I interviewed co-directors Francisca Silva and Maria Jose Diaz about Ancestral Secrets VR that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation.
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[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 on my coverage from IFA Doc Lab 2024, today's episode is with a piece called Ancestral Secrets VR, which is a part of the Immersive Nonfiction Competition at IFA Doc Lab in 2024. So this is a VR piece that is going into the Cairo community of Peru and blending a lot of different elements of 360 video. But then on top of that 360 video is like this augmented reality overlay on top of VR. So you're in VR and you're seeing these kind of augmented elements. And a lot of those elements are trying to flesh out the indigenous worldview of the Cairo community. And there's also a number of different embodied interactions as you go through this piece as well. So there's a number of different chapters and there's different vignettes as you're learning about this indigenous community. And so you have to do these embodied interactions and rituals, which would be some of the same exact rituals that you would be going through if you were actually going in and entering into the Carol community. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Francesca and Maria happened on Monday, November 18th, 2024 at IFA Doc Lab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:33.024] Maria Jose Diaz: Hello, I'm Maria Jose Diaz. I'm a Chilean producer and VR director. And I'm one of the co-directors of Ancestral Secret VR, which is premiering here in IRIFA this year.
[00:01:46.127] Francisca Silva: Hello, my name is Francisca Silva. I'm a Chilean artist of new media and films. And in this time, we premiered a VR immersive documentary called Ancestral Secret VR.
[00:02:02.912] Kent Bye: Great. Maybe each of you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working in this space.
[00:02:09.894] Maria Jose Diaz: So my background comes from journalism. I worked in television for investigative journalism. And then I turned to become a producer because I wanted to produce and make films in different timings than television. I wanted to create films that are more independent. And then I have been always very curious about technology and machines and computers. So by chance I met VR one day and I got very impressed and then I said, OK, I want to do this. This is very impressive and this is very fun.
[00:02:49.406] Francisca Silva: About my background, I'm an actress, also filmmaker, and in this time I work in new media, specifically in virtual reality. With Maria José we are the co-directors of Ancestral Secret VR. It's my first time exploring this new media and I think it's very interesting, the immersive arts, because it's a whole experience, sensitive, it's a... kind of experience. It's different than film. I make films, feature films, short films in documentary and fiction, also music videos, but all that is before we create our creative lab called Galgo Storytelling. Then Maria and I, we are partners in the creation of this lab and co-director of this VR experience.
[00:03:46.676] Kent Bye: And what was it that got you into VR? Was there a piece that you saw, or what was the catalyst for you to start to want to make your own VR pieces?
[00:03:56.203] Maria Jose Diaz: It's funny that you ask, because yesterday we were talking a lot about this. So we were exploring and investigating about Mapuche worldview, which are the indigenous community, the biggest indigenous community of our country, Chile. And we wanted to make a podcast. But then there was this one piece by Anish Kapoor called something like The Fall or something like that. Falling in Myself. Something like that. And as soon as I took off the headsets, I said, OK, maybe it's not podcast what we have to do. Maybe we have to create a virtual reality piece. This is great. This is amazing. And it's more like, it's not that much storytelling, it's much more about story living. So then by chance, we were introduced to Kero community. So we said, okay, this is the moment where we create our first VR piece. And this is why we did our first trip to the community. And then, well, to get the access to the community, it's a very long work. You have to build trust with the community. You have to be transparent. You have to be honest. And this is how we decided together to co-create a piece. And that was the commitment. And that is what we are trying to do now.
[00:05:30.812] Francisca Silva: More about this, in this time we are thinking in how represent or express all the power of the worldview in the indigenous communities from our country like Mapuche indigenous communities or like Andean worldview. So we are thinking how we can talk about the living energy, the connection of these communities with the landscape, with the environment, because all the indigenous group have this vision about the spirit live in all, all have a spirit inside, animus. So how can we talk about that? It's very spiritual, abstract. We think that cinema or theater is not enough, maybe. And when we know about virtual reality and immersive art, we found a way to create a sensitivity experience, not only about mind or thinking, If not in this way, in the rational way, virtual reality propose an experience sensitive so we find the media for express this power of the indigenous community and this possibility to work and co-create with Quero Nation is a great opportunity for us to explore the world view of this community and work together with our technologies and with their technologies and create a bridge between both technologies, the ancestral technologies and virtual reality or our technologies.
[00:07:27.071] Kent Bye: And I noticed that Felix and Gayatri were listed in the credits. And I saw that you had some co-productions and funding that was coming out of the Brandenburg. It was the German entities. And so maybe you could talk a bit about how you came across Now Here Media and also some of these co-productions and additional funding to be able to produce this project.
[00:07:47.748] Maria Jose Diaz: So it's quite funny because in 2020, we got selected to the IDFA DocLac Forum, the one that was made online because of COVID. So there was a virtual party at the VR chat room. So this is when we met Gayatri there. So it was very funny. And then we met Anna from Tribeca. She was the one that introduced us because Anna said, OK, you have to know the people from Now Hear Media because they are creating this project Kusunda, which is also a co-creation with an indigenous community of Nepal. so they sounded like the perfect partners for this project and at the beginning they were kind of our mentors they helped us a lot with development and also when we were going to our production shooting in 2021 so they were very helpful in that way and then we were working about a year maybe before we decided to officially co-produce and then we applied to the medium board fund and we got it and this is how we could actually finish it.
[00:09:03.766] Kent Bye: And so definitely see like innovative embodied interactions that you have mixed with the 360 video and overlaying some like augmented reality animations and other stuff to overlay on 360 video to blend these two realities together. And also some CGI components that are there in the beginning. But most of it is a 360 video where you're going into these different communities and having very long durational takes that you are having them share different parts of their culture and so when you were thinking around first getting introduced to this community and building trust and then trying to think about how are you going to take people on an experience through doing different ritualistic actions to then enter into this space that is allowing them to share different parts of their own culture like how did you start to map out the journey that you wanted to take people on in this piece?
[00:09:58.288] Maria Jose Diaz: Well actually we went to Peru one month and when we arrived we didn't have any script because we wanted to create it with the community. So the first thing was to do these co-creation workshops and this is how we realized what were the topics that they wanted to share and what was the message they wanted to share with the world. Because in our investigation trip that is what the commitment was. the keto community has a message that want to spread let's do that so from the co-creation we started doing like rituals at the beginning so we had an idea about the co-creation workshops but as soon as we knew the community we had to be flexible and bring all their inputs to do these co-creation projects so it was a very collaborative way of doing it and then we had the script after the co-creation process and we also brought a lot of things that we as visitors to this community live like when we were getting into their community in the mountains we did these rituals we asked for permission so this is why we also do it in the experience because it was what we did in the real life so It's the co-creation first, then it's our own experience and how both things were mixed to make this journey to this community.
[00:11:30.833] Francisca Silva: And also for us, this trip to Peru and to share with Ghetto Nation, different members of the five community, also was a very immersive experience for us to be in another world, another reality. It's the Andean world. And we experimented all this, the praise, the offerings, and it's from our experience we start to write the script with them all the time. We are talking about what we are living during the different days, And it's beautiful how we can start also a family bond with them. We start a relation based on honesty and reciprocity, very sincere. So we work in the relation with the family and generate a sincere relation between people who really are interested in create a message from them and spread this message.
[00:12:42.805] Kent Bye: And so when you were doing the co-creation workshops with this community, were you also showing them other VR experiences to give them an idea about what this medium is, what they could do? And I'd love to hear some of the feedback that you got from their experiences of bringing in this technology that's transporting them into these other realms. And what were their insights or feedback or ideas that they had to be able to start to integrate different parts of their culture into this piece of Ancestral Secrets VR?
[00:13:12.685] Maria Jose Diaz: yes in the co-creation workshops we wanted to involve this concept that the keto community has which is aini this means reciprocity so when we arrived we came and said okay this is what we do what we make we are artists this is things that we do we showed them the camera how to film and We did some crazy videos about us dancing and playing around the camera. And then show them how it works. We showed them with another artist, Ricardo Tapia. He's the director of Interactive Narrative. And he showed his previous VR pieces. So they were very amazed and they were very curious. Some of them didn't like it. So it was very interesting and fun to share our work with them. And then what we did was, okay, let's paint, let's make, let's play with clay, let's play with paper. And so we did all this. games because we wanted to see how their identity was shown in different types of art and it was all the co-creation workshops were about sharing knowledge and sharing everything that has a relationship with our own identity.
[00:14:44.929] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so there's some really striking moments where you're grounded in this 360 video and then all of a sudden the mountains start to get painted with certain patterns and throughout the course of this piece there's different moments where there's a lot of playing of the color and color schemes that are tinting the experience and sometimes a layered where you'd have on one layer there's like just the physical reality and then like the second midfield or the far field starts to be like a completely different reality and so there's a kind of a blending and blurring of realities that are happening throughout the course of this piece and I'd love if you could maybe elaborate on where those ideas originated and if that was kind of an expression of how they see the world through this blended versions of reality.
[00:15:30.134] Francisca Silva: During this time with the community and during the co-creation workshop, we are in a process of understanding their worldview. In the school, when teachers talk about Andean worldview or indigenous worldview in general, maybe it's a very superficial the way that the school or the Western mentality explain to people how is this kind of life. I think it's very different. It's really very different. It's a daily life and a relation with the landscape, with the relation with the sun, with the moon, with the mountain. So it's a process for us to integrate this information and really understand what is happening into the communities, into the daily life or between their relations with the environment. So in this process we start to translate our vision of their worldview in this different way of animation, music, sound, and in this scene of the weavers, We really want to show to people this is a community of weavers who knows very, very well her landscape. This woman knows where are the different mountains, where is the path, you know, the different paths around the mountain, where is the sun. So she has the capacity to see all the landscape They can weave the landscape in the textile. They know the territory, so they can weave with so much knowledge this environment.
[00:17:32.539] Maria Jose Diaz: So also, well, you were asking also because of these colorful moments. So we thought that we had to tell the story in two dimensions. The real life dimension made with 360 video and the spiritual dimension are these parts where the colors change and the animations appear because it's how this connection with nature are made visible. So we changed the colors also because Moritz, who is an amazing art director and a great animator, it was how he discovered he could mix these two materials, the 360 video and also the animations, because it's very hard to do both things. But I think he did an amazing job to solve this challenge, this very challenging aspect, which was how to create animations on top of the 360 video. So that is the reason why we did this layer of color to make it easier, but also to create this sense of the spiritual dimension of their worldview and experience.
[00:18:52.486] Kent Bye: Yeah, and there's some moments in the piece where you actually have some stereoscopic animation effects that have some depth where a lot of times you'll have 360 video that's just one eye or one layer, the monoscopic video. But with the animations, I was really impressed with how some of them you were able to also give a sense of space and volume to those animations as well. But yeah, some really beautiful ways that you were able to tie in the metaphoric spatial representations of the spiritual realm within the context of the piece. Sometimes there was like star-like entities and like energy going to different points and sometimes there was like a sphere that was enveloping the people that were there. Sometimes it was like a changing of the color and then at the beginning you start off the full piece with the metaphors of a condor versus the eagle where the eagle represents the western world and the condor represents their community and their indigenous practices. So yeah, I'd love it if you can maybe elaborate on some of these spatial metaphors and how that was able to elaborate and expand on their worldview and their culture.
[00:19:57.313] Maria Jose Diaz: That's a very good question.
[00:20:01.314] Francisca Silva: In the beginning of the experience we talk about an ancient prophecy about the union between the eagle and the condor and the eagle represent the western world or what we know today as globalized world and condor representing indigenous community and this prophecy said when they fly again together, the eagle and the condor, the world will return the harmony. This is the prophecy. So we worked with this story and also we think when we are doing the co-creation workshop we are the eagles and they are the condors and we are working together for this union. And this is the main idea I think of the project, the fusion about what we think about the energy the mind the spirituality and using technology how technology can traduce our imaginary our ideas and how their technologies can traduce all the power with the living energy all the power with the spirit of nature and how we can make a conversation between both media this is one idea of the project and about the animation and all the construction of animations and colors and visuals and the art of the film. We have many inspirations. The main inspiration is the Andean Worldview. It's the three worlds. There is the underworld, the earthly world, and the celestial world. And in each world you have an animal who is the keeper of this world. And all these animals symbolize also a different process, like Amaru, the serpent, symbolizes the transformation. So we talk about this experience also could be a way to transform the vision of... the indigenous peoples and the power they have. This is for me is a very important aspect of the project because in my country we talk so much about political aspects from indigenous community but we don't talk about all the power, all the wisdom, all the technologies they have and we want to talk about that and how can we recover that.
[00:22:37.597] Maria Jose Diaz: And it is interesting what you just said, because humanity now, we are, I mean, global climate change is at their worst moment. It is a terrible moment for climate change. Humanity is trying to look for solutions, for answers, for how we adapt to this new era of the world, of the earth. And there are a lot, a lot of solutions and keys. and things that we can bring to our life if we put attention on the indigenous communities all over the world. They have been having this relationship with nature, a very ancient one, and they have a lot to tell and this is where the focus has to be put on. It is very important to bring this very ancient knowledge to these days.
[00:23:41.758] Kent Bye: Yeah, and a big part of this piece is also the embodied interactions that you have with, you know, speaking of their own technologies that they're using with the cocoa leaves and also just the rituals that they're doing in order to connect to these other realms. And so maybe you could talk about the process of trying to take the spirit of that invitation and those rituals and translate them into these different embodied interactions that the person who's going through the experience can also mimic those same motions and then feel like they're entering into these other realms.
[00:24:14.249] Maria Jose Diaz: Well, if you go to Kero community, this is what you are going to do all the time, all the time. So we thought that it was very important to bring it in some way and to do it all the time during the experience, because this is the way you create Aini with them. So this is the ritualistic way of life is made. through this very simple action and this is how you share with one another and this is how you are all the time giving thanks for everything that surrounds you so we wanted to have this during the experience because it was very important for this visitor that is the user that is having the experience have this very beautiful way to connect with this worldview and know the meaning. Why is it this way? What's the meaning of the leaf, the one on the left, the one in the middle, the one on the right? All of this has a meaning and it's a very beautiful meaning. And...
[00:25:26.021] Francisca Silva: Yes. Cocoa leaf is not a psychedelic plant. It's a plant that gives you so much presence in the present moment. So it's like a portal to be very aware of the place where you are. If you are in the top of the mountain or if you are in Santiago or in Amsterdam, it's like a plant to generate some awareness about the territory where you are. So it's very interesting because with this plant and with all the rituals of Kero, you really feel that you are in a landscape where the spirits are alive. And this is a very beautiful message you can bring with you, because in my case, after this trip, when I was in Santiago in the middle or around the Cordillera de los Andes, I can feel that with so much consciousness about where I am, where is the north, where is the south, and where is the different mountains. And I think this consciousness about the territory is the first step to be aware with nature.
[00:26:49.028] Maria Jose Diaz: So Kero showed us and Kero talked to us that when you are aware of where you are and what's the big elements of nature that surround you like the mountains that are close by or the lagoons or the lakes or this forces of nature if you are aware of that then you can be more stable as a person because you know where you are and you know what you have around you and what's the meaning of everything of all of that
[00:27:23.269] Francisca Silva: Yes, and you feel part of the environment. You don't feel separate. You don't feel disconnected. You feel you are nature. Nature is not outside, it's inside also. So it's a knowledge about our nature.
[00:27:41.192] Kent Bye: Yeah. And in the piece, you have a number of different chapters that are taking you through a journey through these little snapshots or actually longer than snapshots or durational takes like a single shot that you're watching a scene unfold. And they're broken up into different chapters and different chapter names. And so when you're putting together, maybe you just give a rough outline of the arc of the journey that you want to take people on.
[00:28:04.452] Maria Jose Diaz: So the experience, we wanted to create a trip, like a visit of transformation to this community. So you start arriving to the community and you ask for permission to the Apus, which are the spirits of the mountain. And they allow you to go in the community. And this is where they give you the welcoming. And also you do this first ritual with them, the Picha de Coca. where you share with them and this is when you live in the Kei Pacha which is the daily life world and then you go and see the women weavers weaving their landscape this is why you see how the mountains are beautifully weaved by this woman that are chanting in there and then there is this other moment where you go with the Pampa Misayoc to the top of the mountains to do this offering ritual. And this man is invoking the spirits of the sun, the moon, the spirits of the Apus, the mountains. And then you are in the celestial world, the Hanam Pacha. and then you go to the underworld through this snake Amaru which means what is inside the inner world the underworld what is like very intimate so this is the moment of transformation after this trip and this is why at the end you have a CGI mountain because it's how these two technologies like their technology their landscape their worldview is transformed into our language, which is virtual reality and CGI, and then there is the final flight where the condor and the eagle are flying together again to recover the harmony that has to be in this harsh moment of the Earth.
[00:30:07.263] Kent Bye: Yeah, thanks for that. And as you were recounting that, the story of the journey of how there's an invitation and you are invited in, I had the experience of going through this experience and going through the ritual and then blowing and then it freezing and not letting me in. And so I just wanted to comment on both the technical aspect of like there was some glitch where there's software to be able to run all these things and maybe it's interfering in some way, but the more metaphoric interpretation was that maybe I had to get into a different mind state of being really open or... receptive and patient because I had a certain amount of fixed time to get through all the experience. I was like, I need to get through the experiences. And then that was the one that, okay, that was the last one. And I had to go through it four times before I got through. And so it was almost like I was asking permission to be let in and then it just kept saying, no, no, no. And then eventually I did get in and then I was able to watch it. But so I, you know, I just want to like share that as a more poetic interpretation of that. how that experience that I went through with that tech glitch was actually like getting me into a place of surrender and getting me into a place of like openness to then really extra appreciate being able to watch the rest of the piece. So anyway, I just wanted to share that.
[00:31:22.309] Maria Jose Diaz: Well, I love what you said, but yeah, maybe you weren't ready to get into Keto community. And it's funny that you say that because to get in, actually, it took us a long way to build a trust, to build a relationship. It wasn't easy at the beginning. In the first trip, the first thing we did when we arrived there was to have a meeting with the president and with the authorities of the community. And then they ask you what you want to do, why, Are you coming back? Is this a fake promise? Because there's a lot of filmmakers that have gone to Keros and said, okay, we're making a documentary, and then they go, they film, and then they disappear. So the commitment was to, and we also signed a commitment there, that we have to come back with the finished piece, we have to come back again to do the project, and it has to be co-creative, and it has to be in Aini. So then when we went back two years ago, they said like, okay, this is true. This is happening. Like they're not lying. And then we had to be very caring with this relationship we were building and trying to be connected with them through WhatsApp, through one of the members that he's a young guy, Adrian Huaman. and we were all the time connected like how are you how is the family how are you doing and according to that to building that trust with them we were allowed to go in so you need to be in that spirit maybe to to get to the community so if you're in a hurry it's not gonna work He later felt that it was a very metaphorical and poetic way of not being able to enter the mountain because they said no, no, no. So he had to try four times until he finally did it.
[00:33:34.966] Francisca Silva: Well, to arrive to the mountain, it's necessary to make a diet, to be in a very healthy state. Physically, it's very exciting also, the trip. And like Maria Jose said, it's not easy to be there with them. It's a very hard work, but also it's a beautiful work because for us, sharing with them is like I said before, it's to be in another world. to be immersive in another logic, different from the common logic of our lives. It's always different. And the main different daily life aspect is this feeling of gratitude. All the conversations, all the social moments start with gratitude. With gratitude for to be here, for share this moment, for talk. And also after gratitude, we must ask permission to the spirit of the big mountains to make this encounter, permission for make a project, also permission to the most important spirit in the world, the sun, the moon. So it's very beautiful because all the big presence important for our life, like the sun, They invoke and make present. So before every moment, they invoke this important spirit of nature, like the sun, and they invoke and make present. So I think it's very deep, because the sun is very important for all the life of the human life, of the plant's life, of the tree life. And to recognize that all the moment, I think is very, for me, was very impressive.
[00:35:45.415] Kent Bye: Yeah, and have you had a chance to take it back to the Kuro community and show them the final piece?
[00:35:50.734] Maria Jose Diaz: We showed them the 2D finished piece and they loved it. But we have to do this commitment and we are raising funding to go there and to bring the headsets to the different communities. They have three cultural houses in three different communities of the Cato Nation. So we are raising funding to bring the headsets and leave it there as part of the cultural houses.
[00:36:22.176] Kent Bye: Nice.
[00:36:22.976] Maria Jose Diaz: We hope we can make it in 2025, next year, to be there. And we really want to go there.
[00:36:32.659] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, I'd love to hear what each of you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality might be, like some of the exalted examples of what it might be able to enable and where it's all going. So I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on the ultimate potential of both immersive storytelling and virtual reality as a medium.
[00:36:53.917] Maria Jose Diaz: Well, the good things about virtual reality as a medium is that you can tell stories. More than stories, you can tell experiences. You can tell not just by the images, you can tell the stories also working with the space. And this is very important thing for us, the embodiment you can create. to make people to travel, to be in another dimension, to be in somewhere else that is so far, far, far away, but you're able to do it thanks to this technology. So, of course, it has a lot of limitations. We wanted to do a lot of things that we couldn't, but then You also get very creative and how the possibilities of this medium can help to bring a story and to tell a story anyway, just taking them creatively and applying to what you want to say.
[00:37:59.797] Francisca Silva: Okay, yes, for me, virtual reality is a very interesting media with so much potential to express stories about nature, about spirituality, about health subjects, because it's experience and could be very transformative, could be like a travel, like a trip. When you return from a very important trip, you return in another state inside, or maybe outside also, but inside. So I think it's a very interesting media. We have more ideas, more projects, and we want to... explore different technologies also in virtual reality or mixed reality we love this talent to make mix with technologies and we are very proud with our co-production with now here media because they are very talented And this talent to mix documentary with animation was a dream at the first moment of the project. Because we didn't have a very clear reference in this moment. It's like we have many questions, is it possible to do that? And we are very happy that finally with Now Here Media we could do that. do a very interesting mix with animations, documentary, interaction. So I think it's super interesting, the experience, the technological aspect and in artistic way also.
[00:39:53.974] Kent Bye: I had a chance to do an interview with Felix and Gayatri about Kasunda because Kasunda was supposed to be just a pure 360 video volumetric capture but because of the pandemic they couldn't travel there like they were planning and that made them have to pivot and turn to doing more animation and poetic imaginations and interpretations of that piece so It's kind of interesting to see how that piece of Kasunda and what they had to do in order to actually produce that and blend the more documentary parts with the animation and then how that's continued on here.
[00:40:29.358] Maria Jose Diaz: Yes, well Kusunda, I mean Kusunda was a totally different project, a totally different experience but I would say that Felis and Gayatri, their knowledge from Kusunda working the co-creation and working the production aspects were very helpful for us and also, I don't know, the way maybe making some games with the community like bringing the camera to the community and say this is a visitor, treat it as a visitor and These kind of things were very helpful.
[00:41:04.241] Francisca Silva: We are very grateful to have this experience to work with Felix and Gayatri. They are great artists and they know so much well the technologies and for us Kusunda is a very important project. And also it was very beautiful how Felix and Gayatri are very interesting in Maria and I could develop our vision always with so much respect and very interesting about Ghetto Nation. So finally we make a very beautiful team with all the team of Now Here Media, Felix, Gayatri, Moritz, Philip Felix Lant, well, we can talk about all day. Great artists all. And also with Cato Nation and with the Chilean team, we make a very, very beautiful team. So I'm very grateful for that.
[00:42:01.881] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid? Any final thoughts that you have to share with the rest of the immersive community?
[00:42:09.076] Maria Jose Diaz: but at least for us and to me personally to go to KEDO communities was very important not only artistically for my life I learned so much about life and it has been one of the most important experiences that I have ever had so what I really would like is to share that very important experience with the audience so the audience can also feel how important it was for us as creators how important was this encounter between the community and us as creators and I'd like the audience to understand it in that way to feel it in that way
[00:42:53.399] Francisca Silva: and in my side invite people to make this trip to Kero community and make this trip also to the ancestral technologies and can appreciate all the power and all the big connection and consciousness from this community to the world.
[00:43:20.003] Kent Bye: Awesome. I really enjoyed the Ancestral Secrets VR, the way that you're blending and blurring the realities with 360 video, with animation, with the embodied interactions. And yeah, I just also really appreciated hearing a lot more around your process in creating it and all the journey that you went on into getting permission to enter in and to capture and share the story with the rest of the community here at DocLab and beyond. So yeah, thanks again for joining me here on the podcast to help break it all down. So thank you.
[00:43:46.820] Maria Jose Diaz: Thank you, Kent, for this very amazing conversation. Thank you very much.
[00:43:53.082] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And I really would encourage you to consider supporting the work that I'm doing here at the Voices of VR. It's been over a decade now, and I've published over 1,500 interviews. And all of them are freely available on the VoicesofVR.com website with transcripts available. This is just a huge repository of oral history, and I'd love to continue to expand out and continue to cover what's happening in the industry, but I've also got over a thousand interviews in my backlog as well. So lots of stuff to dig into in terms of the historical development of the medium of virtual augmented reality and these different structures and forms of immersive storytelling. So please do consider becoming a member at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
