I interviewed Address Unknown: Fukushima Now director Arif Khan at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here’s his artist’s statement:
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So we're continuing on my series of looking at different immersive stories from Venice Immersive 2024. Today's episode is with a piece called Address Unknown, Fukushima Now by Arif Khan. And this is like a point cloud documentary that is showing some of these different abandoned ghost towns around Fukushima and aftermath of the nuclear meltdown that happened around a decade ago or so. And so, yeah, it's just a way of having these memories that are encoded within the context of these spaces and using these sparse, animated with lots of shaders and then beginning and end of these different scenes that are taking these kind of volumetric scans through point cloud representations as you're going through these different townscapes and allowing the different citizens to share some of their memories of what was lost from the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. so that's what we're coming on today's episode of the voices of your podcast so so this interview with the director behind address unknown fukushima now happened on saturday august 31st 2024 so with that let's go ahead and dive right in so my name is arif khan i'm a vr director currently based in japan and i'm the writer and director and producer of fukushima now a vr documentary that's having its world premiere at the venice international film festival this week MARK MANDELBACHER- Great. Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into this space.
[00:01:45.478] Arif Khan: FRANCESC CAMPOY- Yeah, of course. So I first started exploring VR when I was in film school. When I graduated, I joined Oculus Story Studio as a junior producer, where I was very lucky enough to get introduced into immersive projects, but more specifically narrative immersive projects. And that, I think, was the impetus for me to really delve deeply into VR, but also really explore how narrative and storytelling could be connected to the technology. And this is around the first, of course, Rift. very early days in terms of vr after oculus story studio i worked at airbnb vr working on their marketing content i then transitioned over into vr production studio weaver to work on some of their projects including gnomes and goblins as a producer and it was during that time that i started to think a little more deeply about my own personal projects and seeing what would it look like if i took all the experience that i learned on these other vr productions in these other vr studios and applied it to a story and a project that I was excited about. And so I eventually went to UNCSA for an immersive residency in VR, where we developed an immersive cyberpunk VR experience called Black Ice, where we had our world premiere at South by Southwest, and that was an incredible experience for us to get that out into the world. And then soon afterwards, I embarked on a year-long Fulbright Fellowship to Japan to really develop this project around Fukushima, and really looking at using VR and immersive technology to tell a really deeply personal story around Fukushima.
[00:03:05.739] Kent Bye: Yeah, maybe you could talk about the moment where you decided that you wanted to tell the story.
[00:03:09.580] Arif Khan: Yeah, it was a really interesting serendipitous moment. I think my first encounter in Japan, of course, was in 2019, when I was just visiting just for pleasure. And I took a bus trip up to Sendai, which is a little bit further north of Tokyo. And during the bus trip, essentially, the bus snaked through many of the old ghost towns along the Fukushima coastline. And I saw so much of the Delapidated houses and homes and abandoned cars, supermarkets all across the landscape. And I just started to think a little more deeply about what had happened to these people and where they'd gone. And it was purely from that personal encounter, that personal curiosity, that when I returned to the States, I started to do a lot of research about the world of Fukushima today, the world of Fukushima 10 years after the disaster. And I started to track down the notion of where do memories live and where do people think of their memories living and what do these buildings mean and represent. And that's when we started to slowly build out the concept of what a VR experience around Fukushima could look like.
[00:04:07.071] Kent Bye: Yeah, so encountering these ghost towns in Japan, then, what was the next step in terms of, like, capturing the spaces or, like, telling, like, how did you start to suss out how to tell the story?
[00:04:18.991] Arif Khan: Yeah, I mean, it was a slow moving process. And when I first went through and took that bus trip up to Sendai, that was, you know, before the pandemic, of course. And then when I came back to the States, you know, we were in lockdown for over a year and a half. And I knew that I was going to go back for the Fulbright Scholarship and to do the project, but I had this year gap. where I could do so much research, so much development, even remotely on what the project could look like. And so I did all my research in terms of the local contacts, the types of stories, types of people, the types of photographers and local journalists who are doing work in the region. I made those connections even remotely before I even moved to Japan. I think at the time, which stories we wanted to tell, how we wanted to frame it, was relatively vague. We knew we wanted to use photogrammetry and we wanted to use point clouds. But to what sense and to what degree, it was hard to map that until I was eventually able to go to Japan around March of 2022. And that's when I started to take weekly and monthly trips to Fukushima to meet many of those locals, really get a sense of the stories, get a sense of the environments. And that's when we started to piece together essentially the constellation of what the piece would be like. These types of memories could work. This elementary school could be an incredible place to explore, or this farm, or this shrine. And you really start to get a sense of the environment. And then once you know that this is what you want to capture in VR and bring into Unity or Unreal, we could then think about what technology would make sense for that. I think one of my key partners in the process was Ruben Frasali, who is our technical director. But he's also a really incredible expert in photogrammetry and point cloud renders. And he has a lot of experience doing those types of designs. And so he joined the project and was able to provide his expertise in terms of capturing these locations for VR. And it basically amounted to using a wide-angle fisheye lens where we would take lots and lots of photo captures of certain environments and then render it through a kind of a photogrammetry software-like reality capture. which then brought it into UNT for us to simulate.
[00:06:09.241] Kent Bye: I think one of the other key components of this piece is the oral history testimonials that you're getting from the people who used to live in Fukushima. And so, you know, you encounter Fukushima, you ask yourself, okay, this looks like a ghost town, where is everybody? And then how do you go about actually tracking down people that could start to tell those stories? And did you find the stories and then the locations? Or did you find those locations and then trying to find people who can help tell the story of those locations?
[00:06:34.608] Arif Khan: Yeah, so many of the ghost towns that I encountered that first time didn't ultimately be in the final experience. They were almost like an inspiration starting point of like this feeling, this tone was what interested me into the topic. It really did start from the human story and the human angle and meeting the people and then trying to understand if there's an environment or a location or building or a place that's connected to their sense of memories. And meeting those people, you know, it came through a lot of the local contacts we had there who are photographers, journalists in the region, who at least shared with us some of the people that they are connected with in the region. Potentially like a priest, an elementary school teacher, an elementary student along the way, a farmer. Different colors of the culture that they were kind enough to introduce us to. And we had many, many dozens of conversations with so many locals. And some were really excited about the project. Some were, of course, very hesitant. Some were apprehensive, naturally. And so it was through dozens and dozens of interviews that we started to find that maybe there is five to eight folks who feel open enough to share their memories. But more importantly, their memory is connected to a physical location that we actually could scan, that we actually could bring into VR. And so it was this constant conversation of seeing if they would be open to the process and if we could actually realistically document their story in VR.
[00:07:51.950] Kent Bye: Maybe it's worth taking a step back and giving a bit more context as to Fukushima and the accident that happened there from the tidal wave. So you bookend this experience by zooming into these nuclear reactors in the background, and then it ends with also those nuclear reactors. So at the beginning and the end, you're having this impact of this nuclear energy technology that goes down a wrong path and impacts an entire community in a way. So I'm wondering if you could maybe just say a bit of a context of that.
[00:08:19.676] Arif Khan: I mean, it's interesting. There's an interesting relationship, I think, with nuclear energy and home. And I think with Fukushima specifically, it's kind of fraught in the sense where the idea of building these nuclear reactors in Fukushima maybe 45 years ago was a sign of celebration. It was a great local economic boom for both the economy, for jobs. It was a stimulant for many of the local towns along the way. And so what was something that was supposed to be celebrated maybe 45 years ago, you know, flipped on its side in 2011 during the disaster. And I think it's that paradigm, that kind of prism, that I think is the heart of what the story plays into, and especially with those bookend moments. You know, celebrating the introduction of Fukushima, of the power plants, but then seeing how it turns out further along at the end. I think the other element that is hard to describe in a traditional experience, but I think comes much more better in a VR experience is the nation of radiation and the sense that you can't see this invisible horror that's in this space. And even though the radiation, the nuclear energy has drifted away, there's still a sense that it'll linger 30, 40, 50 years ago, even though you can't see it. And so the zoning which you can't enter is maybe 50, 20, 30 miles out. And so you have people who are waiting on the outside skirts, waiting to return to their homes that they can never go back to as a result of the radiation that's there.
[00:09:39.318] Kent Bye: Yeah, and there's an interesting design pattern that I'm seeing a lot within XR projects where it's kind of like this guided tour motif where you are going through a space and like the impressionist piece that's more explicit docent who's pointing things out and introducing you to characters. But in this case, it's a little bit more of an invisible voice that's coming through and talking about like, okay, this is what this place meant to me. Okay. In this place, this is my relationship to that place. So it was like a tour through all the local businesses of like a main street and just kind of reflecting on what the place used to be now that it's completely abandoned. So these architectural spaces are holding all these memories for an entire community and that there's something really powerful just to get that tour of those memories because you get this sense of loss or it's in the past and it's all point cloud representation and so it's also got this kind of like amorphous blurry fidelity where the memories is kind of i see a lot of point clouds representing memories so there's a very much of like because you're talking about the past and the memories then it also has this real close connection but Love to hear you expand a little bit on this guided tour motif of just how you started to weave all that in together.
[00:10:51.712] Arif Khan: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Like when you go to a place and, for example, like the Futaba Street, that's very central to the experience, you know, on the coastline. You know, when I went there for the first time, I saw so many of these, you know, dilapidated buildings and forgotten homes. But the context was lost to me because I had no connection point or relationship to them at the time. But when I met Onuma-san, who grew up along the Futaba coastline, and we walked through that street together, he was able to point out a history of memory. That was the barbershop my mom used to go to. That was the supermarket that I used to get my toys in. That was the fish market that I used to go to. That's the bar that all the Fukushima workers after work would go and hang out in. And all of a sudden, now you're getting a color and shape and sense of what this street was and what it meant to Onuma-san. But also, I started to understand the importance and values of what these buildings were. And I started to have some connection, at least understanding of the importance of this place. And so it was through the context and the lens of the locals that I began to understand and appreciate the world that was around me at that point. And so just going through that experience, it made sense for a VR experience to see, well, how could we build that into an experience? How could we take audiences through the same moment of being able to see the street today, but as they're walking through, Onuma-san can give a little few anecdotes about the places and moments in the buildings along the way to reframe and give new insight to audiences to know. I think that was the key understanding. I think that's probably the most important human element, because without the human element, without those memories, they're just buildings. But they're more than buildings, they're containers for memories.
[00:12:22.270] Kent Bye: Yeah, and there's this moment where you pass by a tree and then you talk about the poison, the radiation, and you're able to then take what was like maybe normal texture based particle effects that's giving the outline of the tree and then turn it into more of a camera that's looking at the heat signature of the tree that turns it into this red. And it gives you the sense of like you're talking about the poison of the radiation, but it's actually like having this visual representation. And there's also later a number of different ways that you're using shaders or other ways of modulating the point clouds to more dynamically and metaphorically illustrate your point. But love to hear about that opportunity to use the point cloud as an aesthetic, but also start to modulate it to then amplify whatever is being said at that moment.
[00:13:07.236] Arif Khan: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that was important to us is that we didn't necessarily want to make a traditional documentary where we just captured the world as is. We wanted it to capture through the lens of the locals as they were telling it. It was how they were remembering their past. And of course, we all remember our memories with a certain sense of emotion and color and tone and passion. And with the point cloud renders, with the photogrammetry, we can play with those color values, with those point clouds, with the speed, the slowness, to amplify the feeling and the tone that the character, that the narrator wants us to feel. And I think that's the unique benefits of using these real-time renders, that we can play with it to the design and the emotional feel that we want. And of course, with the thermal radiation that you see at certain parts of the experience, that's part of the value that we can do where If the local is speaking about something that connects to the thermal or the radiation in the region, we can turn up the photogrammetry, the color tone, to give audiences a sense of this is the invisible horror that's leaking below. And I think that's something that's really unique and really special to VR storytelling.
[00:14:07.847] Kent Bye: Yeah, and also just the fact that there's these memories and people are recounting them, but there's a lot of sorrow and grief. Almost like this whole town has experienced this form of exile, or not exile, but more of a refugee status where they have to leave their homes because of this external situation. And so they're in this... place of remembering but also with a bit of a sadness and that at the end of scenes you have this translation of these memories that are there but then they kind of like fade away in a way that i don't know how would you describe this transition and what you were trying to do with trying to amplify again the endings of each of these different segments
[00:14:48.154] Arif Khan: I mean, there's a lot of moments in the experience where the locals have trouble remembering the past. And it's a natural case of as you go farther and farther away from a moment, it's harder to conjure those moments up. And I think the design, especially in the bookends of each of those memories, was that rapidly fading sense of the past falling away as we age, as the buildings get torn away. It's hard to remember what was in between the two buildings that were there. You know, what was that supermarket? What was the name of the owner of that supermarket? And there's no history for it, except in the minds and memories of the people there. And I think you described it well, where a lot of the people feel like they're in this kind of limbo state, where they feel like their home is in Fukushima, but they can't return to these towns because of the radiation and the radiation zone. But they think maybe 20, 30 years, they can return back. And of course, some of these individuals are 70, 80 years old, they're further along in life, and they might not have the time to return to the home that they want to. But if you're younger in life, you know, you have the opportunity to move to Tokyo or to Osaka or Kyoto and make a new home elsewhere because you have the time. But for other individuals, the only home that they'll ever know, it's in the radiation zone. So almost like an umbilical cord, they're kind of in these temporary houses just on the borderline waiting to find an opportunity to go back home, which might never happen.
[00:16:06.086] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah. And it's obviously quite sad. And I guess there's other ways that you can use music or other ways to amplify some of those feelings. So maybe you could talk a little bit about the sound design and the music.
[00:16:18.240] Arif Khan: Yeah, I mean, I think for us, one of the key things about the sound design, especially with moving through the spaces, which at least have pockets of the memories that you could hear, whether you're going through a supermarket or a barbershop, you could hear the sense of a past that's still there and that's still lingering. And even if the sound design is very opaque and you hear it in kind of ripples, it still allows you to get a sense of like, this is what the world used to be. And it's never going to be, of course, 100%, but it gives you a sense, a feeling, as if you're stepped inside that moment. And part of the feeling was that we did want it to feel like a memory. And our memories are sometimes discolored. Sometimes we hear them in kind of ripples. Sometimes we render some parts of our memory clearly, but there are other parts that are hard and vague to figure out. And so the sound design, I think, was key in helping conjure that. And of course, the music could help us drive the emotional tone for the experience as well and connect that. all the separate eight memories into one hopefully cohesive piece.
[00:17:15.014] Kent Bye: Yeah, I feel like each person, they're going to have connections to places that they really resonate with. Either it's the shops on the main street or the school with the children or the teachers, and then you have the temples and more spiritual and religious ceremonies that are going on there. And so, yeah, maybe talk about each of the chapters, you kind of have the structure where you would go into a point cloud representation of the space, have the beginning and ending transition in and out of it, but having some people that are speaking about their memories there, but you have this arc from the intro sequence, and then the main street, and then the school, and then the temple. So, like, talk about the process of trying to weave all these independent segments together.
[00:17:55.540] Arif Khan: Yeah, it's a long process. And so, for example, going back to Anuma-san and with the street, it's a long process of first, you know, doing a deep dive interview with Anuma-san, getting a sense of the street, all the memories that he has, and being able to share with us the full range of experiences. take all that down as kind of a transcript, really study that really closely, and really start to see, okay, well, based off this transcript, which buildings still exist, which places could we really go back to, pull those out into a script, look at that again. Could these pieces be a part of a cohesive narrative? If not, should we move some pieces around? go back to a new mason, get more feedback, more information around maybe the supermarket or the barbershop to help give more color to that moment. And so it's a constant process of iteration of digging deeper into the memory, understanding how that relates back to the building that's there, and then kind of piecing that together in kind of a back and forth, the revision process. And then once you go on to the actual location, you're doing the photogrammetry scans, you want to make sure, okay, we're going to grab these five buildings. These are the most important focus points of the script that we have. So we want to capture them as clearly as possible, the road as clearly as possible, but everything else on the background in the environments can be a bit more opaque, but we need to capture these because these are our core narrative story beats that we want to hit along the way. So it's a constant iterative process.
[00:19:18.089] Kent Bye: In terms of the narrative architecture, so then you have chapters and chapter names, and maybe you could just kind of talk from a thematic perspective the different big beats that you wanted to hit in the story.
[00:19:27.830] Arif Khan: Yeah, I mean, part of it with a lot of it is Rumiko-san who of course is the lady who starts the experience who's, you know, 99 years old and she was there when she heard the newscast that Fukushima was being created in her hometown. That felt like a really strong prologue as an anchor point to set the tone for the experience. and then taking us from Unuma-san's story, from Sato-san's story, of more of the past, to give audiences a sense of what the place used to be, and then moving close to the end of the experience with Takakura-san and Moriya-san more about the new Fukushima that's coming together. It felt like a natural ebb and flow of the story that was, the story that is, and the story that will be. But we only found that really as we started to edit the piece together, as we were moving the different memories and stories around. It became very obvious once we started to edit it that this was the right shape along the way. And then we could amplify the music, we could amplify the design. We maybe captured a little bit more dialogue from our local partners to kind of give a better transition between some of the memories. But it was something that was hard to lock in at the script level. It had to be something that we figured out once we were in post-production.
[00:20:32.950] Kent Bye: Yeah, that makes sense. And as you are talking about that, remembering now this contrast between the way things were in the original Fukushima and then having a look at the new Fukushima, which looked like a lot of not very interesting architecture or kind of like more of a utilitarian approach of like, here's some houses that were cheap to build because it's using the minimal amount of materials. that just I guess to say more of a modern architecture rather than the amount of rich history and culture that's kind of embedded within a town that organically grows over time that you really get a sense of a place this kind of psychogeography of like moving through a place and learning about what the place means and so I feel like this is a piece that's really trying to pull that out of those memories and also the way that the physical locations of a home in a hometown are connected to your own personal identity as as well as cultural identity, but also like the different ways that the community comes together.
[00:21:32.692] Arif Khan: Right. I mean, I think part of it goes into, although each memory is as personal and as deeply personal as you want it to be, there also is kind of a kernel of universality in each of the memories, in each of the stories, whether it's about In elementary school, whether it's about a shrine, whether it's about a temple, all these places, although they're deeply personal to the locals as they narrate it, the deep heart of it is really about a core human experience that I think transcends the culture, transcends the language. and I think hopefully connects with guests because I think most people will not of course have a specific connection to UK their elementary school but they will certainly have a reminiscence of how their own elementary school was and the memories that they have and when they think about their own school experiences where was that and what building is that memory tethered to And hopefully that kind of reflection can come through. And so we intentionally in the environment design and in the photogrammetry design didn't try to be specific with faces, with too many details in terms of names, in terms of the signage, but at least try and line up in a space to almost feel like a metaphor for what the audience would like to take out of it as they go through the experience themselves.
[00:22:40.993] Kent Bye: And I saw, I think, somewhere either in your video or sort of like there's multiple chapters that are happening in this piece that this is like just the first chapter, but then you have two or three or four other segments that you want to really dive into. So maybe you could elaborate on starting here and then where you go from this story in the future.
[00:22:59.741] Arif Khan: No, of course. I think one thing that's been exciting for myself and our co-production partner, Serendipity Films, is really starting to think about the notion of nuclear radiation and the impact that it has on lives and communities and homes. And of course, Episode 1 really focused on Japan. We're now looking at seeing how Episode 2 could be explored through the prism of different cultures in different countries and whether that's through Taiwan and really starting to think about how nuclear energy impacts homes and communities there. And there's some really specific and interesting stories that really resonate in a deeply personal way that has been really inspiring to us to see, well, could there be a world in which we have assisted projects where it's Japan and Taiwan that's using the same technology, the same photogrammetry toolset, but really exploring the notion of radiation in home and the impact that it has on our culture and community through a different cultural context. And I think that's the really focused interest point that we want to develop for the future.
[00:23:53.356] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I remember in the last scene of this piece where it was sort of like talking about memories and then trying to let go of the memories, almost like this grieving and letting go, surrendering of stuff. And maybe you could elaborate on this ending point.
[00:24:06.311] Arif Khan: Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you know, there's a line in Japanese which is like, which means like, it can't be helped. And it's a very, it's an open term that's used throughout when something is far beyond the point of no return. And it's very rarely used, of course, in English, but I think it's frequently seen in Japanese culture, whether you're going through work or life, and you encounter something that can't be overcome, right? Yeah. And I think there is that sense that you feel with our local partners who we interviewed. When they talk about these moments and these memories and the past, there is a sense of helplessness. There is a sense of shogunate. It is what it is, right? And I think that feeling, that tone, is something that we wanted to at least try to capture in the VR experience where... It's not trying to be this thing that's defiant or rage against the machine to change the system, but at least understanding and coming to terms with the reality and then moving forward from there as much as they can.
[00:25:00.905] Kent Bye: Yeah. And I think by having at the end of each of the chapters and segments, the washing away of those memories also gives that. I mean, I just read it as like this surrender of like there's nothing left to do, but also like a grief. It's like a sort of a grief ritual in some ways of like having a way for a community to come together and really honor what a place was able to give them and then to be able to let it go. That's kind of like what it felt like.
[00:25:29.454] Arif Khan: And also seeing, like, in the final memory where you see Muriha-san talking about the new Fukushima that's being built and the construction sites. And that was something that I only found when I went there. And I went to the Fukushima station and on one side you had the dilapidated homes that are about to be torn down. On the left side of the station you had these new townhouses that are being built. And it's this pure dichotomy of an old and new. And it's natural for them to want, of course, to make new buildings, a new culture, a new Fukushima for the future of the region and the culture. But it does come at a cost, right? And it does come at a sacrifice. And I think that's the duality that we at least wanted to try to portray as much as we could in this experience. And not necessarily cast judgment, but to share it as is and to at least give that moment back to the audience for them to take away.
[00:26:12.827] Kent Bye: Great. And so how has your trip been to Venice here as you're coming here to show your piece to the audiences here for the Venice Immersive 2024?
[00:26:20.990] Arif Khan: It's been an incredible honor. I think it's our greatest honor to be able to have our world premiere at Venice for this project. For me, it's been about three years from the incubation of the idea to getting it to Venice. So it's been a long journey for me. We feel so thankful and so grateful to be able to premiere it here, of course, with Serendipity Films, our partners in the project as well, but also to be able to get a chance to meet so many talented people XR creators, the community here to get their wonderful feedback, to get inspired by the incredible project that you might only see here on the immersive island. And so I think we feel really lucky and very honored, but also looking forward to the opportunity to take the experience out into different festivals, different opportunities for more and more audiences and guests to experience it. And because we're primarily a 360 experience, it gives us more flexibility in terms of where and how we show it moving forward.
[00:27:08.231] Kent Bye: Awesome. And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential of immersive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable?
[00:27:15.854] Arif Khan: I think, you know, the selection of incredible experiences that we've seen at Venice really highlights the potential and range of VR, and it's really been inspiring for me to see. You can have games, you can have LBE experiences, you can have 360 experiences, you can have shared experiences. The range of potential is as great and as exciting as the creativity that we're seeing with the XR community today. And I'm really excited and really thankful that it can be an industry that allows for games, human stories, documentaries, personal pieces to kind of coexist in the same ecosystem. And I'm really excited about next steps. And so I feel like it could be just as strong as a human expression as any of the other exciting mediums that we see and work with today. So I'm looking forward to the future of the XR industry.
[00:27:59.879] Kent Bye: Awesome. And is there anything else that's left unsaid there? Any final thoughts you'd like to share with the immersive community?
[00:28:05.256] Arif Khan: No, I just wanted to say it's been an incredible honor to be here and we're of course incredibly thankful to our local partners who helped bring this project to life and share their stories with us. I think without them, this project wouldn't exist and for them to open their hearts and homes and to share their memories with such a courageous and thoughtful and honest and deeply, deeply wonderful relationship that we've had with them. And so I personally would just like to thank all of them. And we're looking forward to the opportunity to take the experience back to them, hopefully later this year, and show them the experience in VR. And really excited to kind of gather thoughts in as well. So we're looking forward to it.
[00:28:39.918] Kent Bye: Yeah, awesome. Well, I think this is a story that it feels like the use of the point cloud aesthetic where you're traversing us through the space. It's like this guided tour and yeah, I think it's showing a way of capturing memories, capturing stories, capturing all the different elements of culture that can start to be at least self-contained in a static representation and through the stories that you're able to share. I feel like it's a nice format and structure to continue to expand that out into all these other dimensions of the story that you can cover. So, yeah, it feels like I've been able to take a little trip into this time and place that I've never been before and to just learn a little bit more about the unique experiences of what this impact of the nuclear radiation has had on their community. So, yeah, thanks again for joining me here to help break it all down.
[00:29:27.096] Arif Khan: Thank you so much, Ken. It's always a pleasure. Thank you.
[00:29:29.465] Kent Bye: thanks again for listening to these episodes from Venice immersive 2024. And, uh, yeah, I am a crowdfunded independent journalist. And so if you enjoy this coverage and find it valuable, then please do consider joining my Patreon at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
