IN THE CURRENT OF BEING is a powerfully-told story about electroshock conversion therapy using haptics, mixed reality, and a free-flowing dream logic structure paired with a documentary interview of a survivor. It was a deeply moving experience, and won the new Agog Social Impact Award at SXSW (more on that below). The director is BODY OF MINE’s Cameron Kostopolous, who continues exploring embodied storytelling about a very timely topic. There were a handful of politically-themed pieces this year, and this was particularly prescient considering that the Supreme Court announced during SXSW that it would hear arguments about Chiles v. Salazar that challenges the constitutionality of Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy. Kostopolous is telling the story of trauma from conversion therapy, and hopes to be a part of an impact campaign that bans conversion therapy in at least one state. However this may be impossible if the Supreme Court declares conversion therapists a free speech right, even if there’s little evidence that shows any merit that conversion therapy even works and is considered by Kostopolous to be a form of torture.
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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 voices of VR. So I'm going to be diving into my 20 plus hours of interviews with all the different XR creators that were featured this year at South by Southwest. I managed to see all but one of the experiences that were there, and I did manage to speak to every single one of the creators that were featured this year in this year's selection. Some of them are interviews that I've done previously, and 26 of them are new that I'll be featuring here in this 20-hour plus series. I did something else different this year, which was to do a big, long write-up that is trying to piece together the narrative of how I start to think about the different trends and the themes and how different experiences sort of pair with each other. So I'm going to be going in that order of that write-up, roughly. I'm actually going to be putting currents at the end just because I think it's a really good one to end on to pair it up with the other Apple Vision Pro experiences. So my top experience that I had this year was a piece by Cameron Costopoulos called In the Current of Being. So this is a really powerful piece that is digging into some testimonials of this woman, Caroline, who's gone through electroshock therapy for conversion therapy. And so it's a film that's really speaking out against the traumas that you get from this type of conversion therapy and is advocating that this is a form of torture. And you really see the impact of it on Caroline's life The other thing about this experience is that actually integrates haptics. So you're wearing a haptic vest and the installation was just completely like anxiety inducing where you're walking in, you see these electric chairs, you have this really elaborate tree structure in the middle, and they have this whole mixed reality scan of that scene that is integrated into the very first part of the experience. So it has a very amazing like installation onboarding that is just building up into all this anxiety before you actually go into the experience. So it's a very timely story. In fact, while we were there at South by Southwest on that Monday, the Supreme Court announced that they're actually going to be hearing a case called Childs v. Salazar, which is brought about by a therapist who says that banning conversion therapy in Colorado, that's violating our First Amendment rights. So it's a First Amendment right, or is this some sort of psychological torture that doesn't actually have any evidence that it works at all? So anyway, it's a very timely piece, and it actually ended up winning the Agog Immersive Media Institute's brand new award for the Agog Immersive Impact Award that was presented at South by Southwest. It was selected by the jurors, and the way they describe it is that it recognizes visionary creators leveraging extended reality to foster community, spark action, and build a more just and sustainable future. We're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Cameron happened on Wednesday, March 12th, 2025 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:03:09.426] Cameron Kostopoulos: Hi, I'm Cameron. I was here at South by two years ago with my first VR piece, Body of Mine, which allowed you to experience gender dysphoria and gender euphoria. And now I'm here with my second piece, In the Current of Being, which is about conversion therapy and uses haptic suits to connect you with the story of a survivor of electroshock conversion therapy. Mm-hmm.
[00:03:29.588] Kent Bye: Great. Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space.
[00:03:32.950] Cameron Kostopoulos: So my background is actually in physical production. I developed my first piece while a student at USC Film School. So my background is all cameras and lights and like more 2D live action storytelling. But then when the pandemic came, that all shut down. So I started dabbling with VR, specifically exploring how VR could be used to hopefully reach the hearts and minds of people who have a lot of hate in their hearts. And so it kind of began as this exploration into embodied storytelling and how that could foster empathy. And now here we are.
[00:04:13.396] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, yeah, I remember having this conversation a couple of years ago at South by Southwest after he had just received a special jury award. The award ceremony is tonight, so good luck on your piece this year. I think it has a good chance of picking up a prize, but we'll see. You never know how the juries think. But I think it was really an amazingly told story, but also using the haptic technologies in a really innovative way that matches up with the story that you're telling. And also like a way that I think is amplifying the story and not just like using it as an excuse to use like haptic technology. So I had a really powerful experience watching it. So maybe you could take me from where you went from Body of Mine and then how it led to In the Current of Being that's showing this year.
[00:04:54.969] Cameron Kostopoulos: Totally. I think this new piece is kind of an evolution of the embodiment that I started to explore with the last one. Last time it was all visual embodiment, what it feels like to see an avatar that's blinking in synchronicity with you and whose movements are moving in synchronicity with you. But this time it's less of a visual embodiment but more of a felt, haptic, physical embodiment where your heart is beating in tempo with hers and it's accelerating and... You are breathing with her and you feel embodied with her. We didn't want to use haptics just as like a source of pain and trauma, but also explore things like bioelectricity and creating physical haptic motifs that represent synapses and neurons and the heartbeat and the different currents and rhythms that we have in our body so that we were able to explore kind of a more explore with more nuance carolyn's story and the different anxieties and traumas and ways of recovering and defying all the odds that really make her story so remarkable so yeah i think of it as an extension and then like where did you begin with the story like what was like the turning point where you you knew you wanted to tell the story So coming out of Body of Mind, I knew I wanted to do something about conversion therapy because growing up, it was something that I was always under the threat of. My brother almost got sent to conversion therapy, so it was a very hard-hitting subject. And I knew I wanted to create a piece that would explain to people that conversion therapy is not therapy. And so I was interviewing a bunch of survivors of different forms of conversion therapy, from talk therapy to people who survived exorcisms. And through that process, I got in touch with Carolyn. And she had been more outspoken about her story in the past few years. For most of her life, she kept her story to herself. But recently, she had been more vocal. And so I reached out, and we had a conversation. And after that, it was like, OK, well, cancel the rest of the interviews. We're not going to get one better than that. Let's go. And everything after that came together really easily.
[00:07:00.117] Kent Bye: And so maybe just walk through the stages of production of this piece once you've found your interviewee subject. How did you start to map out the story? And then there's less agency or inactivity, but there's more visceral haptic experiences that are also playing into how the story is being told. So I imagine there is a back and forth between how you were building and releasing tension through the haptic vest and all that gear and the actual story. But maybe just take it from the top in terms of the interview process, scripting, and then the interactive components or the haptic components.
[00:07:30.034] Cameron Kostopoulos: Yeah, it was similar as last time in that it all started with the audio. It was after I did the interview, it laid it all out. And funnily enough, one of the things I learned is that sometimes you really just can't replicate the magic of just a conversation. Because we even tried later on doing, there were a couple lines that we were like, oh, it'd be great if this sounds a little bit better. And we even tried to, it was Carolyn's idea to rerecord a few lines, but none of the rerecordings we did had that same magic and intimacy that the original had. So after we did that first interview, audio splicing came together really quickly. And then it's remained mostly unchanged other than sliding a few things here or around, you know, to make the music land better here, add some detail. But really, it was just a matter of laying out the audio tracks, then having her story, and then spending a lot of time in my bedroom, again, animating and bringing it to life, which I love to do. And so it was really just kind of sitting with that story, hearing it, and then... finding the visuals kind of along the way. I definitely I didn't have all the storyboards when I started. I was kind of like, OK, well, let's just start and then we'll see where it goes. And I think it all came. I think it all came together.
[00:08:39.480] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's this interesting thing that happens to me when I watch pieces that are like a voice of God narrator voice, because in the moment I can track it. But because it's sort of in the abstract realm of words, then I have the reaction in the moment. But in terms of my memory, sometimes unless I see the person or unless it's acted out viscerally, beat by beat. My memory sort of gets collapsed in a way that I have a feeling of your experience, but maybe just to kind of help remind me of the overall arc of the story, you can talk a bit about the different chapters and the story that you're telling in terms of this process of conversion therapy.
[00:09:15.990] Cameron Kostopoulos: Yeah, that's a great question. So it starts, our intention with when it starts is you put on the headset and it should feel, in theory, like you're in the same space. We start with this mixed reality scan that we pulled an all-nighter to do where we built this large installation made of wires and wooden electric chairs. And then a day before, I took a full scan of it, put it in Unreal, and made four quick builds for each of the chairs. And so the idea is to slowly increase the anxiety from the onboarding process, having you sign a waiver that looks a little scary, and getting suit it up and then you know every step should in theory keep building the anxiety all the way up through the actual electroshock sequence so that when you get to that moment you feel like you're actually there and you're ready for that so we start with this kind of mixed reality intro where you actually like detach from your physical world and you float out of your chair and you have this kind of like in my mind, this transition where you're leaving your body and going like into Carolyn's. And then when the film starts, it actually, it's bookended by this narrative of Carolyn being left-handed. She's left-handed. And up until recently, you know, the past few decades, people who were left-handed would undergo forms of conversion therapy, often in classrooms where their hands would get hit or for writing with their left hands. And it's only recently that we have accepted people being left handed and stopped trying to change that. And she's able to kind of very masterfully weave that into her story as a way of anchoring her gender identity and her journey with that as a parallel to what we decided have gone through with being left handed, where now we accept people for being left handed and we see more people left handed. It's not because people started being left handed. It's because we allowed people to be who they are. So when people say that trans people are making people trans, that's often the argument back is that, well, look at left handed, you know. So it kind of begins and ends with this. And then we go through her childhood. This is kind of like fractured sequence where we see her as a little girl seeing herself reflected in the body of a boy back in the mirror and then we kind of have this moment where in my mind it was like, well, body of mine's all in front of the mirror. Now we're going to start this new one by going inside the mirror. And so we see her and we go in this time, we actually go inside the mirror and then we kind of go into her psyche and we go through these different vignettes of her describing the impact of religion and these systems and these structures that caused all this anxiety and all this incongruence between her gender identity and who she knew she was and what the rest of the world was telling her. And so we kind of established all the reasons that made Carolyn go and seek a cure because this was a practice that she thought would help her and was told would help her and she agreed to and sought out. And so then we get into the most intense part of the piece which is the actual conversion sequence where you're sitting in the chair and the photos the women start showing in front of you and they get faster and faster and faster and faster faster the haptics get more and more and more intense until eventually all the faces are just smiling and in synchronicity and then start screaming almost like they're taunting you and so we had this really intense experience and after that it's all about recovery so we're able to use those kind of bursts of intense haptics as a metaphor for trauma that are then soothed out and we kind of start to take on electricity less as a source of pain and more about how carolyn has been able to make that not the defining point of her life and take that and in some ways be used to it you know she talks about how you know her ability to live life to the fullest and the happiest has been taken away from her and so there is an extent where you get used to it and you get used to the haptics and that is kind of this parallel to carolyn's own experience and you know it ends in a very cameron way i think this piece was really magical because i think there's a lot of synchronicity between carolyn's type of storytelling and my type of storytelling and i think that really shines in the end because me and carolyn both i think have this appreciation for making very intimate things universal and she does that so well and she made my job easy But, you know, it really ends with coming back to you and this idea that like you and me are both human beings and we share ninety nine point ninety nine percent of identical DNA. And it's that point zero zero one percent that makes us unique. And yet instead of celebrating those uniquenesses, we condemn them. And so the end is kind of this hopefully uplifting, inspiring kind of reawakening where we. are telling people that they should be themselves and unafraid to be themselves. And in my mind, the ending was always like, well, if Carolyn can do this, this person whose story we just experienced so intensely, if she can be her authentic self, you know, what excuse do the rest of us have for not being ourselves? And so it ends in this very, you know, almost body of mind where the nervous system and this tree and the natural system kind of merge and the neurons become roots and it all kind of pulses with life. And the climax of the piece to me, I never wanted to be the actual conversion sequence, but rather the part where this icon of a tree, this natural image that's rooted in the nervous system and in the body is struck by lightning. As Carolyn is saying, you know, How dare you say these things to me? I've gone through all this and still you say that trans people are rapists or pedophiles or evil. How dare you say that? And she says, I will defy you until my dying breath. And that to me was the climax of the piece. And so we have the haptics the most intense and the fires raging and burning. And she's able to take that anger and redirect it as a source of life and this kind of motivation to make the world a better place. And The experience ends on your way out of the headset with a quote from her we have on the wall that is, all it takes for evil to win is for good people to remain silent. And I will not let evil win. I will not remain silent. Yeah.
[00:14:41.837] Kent Bye: beautiful thanks so much for that recap and as you were saying all that what's interesting to me is that as I came out of your experience what it felt like was I just woke up from a dream you know it's like one of those things where you feel the emotion of the dream but if you were to like kind of recount each of the beats of the dream you it's sort of this kind of elusive quality and I think it it might be in part because of the so much of the haptics were part of it and I remember having this experience at Sundance a number of years ago with a Marshmallow Laser Feast piece that was using a lot of tastes to like paint with the palette of your unconscious, you know, in a way, because you have all these unconscious memories of tastes and smells. And so when those are integrated, I was asked a question like, oh, well, what's your first memory of eating pop rocks? And like. It wasn't until that question was asked that I put language to something that I experienced, but before it was just like this unconscious, subconscious level of the experience. And there's something about going through this experience for me after being at a festival and seeing a ton of content, having tons of conversations, and then my memory kind of gets blurred on certain details of things, but it felt like, wow, that was so incredibly powerful and moving. But then I wouldn't be able to detail the beat by beat like you just did. It was kind of more of like waking up from a dream. And the haptics kind of, like we have different levels of our sensory experience, the visuals, the audio, and the haptics. And there was something around like, The haptics dominated in this experience because it was so novel and unique and different. My body was paying attention, but it was being amplified by what I was seeing and hearing. But it felt like an elusive dream state that was hard to pin words to. So it kind of feels like this dream logic type of experience where you're really leaning to some of those conceits of a dream. So I'd love to hear any of your thoughts as you're constructing the piece and using these really powerful visual and spatial metaphors to tell the story.
[00:16:36.724] Cameron Kostopoulos: Yeah, that's so thoughtful. And it's great to hear that because we were after that. I mean, even the visual language of there's never really... Aside from one moment where the intense electroshock ends and cuts, that's really the only cut in the film. Everything is very... fluid and seamless and it feels, you know, from the moment, hopefully, our team did a great job. From the moment you put the headset on, it feels like there's never a cut, there's never like a hard stop. So it does put you in this kind of like, you know, immersive dream state where it just feels like you're on this ride and on this emotional journey. So that was very intentional. And the type of storytelling I am always after is very like, visceral, felt storytelling. And that's been true ever since even before doing VR, like short films. I've always been fascinated by silent filmmaking, by dance films, by things that can be very felt and universal that don't necessarily need a beat-by-beat analysis like you're saying, but leave you feeling... something in your stomach or in this case like literally tingling over your body and leave you something with kind of digest and chew and i think especially for a piece like this that is asking people to go and reflect on this and think about this after that that kind of dream state helps you have something to chew on after hopefully
[00:17:59.269] Kent Bye: Yeah. And I remember arriving here on Friday and then coming just to the Fairmont just to check out what was going on. I ran into you and I think that's when Alex Gulen was doing a scan from like Polycam. And so you took that scan that you took at that moment after we went to that party and then you worked all night to put it into the experience.
[00:18:17.751] Cameron Kostopoulos: Yeah, if you saw me on day one, I was super tired. All those photos look like ass because we stayed up all night because we really wanted to, you know, we really wanted to have a good onboarding experience. I think it's something that we didn't really have as much luxury to do last time because we were so new to it and we had never been to a festival before. And also we had all those tech issues and we had to move rooms. So we really wanted to this time to have a good onboarding experience. So yeah, so Alex, Alex is always helping us. He's really, really kind. So yeah, He got us a great scan, and then we threw it into Unreal and then tried our best to line it up. It's not perfect, but it's as close as we could get in 24 hours, you know?
[00:18:56.693] Kent Bye: Yeah, so maybe you could talk about this installation piece that you have. It's this really powerful mixed reality component because, yeah, there is this tension of signing this waiver. Like, yeah, do you have any heart conditions? Immediately, like, okay, this is putting my mortality in question. Like, do I step into this experience because it could actually literally kill me? And there's an electric chair there. And so it's sort of like all of these like priming to build up that anxiety, which is, I think, a part of the experience. It's an instance where that informed consent is actually contributing to this larger anxiety that is part of the core of the experience. And then that mixed reality component and seamlessly takes you into this magic circle, into the immersive part, and then it flows into this dream like dream logic from there. So, yeah, I mean, just talk around that. onboarding experience and the details for what you were really trying to go from the outside world into the magic circle, into the immersive part of it.
[00:19:55.970] Cameron Kostopoulos: Yeah, totally. I mean, I feel so blessed. I mean, we're I'm just surrounded by so many talented people. And so all of our installations are always like designed by Taylor, Taylor Woods, who, you know, had the idea to connect all these wooden electric chairs. Like what we were after is this idea that all the wires coming from these chairs is like almost absurd amount of wires all come together into the centerpiece that looks almost like the veins and arteries from all the people who are going through the experience are being connected together so we really wanted the idea of connection and last minute we actually turned the chairs around so everyone was facing each other and added this little mixed reality but at the very end where you come into pass through and you just see people and the type of storytelling I enjoy, I love playing with metaphors and things that have a double meaning. And so with this time, it really was, you know, this idea of electricity and bioelectricity, wires and veins and arteries and how we can use those to explore trauma and recovery and individuality and being a human. And so we created this really scary looking, very clockwork orange and styled installation with wooden chairs, which was kind of fun for us because at all these festivals, you know, you get used to having freedom of sitting in a swivel chair and experiencing 360 and moving around, looking around. We deliberately took that away because we were like, no, this is part of the story that she was in this wooden chair. And for me going through it as a creator, I went through it for the first time yesterday, like as intended, where I had my team put me through and everything. And The most intense part for me was actually sitting in the chair, not even the haptics, but really just like going through that and feeling the straps and the leather straps on the chair and gripping the wooden chair and feeling that restriction of not being able to sort of around like you can in the other pieces here. So it was all kind of very intentional. And the rest of our team who was putting people through are all super amazing. And Nina, who was our art director, and Matthew, who helped us send out all those headsets to LGBT centers. My brother, Ty, came and helped us. And all my mentors and advisors, amazing people, Mark, all came and helped. And yeah, so I'm just super grateful for all of them.
[00:22:02.523] Kent Bye: Yeah, in terms of the depth of storytelling and the overall experience and the technological innovation that made it to the top of my list of experiences that I saw this year, just because I feel like it's also just a very important story and timely story with everything that's going on. But also just the experience and emotion, I think, at the end of the day that I was able to feel. Because with the questions around identity of who you are and being who you really are, these are fundamental questions. We're all trying to... find and express ourselves. And for some people, they go through this exile where society says that you can't be who you are. And it just feels like that's happening at a politicized level right now in the world where it's kind of used for political gain and leverage to separate. And so, yeah, I'd just love to hear you kind of set a broader context under which this experience is existing in this moment in time.
[00:22:56.801] Cameron Kostopoulos: Yeah, I mean, two days ago, the headline was about the Supreme Court taking up a case in Colorado about whether or not conversion therapy counts as free speech. And what they're trying to do is, you know, now we're at a place where 27 states have banned performing conversion therapy on minors because... again because it doesn't work it's harmful it's torture it shouldn't be allowed and what the supreme court is considering is taking away all of those bands and allowing conversion therapy to happen anywhere under the protection of free speech this idea that like therapist manipulating a child into hating themselves counts as free speech and counts as therapy and so they're considering that case right now and throughout this whole process of making this piece One of the things I always hear probably most is like, oh, why are you telling the story? This is in the past. This is in the history. Like what? Like the point of our experience is not about the type of conversion therapy. It's the point is that any form of conversion therapy is torture. It should not be allowed. Any form of getting someone to hate themselves, manipulating someone and convincing them to hate themselves. is a form of conversion practice is not therapy and should be banned. And we are unfortunately in a world right now where that fight is like super on the table and a lot of people are at risk of getting sent to these places because we have people who think that Like there's one there's one way to navigate the world. There's one way to present your gender and only one type of person you can love. And rather than allowing people to be who we are, we're out here debating whether or not we should be able to convert people. And so it's super important that we talk about these things and This piece is very heavy. It's very intense. It's very provocative. I thought more people would be upset, to be honest, because it's meant to be a bit upsetting. You know, it is this is reality. Reality is unfortunately pretty upsetting at the moment. And for a lot of us here in Austin, for South by Southwest, we might think of these things as obvious, but For a lot of people, these things are not obvious. And so while a haptic electroshock experience might be intense and unnecessary for some of the people here, unfortunately, it's, I believe, quite necessary for a lot of people who are standing in the way of these bans against conversion therapy.
[00:25:15.255] Kent Bye: Yeah. It feels like it's really timely. And I wasn't actually following the news closely enough to see that it was that in the news. Yeah. so yeah it just it feels like it's extremely timely in that sense yeah this getting back to this idea of conversion therapy as torture and the argument that it's free speech hearing the story from carolyn and i forget how she phrased it but it was essentially like skinner like association and electroshock associative trauma that was induced But it's all connected to a part of her core identity. So creating this unsettledness and a lifelong type of trauma where anytime she is feeling that parts of herself to be authentic and expressing herself had this trauma associated to it to have this reaction to shut down and to not be who you are because it's not safe. I forget how she exactly phrased it, but I'm wondering if you could elaborate on that because that seemed to be a pretty key, like the actual harms and impact of this conversion therapy is this lifelong trauma that is connected to, rather than being their authentic self, are suddenly questioning who they are.
[00:26:25.740] Cameron Kostopoulos: Yeah, totally. And thank you for picking up on that. And that was like very intentional. Even the way we present the film and talk about the film, like we very intentionally, you know, the description of the film does not say this is about a transgender woman who survived electroshock therapy. It's about a woman who survived electroshock conversion therapy because that's what this is. And we don't want to use the term like transgender as a way of othering women. And all the way down to the visuals. We spent so much time on this scene where we see this little girl standing in front of a mirror and in the mirror is a boy. We spent so long deliberating, well, should the boy be on the outside or on the inside? And should we take this out together? Should it be more stylized? Should they be human? Should they be gendered? We spent a lot of time thinking about that, but ultimately we came to the conclusion that this is about authenticity and authentic self and individuality. And it's like her whole life, Caroline has known deep down that this is her. And so even though at eight, 10 years old, she was presenting in the body of a boy. We have her illustrated in the body of a girl because of what you're saying, because of, this commitment to individuality authenticity your your authentic self and so from everything from the visuals to the presentation the way we talk about it the way we talk about carolyn and her journey instead of transitioning it you know she is very specific about the language of aligning her gender presentation with her gender identity instead of transition so we're very deliberate to keep the focus in order to keep it universal rather than keeping it focused on the specific story rather it is on individuality in general and being yourself and being your authentic self and for Carolyn that was being a woman for someone else that might be something else but it was important to us to preserve the way she refers to herself and the way she likes to be referred to and her authentic self like throughout the entire package
[00:28:08.298] Kent Bye: OK. So given that, I had a bit of a follow-on question, because in the part where you're seeing images that she's getting shocked around, it's showing pictures of women. But because you were doing this gender swap, was she originally being shown pictures of men?
[00:28:24.147] Cameron Kostopoulos: Yeah, this question comes up a lot. So she was shown photos of women. And so obviously there's lots of different types of this procedure. None of them work. But in this particular one, she was shown a lot of photos of women. Again, she's a teenager. She on the outside is presenting as a guy going to this procedure under the guise of we're going to make you more manly. We're going to make you dislike being a woman. We're going to fix your gender dysphoria by keeping you a guy. And so in order to do that, they were showing her all these photos of women and then randomly they would throw the switch and electrocute her. And so it was kind of that anxiety of when they were going to throw the switch of that randomness that we wanted to preserve. And a lot of people throughout the whole process have been like, oh, well, narratively, that's confusing. Maybe it should be two guys that are going to get electrocuted. We thought about a lot about that. But at the end of the day, we wanted to keep as much emotional realism in the piece as we could.
[00:29:14.338] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah. Cause I, I, I'm not familiar enough with the mechanics of the conversion therapy to have known either way. Cause I could also read it as if you're attracted to men or women, then we're going to give you these negative associations for being attracted, but it's more of wanting to present and be this gender creating these negative associations around that.
[00:29:32.600] Cameron Kostopoulos: In this case, it is exactly. But there are other cases like what you're describing where if I went to conversion therapy, maybe I would be shown photos of guys and electrocuted so that I'm not attracted to guys. It doesn't work. It's pseudoscience. It's never going to work. There's no point in psychoanalyzing why they did it this way because it's crazy regardless. But that was at least their reasoning for why they did this.
[00:29:59.207] Kent Bye: OK. OK. Well, that helps. And so maybe just give a bit more context of the conversion therapy, because you threw out some statistics in terms of how prevalent it is in different states. And then there's another stat for how it's legal for youth. And maybe just kind of break down what the current state of where it's at and then where there's bans. And now with the Supreme Court taking it up, it may actually be legal everywhere from the federal perspective. But yeah, just give a state for at the time of when you were premiering this, what those statistics were.
[00:30:28.072] Cameron Kostopoulos: Yeah, so interestingly enough, right when I started working on this piece, under half of U.S. states had banned it, and since now finishing it, over half have banned it. So right now, 27 states have bans of some sort protecting youth, specifically, this is not for adults, protecting anyone under 18 from being sent against their will to conversion therapy. However, conversion therapy goes by many names and conversion therapy has a bad rap now. So a lot of the times they are like, we're not going to call it conversion therapy, we call it reparative therapy. So you'll see reparative therapy clinics even in California where it's banned, but they offer it to people who hate themselves and are vulnerable and who are likely to believe these people. And so because of that, even though it's banned in 27 states it still happens in all but two states so so that sets for for adults or for children maybe just clarify what you mean so it could be for both so for like a very very detailed kind of analysis about like where exactly how exactly these are being defined and what counts as banned like i recommend the 2023 trevor project report on conversion therapy just to for people at home listening every time you say conversion therapy you're giving the air quotes Oh, yes, yes, yes. Thank you for including that. Every time I say conversion therapy, I do give air quotes because it's not therapy. But people know what conversion therapy is, which is why I say it. Though, for the record, Carolyn does not. I've never heard her say conversion therapy. She always says conversion practice. But just for people at home who are less familiar, I think conversion therapy has a ring to it that makes people listen. Yeah. So back to the Trevor Project and the stats. Yes. So we have a copy of that report in our room. And so that kind of gives a very deep dive into about where exactly these clinics are. But essentially, every year they do a report on the status of conversion therapy. And so as of 2023, they were finding active conversion therapists over a thousand across the U.S. in all but two states. I believe it was Hawaii and Vermont. that they couldn't find a conversion therapist and so that is for youth for adults they have a very large in-depth report that goes into all of this and then internationally only a few countries have enacted a nationwide bands one of them being france who i've been lucky enough to like collaborate with actually with kata yoon and floreal we've been able to make this u.s french co-production which is very cool because france recently banned conversion therapy nationwide along with Canada, Malta, Germany, a few others. But there's still a lot of work to do.
[00:32:56.252] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's interesting this split between what I would consider to be bodily autonomy versus something that they're saying is free speech. And so can you elaborate how there's a thread there of bodily autonomy versus the free speech and also how the youth are used as this leverage point to push us as an issue?
[00:33:16.934] Cameron Kostopoulos: I know, yeah, getting gender-affirming care is not a protected right, but converting people is. Yeah, I think we come back to protecting youth first just because youth are the most vulnerable population. And as someone who grew up in a very homophobic environment, I know how vulnerable that can be. Youth don't have the ability to stand up for themselves or bank accounts to just leave their homes if they need to. And what happens with youth, too, is that when you're told for so long that you shouldn't be this way and you can only be this way and you'll only be loved if you present yourself a certain way, is that in your formative years, that stays with you for your entire life. And so I think protecting youth early is so important, especially now. Queer and trans youth suffer disproportionately from higher rates of suicide, almost double the rate of suicide of cisgender or straight youth, almost double the proportion of youth who are struggling with anxiety, depression. And so it's really important to protect those people in that vulnerable state. And it's really hard to legislate things like what happens in a church. Throughout this process, I've interviewed people who survived years and years of exorcisms, of having the demon of homosexuality cast out of them in front of a congregation of 100 people. And it's like, how do you legislate against what happens between a pastor and someone at church? behind closed doors like there's some things that are maybe easier to at face value have a band for like okay don't strap people to an electric chair and shock them we can mostly all agree on that but we still can't agree that informs that maybe on face value don't involve as much physical pain like talk therapy it's still just as it's just as damaging and it that stays with you for your whole life And so we need to talk about it and make people realize that because otherwise people write this off as a history and they're not listening to what's happening right now.
[00:35:08.286] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, it's such a beautiful and amazing piece. And yeah, it just really sticks with me. And I think, like I said, it's such a timely topic. So yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential for these new forms of immersive storytelling might be and what they might be able to enable.
[00:35:25.700] Cameron Kostopoulos: Yeah, so our goal with this new one is to use the piece to get conversion therapy banned in at least one state is our impact goal. With every piece that we do, we like to have very strong goals that we're after. With Body of Mind, it was we wanted to use the piece to create safer homes for queer youth and increase understanding within families with queer and trans youth. Throughout the process since creating that we've been able to send all these headsets and actually like accomplish bits of that goal And so now with this new one very different target less about spreading joy and more about making the right people anxious and uncomfortable and so with this new one we're gonna target very specifically showing the people who we think can make a difference or who have a vote that could make it or who have the connections or the political power to make things happen and So we're going to be doing a lot of impact work with using this experience as well as the chapters that are following. This is just chapter one to fight for bans on conversion therapy. But then we also will be traveling, doing festival tour and. Hopefully finding a permanent or semi-permanent home for her. At least body of mine is now on the Quest store, so there's at least a version of it out there. It would be nice to have, whether it's an installation or a museum, it would be nice to have a home for the full haptic piece for this one. But, you know, I'm in really good hands. I've been collaborating with Catty Yoon. She's our producer. She's awesome. She's great at this stuff. So, you know, it's worth having a whole other conversation just with her because she could go on and on and on. Awesome. Is there anything else left inside you'd like to say to the broader immersive community? Um, no, other than just like everything here at South by Southwest has been super different from each other, which is awesome to see. I think that like this kind of exploration into experimental formats is awesome. And thanks for making the time and your busy South by schedule to chat and to see our piece.
[00:37:12.199] Kent Bye: Yeah, like I said, it was at the top of my list of all the pieces in competition that I saw this year. And yeah, just really moving in a pack full and just the integration with haptics and the whole experience and this kind of dream logic and leaving me with like a feeling. Yeah, I just I feel like overall it kind of works well together. And like I said, it's just such a timely topic. And yeah, unfortunate zeitgeist of the moment that you're been digging into this and happens to also be at the forefront of the news. Yeah, but thanks again for all the work that you're doing and for taking the time to help break it all down.
[00:37:44.818] Cameron Kostopoulos: Yeah, no, of course. Yeah, no, I think audiences have really resonated with it as well. We thought we actually took bets right before on how many people would walk out. And I think the lowest number, we only had one person, so we all guessed way too much. But I think it shows just like, you know, how much people want to help and put themselves in that shoe, if for anything other than to just understand the world more. So I hope that, you know, is a good reflection on our piece. Awesome. Well, thanks so much. All right. Thanks, Kent.
[00:38:15.950] Kent Bye: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Voices of VR podcast. And there is a lot that's happening in the world today. And the one place that I find solace is in stories, whether that's a great movie, a documentary, or immersive storytelling. And I love going to these different conferences and festivals and seeing all the different work and talking to all the different artists individually. And sharing that with the community, because I think there's just so much to be learned from listening to someone's process to hear about what they want to tell a story about. And even if you don't have a chance to see it, just to have the opportunity to hear about a project that you might have missed or to learn about it. And so this is a part of my own creative process of capturing these stories and sharing it with a larger community. And if you find that valuable and want to sustain this oral history project that I've been doing for the last decade, then please do consider supporting me on Patreon at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Every amount does indeed help sustain the work that I'm doing here. Even if it's just $5 a month, that goes a long way for allowing me to continue to make these trips and to to ensure that I can see as much of the work as I can and to talk to as many of the artists as I can and to share that with the larger community. So you can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
