[00:17:37.745] Kent Bye: And in terms of your output, I know that you've done different writings on your blog. Sometimes you will take shots and post them to Twitter, but what do you think of as your output of how to cover some of these different events? I mean, you're having these experiences, but you're not translating all of your experiences into some sort of cultural artifact for other people to see. And so just curious what either a world or event that crosses a threshold that makes you want to either speak about it on Twitter or to do a more in-depth write-up with some of the different trends that you're seeing.
[00:18:08.345] K. Guillory: I think when it comes to something that I would actually cover, it would be something that I think that readers would definitely want to read about that has a kind of unusual angle to it. Or if it's a bunch of events that are following a specific pattern and I notice that pattern. So I'll just be hanging out, for example, at multiple parties and then I'll notice that they're all kind of following events a particular style, there's a bunch of music that's coalescing together, then I will say, okay, that's an interesting pattern. I'd like to write about it. So then I write about it and I put it on the news site. When it comes to something like that, that's really what I'm interested in covering is like when there's a pattern. I think that's another really interesting, important aspect of it. I'm not too interested in going into the minute of somebody's life. And it's because There's not that many people in truth that are running these cultural scenes. There's not that many fine artists in VR yet. Not relatively, not a lot. There's not that many musicians, not that many, not yet. So if you're delving too far into someone's life, you can actually kind of hurt them. You don't want that. That's not what this is about. It's about the bigger picture. When there's a bigger picture and there's an interesting pattern, then That's what you really want to capture and take a snapshot of.
[00:19:38.708] Kent Bye: When you say that you may do something that hurt them, what do you mean by that?
[00:19:42.867] K. Guillory: I think that it means, well, maybe someone doesn't want to be too much in the spotlight. Like maybe there's a musician out there that is just making music for the sake of making music. And they know that what they're doing is advancing that particular genre and that line of thought and production. But covering that doesn't mean that I should be getting in that person's face, right? I think that respecting their life and their privacy is extremely important and that there should always be a line of respect there.
[00:20:16.222] Kent Bye: Okay. I just asked because my approach is all about oral histories of individuals and all about their stories.
[00:20:21.869] K. Guillory: Oh, no, no, no, no. I mean, how do I say it? Someone, for example, who makes music and they're not approaching it as in they want to make a career out of it, but what they're doing is phenomenal. but they have like 30 followers and they're not taking it very seriously. Like they have stated this, that's not the person that I'm trying to get in their face with because that's taking that person and you're throwing them in a spotlight and they're not prepared for it. They're not really ready for that. They really have to be, you know, left alone. And so what I do instead, for example, is I do a music roundup. It's like, if you want to, me to put your music out there in an article, you can give me the link, then that's okay. But that's also why I don't go to people's band camp and Spotify and just pull music and then say, this person published this because maybe they don't want it in an article. Maybe they just put it out there for their friends. That's why I actually don't do that is because I don't want to kind of encroach on people's private space by doing that.
[00:21:34.611] Kent Bye: Okay, yeah, yeah. It's interesting just to talk to you because my reporting in the VR scene has been a lot of going to physical conferences and meeting people face-to-face. So a lot of my coverage has not been as much of going around these virtual spaces and covering those kind of recording stuff within the virtual world where people may want to be anonymous. So, but I have thought about my own self of wanting to see the different ways of covering a world. Like the virtual market is something that I've found interesting. And I actually have taken lots of different 360 photo spheres and but have not translated those into a video or whatnot. Cause I think for me, the format of how I would want to cover an experience within a virtual world, ideally what I would want to do is to be able to go into that world, maybe take some shots and then have a methodology to post those spatial photos, either to YouTube or WebXR, and maybe we'll make some comments, but because people aren't consuming those, then I'm just focused mostly on these, the podcast coverage. But I do love going into these different virtual worlds. I guess the challenge for me is finding the right format to be able to like really express the what I'm noticing or what I'm seeing in a way. And I feel like what you're doing is having those experiences, but then a lot of them are these different categories of say these nightclub scenes or live music shows. So I'd love to hear maybe like how you think about the different beats that you're covering. Cause there's lots of stuff that's happening within VR chat, but what are the things that you're either particularly interested in either experiencing or talking about?
[00:23:10.233] K. Guillory: I think that I've actually compared yours and my coverage. Well, first of all, you have way more experience than I do. And so like massive respect to you. When I tell other people about you, I would say like, Kent's like the AP news of like VR coverage. Like you're just like tireless. I don't even know when you sleep. I don't know. Do you sleep? Yes. Like the one question I would ask you, obviously you do. You look well rested right now. I'm like looking at you. I'm like, that's somebody that gets at least maybe eight hours of sleep. I don't know. So, but there's some times when I see you working very, very late on covering something and I'm just like, wow. that's amazing. It'll be like two or three in the morning. Like with the Facebook or the meta earnings report, you worked very late on that. And I saw that. So when I tell my friends like, yeah, he's the AP news and he's tireless. And I'm more like, I don't even know if I would be Vogue. Vogue is very, I think sometimes people pay to put their stuff in Vogue, but I would just say like, I'm like an odd culture magazine. I'm just an odd, kind of like the interesting magazine that you put on a coffee table. I think that's more, it's an interest magazine. I think that's what I'm more like. And I think that's fine. I think that's actually very cool because I like magazines like that. So what I would want to see and cover more in VRChat, I definitely want to cover more art shows because now I'm seeing more people get into VRChat that are doing more repeated and often art shows. And that's what I want. There hadn't been that many in the past, or it would be artists that would just kind of leave an exhibit up and then they wouldn't host an event with it. And so art being paired with events kind of creates that cultural space that I'm looking for. And I'm interested in seeing that. I like when artists get together and they start talking because those exchange of ideas lead to things. So that was what I was waiting for.
[00:25:18.263] Kent Bye: And I know that there's been a number of videos that have been covering the underground music scene. I know Fia Bunny just put out a video within the last couple of weeks or so. And there's been other videos that have been covering the different clubs and music scenes. And I think this is something that is something you've been also been going in to these different events and experiencing the different nightclubs. So I guess, how would you describe this ecosystem of underground music scenes and nightclubs within VRChat? How do you start to make sense of what's happening here?
[00:25:51.823] K. Guillory: I think once I thought about how to organize them and I thought about the iceberg, have you ever seen the iceberg meme where the most known are kind of on top? And then as you get deeper and deeper, you find all these smaller and smaller venues that less and less people know about that are more about like friends congregating together and having a good time. Then you find really good music there. So I would say that, um, The level of knowledge about clubs. Sometimes it's kind of about who the audience is directed to. So you want to say like diesel works concrete shelter. you know, ghost club, you know, those clubs, it's aimed at a broader audience. It's aimed at those. And then as you get further underneath it, there are some clubs that are intentionally posing as subculture clubs. So I don't know if I could say this club piss. That is actually the club name. I love them, but they are intentionally subculture. They're kind of posing as subculture You know, kind of being counterculture in their name and their approach and everything is extremely sarcastic. It's very meta. But clubs like that, you get that narrowed focus. Like some people, they get scandalized by the name and they're like, well, what do you mean? I don't know about going there. It's like, no, you should go. You should actually go. It's fantastic. So clubs like that. And then as you get narrow, what you get is. People that are part of these larger clubs that have their own particular venue where they hold pop-ups. Pop-ups will be underneath the kind of like counterculture clubs. Pop-ups are for when a musician just wants to throw up a set. Like they're just holding a set spontaneously. That's called a pop-up. And they'll have it at their own specialized venue or they will borrow a venue from somebody else and they will hold their event there. So I would say pop-ups are underneath that. And then underneath that is the private hangout space, which is not really that private, but it's more like if you know a friend, you can go and it'll be kind of like friend plus. And then you go to that and you'll see like usually you'll see open decks for anybody that wants to play can play something like that.
[00:28:11.215] Kent Bye: Okay, so yeah, they're starting to move from what I'd see is the club scene that I've seen covered in videos, but I know Loon, as well as yourself, following up and talking about the live music scene and synchronized music, which I thought was really quite interesting to see these, either these nights where people are kind of like an open mic night type of vibe, at least from what I see, where people are getting up and maybe singing a song or maybe even bands that are playing together. completely virtually. So having different ways on the backend to synchronize all the music so that as they're performing, they're able to not have latency amongst each other, which is a pretty big issue. And to me, kind of surprising to hear that that's happening, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about what you see as like the live music performance and other live music, as well as other realms of performance that you're seeing within VRChat.
[00:28:59.144] K. Guillory: So live music ties more into, if you wanted to organize all the major categories of music and performance on the spectrum, there's club music, which is like way over here. And then live music is next to it, more towards the center. And then next to live music, because it's theatrical based, you may be more into live theater, Because the crossover at that point is the musical, which that has happened in VR performances already with Brendan from the Ferryman Collective. Please forgive me his last name, but Brendan and Deidre, I've seen them in a couple of performances like Tender Claus performance, The Ender Presents and things like that, where there has been live singing and there's been live performances. So that's the connector. But when it comes to live common line performances in VRChat, there's a couple of different types. The first type, most known, is the open mic night. And that is the most common one. There's midnight munchies, there's midnight melodies. Those are like, if you sign up or you show up, you're likely going to get a space. And then there is the organized concert, which Team Muse runs the most popular one. And that's like once a month. And it lasts for several hours. And it's fantastic. There will be several singers. There are stage changes. There's live lights team. It's amazing. And then they stream it out to Twitch. So there's Twitch and there's VR engagement. And they get a lot of views from that. And then after that, I would say... That's when there's crossover back into the dance scene, because then there are some individuals who do pop-ups much like DJs do. And so they will have spontaneous shows and they will throw that up and there will be people that will be interested and that will go to that. And then also, especially in the Japanese community, that's where you find synchronized band performances because they have the capability to take advantage of that software. Synchronized performances can't really happen if you're more than 1,500 miles apart from each other. It works best if you live closer to each other. So they can take advantage and hold things like jazz concerts, which is really big, band concerts, things like that. So you'll find a lot of the live whole band performances happening in the jazz community in VRChat. The best one that I've ever seen is jazz in VRChat. It's all one word. And if you look it up with that hashtag, you'll find them.
[00:31:37.785] Kent Bye: Oh, wow. Yeah. I know I've had a chance to get into some of these discords and was able to attend one of the Ghost Club performances in a way that actually when I got in, I was put into an instance all by myself. So I wasn't able to make it into the main instance, but there is this almost like getting into the whitelist or getting into the actual main instance seems to be like the hot ticket. Cause there's really only like 40, 50, maybe a hundred people max that can really get into one of the main instances. And so I don't know if that's something where you see the future of some of these live performances where you have something a little bit more like the alt space VR front row system, where you have one person that's then their embodied performance is being synchronized across different instances. I have seen some technology like ORLs from the prefabs community when they're doing their developer talks that were able to broadcast other people into other instances, although it didn't have the actual avatars because broadcasting other people's avatars, I guess, would be something that would perhaps make them more vulnerable to being ripped. Or there's some constraint there for having your own avatar representation replicated across multiple instances. But this seems to be one of the things that as I look at these different types of performances, I've already seen within some of the club scene, ways in which that they are able to then perhaps broadcast the synced music performance within an instance. And maybe you could have your own private instance and go to this club with your own friends. But that seems to be a current constraint that is creating this whole super underground vibe where you have to know somebody or really be at the right place at the right moment. And even if you are, you still have to get in and be invited and be one of the lucky 30 or 40 people that actually get in. to the show, but I'd love to hear a little bit about your own reflections of that, trying to get into these shows and knowing people and networking, and then where you see that if that's sort of a happy accident for the technology. And if you see if other systems to be able to broadcast that would kill the vibe or change the dynamics that have been created because of these really small, intimate underground nature of some of these shows.
[00:33:46.681] K. Guillory: So that's actually very interesting because there's a lot associated with that particular phenomenon. The first thing is that the technology that utilizes someone being able to be seen with their performance across multiple instances is shader memory. And that's a really fantastic shader. And I think that's the best implementation. Slyfest uses that. Muzzfest, I believe, use that as well. I'm not quite remembering that right. I believe that's so. I believe that's the case. Forgive me if I'm wrong. But I think that as many clubs as possible should implement that because it's a great way for people to attend and enjoy a club without worrying about, can I get in this instance with the quote-unquote cool kids? I know that there are some club owners that don't like that and they just want the intimacy of just one instance. And if you can't get in, then I'm very sorry, we're at capacity. And that's fine. The downside of that is intimacy. There was one club that had some people that they could get in. It wasn't really like if they paid to get in, it was more like they got the link first, the link to the instance and the note first that an instance was open. And that was part of the perk that they paid for their Patreon and they got in. And that was back when I was going to that club. But when I noticed that happening more often, the energy of the room changed and it wasn't really something I enjoyed. And so I left. And for that reason, I'm not going to name what the club is, but sometimes that happens and it's kind of a downside. You know, the person that's paying to get in, you know, may not be the person that you really want to hang out with. So it's something that, you know, give and take. So because of that, there'll be instances where maybe some people can't get in, you know, with the paying folks or the people who knew that an instance was open before everybody else knew. And so someone will ultimately an alternate instance, and that's called the homie instance. That is where you're going with your friends and I've heard a lot of people say that's way more enjoyable. So the myth of the main instance is not something that I personally like having partied everywhere now, having partied all over the place. I would say that's not even something that's desirable sometimes. Sometimes I want to go with my friends that I think are the coolest people around. I don't necessarily think that everyone that gets in the main instance is Some people are going to be mad that I say this. I don't think that everyone that gets in the main instance is often who I actually want to talk to. And so I think that if you can't get in a main instance, you should take your friends and go because those are the best people to you.
[00:36:39.693] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I'd also say that depending on the quality of your PC, if you're in the main instance, you may not be able to even see everybody anyway because of the performance hits that come. I know that I've certainly am due for a PC upgrade, but yeah, there's a lot of ways in which these worlds are really pushing the limits of what a lot of these different... PCs can handle. So you end up having to either hide them or turn them into robots anyway. So that seemed to be another dynamic, at least I've noticed is that there's a lot higher tolerance for really low frame rates. And I guess, preferencing like the experience that has this deep level of immersion with all these different people there, but may not be hitting the frame rates that you expect. So it seems like because of that, VRChat has been on the frontiers of really pushing forward what's possible and worrying about optimizations and hitting all those different performance things will come later, but rather than cutting down in different levels of fidelity, that there's just a lot of really amazing immersive experiences that are happening within these worlds.
[00:37:41.482] K. Guillory: Yeah, and the other thing about it is on the thought of instances as well, I think that it's very important that people not focus so much on getting in a main instance. Again, the reason why is because you're assigning a hierarchy to other people when you do that. And that's actually one of the negative sides of the music scene in VRChat. People try to distance themselves from that as much as possible because any music scene at all, it can cause you a lot of stress to be a part of it. Any creative scene at all can cause you a lot of stress to be part of it. And as soon as you start assigning ranks to people, which is why I didn't do that for clubs. I arranged them by the way that they are intended with their audience to be, you know, focused out on. And then I arranged them like that instead of assigning a particular hierarchy to them or anything like that, because I'm against that because it makes VR chat part of the music industry that a lot of people are coming to get away from. And if you repeat those patterns again, you're just going to have the same pile of garbage. So this is a haven for people to get away from all that. So instead of focusing on, you know, assigning like tears to them or anything, I think it's better to focus on what makes you comfortable because what makes you comfortable and what makes you happy is what inspires you. And that is also the other reason that when I do music roundups, I say, if you post your stuff, you're getting in. It doesn't matter if you're a beginner or if you're an expert, you're getting in because it's not about assigning a hierarchy to anybody. I don't like it. And it's unhealthy. So when you go to these clubs, you don't want to participate in the myth of, oh, you know somebody and you get in because that's not healthy. In the long run, it's horrible. It leads to really bad behavior. You don't want that. The best thing to do, even if you just throw yourself in a random instance and get to know some new people, you might actually make a lot of friends. I love going to club instances where there's just white names. There's no yellow because those are people I don't know. And it's cool because it feels like I'm in a crowded club and nobody knows me. It's exciting to me. And I feel like more people should do that.
[00:40:09.155] Kent Bye: One of the things that I was noticing, at least when I went to the Ghost Club, was the level of environmental design, or even just getting into the club. It's a lot about the journey of going through all these back way alleys, and then you make it into this space, which often is a lot smaller than I am expecting, because it's just like really intimate spaces that are kind of replicating different small venues, small underground venues from around the world. But I guess the other thing that's unique to VR that I'm really noticing is ways that people are doing either light shows or shaders or trying to do music visualizations. That seems to be something that is maybe above and beyond what you might be able to experience if you go to an actual dance club is the type of the VJ aspect or the visual design. I'd love to hear any reflections of the different trends that you see in terms of ways that people are using the VR medium to be able to amplify the experience of having this nightclub experience.
[00:41:03.260] K. Guillory: I think it's a real science that's developing both in live performance and theater and in the club scene. There are these VJs and these light experts that are, they're really developing their craft. And some of them are actually getting real jobs with real engagements with it in the real world. Silent is somebody that started out doing VJing visuals and light work and And then started working for Muzz, who is a big drum and bass artist and working for Sanctum, which is like a regular event in VR chat. And now she's working for real spaces. Like I see footage for visuals that she's done for artists for concert series. And it's amazing. I think that's like so powerful about VR is that you can learn something here. You can learn a new skill here. And you can grow and bring that back to real life engagements like that. So I think that a lot of what people learn when they're doing like lighting is that they're balancing out with performance because when you're flashing all these lights, it's affecting the frames of the visitor. So they've got to keep it engaging. They've got to keep it performance. And then they're working with a team on top of that. And they're making sure all this stuff, this doesn't fall apart, which is huge. And then they're timing it. Like when VJs also like visual, the light person, it can sometimes be different than the visuals person. So the visual artist will stand up next to the DJ at the deck. And if they don't have the visuals packed in with a prerecorded performance and they're doing that live, then it's definitely two different people. But then the VJ is going to be working and they have their own controller working. The DJ feeds their music into a special feed and then the VJ feeds them both out with the visuals out to the feed that everybody else sees. So they have their own like renders and things like that that they add to the music and they time it and they press like they use a controller that they have in real life to affect that. So they're timing all that and they're making sure that it's good and it doesn't all fall apart. So then if it's a separate like team, then you've got somebody in the back doing like live lights and making sure that the lights are matching the way the music is going. So that is a dedicated team. That is an absolutely dedicated team. Now for more for live performances like singing, then you've got stage changes. And so what happens is that with a team music concert, for example, you'll have someone singing, and then the stage will look a particular way. And then when they change songs, they will press a button on a panel, and then the stage actually changes out. It changes props. And it will transition out and then they'll have different visuals in the back. It's a little more slower moving, but it's still a big team event. You see, like, if you look, turn around and look in the back of the Team Muse like venue, you'll see like five or six people back there and they're all working together to make sure that it's good. So yeah, they're very alike.
[00:44:14.141] Kent Bye: Interesting. Yeah. That's really fascinating to hear that. And the thing that I saw at Ghost Club was a live performance from the VJ that was being replicated across the different instances. So even though I wasn't able to see all of the people there, I was able to see the live VJ performance. And so lots of really interesting things that are happening there. And I know that the virtual market and Loon have been doing a lot of things with different shader performances as well, volumetric performances. So yeah, it's something that for me, I think there's a lot of potential there to continue to explore how to use the spatial medium to be able to amplify or augment the immersive experiences that you're having The Foo Fighters 360 video even had some things that they were overlaying on top of the 360 video that gave some volumetric holographic effects that would not be possible without any type of like holographic display technology or augmented reality glasses that you were wearing. So yeah, I feel like it's an area to start to prototype the future of these immersive performances further. And you had mentioned earlier the live theater as being on the spectrum where you have the club scene and then the live music scene and then the immersive theater scene. And I know you've also been covering some of the different events, whether it's Finding Pandora X or the Ferryman Collective's Welcome to Severance Theory. And I just have the Gumball Dreams that just premiered at South by Southwest. So that seems to be another area where taking the conceits of world building within the context of VR, but adding this live immersive theater performative element to Scarecrow VR, VRC was another adaptation that first premiered at Sundance in 2020, and then was translated in during the pandemic to have another show that was kind of adaptation, but using the affordances of VR. So I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on what you see is happening in terms of the immersive theater scene and how you see what's happening there might be informing other cultural trends that are in this performative space.
[00:46:09.065] K. Guillory: I think that theater, it's at this point where if you want to start an acting career and you want to start getting your feet wet with writing plays and putting on productions, now's the time to do it. Perfect time. Because there's not that many people doing it. Ferryman Collective and Deidre and Brandon are doing amazing work together. And Deidre even got to walk the red carpet in Italy, which is amazing. I'm just blown away that such an early practice and they're winning awards already. I find it fascinating that VR plays, VR-based plays are an extension of an immersive theater and has been welcomed with open arms and has expanded the practice. And that's definitely going to go down in the history books. People that study theater are going to learn about VR in the future. And I think that's going to be amazing. You're going to have actors in the future that started in VR performances and plays, and they're going to grow into roles that take them elsewhere or vice versa. I think that more people should come here and start putting on performances, but I feel like they're watching. I feel like a lot of eyes are on Fairman Collective, especially, and they're just not ready to jump in yet. And I think that's regrettable because they definitely should be here experimenting and getting ready. And I think it's also fascinating that If you wanted to sharpen your acting skills, you could actually take some acting classes or some of them from, you can do improv with GoBlock's improv. And then you could also get like fight choreography acting pointers from Gormunder, who is a kind of like a combat actor. and does a lot of LARPing and acting on Twitch. So, I mean, if you think about like VR-based acting that uses Twitch as its stage, there's a lot going on with there already. It's just that it's live and it's very reactive, but I think there's definitely more room for scripted plays to happen in VR.
[00:48:14.150] Kent Bye: As we're talking about different ranges of music events and live performance and open mic nights and the live immersive theater, what are some of the other types of events that you've been able to go to that maybe were kind of a small, intimate crowd because you were able to be at the right place at the right time to get in? But I'm just curious to hear what other types of stuff that you've been able to check out there in VRChat.
[00:48:38.058] K. Guillory: Um, I feel like not enough people are visiting. There's a brand new event, relatively brand new, and it's called turbine and it's more down-tempo music. And I've gone to it a couple of times and it's, it's still relatively small and it's very intimate, but I feel like more people should pay attention to it. And it's run by someone named frills and what it is. It's really cool example of people. playing with the ideas of what is a club and where can a club take place you find that a lot vr so in this case turbine takes place in a turbine it's an actual turbine like you go and it's like a lighthouse kind of thing and you go up and all of a sudden you're in this circular room and there's a control console and that's where they're djing and so you stand around this circular room and and you dance and talk to people. And that's all the standing room that there is. So it's very crowded because it's supposed to be. So it's playing with the idea of space. There is another space and it's called mistakes. And it's kind of a joke, but it's also really funny. And I want to go again. What it is, is what if it's a club, but it's in a phone booth And you're all forced to just huddle in this phone booth together and none of you can move. That's the club. And you're playing music there. That's it. You can't spawn a portal. You can't respawn because you're in the spawn. Everyone is just smushed in. That's the club. It's amazing. So there's all these wacky ideas. Like when I say that there's counterculture stuff going on in this space, I really mean that. Like there are people that are just thinking about really wild ideas. Like there's somebody named Iron Biscuit and she thought of this club where you take the idea of adding bloom and glow to a world and audio link, which is like audio reactive lights. And you just turn it up to 11. And it's a joke because people have to go in a maze within all this bloom and this music blasting at you just to get to the main dance floor. But you can't step in the middle of the dance floor because there's a hole there. And if you fall through, you're going to end up responding at the start. And then you have to go through the maze again. And you can't look at anything other than the DJ because there's all this bloom and audio reactive lights blasting at you and it will literally hurt your eyes. So it's kind of a joke. Like Iron is very good at these events where Iron makes non-joke type of venues where people can dance and have fun. But Iron is also very good at making venues where there's some kind of practical joke behind it. And I think that she's brilliant when she does it. So people expand on the concept of what a venue is. And I think it's kind of, it's like conceptualism colliding with map design. That's really what it is. It's like data ism and conceptualism, and it's just all just smacking together and people are just kind of doing whatever they just throw on ideas and seeing what sticks at the wall. And it's really great.
[00:51:51.291] Kent Bye: Fascinating. Yeah. This kind of surrealistic movement here. It sounds like, yeah, it brings to mind the Nanotopia music show that had like mushrooms that were being integrated. So actual mushrooms that were involved in producing the music within the VR chat world. I think that as an idea of being able to have like this sentient experience. entities that are somehow using their responsive to their local environment, producing music that's in a virtual world. And so, yeah, stuff like that, where that ended up getting programmed at the film festival. So that was, they had a show at Venice and I had heard about it and had a chance to see it before that as well. But that's, I think where I ran into, and you told me about the OM three was also having different stuff. So it seems like that there's this going to these different places and then running into people and hearing about it, finding the right discord and then jumping into the, some of these different events. So what, what would you, if people were wanting to discover some of these places, are there, you know, you mentioned the Twitter and the discords, are there any people on Twitter or the discords that you would recommend would be a good place for people to start to be able to, to keep tabs of some of these different events?
[00:52:58.871] K. Guillory: I think one of the best places that anyone that is new to clubs and wants to learn and branch out from there, the first club is DDVR. And that is a longstanding club that plays like house music, techno, all kinds of things. And you'll find a lot of friendly people that will show you what a community is supposed to be, what responsible moderation is supposed to be. And then I would also say, visit Club Rizumu because it's the same thing. So these are these two longstanding clubs that do a fantastic job of good moderation, making you feel safe, good music. And then from there, you join their Discord. You can look in the other events section of their Discord, and you'll find people posting event announcements. And then the other one would be VRChat Party Hub, which is run by Captain Duck. And they have all the events every day. They post it without fail. This guy is tireless. It's like a collective effort to let everyone know these are when these clubs are happening. Now, if you read Japanese, there's also a calendar floating around in Japanese that shows when Japanese events are playing. But As I don't read that, I don't speak Japanese, so I can't really help with that. But definitely check out VRChatPartyHub on Twitter and visit DDVR and visit Club Rizumu. And those are great places to start. And from there, you can find your own journey. It's really just like your own journey of music because it's not really about, you know, the quote unquote club to get into anymore because this is the year when things are going to increase and blow up so much It's no longer possible to be at all of these spaces anymore. And that's good because no one needs to be thinking about a hierarchy at these clubs. That's not how real life is. That's not healthy. And it's really about finding everybody, finding what they like, what music they like, and just settling in and having a good time.
[00:55:10.851] Kent Bye: Another big part of VRChat and the culture is to go world hopping and discover worlds. I know that you and I were on the jury for the best VRChat worlds on Raindance, and we had a chance to go through a number of different worlds together. And I also see sometimes on Twitter, you'll post some screenshots of some worlds and give some shout outs to different worlds. And so when it comes to either experiencing these new worlds, what's the best way that you find to keep up the tabs as the stuff to check out, or What is it about a world that crosses the threshold for you to start to share and cover it and give it a shout out on Twitter?
[00:55:47.428] K. Guillory: I think that, well, first I think that the community labs tab needs a lot of love. I think everyone should go and just check community labs like every day. That's how I started. You can check the new tab for new worlds that are there. But I think that community labs is a place where there's a lot of experimentation going on. They may not end up on the new tab yet. They may not for a long time, actually. So those places need a lot of visitors. And so what I do is I end up going into the community tab and I hop from world to world. And really what I'm looking for is if it's not another bedroom app. There's like a million of them. And if it's just something really cool, like if it's a forest, I've seen a lot of forest worlds, but something that doesn't look like it's a Unity prefab, because sometimes people take prefab maps from like Unity store and they just throw it up on VRChat. And that's not what I'm looking for. I look for original creations that take, even if it's existing assets, and you just kind of mix it up in a really interesting way. If I want to visit a house, I'll just visit a house that it's got like maybe some custom art in it. You know, maybe I just want to check out the way that your house looks. I could get curious about that too. If it's a cafe, I want to see a cafe concept that hasn't been done before. I will always visit an art gallery. Like if it's someone's like paintings and drawings, I want to go. If it's a new avatar store, like sometimes booth authors will put their avatars like try on. And they'll put them in a world. I will definitely go to that. And I don't see enough really good city maps. I love those. Like it's a whole city. It's a whole scene outside. I really, really love those. And I think the last thing that I really love is just Udon experiments. Something cool, zany that you thought of. I want to go visit that.
[00:57:46.997] Kent Bye: So yeah, the more interactive parts of being able to engage with the world in some new and different ways. Right. So, yeah, I know there's a number of events that happen in VRChat over the year. I know there's like the virtual market, VCAT, and some aspects of VCAT, VCAT music, VCAT, you know, just the avatars. There's Furality, which I dropped by last year, which had a lot of from the furry community with different opportunities to sell furry avatars and costumes and different events and discussions. There's the VRCon. We're just showing different aspects from the community. You mentioned some music festivals recently. I'm just curious, what are some of the big events that you feel like are the can't miss events that are happening within VRChat over the course of the year?
[00:58:28.769] K. Guillory: The absolute events that I would go visit, definitely I would like to go visit VCAT. I like world jams also. World jams are big. Spookality, I think, is big. I love seeing what people have thought up because then everybody really brings their creativity for like spookality and stuff. I like world jams, as I said. I love going from world to world to see what kind of themes people have taken and adapted to that theme and what they've submitted for that. There's actually a world jam going on right now. And I think the concept is going to be jokes. The theme is jokes. So I'm really interested to see what happens because I know there's going to be some trolling going on. It's going to be hilarious. So I love that. I also like seasonal festivals. And this is kind of like not an official like VR chat event or anything. But when there is a real life seasonal event, sometimes people bring it into VR chat. Like the Okinawa Summer Festival, things like that. I love visiting those because you dress your avatar up as something special and then you visit. And then you see people that have also done the same. And you kind of experience this, you know, season together. And I think that's really cool. That's especially cool around like holidays, like Valentine's, Halloween, Christmas. Those are some of my favorite times because people get really festive and they run around in special avatars and they end up wishing each other like a happy holiday and things like that. And I love those times as well.
[01:00:03.186] Kent Bye: What are some of the big ethical issues that you see are maybe not adequately addressed either from a cultural standpoint or from a VR chat moderation standpoint, or if you feel like there may be like larger laws that need to be set by the United States or, you know, there seems to be kids in VR is one of the things that I think is a hot topic, but just curious if there's other things that you see in terms of the culture of VR chat, what's happening there and where there may need to be some layer of additional attention for some of the big hot button ethical issues that are happening right now.
[01:00:38.251] K. Guillory: I think that the child issue is already something that unfortunately VRChat might be running into a wall with that. I think one day they're going to end up having to either put in age verification, junior accounts like what Rec Room has, or they're going to end up having to raise the minimum age to at least 16, if not 18. And I'm not sure how that's going to go, but I feel like one of those things is going to happen. And I think the staff knows and it's just going to play out the way that it is. I think the other thing is that I hear a lot from various people about harassment in VRChat. It's very easy for people to kind of line step on rules on how to harass somebody. And I think that it's often something that people get away with that too much. And I don't think that there is quite an adequate system of reporting it. I know somebody that has gone on alts to kind of like escape people. And, you know, I find that really unfortunate. I have heard of that happening more than once. And I think that's, those are the two major issues that I would say. I think that when it comes to cultural issues like racism and bigotry and things like that and VeerChat, I feel like VeerChat is still ahead of other platforms, such as Second Life, unfortunately, where they tell you upfront, this isn't tolerated. And if you're this way, you can get banned. I think that there are still more covert ways to discriminate against people that unfortunately they pass. And I don't really know what anybody can do about that. Like at that point, I don't really know what any moderation team can do. I think that if it is something where it's a very obvious air of making people uncomfortable, then that is something that is reportable. So it really becomes a question of when can you moderate? somebody's behavior. If it's social engineering and it's subverted and dog whistle language and things like that, and it's not ingrained in the game itself, like if it's not a searchable listing, for example, showing up on a map that these people are superior, something like that, then I think that it is something that the moderation team probably is not gonna be something that's actionable. And it sucks because you know that it's wrong. You know that what that person is doing is wrong. But other than that, it falls to just not supporting that person and kind of getting away with them. But I have seen and I have heard where somebody that is harassing another person will social engineer and try and get in with friends around the person that they're trying to harass. I feel like that should be actionable, but we all know it's not really going to be because then it becomes... a really ambivalent case where moderation, again, cannot do anything. So it becomes really hard. But it's not easy for the person that is going through that. I have had that happen to me. I have seen that happen to people. And it's just really a tough one. It ends up falling on your friends to know what's going on and for them to support you, unfortunately.
[01:03:59.795] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's a wide range of issues there in terms of the moderation. And I don't know if VRChat has implemented this yet, but I know that in say the MetaHorizon worlds where there's a way as you're making the report, it's got like a running buffer of a video. And so I don't even know if VRChat has implemented something like that to be able to help with some of these reportings of events that often by the time you're ready to report, it's already happened. And so, you know, trying to get around some of those things, or at least having a moderation team that then is able to handle all of that. Because, you know, some of the peak concurrent users at this point are like 90,000 users in VRChat at any given time. So it's quickly getting to the point of beyond a scale that's reasonable from a small scrappy startup team without outsourcing it to professional full-time huge armies of moderators to try to help get a rain on some of that stuff.
[01:04:54.560] K. Guillory: Right. Yeah. As their player base grows, it's going to become harder and they're pretty much going to end up having to invest more in having a larger team of moderators that can help them out with that. I don't really know if I like the recording up to when you submit a report. I don't really know if I like that, but I do know that more moderators is good. I think more moderators is good.
[01:05:20.011] Kent Bye: And just to circle back to the kids in VR issue where the minimum age is 13. And I did a deep dive into looking at both the community guidelines from VRChat and the terms of service. And there's this kind of weird language where they'll say things like pornographic or nudity is not acceptable when it comes to the avatars or the worlds. And that's pretty clear that you can detect and show. But there's this other thing of saying that sexual content, so erotic role play is an example, or engaging in consensual interactions with another adult is something that is legal. However, when you have kids there that are less than 18 and you go into these private instances, it seems like a little bit of the Wild West because The community guidelines are so much focused on what's happening in these public instances or being live streamed. And so it seems like there's yet another caveat for these private instances that whatever happens, there's a little bit of the wild west absent from having kind of big brother ask moderation that's dipping in and looking in what's happening in these worlds. It seems like an area where that's where a lot of the trouble seems to be coming up lately in terms of more and more reports of these kids that are under 18 going into strip clubs or engaging in different types of erotic role play. I don't know if that's something that you've dipped into or been able to investigate or to understand the deeper dynamics of those scenes.
[01:06:48.999] K. Guillory: I know that it's definitely, I haven't like investigated it, but I know that it's happening. I also noticed that Rec Room, I feel like they changed their TOS too, because I noticed that too. Like I went world hopping in Rec Room as like a visit with a couple other people recently. And we came up on a world where the TOS was out in front and center. And it said the same thing. no sexual activity in public worlds. It didn't say anything about a private instance. And that's when I realized that I think more and more people are going to end up adopting this. And I think this might become a general VR problem. So I don't really know what to say about that. I don't believe in banning adult content from VR. I just think that there should be some age verification to stop people from visiting certain worlds and for there to be age verified users. I feel like that's a big solution that needs to happen.
[01:07:50.377] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if it is going to happen in the absence of having larger legislation because there's the trade-offs of privacy that the users, some of them don't want, but you know, in order to actually create these environments that are having some degree of age verification, I think it's going to certainly help things. I know that Andrew Bosworth has said that any age verification system can be circumvented by whenever you don't have proper parental supervision. So I know that at least from Rec Room, they do credit card transactions and ways to be able to do spot checks because they do have junior accounts and at least a method to be able to either demote people into a junior account if they're on a regular adult account. So yeah, I think that time will tell was some of these issues get played out. Are there other ways in which that you find like the kids in VR issue runs into your own experiences within VR chat? Or do you find that you are in enough private instances that you don't actually run into this as much of an issue because you're already in a little bit more of a self-selecting areas and environments and events?
[01:08:54.093] K. Guillory: I think that's actually the benefit of being in closed groups like that or clubs because they, I wouldn't say like, obviously the mods are not like, it's not like you're going in with your ID. And by the way, I think that people can fake their ID anywhere and that's a problem. But I think that... instilling an age check is going to be something that helps the company's liability because that's going to be the next big thing. Like I told people, it's not just about checking the age of people. It's about the company being liable because they are at the end of the day, they have to cover their selves. And then it's going to end up being the only way. And I know that people have their privacy concerns about that, but It just is what it is. And that's gonna be the final conclusion is just checking IDs. It has to be. But there are companies that can handle that. Now, if somebody wants to arrange and hack those companies and all that, well, they're gonna hack a company anyway. If they're gonna do it, they're gonna do it. So, I mean, we give our ID and everything else for other services. So I don't really see that much of a problem with doing it for VR, too. I don't think that Mark Zuckerberg or any of these other people care specifically about every single person that's out there in VR. I'm sorry. None of us are that interesting. But... I'm sorry. None of us are that interesting, but I'm not defending the guy. You know, I understand the criticism about meta, but at the same time, I feel like that's going to end up being the solution is ID checks. But to talk about kids getting in, I I've been like, I've gone up like play chess at chess worlds because I love playing chess and And I've seen kids running around there as young as eight years old. They publicly have said, I'm eight years old. And I'm like, you're not supposed to be here. What are you supposed to like? Like you tell the kid, you're not supposed to be here. Go to rec room. They don't listen to you. So it's kind of like a nightmare. It's like, it makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't want to go back there anymore. So then I ended up going back to my club worlds because that's the only place I feel comfortable. It's where all the adults are. And so I just hang out there. Yeah. That's just when it ends up being, I think the mods try their best to With these servers. I think that there are some servers where it is purposely like a club is 18 plus and it's not because there's anything erotic or anything happening there. It's just because they don't want kids there. And they might use discord as the age check the age gate and whitelist people I don't know any specific clubs that do that, but I know that some do. So there are some places where it's age gated like that. But if somebody is really determined to fake their identity and fake their age and get past all that, they're going to do it. And when that happens... It's going to be another example of why we really need age verification. It's really the only way. You can't put it on these moderators of these clubs to be checking IDs and stuff. That's way less secure than just giving your ID to a third-party company that specializes in this kind of stuff and then having them give the okay back to VRChat. What is so hard about that?
[01:12:14.502] Kent Bye: Well, yeah, it certainly costs money, so that's a, would be a significant cost, but yeah. Um, and also user resistance to privacy concerns, but if they're just returning back your age, I think that's the type of, you know, self-sovereign identity type of thing where you have a, uh, either you're above 18 or not type of checks.
[01:12:34.610] K. Guillory: Right. And the only other problem would be non-binary users that are in the middle of doing like name changes and identity changes. That would be the other problem that, because I'm aware of that. I'm aware of that for passport problems and things like that. I know that those problems exist. So for anyone who was listening that wants to say, what about this? Yes, I'm aware that that's definitely going to be the problem with that. I would hope that these identity check companies have a solution and plan for that. because I want non-binary users to be able to verify their identity too, like with IDs, just so they can be verified as an adult.
[01:13:13.581] Kent Bye: Right. Well, just as we start to wrap up, one other topic that you've mentioned that we haven't talked too much about, but that's just in terms of fashion and the different types of ways of, you know, there's avatars and avatar culture. And as an artist, I know that you're creating textures and creating your own avatars. But I guess when you talk about the different fashion trends, have you been writing about that? Or how do you start to think about what's happening in terms of fashion when it comes into these virtual spaces?
[01:13:41.297] K. Guillory: It has been requested of me to start writing about the history of fashion and start covering more fashion movements and events. Usually what ends up having to happen is that VR fashion movements kind of happen every, I want to say more like half a year Every half a year, things generally change in terms of fashion. The first half of last year, everybody was into putting their club logos and their venue logos all over themselves. We look like race cars. We're all just running around looking like NASCAR cars, you know. And then finally, my friend Ari X said, I don't want to look like a race car. And so we stopped doing it. Except for the more hardcore users who decided they still love that, which that's cool. That's niche fashion. Keep doing it if you love it. But then as time went on, there were less V-roids that I started seeing. There were more booth avatars that I started seeing. People started doing that. People stopped wearing so much black and white. That was the other thing that was really, really big last year. And then we were starting to move more into color. Now you're going to start seeing avatars with more color. There are some people that are starting to dress more like skaters. I took more of the shoegaze Californian fashion up because I like getting into that. I like getting into like punk Californian fashion. That's where I want to go with my personal style. And so more people might get into that because shoegaze as a genre is coming back and so is the fashion that's associated with it. And also people are getting more back into like Indian folk music. And so you might see fashion change again. So right now I would say what's right now is wearing less black and white, having a little more color on your avatar and also dressing a little bit more like a Californian or somebody within shoegaze indie style.
[01:15:38.592] Kent Bye: Have you been taking photos and documenting these different fashion trends? I'd love to see like a whole visual anthropology of some of these different trends that you're talking about.
[01:15:47.591] K. Guillory: I think that when I cover fashion, I'm probably going to have to end up drawing it out like the types of trends that have been dominant in recent years because before there wasn't really like a particular fashion that was really dominant. It was more that everybody was using TDA avatars and skimpy clothes. And then as like larger music personalities came into this platform and started using it in lieu of going somewhere because of COVID. They brought their expectations of fashion with them and they brought their crowds with them. And then all of a sudden we had a fashion scene. And then all of a sudden we had people interested in club culture and kid culture, like club kids and then, you know, dressing outlandishly and having a particular look. and people wanting to be known for that look. So then that created the fashion scene. And now that we have it, I would say that that fashion scene is about going on three years old now, two or three years old. So there's just enough history to cover it now, finally.
[01:16:53.766] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah. I mean, whenever I go in to VRChat, there's certainly an overwhelm of anime-styled aesthetics and there's other styles that are there too, but the anime seems to be something just in terms of a fashion and avatar aesthetic. I've talked to Loon about this a little bit because he was involved with helping to catalyze the adoption of a lot of those types of avatars that were going to be in there. But When you start to think about these larger trends in terms of like the anime, like how does anime as an aesthetic, I guess that's more of an avatar fashion rather than, or the actual embodiment of these avatars rather than the clothes. But when you talk about fashion, do you also take into that account in terms of the different types of avatars that are there and how do you start to make sense of the anime?
[01:17:41.166] K. Guillory: I think that anime was technically explained when VRChat started is that it was one of the few bases that were really available. And then people took it up and then it became popular. People didn't have a lot of avatars back then to customize. And so there are all these Vocaloid avatars that were hanging around and people grabbed them and they uploaded them. And then from there, you can actually see the progression of people customizing them. And then from there, you could see original avatar makers saying, you know, I can make some money off of this. And then them starting to upload custom avatars that you can dress and redress with custom outfits on booth. And then it became a thing. So people nowadays, like they say like TDA is old. Like TDA is considered old. There are some people that still use it and they customize it well. or you have bases that are TDA adjacent. So they're like the TDA is like the, you know, the, the e-girl look that you often see that the skimpy skimpily dressed e-girl with like, you know, black bikini and stuff. And her face looks kind of small. That one, that would be TDA. That was like a style, but then what's the TDA stand for? I think that's like the artist's name that first created the avatar. And so it was just called the TDA base. That base actually wasn't supposed to be used in VRChat because it was actually kind of like against the rules to upload it here. And then other avatar makers started making bases that look similar to TDA, So it came from everybody loves TDA to let's make a base that's kind of like TDA to, you know, I'm kind of tired of TDA, let's do this instead. And then that's when you start seeing these booth avatars that look more anime-ish and things like that. Now people are doing like, rankings of like their favorite booth avatars and what they think is like the newest one or the cutest one. And they have various opinions on that. And then there are people that use Vroid, Vroid bases. And then there's two types of Vroid users. There's the Vroid user that they use it straight. You know, it's just Vroid. They get a dress like me. They get a dress and then they put it out and they upload it to VRChat because I don't really have time to edit it in Blender. Then there's the user that uses a Vroid base, which is like a custom animate building program, like an avatar that you can affect the sliders and things like that to make whatever you want. And then you can custom texture it. So there are people that start out in Vroid, but then they take the avatar and they put it in Blender and they end up making a custom avatar from it. And then all of a sudden they're a 3D artist and they're taking commissions. So there's two roads there. And then they end up becoming a booth artist. That's the end game. So it's kind of like that. But everybody, regardless of what avatar they use, they end up applying a custom style. And then that's where we get that custom fashion trends at. So yes, it implies both clothing that you're wearing and the avatar type that you're wearing when it comes to fashion and VR.
[01:20:54.511] Kent Bye: Okay. Okay. That's, yeah, really helpful to get a bit more context. And I know that at different events like the virtual market VCAT, that a lot of the artists end up you going through these third-party sites like booth.pm to be able to buy, sell these different avatar representations. And I guess as a follow-up, if you foresee the need to have more in-game economic exchange within VRChat, rather than going to some of these third-party sites that are not integrated within VRChat. And if you see that, you know, there's certainly a vibrant ecosystem of people creating and selling these different avatar assets into this, you know, booth.pm, but if you see the need to be able to have more of this within the context of VRChat to really have the ecosystem more seamless and integrated for people to sell their different avatars, but also for creators to be able to more easily make a living.
[01:21:52.185] K. Guillory: Yes, I think that eventually VRChat's going to need that market in order to keep itself healthy, financially healthy. I don't really know about how it's going to be implemented. It's probably going to be that some avatars are ready to wear as they are, or there's probably going to be an option to download the avatar, customize it, and then re-upload it. So I think that what's going to end up happening is there's going to be a market implementation. You're going to be able to upload your avatar if you want to sell it. And then there's going to be that it's prepped and ready to go for VRChat now. So then you can go to your inventory and wear that avatar. Boom, calibrate. done, or you're going to be able to access it on the beer chat website, download that file, go into Unity, customize it, upload it, and then you've got it again. And then there's probably going to need to be some kind of check to make sure that you're not re-uploading an avatar to the market that you just bought and want to try and turn around and sell with a different edit because the original designer is not going to let you do that. So there's going to have to be something that stops that.
[01:23:04.766] Kent Bye: I see. Yeah. Well, as you're saying all those different edge cases, I can see why it hasn't happened yet because there's a lot of things to take into consideration there. So, yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up here, I'm curious what you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and all the frontiers of culture and virtual worlds might be and what it might be able to enable.
[01:23:26.485] K. Guillory: I think that VR can be a lot of things, but I think we're ultimately going to get to a point where we say this thing that is really cool doesn't need VR to run it. And if it does, then awesome. I think ultimately what VR is going to end up doing is it's going to be mixing with AR. I think that we're going to have, I think we're going to have inside out trackers. We're going to be able to walk around our house and we're going to be able to have like just glasses and we're going to be able to flip between VR and AR and we're going to be able to switch between the two. use full body tracking, going to be able to dance everywhere without the need for lighthouses. I was just thinking about that the other day. And I think that's going to be very exciting because finally I will be able to put a blanket on myself without the need to worry about if my tracker is going to be seen or not. I know you can do that now with SlimeVR, but SlimeVR is made by a very small diligent team or one person, I think, or a small team, but I kind of need more of that inside out tracking happening. And we're not there yet, but one day we will be, and we're going to have cool frame glasses to go with it. And it's not going to hurt our foreheads to wear them anymore. Yeah. It's not going to be so heavy.
[01:24:48.741] Kent Bye: Nice. And is there, is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[01:24:55.379] K. Guillory: I would ask the community, thank you for listening to my interview. Please check out themetaculture.co for cultural coverage about VR and other virtual spaces. And thank you so much for having me. And also when you want to go visit a cultural event VR, remember the key is to have a good time. The key is not to be seen by anybody else because the coolest person in the room doesn't care.
[01:25:24.901] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Aemeth slash K. Guillory, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. You're on the frontiers of tracking what's happening in terms of culture and the music scene and fashion and VRChat. Really fascinating to hear your perspectives and reflections on all the what's happening there in VRChat. So thanks again for joining me on the podcast.
[01:25:43.853] K. Guillory: Thank you. Happy to be here.
[01:25:45.939] Kent Bye: So that was K. Guillory. She does an online magazine called TheMediculture.co where she covers arts and culture and online social VR spaces like VRChat. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, Well, I know K. Guillory as Aemeth, so I think it might be a little bit easier for me to refer to her as Aemeth because I met Aemeth a number of times at the NVR chat, actually had a chance to become a juror with her at Rain Dance. I was first a juror in 2020 and then came back again in 2021. And so I was a juror with her going to these different online social VR spaces. And since I had this kind of chance encounter with her in July of 2021 at this Nanotopia performance of Mycelia, where she was just sharing all this really amazing information as to what was happening on these underground scenes of art and culture within VRChat, I had encouraged her to consider publishing or documenting this knowledge that she was aggregating. And so since then, she's written over 70 articles for the Metaculture, also has appeared on Upload VR and other documentaries like this Resident Advisor documentary where she plays a key part of helping to form the overall architecture of the story that was being told there. And so Aemeth is just like documenting a lot of these different scenes. And she calls me like the AP reporter where I'm reporting a lot of incremental things. I think that was true during like the pandemic where I was doing a lot of stuff with tweets and just trying to cover things in real time. With the podcast, it's a little bit different, a little bit more tricky, I think. Because normally when I do event coverage for the voices of VR, I will go to an event. I will talk to people who are in the public. They have different projects. I'll talk to them about their projects, but there is this kind of like sensitivity to like, how do you cover things in the VR chat realm where there's this whole layer of anonymity. So there is different considerations and I didn't quite understand what she meant. when I first heard her talk about this because she was talking about coming across someone who was doing an amazing musical performance and her inclination as someone who's a virtual journalist is to cover it. But she has to navigate this whole issue as to whether or not these people are public or private. And I didn't really understand that when I was talking to her. I understand that a lot more after I've actually started to dive in and do different interviews with folks from VRChat, you know, specific considerations. Like one good example is that so I was at the virtual market in May of 2020. This is during the pandemic, really kind of immersed myself into exploring different aspects of VRChat. And there was a user named Arashi who said, hey, I got to show you what's happening with the full body dance scenes. There's like a whole underground club. And so he had taken me into Rizumu. He had introduced me to Aliquem. And then basically it was like, you know, you have to know someone to know someone in order to get to some of these different events now with the group systems. You just have to become a member of the group. There's now a whole like vrc.tl, which is like the timeline of all these different events. There's the VR chat party hub. And at that time, a lot of these different events would be advertised on Twitter. You might hear about it or you might have to join into a private discord or it might not even have any public facing stuff. It's all sort of a word of mouth kind of grassroots organic happening of like you have to know someone to know someone and then, you know, friend a certain person or to get into any of these different instances. And so at the time I had like put out a tweet of like, oh, hey, there's this whole underground scene that's happening in VR chat. And then immediately someone's like, oh, hey, tell me how to get in. And I'm like, well, actually, I don't actually know if this is public. And so then I had to go back and say, is this something that I can like say publicly? And then I did. I went back and said, OK, OK, here's a Discord you can go to and join some of these different communities. But that was just some of the things that I think Aemeth has been at the forefront of figuring out some of these different normative standards for how to cover VR. these different happenings. And for her, she does these 70 different articles over the past three years or so. And so she will kind of aggregate and do different roundups of music, cover different trends that she's seeing. One thing that we talked about in this conversation, I haven't seen her do as much is give some sort of visual documentation as to what's happening in these different fashion trends. It was super fascinating to hear her talk about these things, but it was all with words in the abstract where I'd almost want to see like a visual anthropology or different examples of some of the things that she's talking about. And what she said was that as an artist, she would probably have to actually like draw out some of these different trends, but just to have a little bit more visual artifacts for me to hang upon, to be able to see some of these different trends and to really understand them myself. But I was just super impressed with, you know, having done this interview back in like March of 2022 and then come pick it up like two years later. And then a lot of the things that she was talking about two years ago were like some of those same trends and artists are being featured in Rain Dance Immersive like two years later and last year and Rain Dance Immersive 2023. starting to have more and more of these films that are being featured, both music videos and films, but also just a lot of these different performances. You know, Silent is someone else that I had a chance to have a conversation with because she was a part of the Night Under the Lights at the Moon Pool, just a really amazing use of the shaders from Apple Blossom and Adidas. And yeah, silent is a VJ who does both VJ and VR. And then now is also doing VJ and physical reality. So going from VR to IRL, doing the same type of sets where she could go back and forth. And I have a conversation with silent and a couple of other VJ and another DJ diving into like a whole history of the clubbing scene that gets into a Certainly in the writings that Aemeth has done, you can dig into a lot more of that. And there's also a documentary that I didn't mention up top, but that was kind of an inspiration for me to dig into my own journey into the history of VRChat. There's a documentary that's called History of VRChat 2014 to 2022 by Twice on YouTube. So this is a really great deep dive into like the history and evolution of your chat. There's this, I guess, larger question as to like, how do you start to describe different aspects of a history of an online social VR platform when you have literally hundreds of thousands of millions of users for twice as On YouTube, he starts to track like here are the major changes to the platform, both in user interface and how there's these different features that we're launching and going through and recapping those, but also mixing his own journey into VR chat coming into like 2017. And then key moments that were happening along the way that helped provide these markers for people to understand like, okay, I can orient myself to that feature. And from the period from like 2014 to 2017, it digs into a lot more of archival footage. And so that's where I have more of a interaction with the leadership and the developers of VRChat than I do with my own experiences. And so a lot of my early experiences with VRChat is like, you know, having an interview with Jesse Jodry at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference back in May 19th and 20th, 2014. And it kind of like inspired me to go back into a little bit of an archeological dig as to like, okay, what were the, like the very early beginnings of your chat? And I just want to share a few things because I don't know. I think it's just kind of interesting to think about what is the different elements of the history of VR chat. So Graham Giller was a student at Vanderbilt and he was posting on his development blog that he was working on this like school project. And then he started doing like networking and, Getting the online social VR experience working. And so he released the 0.1 version of VRChat on January 15th, 2014 at 1141 p.m. Central Standard Time. I believe he was in Nashville, Tennessee there at Vanderbilt University. but he posted to the r slash Oculus subreddit, which was kind of like the hub for all of the indie VR developers that were getting the dev kits and sharing news. It was kind of like the hotbed of community that you go to to see all the latest news and buzz of what was happening within the community. but he had posted at the 0.1 version. And then within a few hours, Reverend Kyle had jumped in and recorded some very early footage of the very first launch of VRChat 0.1. And he posted that to YouTube. So you just have the coffee shop where he's walking around in a T-pose. After that, he did a whole interview on the RevVR podcast with Graham Gaylor. At that point, Jesse Jodry hadn't become involved with VRChat as a co-founder. As far as I could tell, the first public mention of anything that I could find was Jesse Druder did an interview with Reverend Kyle on like February 14th, 2014, where it was published. They had technical difficulties. And so they actually ended up meeting up in VRChat to connect, but they eventually got Skype to work. But it wasn't until like March 16th of 2014 when the version 0.3.5 of VRChat was released. And that's when Jesse Drogery had posted a whole blog post on his Chespionage blog that VRChat now has custom avatars. And so he was going into the process of making it possible to even upload VRChat. custom avatars to VRChat. So from the very beginning, VRChat has, within the first couple of months of existing, really emphasized the power of having people upload their own identity, their own avatars, and their own worlds. And that's something that, working with the Unity engine, they were really focused in on. When I had the next interview with both Jesse and Graham at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference in 2015, they were talking all about their Unity APIs and their updates to the APIs that they were launching there. And then from there, I have a number of other different conversations with them over the years and my own journey into different experiences that I had within the context of VRChat. But yeah, definitely running into Aemeth and having her point me out to different events and different things to go check out was certainly a part of my own journey into the space. And there's certainly like a much deeper question here, which is like, how do you tell the history and the story of a place? My approach is to take it a little bit more of a, you know, not like a biography where you're telling the story of an individual person, but more of a prosopography, which is like the story of a community and how can the pluralistic perspectives of many different people getting their own individual stories as they come into a space and then weaving this tapestry of all these different stories to get a sense of how everything was kind of evolving. That is a little bit of what I'm starting to explore here on this deep dive into VRChat where I'm getting these little stories and strands for each person into VRChat. But the Voices of VR podcast project more generally is like doing that across the entire XR industry for the last decade. But, you know, I think what's happening on VRChat is super exciting. And there's certainly a lot of like bleeding edge culture that's happening. And so Kegular is someone who's just there embedded as a reporter. Very similar to, I'd say, like SL Hamlet, Wagner James Owl, who has been kind of an embedded reporter within the context of Second Life on his New World notes where he's been, you know, consistently blogging about virtual world since like 2003, which he certainly holds the claim for the longest running metaverse news and culture site. So, yeah, certainly doing that for a while. So definitely go check out themediculture.co to read some of these different articles. She's also been publishing some articles on UploadVR. Normally when I do different episodes, I have a rule for myself to not open up and do like a bunch of extra research into things. But there was something around this conversation going back in time and talking about the history of VRChat, but also like the fact that so much has changed within VRChat. vr chat since we even had this conversation and so it's like a meta like she's talking about the history of VR but also i'm trying to contextualize a larger history of vr chat so yeah just kind of a deep dive into a lot of these things but it's also really got me thinking around like how are other ways to really get access to these strands and these stories of these histories of people In a way that starts to perhaps even use the spatial and multimodal context of virtual reality itself to be able to capture these strands of history. So that's certainly something that I've been thinking around a lot. And this intro and outro was something that I have been kind of struggling with to try to really find my way through. But hopefully it gives you a sense of both reflecting on this conversation, but also trying to reflect on this larger story of history. the history and evolution of the medium of VR itself, but also specifically in this case, in this series, the history and the story of VRChat as well. So that's all that I have for today. And I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoyed the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a part of 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 voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
