I interviewed Venice Immersive Worlds Gallery Producer Mike Salmon at Venice Immersive 2024 about this year’s selection of 20 VRChat worlds as well as his process of scouting promising leads and trends of world building, music, art, and immersive storytelling.. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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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 continuing my series of looking at different immersive stories and experiences that are being featured at Venice Immersive 2024, today's episode is with Mike Salmon, who's a producer of the Worlds Gallery that's being featured at Venice Immersive. He does a lot of the early scouting And then he shows it to the main curators of Venice Immersive of Liz and Michelle. And they end up making the final curatorial decisions for what's going to be featured. But it ends up this year around like 20 different worlds that are being featured. And then Mike goes through and tries to cluster them to go together into like 10 or 11 different slots in order to go explore either a world within its own right or within a combination of a couple or in some cases like three different VR chat worlds that folks are going in on. So we talk a little bit about the evolution of featuring these different VRChat worlds in the context of the Venice Immersive, some of the processes that Mike goes through in order to scout all these different worlds. And then, yeah, just kind of going through each of the pieces within the selection and sharing some of our thoughts as well. So that's what we're coming on today's episode of Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Mike happened on Sunday, September 1st, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive in. Die right in.
[00:01:33.039] Mike Salmon: MIKE SAMMONS- Hi, I am Mike Sammon. I'm also known as Manglebird in VRChat and other digital platforms. I'm a producer. So I come up with ideas for projects and work with teams to bring them alive. And then I also am a producer here at Venice Immersive. So I work with Liz and Shell running the World's Gallery.
[00:01:57.672] Kent Bye: JASON MAYES- Great. Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into this space.
[00:02:03.112] Mike Salmon: Sure, so I used to work at NBC Universal and I worked in an innovation team and my job was to go out look for new technologies and find startups that Universal might want to experiment with. So we had a very small budget for running prototypes and during that time we picked up a DK1 and I kind of pissed my manager off by completely going down a VR rabbit hole and basically ignoring all other technology. So I got totally obsessed with VR to the point where we ended up setting up an immersive entertainment team so I could produce some content. And that's how I got to know Liz and Michelle, because with a friend of mine, Marad Nori, we produced 11.11, which was a piece that we showed here in 2019.
[00:02:54.665] Kent Bye: Awesome. And so when you think about the VRChat Worlds Gallery, it's changed a little bit of format in terms of how it's being displayed over the years. It started out in VRChat. Now you actually have the physical exhibition that you've been iterating in over the years. But for your job as the producer of the Worlds Gallery, you're sort of scouting out and going into VRChat Worlds. I guess in most of the Venice immersive, there's a submission process. But is there a submission process for the World's Gallery? Or is it more of you're embedded into VRChat, scouting all the things that you can find, and then just talk about the process of how this all comes to be?
[00:03:34.016] Mike Salmon: Sure. So I guess if I go right back to the beginning, in 2020, obviously COVID hit in Italy first. So the film festival had to go online. So I worked with the folks at Vroom and introduced Liz and Michelle to VRChat. That year, Vroom looked after the whole of the build. And then the year after that, we ended up starting to put Worlds actually in the selection itself. So we had a few COVID era editions of the festival and during those it was very much very community based and we were looking to try and highlight what was going on in the VRChat community. So we would run like raves with people like Shelter and Mass. We did guided meditations. We did Jean-Michel Jarre concerts and lots of things that were sort of native to the platform. And then fast forward to a few years ago when we started then going back to the island, the Biennale, who run Venice Immersive as part of the film festival, are very focused on bringing people physically to Venice. Once COVID had finished, the idea was that we went back to serving the audience that are coming to the film festival. So what we did is we created a situation where we could give the folks that are coming to this festival a window into the culture and the communities that exist within VRChat. So it's very important to me that we ran tours. so i really love working with our amazing tour guides and it's one of the things that's like the talk of the festival you quite often hear people having a beer talking about the crazy people that they've met in vr with their full body tracking or talking about recipes for barbecue sauce all sorts of funny things that happen so what we have is we have 10 headsets and Six are for the best of and four a part of the competition. So if you're a world builder and you want to be in the competition, then you need to go through the same submission process as all of the other projects that are here on the island. You need to premiere at Venice. and the jury will come and experience your work and there's a possibility that you may win one of the awards, which means that you might end up going up on stage in the awards ceremony at the end and potentially share the same stage as a Colin Firth or someone. But the best of is for projects that have already released. And so for that, I am scouting constantly. I have a geeky spreadsheet that I follow. And I follow tons of people on Twitter. I am constantly lurking and seeing where my friends are in VR chat at any one time. And if I see something that I think is interesting, it goes on the spreadsheet. This year, my spreadsheet had 650 worlds on it that were ones that I had seen something, thought it looked interesting, need to investigate. And some of those come to nothing. Some of them might have been released 10 years ago and are therefore not valid. Others might be tiny little hangout worlds, which are not necessarily the sort of thing that we show here. But then when Liz and Michelle do their submissions here in Venice, they spend two weeks here in Venice going through every single submission that comes through, which is hundreds of pieces. And then on top of that, I take them on daily World Hops every day with a much shorter list, maybe... 80 worlds which is still quite a lot for them to go through every day given that they're in a headset maybe 10 hours a day and then from that they then choose what goes into the selection and most of the time we all totally agree and every so often there'll be one world where I sort of try and push and see if I can get it in.
[00:07:35.174] Kent Bye: Nice, yeah. And as I was going through the list, there were 17 other worlds that had launched publicly around a week before the launch of the festival. Then during the festival, some of those that weren't launched publicly have a release, but some of them will be taking it offline because they're more performance event-based stuff. And so... Yeah, I guess as you start to think about this year's selection, I think about it in terms of genres of worlds and exploring. There's some music-based stuff. There's some sandbox-y type worlds. And then from there, there's at least 11 or 12 different slots. So you have the 20 worlds, and then some of them are combined with two or three at a time. And then some worlds are so vast and big, they merit having their own slot. And so I guess as you start to look at the complex and through the selection process, I guess you can call it the big experiences that have their own slot or ones that maybe pair so they get half the slot and then the ones that get a third of the slot. So when the selection process is happening, is that part of the discussion of trying to keep tabs of, oh, we can't have 20 big experiences because we don't have the capacity? Is 20 the number and then you try to fit it from there? Like, how do you sort of squeeze everything into the schedule after? Or is that part of the selection process?
[00:08:51.933] Mike Salmon: Yeah, so it's not part of the selection process. We want to make sure that we're showing the best work. And then once Liz and Michelle have made the selection, it's then down to me to work out how to fit it all in. One of the big changes this year. So the last two years where we've been doing it here, we have highlighted world hops. And we called them World Hops. In the ticketing schedule, you bought World Hop 1 or World Hop 2 or World Hop 3. And one of the things that we realized was that people were talking about the World Hops and not about the work. So they were seeing them as these homogenous groups. They were like, oh, I was on World Hop 7. Wasn't it great? And actually not talking about the artists and the pieces of work. So this year, we've sort of removed that. In the ticketing system, you're looking at the work. And although they are bunched together, they've got the names of the worlds and the creators to make sure that we very, very strongly believe that the work that is in the World's Gallery is on exactly the same level as everything else that is here at the festival. It might be a little bit more punk, it might be made by one person rather than a team of people with lots of funding behind them and arts grants and everything, but it deserves to be here alongside everything else that's here. So we want to make sure that people are recognizing the work and the creators rather than just feeling as if they've been on a fun world hop.
[00:10:23.367] Kent Bye: Yeah, that makes sense. And so as you were then sorting through, how do you negotiate whether or not an experience goes into three other experiences or if it's going to be its own sort of the full time to be able to go and explore it?
[00:10:37.913] Mike Salmon: So basically, I redo all the worlds. And I time myself going through them. And I try as hard as I can not to speed run them and to think of myself as a festival goer who may not be au fait with VRChat. I try to imagine our tour guides talking through the various elements of the world. And then I give everything a time value. I then sort that. And then look at that, work out which ones make sense to pull out as their own experience, and which ones are smaller, bite-sized experience, which we put together. But again, last year, we would have maybe six or eight worlds in a world hop. And some of the feedback was that we were just running through them. And that comes from me being a bit of a speed runner. I was just going through like super quick going, yeah, yeah, yeah, done, brilliant, move on. You know, slight ADHD brain, next, next, next. So this year I wanted to make sure that we spent more time in the world so that people could give them the consideration they deserve and they didn't feel rushed.
[00:11:45.505] Kent Bye: OK. That makes sense. So yeah, I guess as we start to dig into some of the projects that are featured in this year's World's Gallery, where do you want to begin in talking about some of the selection that you have this year?
[00:11:56.994] Mike Salmon: Sure. It's funny, because you start to see themes, but those themes are not conscious. Well, some of it is subconscious bias, because I'm super into the music side of things. And anything that's kind of weird and trippy is also something that is going to naturally draw my attention. So the long list that Liz and Michelle get, there's usually quite a lot of music worlds and particle systems and all the things that I enjoy, because that's what I'm naturally drawn to.
[00:12:25.788] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, yeah, just to jump in there is that Raindance happened right before Venice this year, and usually Raindance is after Venice. And so I felt like there would be a lot more of the worlds that would be shown at Venice here that would have shown at Raindance's Worlds Gallery, but because they hadn't premiered yet. But I did have a chance to see through a number of different programs there, the SNR Labs test facility system that's behind that. AD DOS or Adidas and Apple Blossom created this really amazing shader to do this volumetric visualizations of music that just totally blew my mind. And to me, there's kind of like that SNR Test Labs, the sanctum that's using billboarded stereoscopic video that has lighting effects that tricked my eye. I was like, that looks like 2D, but it's 3D. What is happening? And so it's a billboarded but stereoscopic video that's happening in these club scenes now with lighting effects as well. And then the final one was the Concrete Pale Sands that I was able to get a tour and go to one of the shows for three hours where I was just in this total state of awe and wonder watching the light show of what was essentially a 2D plane that is a hologram that's having lighting reflections across this huge, vast sand dunes and almost like a projection map of the dunes and just allowing VJs to have live input to be able to modulate some of these. And I think that each of those have the ability for live VJs to input whatever they have on their screen. whether it's Touch Designer or Notch or whatever the program they're using, and then have that be live streamed into these VRChat worlds. So that was something that I was really struck by because it seemed to be a distinct trend of having more and more of these visual artists being able to have these different types of shows that are then have these different translations to have these really mind-bending volumetric effects.
[00:14:16.280] Mike Salmon: So one of the things about what we're doing here is it's like a 10-day festival. So it's pretty harsh on people to say, right, what we're going to do, we want to show Sanctum. So we're going to put on a rave every night for 10 days. It's just not really possible. So I think what Rain Dance is doing is absolutely incredible. but they're able to do it by running a couple of shows and getting lots of people to those shows. We don't really have the ability to do that here. So for Sanctum, as an example, so Mixi, who's also one of our tour guides, made this awesome sort of walkthrough. So now the guys have built this system so you can follow this orb And the orb takes you around the church and takes you down deeper, deeper, deeper down into the reactor room that has this amazing animation as all the doors come apart and fly open. And then you get in and you see like silence work going on in the reactor. But that's something that they have created for us, especially for us, especially for the festival, so that we can do it every day, run through. So it's like a canned version. And so the SNR research facility, the same thing. So I came across their work on Twitter in the early days and reached out to DDoS and was like, what the hell are you doing? I need to put my face in this, but I'm in the UK, and I'm old, and I can't stay up that late. What is it? And so he sent me to, it wasn't the research facility, but it was literally just a box room, and he sent me a Twitch link. He said, just put that in the video player and watch it. And this thing came alive. And he hadn't told me how it works. And I just completely lost it. I could not work out what was going on. And then there was a debug button. And I pressed it. And then it came up with the composite six videos in one video which they're using. And it floored me. It was just so cool. And then the concrete folks, speaking to them, and they were like, look, we can't can it. It's live. But we're down. We'll come every day. So that is happening live. So every day, Mae, Jerk, and the team are there manning the decks and manning the creature, which is the name of that big piece of visuals. and meeting the folks, and talking to people, or how it works. And I think that's one of the things that I also really love about what's going on here, is we have lots of XR industry people. And lots of them, their experience of VRChat is going to the Black Cat. And that's not always the best experience. And then when they come and they see, this is like us being their spirit guide. This is us being able to sort of elevate some of the work on the platform and help them look through all of the thousands and thousands of worlds that are there. And I think we open a lot of eyes. A lot of people come away saying that the World's Gallery is their favorite thing.
[00:17:28.638] Kent Bye: Yeah, so for me that was some of the highlights just because there is so much fascinating stuff with the magic wizardry of putting a 2D video and then taking those six different views and then reconstructing a cube and basically sculpting these 3D objects that are holographic and have lighting effects that are impacting everything. So yeah, for me that was just some of the more mind-bending type of stuff that I was able to see. And there's a number of the VR, well, maybe we should just go through the worlds so we don't miss anything. So we covered a couple of them, but what are some of the other themes that you see this year in this year's program?
[00:18:03.578] Mike Salmon: Yeah, so unintentionally, art has become a big theme of this festival. So we have a couple of worlds where you can make your own. So we have Mix's gallery space, where she has all these really cleverly programmed easels, where you can choose the size of your canvas, and you can paint and make these really beautiful artworks. And some of the work, she's got a gallery in there as well, And some of the works that people have created in that space are just really, really incredible. Is that like a canvas?
[00:18:35.854] Kent Bye: Is that what it's called?
[00:18:37.696] Mike Salmon: No, that's finishing touch. Oh, finishing touch. OK. Yeah. Then we also have Smoo Brush. So Smoo makes shaders and interesting pens that you can either use in your world or some you can even put on your avatar. But they're kind of like Tilt Brush, but they have really fun little extra dimensions. So you can actually start building quite complex, interesting things. So you can make things that you can bounce on or that have colliders. Or my favorite pen is a rocket pen that you can zoom around and you're scrolling and drawing as you go around. So you have a couple of places where you can sort of draw and be creative and make things. But then we also have a bunch of galleries. So we have the VRC Museum, which is a Claude Monet exhibit. And it's just done with such reverence and style and class. All of his waterworks are in a gallery space and it's flooded and the light's coming in and rippling on the water. And then when you walk through that gallery, once you've done it, you're then out on a bridge and there's an easel at the end of a dock and you have to jump off and into a boat to then move on to the next world. So they've done a really good job of... really using VR, even though they're sort of showing paintings, which I really like. And the quality of the painting is really good. If you walk up to it, you can almost see the stippling effect, which I really enjoy. We also have a chap called Nico, who is like a shader ninja. And he's made these really, really beautiful shaders where he's able to sort of... Now, my technical knowledge when it comes to shaders is fairly non-existent. But he makes all these really incredible skyboxes where he sort of mixes layers and adds animation. And so, yeah, his art gallery is... And it's also being used in the VRChat home world at the moment because his shader works in Quest.
[00:20:35.731] Kent Bye: Yeah, so he's got two worlds, actually, the exoplanet journey and the magic AI art dimensions that both have that skybox effect. And the AI art is a little bit more abstract where you're going into these different art rooms. And the exoplanet journey is more of like you're flying on a ship and you can change how the different worlds are being shown and Yeah. And it's also interesting just to see some of the VR chat monetization that's connected into that world in particular, because he's got, well, if you become a member, then you've got this thing or this thing. So it's got like, here's a bunch of free content. That's pretty cool. But if you want to have even more, if you just want to support him, then there's the VR chat economy integrations that are in that world, which if people are interested in seeing an example of that, that would be a good one to look at as well.
[00:21:18.530] Mike Salmon: If you look behind you as you walk into the Magic Eye Gallery, if you look behind you, you see his list of Patreons. And he's huge. He has a lot of people supporting him, so it's really great. And then we have Complication, which is like a walk-through gallery. That's another one of the things I really enjoy about this space, is that it's like a series of installations that are all connected together. So you get this really nice through line as you walk through the experience, which is fantastic.
[00:21:51.266] Kent Bye: Sort of like Meow Wolf-esque, but it's more completely virtual and doing some more surreal things that you wouldn't be able to see. I mean, Meow Wolf is a little bit more textured. This was more abstract and sparse and zen-like, I'd say. But in VR, you have the ability to have these really big spaces that are a little bit more focused, but using the contrast of the vastness of the space to have a huge sculptural object that you kind of have to walk through these different rooms. Definitely gave me a lot of Meow Wolf vibes when I was going through that one.
[00:22:21.933] Mike Salmon: Yeah, totally. And we also have a couple of worlds which are really focused on sort of hand-drawn illustration. So in the competition, there is Strange Ways. And that is a South African artist called Chris Bianchi. And him and folks from the Metaverse crew, Wandering Chew and Deke, and others. Adam Lieber. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I use everyone's avatar name, you know. Oh, what's Adam Lieber's avatar name? Wandering Chew.
[00:22:54.265] Kent Bye: Oh, okay, okay.
[00:22:56.181] Mike Salmon: And so that's a really beautiful space where we've taken 2D hand-drawn artworks and turning it into 3D worlds. And also then bringing some of those alive with avatars. And I think that's super interesting. The fact that once you start bringing avatars into it, like Egg made these really cool avatars, and it kind of takes the world and then sort of pollinates it. through the rest of VRChat. People start asking where you got that avatar from and you can lead it back to this space, so it almost works as like a walking advert for the space. And then we have another one called Endless Resident by Spencer Filson, which is just a kind of... I don't know. It's just batshit crazy.
[00:23:47.382] Kent Bye: A lot of surrealist kind of like it's I guess that's another one that has that kind of aesthetic of using 2D billboarded planes that have art, but that they're spatialized within a spatial context. But it feels like you're walking through a cartoon through the surrealist cartoon and you're kind of going on a number of different like wild goose chases or like someone's like, Oh, I need to find this. And they're like, okay, well I guess that's what I need to go do. And then you end up using some of those prompts to then explore the space because there's a lot of labyrinthian doors and you know, you go into a door and then you're another dimension. So there's a lot of ways that it plays with the adventure game point and click adventure where you're exploring and adventuring to this, but it is that kind of animated world that you're going through with, uh, Something that, in terms of narrative, it's not clear what the story is other than here's a bunch of weird shit that's all together as you're going around.
[00:24:40.504] Mike Salmon: You know, it kind of feels like being in a Ren and Stimpy cartoon or something, you know? And I really enjoy the sort of slightly wild, everywhere you look, there's something super bizarre. You know, there's a guy who has a jar in his mouth, collecting the moisture from the inside of his mouth and recommending that you get yourself a jar, you know? And drinking that cool mouth juice. And it's just completely crazy. I think Spencer might have been a little nervous about the idea of introducing something like that into the crowd at Venice, but people are absolutely loving it.
[00:25:20.703] Kent Bye: Yeah, and also that Strange Ways also has that kind of 2D aesthetic. And yeah, and one that we didn't mention to the art, but I want to also bring in was this Accenture Rooms, because it feels like you're walking into an art gallery, but it's doing weird things. stuff where you then start walking on the ceilings or this is a good one to actually do with some people as I was going through some of these I was going through by myself which is okay but this is one that really is a lot better when you have a lot of people because there's a lot of effects that are playing with mirroring yourself or taking little avatar captures of everybody that's in the instance and having these infinite recursive rooms. And it's just playing with the impossible physics, I guess is a good way to put it, where you're walking around and each room is exploring one new eccentric quality, playing with different things. That was one that was fun to see, just because it's like, oh, how can we experience something in VR that you can never experience? But it did feel like a gallery type of experience that you're going through these different rooms.
[00:26:22.064] Mike Salmon: it's kind of like a mix between like optical illusions and some sort of fun fair and so the first time I did it I did it on my own and I went through and I thought yeah this is so much fun and then when I came in with Liz and Michelle it was an entirely different experience and so There's one room which didn't work on my own and didn't really understand it. I've just carried on regardless. But there's one room where you kind of leave your body behind in one room and then you go into another room. You can still hear the people that are in the other room, but then you can pick up these little discs and they have the live tiny avatar of what the people are doing in that other room. And it's like having an out-of-body experience. In fact, one of the rooms is an out-of-body experience. As you walk in, your avatar comes out in front of you, and you're in third person. So yeah, it's really tricky. It's really fun.
[00:27:16.396] Kent Bye: It's a lot of playing with that. And yeah, like I said, I went through that by myself at first. And then I was like, I think I need to do this with some other people. I went into a public instance that people happened to jump in. But that's one to definitely think about doing as a group. And like a canvas, I think is another, if I'm remembering this correctly, it's also sort of like you're walking through a gallery space and that you have kind of like a painting that's occluding something behind it. And then you kind of have this moment where you move through the space to kind of complete the puzzle, like getting it the right perspective to see how that gets completed. So that was another one that, and there's been a number of those different types of like You're walking through a gallery over the years at both Raindance and here at Venice Immersive. But yeah, I don't know if you have any other comments on the Leica canvas.
[00:28:04.079] Mike Salmon: Yes, Haruki had a piece last year and their worlds are usually all about changing the context of the picture that you're looking at. So they're all interactive and they have a little button and you press it and then it will either reveal the thing that's behind it or it will turn the canvas into something different so that it splurges a clock so that it splatters across the page. And we really like having a real mix of... These, you know, something that's fairly simple and yet elegant next to, you know, the big dirty raves and the more complicated worlds.
[00:28:44.764] Kent Bye: Yeah. And one of the ones that I really enjoyed also was the music visualization, one of polyrhythm, where it actually took me a bit to kind of understand what was happening with it. But it's kind of like a number of different concentric circles that are embedded into each other and that as you watch it, you can kind of find one slice through it that you notice that whenever the dot that goes around, it actually is representing a beat. And so it's a new way of representing the musicality of the music. And I really appreciated how there's like a cyclical nature to music and just time in general. And so how they were able to take something that we normally think of music as like sheet music or you've seen mini visualizations where like there's blocks of notes that are flying through like in one direction but this was more of like taking all that and putting into a circle that then was finding lots of really innovative ways of like visualizing a song so that was one that I really appreciated
[00:29:41.260] Mike Salmon: So Sky Sage, who made that, so that was a piece of existing music. And then she used, if I remember rightly, mochis, shaders, to hand animate all of that. So even though it looks like each time Block hits the line that it's making that piece of music, it's all just hand animated. And they made it in one evening. It's insane, but it's really hypnotic. Like, it's about eight minutes long, and by the end of it, I feel like I'm in almost an unaltered state because there's just something about it which, because it's so circular, it kind of makes you feel as if you're drifting off almost. Yeah, it's fantastic.
[00:30:23.294] Kent Bye: Yeah, another one I'd recommend to do with a big group would be Liminal Dreams, the pool rooms, because it was a lot of fun. It reminded me of like a little bit of Dr. Morrow's with the sort of like ways that you weave around and is sure partly inspired by this feeling of being able to explore through a space and find a little crack and, oh, there's a little hole down there. Let's go see what's down here. And then there's a whole other new world that's there. And so to really explore through that. And there's a mechanic of really explore through the world. And I don't know if you have time to actually collect all the different boards, but there's kind of a puzzle game mechanic where you can search for these boards and aggregate them. And then there's new parts of the world that are revealed if you do that. That was one that I also highly recommend to do with a group of people just because it's such a big world and you can kind of get lost in it. And it's just a lot of fun to kind of impossible physics, but it's kind of the back rooms idea with liminal spaces, but with pools, I don't know what the origins of like the pool liminal spaces, but that's a whole other like genre of liminal spaces of swimming pools, but all kind of strung together in a Dr. Morrow esque organism way that, was just a lot of fun to explore through.
[00:31:40.883] Mike Salmon: So my understanding is that there is a Steam game that is very much focused on pools. I've been sent it, I've downloaded it, I've not tried it yet, but I believe that that might be part of the inspiration. But this place is a maze and I can't tell you how many hours I have spent in that space because part of my job and my sort of dedication to trying to make sure that the tours are as good as they can be is that I make a journey. So I needed to work out how are the tour guides going to show this world. So I needed to be able to look through the world and work out where the milestones are, which directions they should take, which parts of it we show, which parts of it we don't. And so I basically had to learn the layout of the place. So it was the same thing with organism. Like organism I think I did like 15 times. So you're just trying to work out what the right route is. But what I really like about that space is that when you first start exploring, you treat the pools, you sort of swim around a little bit, you walk around, and then you realize that some of the entrances are actually underwater. so you have to swim all the way down underneath the water to find these entrances and then as you go through the entrance you come out and it's dry you know or there's a diving board and you if you jump on it the ceiling is a pool so you jump on the diving board you jump up through the air into a pool and then you can swim up so yeah yeah that's very cool
[00:33:20.074] Kent Bye: Yeah, and one that actually I went into and saw a little bit of it, but then is Fata. And I didn't figure out that there's a trick that you need to do in order to see the full experience. This is kind of like a very dark, stark, sparse. I feel like I'm in a post-apocalyptic type of world. And the first thing you see, when I'm in VR chat worlds, there's kind of a language of, oh, there's something off in the distance. That is the most interesting thing. I'm going to go there. Then I go there. And then, oh, over here, there's also a little shiny thing. Oh, let's go check that out. And then I look over to the right. And there wasn't much there. It was more of a waypoint. So then I would look and find the next waypoint to go and find a tent. And as you take a tour, you kind of lose that a little bit. Or maybe you allow the people to do that. But if they go in the wrong direction, then they could be wandering in a way that they kind of miss the point of how the world develops. So this was one where I got to it. And I was like, I think I'm kind of missing something. But I had done it with some other people on VRChat. And then they came back and said, oh, actually, you need to take this thing and take it here. And then this thing happens. But yeah, that was one that it felt like, hey, I appreciated the darkness, but there was a little bit of a exploration that I missed in my first take on it.
[00:34:37.171] Mike Salmon: Yeah, actually, that's one of my favorites at the festival. There's just this place, the sound design and everything is so ominous that you feel like fairly uneasy as the light comes through the clouds of this dark, dark space. And I quite like the fact that there are some clues about where you need to go, but no clues about actually what you need to do. And there is part of me that was like, the UX of this is not cool. You know, you're going to piss off a lot of people because they don't know what they're doing. But at the same time, like, that's part of the fun. It was like you, when you start approaching this sort of pile of rocks in the center of this dirty, oily lake, You hear all these spirits sort of calling you and roaring at you and then suddenly it all blacks out and you're back to the spawn point. So I just knew that there was something that was going to get me to that spot. And so I just explored the whole space. I also didn't quite get it right. There are two lights and if you follow the lights then it kind of shows you where you need to go. I didn't see that. I just went around the whole thing. just combing just looking for every detail that i could find and again it was in there for quite a long time and then found the the thing i'm not going to say what it is but the thing that you need to take with you when you go towards that black edifice and then you get this really beautiful animation that's yeah very cool payoff for for the work that you put in looking for the for the key
[00:36:18.763] Kent Bye: I had sort of like an inverse phase of that where I got to that point where I got through the gate. And then I was like, is that it? And then that's when I did my exploration of everything. And then there wasn't anything else after that. So I think some of these experiences, it's like having a clear indication that it's done. But maybe that's just the nature of some of this environmental storytelling is that it is kind of ambiguous in that way. One of the experiences that is a little bit more of a puzzle game, it's called Magnetize. And I need to go back and do it probably with a group, just because for a little bit of a context, as I was preparing for Venice Immersive, I've seen a lot of different games. And so I had an interview with the folks at Cyan Worlds. And Riven is a game where you can go through and play. It probably takes maybe most people, I don't know, anywhere from six to 12 to 18 hours to get through Riven. And I started it at 7 PM with an interview. And so I ended up staying up until 4 AM going through and using a video to help get through. But that's a puzzle game where you end up having to do a lot of, like the puzzles are across the context of an entire world and island that is gigantic and huge. So by the time I got to magnetize, I was like, you know, I don't know how much my patience is to figure out all the different puzzle game mechanics of this world. I kind of saw some of it. But yeah, maybe you could describe a little bit more around what's intriguing around this type of puzzle game mechanic and this bending and modulating of physics in a way.
[00:37:48.598] Mike Salmon: Yeah, so it's a world that won an award at Raindance last year. And it's like a 90s retro game. And you start off in a living room. If you look at all of the things that are in that living room, you'll then see them during the experience as you go through the game. So the idea is that you touch a light socket and it explodes. You get an electric shock. And then you find that you have this power and it allows you to go inside the TV screen. So the whole game's then kind of like a mess up of the view of that space that you were first in. And all of the little clues that are in there, the little dinosaurs, like VHSs of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Jurassic World are all sort of woven in there. So the mechanic is that you have the power to move things with a special power. So instead of just grabbing, you can grab things and then you can move them around in the space. Now, I will hold my hand up and say that I have not completed the whole game in its original form and that I did put it on easy mode so that I could go through and not get too rage-some as I was going through the selection. But it's really wonderful. They hide lots of little coins throughout the world, which is another incentive for you to sort of explore and find things. And while we were doing the tours, again, I made one of my videos, I showed where all the coins were that I could find. And as we've been doing the tours, I've noticed the tour guides have found ones that I'd missed. But it's a really nice payoff at the end when you come back into the real world. There's a gumball machine. And if you put your coins in the gumball machine, it brings out all these little plushies. So, yeah, you get a nice little payoff for your exploration.
[00:39:49.932] Kent Bye: Nice. Well, the Sukku I had a chance to see at Rain Dance Immersive and actually get a guided tour from Dirk at work. And yeah, that was a really beautiful fusion of this Caribbean carousel island, which has got this Dutch colonial history. And then it's got this Studio Ghibli infused aesthetics and also this kind of real surrealistic vibe. And I did a whole interview with Dirk talking a lot about his process of him going into Gravity Sketch and hand crafting each of these different models. And yeah, it's one of those spaces that just talking to Dirk where any art project he has for like a year, he makes sure that it fits within the context of the world that he's building. So it's kind of like as a full-time digital artist, he has his extra time to do his own personal private work and that he tinkers around to really build out a, what's a pretty spectacularly large world that has lots of really interesting moments of these buildings and surrealistic architecture and Yeah, that was one I really enjoyed going through, and it was a bit of a crowd favorite at Raindance.
[00:40:55.490] Mike Salmon: Yeah, and I think, really, I could quite easily have put that into the art section that I was talking about earlier, because although it is an island, it's also kind of a gallery. The spaces that are there, they all join up and they all have this beautiful linkage to the Carousel culture. But it almost feels like an island that he's built as a display for various artworks. And the fact that it has that sort of really beautiful Studio Ghibli aesthetic just really makes it very... What's the word? You just get lost in a beautiful world that couldn't exist in reality.
[00:41:36.796] Kent Bye: Yeah. And there's also just the way he built the world. Normally he would handcraft everything, but this time he was using kind of like an island builder. I forget the name of the plugin he used, but he talked about it on my podcast. But he kind of built out the world first and then intuitively tried to suss out where the next path would be. So kind of having a path to go through this big island I think was a big part of this process as well. So it's a pretty linear experience as far as I can tell. But yeah, another one that I went into and explored around, it's called Chromatic Frequency. It's got this really nice shader that gives this kind of psychedelic twist to a space that's pretty, I don't know, it's like a circular space with a swimming pool. A little liminal, but also there is some paths to jump onto. And I tried to jump up and jump to the top, but I could never make it. Yeah, it's got this kind of shimmering shininess of taking a shader to its logical extreme to fully embody it. And what if you put this kind of psychedelic shader on everything in the world? So yeah, I don't know if you have other thoughts on chromatic frequency.
[00:42:41.547] Mike Salmon: Well, only that it is probably the closest thing to a Hangout world that's made it into the selection. Usually, we need something. We don't necessarily need a story, but we need something that the tour guides can sort of walk through or... But this world is just so spectacular. You get such an awesome hit from the almost like chromatic aberration that is happening throughout the world. They were all just sort of that moment where you take a sharp intake of breath. So it was such a deeply impactful moment that we're like, yes, we've got to keep it in. And especially if you put your head under the water. Under the water, you then get like this really sort of almost TV, colorful TV, static-like experience, which is great.
[00:43:34.235] Kent Bye: Nice. And I think the last one that's on the list that we haven't talked about yet is the overview effect experience, which was produced by Tripp. And yeah, it's sort of like recreating the effect that astronauts got when they went up and saw the Earth from beyond being on the Earth and having this kind of third-person perspective of the Earth and having the reflections of how all of humanity has lived on this planet and this interconnectedness, a little bit of a spiritual transformation. It's kind of a short and sweet narrative, but it takes you through trying to recreate different dimensions of that over-effect experience. So yeah, it's kind of like this guided tour through that effect.
[00:44:12.509] Mike Salmon: Yeah, and so Shushu, who made that, is like a very accomplished world builder. And it's such a beautiful sort of completive experience that we thought that the best thing that we could do when we were programming it was we put it in with Sanctum. So you go to the church, drum and bass rave, visuals, and then you come to the overview experience. And it was made for Trip, the meditation company. And so then you get this beautiful meditative experience, which then takes you from the rave back to being chill. Nice.
[00:44:53.735] Kent Bye: Yeah, so there's a way that they play together. And it's probably worth mentioning that there's also a VRChat world that's a bit of a portal. And I know in years past, you've had worlds. But maybe you could talk about the new world that you have this year for Venice Immersive 2024 that people could go to in VRChat and then start to explore all these worlds.
[00:45:10.666] Mike Salmon: Yeah, so this year, we are absolutely thrilled that VRChat have us in the menu system. It's the first time we've worked with them to have that space. And so when you click the Venice Immersive logo, then the first thing that you'll see is our hub world, which is made by Dale Deacon, who is one of the Metaverse crew. He's also one of the developers behind Strangeways. And it's just this really beautiful space. So we have to be super careful when we're making a space for Venice because the buildings in Venice are all copywritten. So if we were to put something that was really Venice or try to recreate Venice in any way, then we would fall foul of the law. So we were told very clearly, you cannot recreate Venice. You cannot do San Marcos Square. And what he's done, he's taken the vibe of some of these Venetian islands and built his own. And it just feels so much like Venice. So it's there, it will be there forever. And if you visit the world, we'll have portals to all of the worlds that are in the selection that are available. And then Fins is also in the competition with Project Lost Worlds, which is a preview of a really huge world that he's creating, but that's not coming out to 2025. So that doesn't have a portal, that just has a thing saying, coming next year. Most of the others have portals, and we also have links to the previous year's editions. So we make a new version of the world each year, so that people can go back and see what we selected each year.
[00:46:58.215] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think another dynamic that is worth mentioning is that a lot of the worlds that you're mentioning are like PC VR only, but some of them, like Strangeways and maybe some others, have Quest versions. And so to see the full fidelity of some of these experiences, you have to be in PC VR. Maybe you could speak to this culture of the most cutting edge stuff can be PC VR, but you don't also want to completely exclude what's happening for Quest users. And so I'm wondering if that comes into the consideration when looking at the worlds and to see if there could be an experience so that if it is getting featured on the VR chat page, then if someone has only got the Quest and no PC VR to really power some of these other experiences, then are there still going to be stuff that they can go explore and enjoy?
[00:47:42.307] Mike Salmon: Yeah, the only thing that we really consider when we're looking at what's going to go into the selection is the quality of the work. So we love the fact that we have more work that is compatible with Quest and therefore there are more people who can visit worlds. We will make sure that our Venice world is always Quest compatible, but we are here to showcase beautiful pieces of art. and the focus of that is here on this island, we wouldn't look to not have pieces in the selection because they're PC VR, or to have any sort of quota for must-have X-Quest worlds in the selection. The selection is purely driven by the art.
[00:48:26.286] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah. And I think it's also worth mentioning just the fact that there's a piece that's here by Emissive that's called Impressionists 1874. And it's kind of like a guided tour as you're taking groups through these different spaces. But it kind of strikes me just that how some of these VR chat worlds could actually be prototypes for people to start to experiment with the different types of group social dynamics to guide people through these spaces that could actually have other business models at some point to then actually get translated into a walkthrough experience, kind of like what emissives have been doing in a way that seems like it's really proved out as a business model. So that's just something that I was thinking about as I was sitting here and thinking about Finns' world in particular, because there is quite a lot of open world exploration that is in there. And there's a bit of a Sometimes with the translation into a physical exhibition like that, you have to put a little bit more guardrails in rather than going down some of these different branches. But I think it'd be possible for maybe some trickery with allowing you to go backward into spaces Yeah, I think there's more and more ways of trying to figure out how to get enough throughput, like 60 to 100 people through an experience, but in a physical exhibition. But in VRChat, there's not as much of that throughput issues, because you can just pull up another instance.
[00:49:48.169] Mike Salmon: One of the things that I find really interesting is that often projects that come to the film festival, and they're funded by government cultural institutions, And, you know, they do the film festival circuit and maybe they get a little bit of distribution. But it's often fairly difficult. Distribution in our world is rather difficult. So especially for sort of impact projects, the main goal is about getting eyeballs rather than necessarily revenue. And so I think people get quite surprised when they see the viewing figures of these VRChat worlds. So Strangeways, which launched at the beginning of the festival a few days ago, has had like 28,000 views. And if you think about the number of people that are coming through these experiences every day at the festival, and let's say you increase that number, they go to five festivals. it's quite unlikely I think that they're going to touch these sorts of numbers and this is in a few days and hopefully it will go viral. We've seen people posting cool things on Twitter and so actually if you're looking at numbers you kind of start to see that VRChat could almost be like the YouTube of VR creation, you know. So I think there are a lot of people who could really benefit from looking at VRChat as the medium for their next work.
[00:51:22.352] Kent Bye: Yeah, for sure, especially because there are so many people that are searching for those next business models and trying to figure out how to make everything sustainable here. So yeah, and I think because there has been a little bit more explicit partnership with VRChat, then I've noticed there was posts from both the Biennale College Twitter account or account on x, formerly known as Twitter. Also, VRChat was posting things on social media advertising, putting it into the main world. So there's a little bit more tight coupling between Venice Immersive and VRChat. And so maybe you could elaborate on a little bit of that, because it seems to be a big impact of, you know, my wife was meeting up with a friend. She's like, oh, yeah, we went to the Venice Immersive hub world. And I was like, oh, wow, you heard about it. But it was being promoted to everybody to go visit. So it seems like a good collaboration here to focus on that art and culture and to have a little bit more synergy between VRChat as a company, but also the Venice Immersive and But it hasn't happened in the past, and so maybe you could elaborate on what changed this year.
[00:52:24.915] Mike Salmon: Yeah, so it's pretty simple. We invited Rock to Person Finns to the festival last year. And when they came, they saw what we were doing and they saw how we are... Like I said earlier, that we see the world-building community at exactly the same level as all of the other work on the platform. And I think they took that back to the company and they saw the fact that we're... God, this is going to sound a bit wanky, sorry. But we're kind of elevating the platform a little bit by putting it at a A-list festival in the way that we're showing the work. So I think they see the benefit from how we're displaying the work.
[00:53:07.380] Kent Bye: Yeah, that makes sense. Awesome. Well, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and world building, immersive art, immersive storytelling might be, and what it might be able to enable.
[00:53:21.264] Mike Salmon: I think the thing that really strikes me is connection. Like I was listening to your podcast with, sadly, it's Bradley about the Apple Vision Pro. And he was talking about how the fact that his VR usage has gone to nearly 100% VR chat, you know? And it got me thinking that actually, crikey, I'm probably pretty close to being in the same boat. And now I'm here and I'm doing lots of experiences. I just, I so miss the opportunity to turn around to the people with me and discuss what's going on. You know, I just talked about VRChat being like YouTube and that anyone can get involved and make something, but it's also cinema. You know, you also have that shared experience, that moment where you all gasp together or giggle together. And so I'm now really getting to the point where I just want all experiences to be social. Even if I'm watching a 360 video, like we're talking about, you know, experimenting with, you know, the number of places where you could actually have a, we had a piece at Venice actually. Vroom did a molecule show of French band. where you have a 360 video and you place a plane in the center, and so you end up watching it like a planetarium show. And again, it just adds that sense of connection with the people that you're with. So I think that's why so many people who use VRChat end up becoming fairly obsessive, because it's not just a game, it's a culture and a community.
[00:54:57.734] Kent Bye: Awesome. And is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:55:04.116] Mike Salmon: Yes, actually, there is something. So I am really interested in connecting with people that are out also world hunting. I really love to build connections with people. and get, like, a group of people together that can help with the geeky spreadsheet. And, you know, like, I'm really up for joining World Hops, and so helping me scout would be super amazing. So you can find me on Twitter. I'm at MikeCSalmon. I'm MangleBird on Discord. So, yeah, come and hang out.
[00:55:43.673] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, it's really been great to see what's been happening from World's Gallery to having things in competition and all starting in the pandemic. I've sort of seen the evolution starting from like 2019 through the pandemic until now. And yeah, I think it's really great to see not only the innovations and the quality of the world building, you know, the fidelity and the types of experiences we didn't mention, the Uncanny Alley experience. kind of the immersive theory with Fairman Collective, which is a part of the selection. I'll be diving into each of the ones that are in competition and have a deep dive conversation with them that I've recorded already this morning, but Yeah, it's just to see the types of innovation that are happening with the types of world building and experimentation. And yeah, like you said, it could potentially be like the YouTube of VR, where you have this kind of persistent social networking and existing communities. The business models within VRChat itself are still getting sorted out. So that's a whole other topic that we really didn't get into the internal creator economy and can VRChat kind of find a way for world builders to use the in-game world economy? VRChat did have a layoff of over 30% a couple of months ago. So yeah, kind of like the underlying business model of VRChat as a platform itself is kind of a fractal reflection of the the deeper strains in distribution and finding these new economies. So I'm hopeful in the future that they'll be able to sort it out and that there'll be some sort of synergy between what's happening with the different types of pieces of art and stories that are being shown here at Venice Immersive, but then kind of lean upon the lessons of what VRChat are able to do, especially in terms of its scope and scale of the reach that some of these experiences are getting out there. Like you said, some of these numbers of 28,000 of people seeing it just in a couple of days, it's a lot more than maybe you can see the entirety of all the different programs that are here by an order of magnitude or more. So yeah, but keep up the great work, all the scouting, and hopefully you'll get some some other help out there to do these different adventures of finding the next hidden gems that are out there on the platform. But yeah, thanks again for taking the time, Mike, to explain a little bit more of the process and to reflect on this year's selection.
[00:57:57.848] Mike Salmon: Nice one. Thank you very much. Many happy returns.
[00:58:01.172] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to these episodes from Venice Immersive 2024. And 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.
