I interviewed Myriam Achard about the new distribution arm of Phi Studio (as of now there is still no official name yet) as well as the exciting new Phi Contemporary set to open in 2028 that will be fusing together the contemporary art world with the immersive art, storytelling, and technology worlds that the Phi Centre have been curating. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation.
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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 different interviews from IFA Doc Lab 2024, today's episode is with Miriam Ashard, who's the Chief Media Partnership and PR Officer at the FI Center. So Miriam is someone who goes to all these different immersive festivals and sees all the different work and and also goes to other immersive art festivals as well. And so she's helping to curate different experiences that she's bringing to the FI Center, but she's also a part of the FI Studio and helping to run that as well. And they've been doing a lot of location-based entertainment exhibitions for some of the different pieces that they've produced in-house, but they're now going to be starting to look for other experiences to take onto the road and do more of these exhibitions. They've been working with Excurio, which was formerly known as Emissive, and they were showing up to like 100 people an hour, some of these different like Horizon of Kofu pieces. And since like February, shown it to over 200,000 people. So they got exclusive license to be able to show it there in Canada and potentially expanding out into other parts of North America. So I wanted to touch base with Miriam just because she's really on the front lines of pushing the edge of what's possible with location-based entertainment for immersive stories and continuing to expand out for what's eventually going to be a whole home that's going to be opening up in 2028, which is going to be at the FI Contemporary, which is like this blend between contemporary art, which is more and more moving towards these immersive techniques. and these immersive storytelling that is already being exhibited by the five center very exciting to see where that's going in the future as well and also to get a little bit of the latest trends of lbe distribution of immersive stories so recovering all that and more on today's episode of the voices of your podcast so this interview with miriam happened on monday november 18th 2024 at if a doc lab in amsterdam netherlands so with that let's go ahead and dive right in
[00:02:08.283] Myriam Achard: So my name is Myriam Achar and I'm Chief New Media Partnership and PR at PHI. PHI is quite a large ecosystem but in the immersive sector we are mainly known for the PHI Center which is our institution dedicated to present immersive, XR, interactive experiences and we've been doing that for 12 years. We are located in Montreal and the FI Centre is, I think I can say is a pioneer in the way XR works have been exhibited and found homes to be shown. What maybe we are less known for is Phi Studio, which is our entity that was founded in 2019, just before the pandemic, which is our entity that is producing work. So the first experience that came out of the studio is The Infinite, you're aware of. that is a co-production between Felix & Paul and PHY Studio. And starting from that experience, creating the Infinite, then we really became very interested in creating more of that type of experience, large-scale VR experiences that can welcome, in the case of an Infinite, up to 175 people an hour. So this is what we are mainly known for, but as I said, the framework of PHY is bigger than that.
[00:03:30.602] Kent Bye: Yeah, maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space, doing what you're doing now.
[00:03:36.984] Myriam Achard: So I've been working with Phoebe Greenberg, our founder and chief creative officer for 18 years. Before that, funny enough, and maybe I shared that with you already, but I'm a trained German teacher. And I think I did share that with you. So I didn't study in that field at all. I did a lot of PR for a film festival, theater festival before meeting Phoebe. And I could say that it was love at first sight. And we knew that we would work together. And when we started to work together 18 years ago, it was not about immersive, XR, VR. It was about contemporary art. So she opened a foundation for contemporary art. And then came the Feist Center. But it was very clear and very quick that the Feist Center would be a space dedicated to present experiences that are at the intersection between art and tech. So I'm doing a lot of, I wear many different hats at FI, I'm programming the XR exhibition, I'm doing local and international partnerships, I'm doing PR, press, communication, and I'm traveling the world. My carbon footprint is very bad. and I'm ashamed of it, but honestly I couldn't be doing the job I'm doing by staying at home. I need to meet with people, I need to meet with artists, I need to discover new works. So yeah, in a nutshell, that's what I'm doing.
[00:04:56.813] Kent Bye: I think as the industry has continued to develop, at this point at least, there's a lot more focus that's happening in discussions in the industry, thinking around how do you take some of these immersive experiences beyond the festival circuit into having an infrastructure of different venues to be able to turn it around and bring this location-based entertainment of these art pieces that we're seeing at these festivals, but bring them to different cities around different countries. Maybe you could go back to some of the first times that you started to do that with XR and start to exhibit some of these different pieces to the audience and have these different LBE runs within the museum context, but then also expanding out into going beyond the museum into these different venues.
[00:05:39.437] Myriam Achard: So we started, as I said, 12 years ago with the FI Centre, and we started to exhibit VR after we met a studio based in Montreal called Felix and Paul Studio. I've never tried VR before, and that was 12 years ago. And Phoebe and I, we both put a VR headset, we watched Strangers, their first piece, and When we removed the headset, we looked at each other and we said, like, this is it. This is what we would love to be able to bring to our audience and to make sure that Montrealers are in contact with that type of work. So we started on a very small scale by having what we called then our VR garden. which is a beautiful space in the FI Centre with, you know, no decor, no specific installation, but well done chairs with VR headset. And it was at the beginning only the content from Felix and Paul because we didn't know anybody then. And that's when we started to be interested in starting to discover new artists and traveling to different festivals. And then it became clear that that would be the main mission of the FI Centre to present XR works. And when I say XR, I mean, you know, like at large to the audience in Montreal. After that, we've been doing that for 12 years, we also partnered with international institutions to bring some of our exhibitions that were curated for Montreal on the road. Unfortunately, this was somehow cut because of COVID. In 2020, we were supposed to have an exhibition in Milan, we were supposed to have a VR exhibition in London. We're supposed to have a VR exhibition in New York, mainly in cultural centers, cultural institutions, museums also. Then COVID happened, so all of this, all hell went loose. And then after that, coming back a little bit after the pandemic, we started to look for Going back to the Infinite, because I think the Infinite is really central to everything we've been doing. We learned a lot from producing the Infinite, co-producing it, from touring it. And then we realized that there is other markets than, of course, festivals. Festivals, only festivals, it's not sustainable. For artists, for instance, I wish there would be more fight center in the world. And I say that in a very humble way. I don't say we are the only ones. But I think if there would be more spaces like us that are exhibiting that type of work throughout the year, then it would give artists so much visibility and then their work is finding an audience.
[00:08:23.331] Kent Bye: So I know at some point you also exhibited Carne Arena. I think I want to also point out some of the challenges when it comes to the artistic intent and making the most immersive experience that you can, but yet the throughput of something like Carne Arena is only one person for I don't know how long, but it's a very low throughput type of piece. And then you have something like The Infinite, which is, like you said, 175 people per hour. And it has a different type of experience and different... you know, scalable, like a certain design constraints you have to do in order to achieve that. But maybe you could take me back to like deciding to exhibit something like Carne Arena and some of your own lessons from taking the experience of doing that and then needing to work earlier with the content creators to be able to design with distribution in mind from earlier in the design process.
[00:09:12.042] Myriam Achard: So, yeah, Carny is a very incredible experience. I mean, I was very fortunate to experience Carny Arena the first time it was shown publicly in Cannes at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017. And to this date, it is still one of the most powerful VR experience I did. And I did a lot. As you know, like you, I travel a lot. I get to see as much. I try to see as much as possible. And I remember coming out of Carny first being completely... in tears and not being able to talk to anybody for a little while. And it was quite a paradox because, you know, you're at Cannes Film Festival, the red carpet, the Hollywood stars, the champagne. And I had no, after doing Carnet, I was like, what am I doing here? Like, it really was very, very emotional. And I remember calling Phoebe Greenberg and telling her, like, I just went through an experience, an incredible experience. And she said, well, Let's try to bring it to Montreal. And it took a while before finding the right entry. And next thing you know, I think it was in 2019, I think, no, 19 or 20, I don't remember. And I was in Alejandro Inarritu's office in LA trying to convince him that we were the best partner to tour it. So we didn't produce that piece, like it was produced already, but we came on board as a distributor and we optimized the piece for touring because the first iteration was literally two people every hour. We brought it to 14 people an hour, which is still not much, but at least a little bit more. And it was not, you know, like over the last four years that we've been touring it and we are still touring it. It's not easy to find locations, institutions that are willing to, because by presenting it, you know you're going to lose money. Because it's a big installation. It takes a lot of people to operate. But you need to find somebody who wants to do it for the cause. Because it's about migrants going from the Mexico border to the American border. And their life is at stake. But we found locations. We found great partners. We're still talking to a couple of partners to tour it. But like you said, 175, the infinite... 14 carne but by doing the infinite with a lot of people it allows us to be able to tour works that can welcome less people and we will be doing more of that type of distribution of works that can welcome a lot of people that are generating a lot of revenues to allow us to work on experiences that are maybe more intimate. The example I can give you is the piece we will be launching in Taiwan in March 2025, which is a co-production between Phi Studio, Riverbed Theater, which is Craig Quintero's theater company in Taiwan, and the Onassis Foundation in Athens. And this is for a small group of people, but Infinite and other works we are touring that we didn't produce is feeding this circle.
[00:12:26.357] Kent Bye: Yeah, and you mentioned to me the other day that you were starting a formal separate distribution arm. It sounds like you've already been doing distribution. And so maybe you could trace the lineage of when you first started it and what you've done and now deciding to expand out. And what's different from what you've already been doing?
[00:12:43.470] Myriam Achard: So until now, apart from currently Arena, we were only distributing our production or co-production. And we are now, as you said, we are really officializing like a distribution branch that is part of the studio that where we will be also touring other studios work. Because over the last four years, you know, like trying to find locations for Carnet Arena, trying to find locations for the Infinite, we made so many contacts. And we feel that this is something that we would like to pursue. And I'll give you the example of what we are doing in Montreal currently. We are operating Horizon of Khufu, which is a VR experience produced by the French studio called Excurio, that used to be called Emissive. And we launched Horizon of Khufu in Montreal in February. We are now in November. and we already sold over 200 000 tickets for this vr experience so there is a model there and we want to embrace this opportunity so what we are doing right now with excurio is that we have exclusivity for canada we are opening uh horizon of kufu in calgary in three weeks from now we are looking for other locations in canada but we also want to find maybe ways of doing distribution for them in North America. And who knows for other, we don't want to, right now we're looking at North America, but we are open to look at other territories because of all these connections we made over the years. I mean, the Infinite is currently in Houston, in Charlotte, in Shanghai, in Singapore. So we have a lot of contacts and we feel that we can probably open doors. Right now we are distributing Excurio only, but by being here I have talks with many other different artists and studios where we tell them we would love to distribute your work. It's mainly LBE, so really large-scale experiences we are looking at because of the business model. I'm not lying. It's really about, you know, like having a large throughput. But I'm excited by many different people I talked with in the last two months that they are on board and we will be distributing their piece.
[00:15:04.110] Kent Bye: Yeah, and when I talked to Fabian from what was then Emissive but now is Excurio, I talked to him in 2023 at Laval Virtual and Laval France. And one of the things that he was saying is that they've been working with exhibitors. So they are producing the content, but working with people who are doing all the operation stuff to take care of actually exhibiting it. So it sounds like that. you are also taking it around to different places. And in some cases, you are the exhibitor doing that. But it sounds like you're also building up a network of other institutions and getting them ramped up so that... I sort of think of it as when I saw the pieces by Emissive that, you know, when you see a film, you can go to a movie theater to see the film. It's more of a collective experience. That's also the distribution channel for films is to go to those theaters. And I feel like there's an equivalent of what's emerging now, which is the equivalent of these immersive venues that are exhibiting immersive art, immersive storytelling. And that there's certain size dimensions and constraints and affordances. Like Excurio, they need to have a certain footprint or I don't know if it's like a thousand square meters or whatever the minimum is to be able to do that. But that's one mode. And then there may be other... institutions with other models. And so there's different sizes, I guess, of maybe small, medium, large, if we want to call it, with the large being this kind of high throughput. So as you are out there, is the idea that you would then sort of be this middleman of the content producers building up this network, but also helping training up that network, but also take a step back and let them handle a lot of the operations costs, but you just kind of help to build this network and this distribution channels? Is that kind of the idea?
[00:16:38.143] Myriam Achard: So I've been dreaming of a network for a long time. Everybody here in this field is always saying, so Miriam, when are you really taking charge of building that network? I say, well, I don't have the time. I cannot be that person that is in charge of a network. But I think we need that. And until our industry doesn't officialize a network, it will be hard to grow. When we are distributing either our works or others, we always go on locations and we stay for a little while. We make sure that the people on location are trained the right way, are talking about the piece the right way, are onboarding the audience the right way, because our name is attached to the presentation. So it's really important for us to be out there, to stay for a little bit, and then when we feel that it's working well, then we can leave. But we will always go and check once in a while, you know, if everything is... It's so important because, what's the saying? You only have one chance to make a good first impression and if for a lot of people VR is the first time they come and they experience VR if they don't have a good experience then they will never come back and they will be people saying that VR is not interesting I'm not into that so it's really important you know to to take care of the audience the right way and mediation is key to everything we do and yeah so
[00:18:11.696] Kent Bye: I know in talking to Dan Tucker, who's part of East City Films that just have been exhibiting the In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats, you know, they have like a quadrant system where they have six by four meters that they're splitting up a space. That's kind of like a free roaming and they're looking at multiplayer to be able to really better utilize that space. I would consider that a little bit more of a medium and maybe the large excurio and maybe the small being like just individual pods or maybe even like a little bit of a smaller space, like one by one or maybe two by two meters or three by three meters. When you start to think around the types of distribution that you feel like is kind of the sweet spot of the PHY Studio, what's the name of the distribution area?
[00:18:50.694] Myriam Achard: So the name is not, we don't have a name yet. So it's really under PHY Studio for now, operated distribution by PHY Studio. But we'll come up with a name at some point.
[00:19:00.679] Kent Bye: So we'll call it PHY Studio distribution arm. So what are the different sizes that you see in terms of the different formats that you feel like are gaining traction in the LBE space?
[00:19:10.723] Myriam Achard: So, you know, like, Xcurio model is, I think it's an average, I mean, with K-Ops, it's approximately like 70 to 80 people an hour. I mean, it could be more if you have a bigger space, but right now that's what we are doing, and it's probably going to be the same thing in Calgary. I mean, the model that Dan, Tucker, and Darren, and Ash are putting together, I mean, we presented In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats at the FI Centre earlier this year. It was eight people, or six people every 40 minutes. So that was okay for a presentation at the FI Center, but over a year ago, we told them, why don't you work on a bigger version? And it was not the right time, and I totally respect that, but now that they're working on this, this could definitely be interesting for us to distribute. Because having 24 people every 40 minutes, start to make sense you know throughput is good so I don't want to say you know like under 20 an hour we're not interested like not at all it's also like we need to feel you know like the project needs to be compelling for us in pursuit of repetitive beats is definitely I remember the first time I did it in 2022 and I was like okay wow this is very powerful so we look at numbers of course I mean throughput but we also will look at how much revenues it can generate, like how much you can sell the tickets for, how many people you need to onboard. So we'll make the math and like how much are the operation for like how many people you need and everything. But yeah, in pursuit of Repetitive Beats is definitely something we could be interested to look and they know about that.
[00:20:56.365] Kent Bye: There's also, I guess, the amount of staff. And even if it's that many people per hour, then it's like, what is the ratio between how many people need to be on staff helping to onboard all those people? And so what is the sort of ratios that you have? If you have 70 to 80 people per hour, how many staff are needed to be able to pull that off?
[00:21:15.089] Myriam Achard: So I think that right now to present, for instance, Horizon of Khufu in Montreal, which we welcome 80 people an hour, we have on site, going from the person at the entrance that is scanning the ticket, to the people that are working on the floor to make sure everybody's fine, to the person at the cafe. I would say probably seven people. With the Infinite, when we started, we have three different versions of the Infinite, but with the premium, we call it the premium one, the one you did, I think, in San Francisco, was it?
[00:21:56.437] Kent Bye: I went to the Olympia.
[00:21:58.438] Myriam Achard: Yeah, exactly. But the first version was 470 people an hour. We needed 14 staff members. which is quite a lot. But again, we would never compromise on the number of mediators is needed because they will make the difference if you have a good experience or a so-so experience. And then are you going to positively talk about it or not? So for us, we rather have more staff than less, but it's costly. So we need to find the right balance.
[00:22:33.629] Kent Bye: Yeah, we were both a part of the, in Venice, a think tank, thinking around the challenges around distribution. And I've been working with Liz and Michelle on that report, that it's going to be a public report, that reporting. But one of the things that came up in that discussion was that there's a bit of a need for content distributors to be in contact with the content producers earlier in the process so that they're not creating something that's an incredible immersive experience. Like you said, something like Carnegie Arena, one of the most immersive experiences you ever had. I had a similar experience with in pursuit of repetitive beats, but yet there's these trade-offs of having a low throughput, not making it viable. And so there's this need or desire to have people who are creating that content to have a little bit of a better sense of the design constraints that they need to make and constraints on their experience in order to have that high enough throughput to have a life beyond the festival circuit. And so I'm wondering how you start to think around that as a challenge generally in the immersive industry of First of all, not everything has to be at the scale of the Infinite or Horizon or Kofu, because that's obviously going to severely limit the type of work that's created. But there may be other distributors that are out there. But for you at the PHY Studio and the distribution arm that you're cultivating, What should content producers know around the type of constraints that you're looking at? And what do you think you would like to communicate to those content creators in terms of how to think around the creation of their projects so they don't show up to a festival with an amazing experience that can't have a life beyond the festival?
[00:24:02.574] Myriam Achard: So for us, now I'm talking about from Five Studios' point of view, right at the beginning, we are thinking about that, about the throughput, about how many people versus how many space you need. We don't have all the answers right away, because when you start a project, you need to do some development. But right away, it needs to be clear, like, are you doing a piece for... 150 people or are you doing a piece for 20 people so it's always on our mind and I think that I would recommend to content creators definitely to think about that right at the beginning and to talk to others you know like I could share so much about what we would have done differently with the infinite if we had maybe this cut I mean the infinite is one of the first VR pieces that can welcome so many people. I'm not talking about arcades like really, but really experienced. So we learned so much from the mistakes that we would love to share, you know, what we learned to other creators. So creators like they need to talk to each other and you need to go to festivals and to, of course, experience works, but also talking to your peer. This is highly important because I'm sure, as I just said, we learn so much from our mistake that we could probably help some creators not to make those mistakes. But it has to be on their mind at the beginning. It cannot come at the end as an afterthought. Oh, OK, well, then maybe I need, I don't know, 10,000 square feet. And it's not viable if you create that way or if you produce that way.
[00:25:44.662] Kent Bye: There's also a number of artists' residencies that you're having there. I don't know if it's part of the FI Center, FI Studio, but there's a piece here this year at If a Doc Lab Burned from Absence. There's a piece that was at Venice that had all the projection maps. I'm forgetting the name of it, but I know that the FI Studio was involved in helping to produce that. So it sounds like you're also in the process of having a pipeline of artists to come in and start to have an artist residency and to collaborate with you and the rest of the community there to start to prototype and develop their pieces. And so I'd love to hear a little bit more elaboration on these other pipelines for facilitating those types of conversations that you're talking about.
[00:26:21.877] Myriam Achard: So at FI, we have three types of residencies. We have one in music that is open only to Canadian artists. We have one in contemporary art that is only open to Quebec artists and the immersive one that is open internationally. So there is a call every year. There's a jury that goes through, like last time, I think we got 150 applications, like an international jury that goes through the applications. And then there is one laureate that is chosen And then the laureates are coming to Montreal in January, February, March. It depends. These four weeks, sometimes a bit longer. And our promise as part of the residency is to help the artist to produce a prototype. So we are not producing unless... this is what happened with our last resident, unless we feel that there is a lot of potential. And our last resident, Emeline Coursier, who is presenting here burned from absence, she produced a piece in four weeks. She didn't produce a prototype, she produced a piece. She didn't sleep for four weeks, but this was not what we expected. And then when we realized that it was a finished piece, and then Onyx was also very interested in that piece, and then it was shown during Tarbeca in a different setup, and it was not finished like now, then we decided to come on board as producer. and also as distributors. So Burn From Absence, we are currently looking for different museums, setups to be able to present it. The piece you referred to in Venice was Ceci est Mon Coeur. So Ceci est Mon Coeur was not part of a residency. Ceci est Mon Coeur was, at the beginning, we tried to be a co-producer with Luxembourg and France. So they came to Montreal, they did some workshop, and then we didn't get the funding on the Canadian side. So that's why at the end, we are not... I mean, they really produced an incredible experience. And I'm glad, you know, like they were able to spend a bit of time in Montreal with us to iterate a little bit. But that was not a residency. That was really more like it could have been a co-production.
[00:28:30.316] Kent Bye: Gotcha. Okay. So you're doing co-productions, residencies, and also scouring what's ever happening on the film festival circuit to both see the pieces that are out there and see if that might be a good fit for having distribution as well.
[00:28:42.372] Myriam Achard: So I'm doing a lot of those film festivals where you also are going, but I also do contemporary art biennale. This year in Venice at the contemporary art biennale there were some immersive and interactive pieces and I'm trying to go out there because what we are passionate about is very much this intersection between art and technology. And yes, in the film festivals, the immersive sections, I discover great works, but I'm also interested to see what contemporary artists, what they are thinking about. And I think one of the very strong piece that we showed at the FI Centre last year, and that was shown also at Tribeca and also in London was a piece by Shirin Nechat called The Fury. And Shirin Nechat is a major contemporary artist, known as a video artist, but she really wanted to test what VR could do. It's actually Kora Contemporary, based in Copenhagen, that produced that work. and wow just incredible so yeah i have like you know like i look into the contemporary art world i look into the film festival sections but it all come back together like this intersection between art and tech
[00:29:55.538] Kent Bye: Well, that's a good segue of talking around what's next here in both, I guess, the near, medium, and distant future. Maybe this is a little bit more distant future, but the expansion of the Phi Center. We talked about this a little bit at South by Southwest last year, but maybe you could just kind of recap this vision for where the Phi Center is going in terms of this expansion, and then what you imagine with this continued fusion of, like you said, you're going to the film festival scene, which tends to be like a lot of folks from the XR world, the XR industry, technology first, but also artists and storytellers, but also the contemporary art world with the artists first and how they're both kind of on this track of immersive and having the FI Center as a place where each of these fusions of immersive art technology are coming to be exhibited. So I'd love to hear if you could elaborate a little bit as to what's coming next.
[00:30:44.133] Myriam Achard: So we have a major project coming next. We will be opening a new institution, a new venue in Montreal in 2028, hopefully 2028, which will be called Phi Contemporary. And this institution, based on the model of the Kunsthalle, will actually allow us to bring under one roof what we are currently doing in two different buildings in Montreal. Because I didn't speak about... the fact that we have a foundation for contemporary art that's been open for 17 years. So the FI Foundation for Contemporary Art, its mandate is really to present the works by major contemporary artists that never had a solo show in Canada or sometimes in Quebec, it really depends. And, you know, like I'll name a few of the artists we've been presenting over the last 17 years, but it goes from Yoko Ono, to Sophie Calle, to Yayoi Kusama, to Jenny Holzer, Ryuji Ikeda, Christian Markley, Chapman Brothers, like really major names from the contemporary art world. And then the FI Centre, as I was saying, like art and tech, but Right now, when we talk, for instance, to the press about the foundation, it's about contemporary art. When we talk to the press about the FI Centre, it's art and tech. We just want to talk about art. And this new institution will allow us to do that and not to have silos. We want to really bring this expertise that we acquired over the last 18 years under one roof. It will be a bit less than... 70,000 square feet of gallery spaces, approximately 7,000 square meters, with different large spaces, like black boxes for installations, but also smaller galleries, a network of galleries. So yeah, that's the goal. It's very ambitious, but I know for sure, and I say that again in a very humble way, This will become a landmark for Montreal, but also for creators. They will want to be shown and exhibit at FI Contemporary. And it's really exciting. It seems far away for years, but it will go so quick.
[00:32:54.682] Kent Bye: I know that there's been a huge leading edge in terms of art and culture and like what the FI Center is doing and FI Studios is really, I think, on the bleeding edge for what's happening in the larger immersive industry. Is there something that's happening in terms of why Montreal or why is it that that ended up being kind of the center of immersive culture?
[00:33:13.103] Myriam Achard: You know, it's funny because I agree with you that it's happening, but I feel that we are currently maybe losing a little bit our advance. I remember coming to IDFA like seven, eight, nine years ago and a lot of works that were shown here, some of the works that were winning in festivals here or Sundance or Tribeca were from Montreal. And I think that is because Both our governments, provincial and federal, strongly believe in digital creativity and allow creators to have access to great support. The reason I'm saying that, I still think we are quite advanced, but others are coming and it's not negative because We need institutions, we need spaces for digital creators to be able to show their work. But I always tell my colleagues here in Montreal, don't sit on the fact that Montreal is known. We need to keep going forward together. But I think the fact that public support is very important in Quebec, in Canada, helps, of course, the sector.
[00:34:24.915] Kent Bye: We talked about the future of this expansion at Phi Center. What's next for the Phi Studios and the new distribution arm? What can you tell me in terms of your immediate future, near term, and then sort of distant future for where you see that going?
[00:34:36.502] Myriam Achard: So we will be the next co-production that comes out of the studio will be launched in Taiwan in March 2025. It's a co-production between Phi Studio, Riverbed Theater, Craig Quintero, and then Onassis. Foundation is called Blur. And the goal is really to have this piece toured first in Asia, then in Europe, and then in North America. So at least for three years, hopefully for longer. So this is the next... It's almost done. Really exciting. We're working on two other projects currently that are in development. We're waiting to hear back about funding. So we have a co-production with Atlas. I don't want to say too much because we don't have the funding yet. And then there is another project we are co-developing with... company based in Montreal called the Seven Fingers. They're coming from the circus world. They are doing incredible production, also waiting for funding answers, hopefully by the end of this year. So those are the three projects that are really on our slate. We have other IPs that we are analyzing currently, but those would be the major. And then for the distribution, I mean, hopefully we'll be able to distribute all the works I don't know if it's all of them, but a lot of the works that Excurio is producing. After Horizon of Khufu, that's closed in Montreal, closes in January, we are opening Lost World, the Monde Disparu, the piece they did with the Museum of Natural History in Paris for the summer. After that, we will be showing the Impressionists. So it's a space we are renting. So it's not at the FI Centre. It's a place we are renting in the Old Port that we hope to be able to activate for the next... two, three years until we open Phi Contemporary. And I'm taking meetings here with studios that are producing works that could be very interesting for us to distribute. So, yeah, I mean, the next year will be busy for sure but it's always busy but also it will establish i mean we'll establish fi as a like a distributor which is for us something we are it's really something we were thinking about but never really officialized but now we are officializing it
[00:36:51.573] Kent Bye: When I was at Venice the previous year, I was talking to Paul Arfial, and obviously Felix and Paul are working on The Infinite, and then they saw how successful The Infinite was and how much of that could be a core part of their business, and then they're expanding that out into generating more narrative, immersive content that's kind of designed from the ground up to be in this kind of mode where lots of people could have high throughput through this kind of more narrative spaces. I know that there was a press release that went out announcing that there was a project, but I don't know if there's anything else that you could say in terms of what's going on with that.
[00:37:23.427] Myriam Achard: With Felix and Paul? So I don't want to talk for them. I mean, they're working on a permanent experience that would be in, I think, maybe up to three cities in the US. FI is not implicated in the operation of it. We are business partners, definitely. But sometimes they do their stuff and we do our stuff. And in the case of I think the title was released, right? It's Interstellar Arc. I don't know if it's a working title or not, so don't quote me on that. But we are not involved in the operation of it. It's really meant to be a permanent experience installation.
[00:38:01.513] Kent Bye: Kind of like a Sleep No More type of thing, where there's a big space that they kind of expand out then, too.
[00:38:05.556] Myriam Achard: Exactly.
[00:38:06.677] Kent Bye: OK. Yeah, I just wanted to ask, because I know that was on the radar of something that's going to be coming soon at some point. But I'm sure we'll all learn more about it. But yeah, it sounds like you're not directly engaged in that right now. OK, so I just want to check. OK. Well, yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of all these immersive art, immersive storytelling might be, and what it might be able to enable.
[00:38:28.556] Myriam Achard: I mean, I believe, of course, in the power of immersive storytelling. If not, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I think, you know, like when talking about Carny Arena, where I still, seven years later, I still know how I felt and it's still very much present. So to me, it's about storytelling and the technology is there. to support the storytelling and yes we work in a field where technology is very present but it's really the technology is there to enhance the storytelling and if you are able to do that and that if for myself you know like if I'm able to forget that I have a VR headset on my head and that an experience is able to transport me in a world where I completely forget about the VR then this is it, you know, this is successful and this is what I think creators should try to do as much as possible. Like immersive experiences can be really, really, really powerful and yeah, I think we are only at the beginning of technology is evolving really quickly, devices and I'm really curious what's next, but it should always be the story at the center, storytelling at the center of the experience.
[00:39:56.233] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:40:00.818] Myriam Achard: Keep doing what you're doing. Be curious. Be generous with your audience. Think about your audience while you're creating, because sometimes I go through experiences and I'm like, wow, did the creator think about the experience the audience is going to have? So, yeah, but just be curious and keep on being, you know, like we are pioneers in that field. So, yeah, keep on doing what you're doing.
[00:40:27.543] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Miriam, I'm going to reflect that back to you and say, keep on doing what you're doing there, both at the FI Center and FI Studios and the new distribution arm. It's such a key part for creating a viable industry of having places for these projects to go and to continue to go beyond what we're seeing on the online distribution. That's got its own place and its own context, but to have this more artistic framing and context, to have these pieces that are really quite meaningful and moving and impactful, I think is really crucial. So thanks for all that you're doing, and thanks for taking the time to help share a little bit more around what's happening now and what's going to be expected here in the future with the FI Center and FI Studios. So thank you so much.
[00:41:04.790] Myriam Achard: Thank you, Ken, and thank you for all you're doing for the field. I mean, it's very hard for creators to get visibility on what they're doing, so you inspire us, and thank you for your generosity.
[00:41:18.241] Kent Bye: Thank you. 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 1500 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 to 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 and 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.
