Web developer Pete Adams created seven different really cool WebXR worlds for his songs featured in the A NUMBER FROM THE GHOST experience. His music was really great to listen to as I explored his abstract open worlds that were being modulated by different three.js effects. It’s tough going to make it as an independent musician today, and so Adams was thrilled to take part in SXSW to feature his intersection between art and technology. These experiences also led to him being commissioned by HTC’s VIVERSE to continue to develop these WebXR musical immersive experiences for their platform.
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Music: Fatality
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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 in the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So I'm going to be going into a section from South by Southwest where I'm talking about a number of different music-related experiences. The first one is by Peter Adams, and it's called A Number from the Ghost. So Peter is a musician and then turned into web development because being a musician in this day and age is not really a viable career, but he still loves music and he wanted people to listen to the music that he's creating. And so as a web developer, he turned to 3GS and WebXR and created seven amazing different short vignette worlds where it feels like kind of like an open world adventure where you're roaming around and sometimes there's these cuts and shifts but also shaders that are coming in but overall you're listening to each of his tracks and you're kind of walking through this open world exploration and it's just a really beautiful experience in fact it's available for anybody to go check out now it's at a number from the ghost.com And I recommend that you pay attention when you go to each of the different portals, because the way that it's set up right now is that you have seven different slots to choose, but they kind of rotate each time. And so I wanted to see all the different musical tracks that are there. So I'd recommend puzzling through and trying to see each of the seven before you take a listen to this, because we walk through the order in which he created each of these and kind of break down his design process. So because it's available, I'd recommend checking it out and then having a listen. Also, it's just a really amazing experience. You should definitely check it out just because I think it kind of pushes the edge for how musicians are starting to use the immersive medium to promote people listening to their music. So there's a couple of experiences like that. And this is the first one that we'll be diving into. It's called A Number from the Ghost by Peter Adams. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Peter happened on Tuesday, March 11th, 2025 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:17.250] Peter Adams: Hey, my name is Peter Adams. I am coming to VR as kind of an outsider. My background is more in music, and I approached VR as a way to find a way for people to listen to new music in an immersive environment and actually sit down and listen to the music and sit all the way through with it.
[00:02:36.357] Kent Bye: Great. Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space.
[00:02:41.207] Peter Adams: Sure. So I am a web developer. So my background is kind of in run-of-the-mill websites. I do a lot of JavaScript and PHP, you know, kind of boring WordPress, dentist websites, stuff like that. But it did give me a solid foundation in JavaScript, which led me down the road to web-based experiences, gaming. I use 3JS as a framework. So I initially built these musical experiences to run just in a browser on, you know, a PC or whatever that has a browser running on it. and then I later realized that it's quite easy to port these to VR, so I went down that route about a year ago and have been kind of perfecting it and polishing it to work in all manner of devices.
[00:03:23.703] Kent Bye: Yeah, 3GS actually goes back to my origins into VR, because I was designing a separate 3D visualization in 3GS and saw this Oculus filter back in late 2013. It must have seeped in my subconscious, because eventually when I bought my Rift on January 1, 2014, then I started into the Voices of VR podcast later that May. But the very first gathering that May was some interviews I was doing around, at the time it was being called WebVR, which eventually became WebXR. but this idea that you would use the browser to have these immersive experiences. And for the longest time, the browser was not fast enough. It wasn't good enough. People were still preferring native. And so once Chrome launched it, and now it's launched in Safari, it feels like we're entering into a new phase of seeing more web-based content. So I'm excited about it. But I'd love to hear some of your thoughts of at what point did you enter into more of the VR side, and what makes you excited about that?
[00:04:22.290] Peter Adams: Yeah, let me just talk a little bit more about the WebXR because the reason I stuck with 3.js and kind of went down that route is I liked the simplicity of it and the accessibility of it where no matter what the device is, if it has a web browser, you're going to be able to run it. So there's nothing to download. It just runs natively. in the browser there and it gives you a really granular control like I can write shader code I can really get down to the nitty-gritty optimize things and because of that I've kept my experiences lightweight each one is so there's six different levels each one is under eight megabytes I want to say including like a four megabyte mp3 file So I keep the resources really light. I want people to be able to download it quickly, play it on their mobile phone. And so there's a big focus on just having it accessible, not just to gamers, but just to anybody. Just send them a link. They can do the experience. So the VR angle came more when I was trying to promote it more and I realized, hey, a lot of these film festivals have entries for VR. You know, that seems a lot simpler than like trying to like bring a computer and have somebody like play it on a computer. So I thought if there's a way I can get this working on VR, I could really easily package it, send it out to places, have people experience it in a really immersive way. So it seemed like an easy route to just get more eyeballs on it.
[00:05:38.079] Kent Bye: And so was that your introduction to VR, or did you have a prior introduction to it?
[00:05:42.242] Peter Adams: That was my introduction. I had never used VR before. I ordered a MetaQuest 2 just to see how will this even work with my existing experience. So I bought one and just kind of used it to debug my own game.
[00:05:55.177] Kent Bye: What was the first experience that you did? Was it your own?
[00:05:57.402] Peter Adams: It was my own, yeah, yeah. So I just, you know, I popped it on and I just wanted to quickly get it working so I could start applying to festivals.
[00:06:04.881] Kent Bye: That's great. I think Eli Asami is someone who's an Iranian VR developer, and someone had to sneak a VR headset into Iran, and one of the first experiences he did was his own as well. So there's kind of a small club of people whose first experiences are their own experiences, but that's great to hear. And so it sounds like you're kind of a relative newcomer to VR. And so just a technical question before we start to dive into your experience is that I know that 3.js is really looking into WebGL and that there's now WebGPU, which is something that's a completely different render pipeline than WebGL. And so when you were working with your experience, were you paying attention to the types of things that would be ported into WebGPU? Or as far as you know, is everything that you're using just using the more traditional WebGL rendering pipeline?
[00:06:53.743] Peter Adams: Yeah, everything in my game is WebGL just because that's where I entered into it. So I've already got this whole framework built around it. I think the WebGPU stuff is still slightly experimental. It's not as widely available. It's super exciting to think about the capabilities that that would bring. Like there's a lot of ways that I'm not able to do as advanced stuff as I would like that I think WebGPU will make available. Not sure if I'll be able to like port my current experience to that or maybe I'll just start another project in WebGPU when that's more widely available. But it's really exciting that 3JS is going down that route. Yeah, I know they're working on it. I don't know the timeline. I'm not super involved in the development of it. But I think they're kind of parallel tracks right now. And once it's more widely adopted, I think they'll probably shift that over to be the default.
[00:07:36.331] Kent Bye: OK. Well, let's go back to your musical experience because you have a number of different music tracks. You also have this visual worlds that you're exploring around and different shaders and the ways that it's unfolding as a story. And so did you also do all the music and just kind of talk through the process of where did you begin with this project?
[00:07:55.703] Peter Adams: So the project began as a frustrated musician who was having trouble getting people to listen to my music. So my background, if I go way back to like my 20s, I was at South by Southwest like 15 years ago with a band. I did the whole thing, like touring, live music. It's very hard, as I'm sure everybody knows, to make it doing that. So it kind of shifted, went into web development, had more of a traditional career, but still was making music on the side, still running into the problem, like, especially now that I'm not performing, how do I get anybody to listen to this? You know, Spotify is awesome, you can listen to anything you want, but it's so easy to get lost in the shuffle and just, you know, get ignored. So the original spark for what became A Number From The Ghost was just thinking, maybe I can make some kind of simple... visualization like my first idea was almost like an 8-bit experience where you just kind of walk through rooms while the music plays and kind of discover things so it started very modestly I never had any intention of like having this whole immersive world you know with six different levels because I hadn't I didn't know anything about 3d modeling or a game program or anything So I came in with a very basic idea, and it just kind of grown from there. I realized that I really like and enjoy working with graphic design. It's a nice way to shift from when I'm tired of working on music, I work on the graphics. When I'm tired of working on the graphics, I work back on the music. It still comes from a point where the music comes first, so I'll finish the music, and then I try to imagine, well, what would this music look like? What would it be like to walk through this music? And that kind of inspires the visual world.
[00:09:25.934] Kent Bye: okay and so when you go into your world there's the home world and then there's seven songs that you have this sliver that has this kind of like screenshot that's kind of modulated it's poetic and when i first went through it it was like okay i'm in i'm committed i'm gonna see everything and so i started to systematically go through each of the different worlds and by the time i got to the fourth one it repeated and i was like oh wait I figured there should be more. Is that it? And then I went into another one. And so then it became this process of like a puzzle of trying to find what the logic was because it's like, oh, clearly they're rotating, but I wasn't paying attention. So then there was the levels that you could see each of the individual ones, which I think the very last one I had to choose that one because I was like, I don't know which one I've missed. So for the other completionists out there, I feel like the way that it's rotating makes it tricky to see everything. But at the same time, there's probably other optimizations where you want to make sure that people see a variety as well. So I'd just love to hear some of your design process for this kind of randomness or what the default use case would be.
[00:10:28.840] Peter Adams: Yeah, I think there's a couple reasons I went that route. One is because I have no idea which levels people are going to connect with. So I figured whatever I put in the middle is going to get the most traffic. So I thought maybe I'll just shuffle them around each time the page loads so people get a variety of experiences. I also kind of just like art in general that doesn't necessarily hold your hand all the way. That makes you, maybe there's times when you're confused, maybe you're a little bit lost at times. Obviously I don't want it to be like off-putting and super confusing and unpleasant to use. But I wanted to really keep the instructions to a minimum. I didn't want to like tell people like this is why I did this or this is why I did this. So I kind of like that there's like a little bit of maybe mystery to it or people aren't quite sure like, well, why did they do that? Oh, now it's doing this. And like there's kind of a process that goes through the experience like that.
[00:11:18.325] Kent Bye: Well, there's seven songs and I saw them in some random order. I wouldn't be able to fully remember which order I saw them in. But in terms of you creating these different worlds, maybe you could take me to the first world that you created and we'll just go through the different worlds.
[00:11:35.649] Peter Adams: Yeah, so the first one is called Black Cassette, and it's inspired by, this was a good starting point for this reason, because it's kind of inspired by early computer animation, like mind's eye kind of stuff, like 80s, 90s computer animation. So it was really good because that was my first one. I really knew next to nothing about 3D modeling, so I was able to just work with simple geometric shapes. I wanted to kind of give that feeling of like the excitement of like the early internet and like games like Myst where you're just kind of like excited to be in this digital environment. Things are colorful. Things are moving around. There's not a lot of emphasis on realism. The emphasis is more on just like I'm in this abstract kind of magical digital environment. So that was where I started. Yeah.
[00:12:23.883] Kent Bye: Is that the one where you fall down?
[00:12:25.764] Peter Adams: You're falling and there's kind of cubes around and triangles cycling around and you keep falling down. You eventually land in this kind of like mall-like mezzanine environment that you can explore. And you can fall down further into like this sphere that actually does slow the music down as you go through it. And then if you keep falling, it's a recursive experience. So it brings you back to the top and you just can repeat it.
[00:12:50.103] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think the first time I went through it, I went immediately down to continue to fall, and then it repeated. And so, yeah, and like each of these worlds, it felt like I was exploring this abstract world. And, you know, in some of the different worlds, I think one of the first ones I saw, like the world kind of shattered up and all these different shards and then coming back together. But this idea of wandering and exploration, and in that specific one, you give a lot of choice because... Once you get to a certain level where the shapes are, you have a number of different hallways to go down and like you can choose to kind of like explore the interior architecture of that space or you can jump down and keep falling down. And so I'd love to hear you just reflect a little bit on this concept of wandering in connection to listening to the music.
[00:13:36.920] Peter Adams: Yeah, I mean, my dream would be to have a truly like generative infinite environment to go through. But obviously, with timeframes and stuff, I have to find some kind of middle ground. So I try to make the levels so that there are multiple routes you can go down. but it's obviously not infinite, so I want people to feel like they're in the middle of something big, something bigger than themselves, and that they're just kind of in the middle of it, they're getting a glimpse of it, they're maybe following a certain path, they're not sure, like, maybe there was a better path I could have gone down, but this one is, you know, going this way, So I want to give a sense of expansiveness, but also the realities of this kind of development process. I do have to have some sort of restraints on where people go. So if you do literally just try to find the edge of the world, you probably will eventually get there. But I think that's also cool because you kind of get to this point where the landscape ends and you're just seeing kind of the background and you can you know jump off and certain things happen at that point but similar to my music i want you know the music is somewhat abstract somewhat pop there's some melodies but it's not maybe as super accessible as some traditional pop music so i like this combination of accessible but also experimental so there's things that draw you in and then there's things that maybe you don't quite understand and you think i want to try that again and i'm not sure why it did that or why did the music do that So I think that adds a little bit to the replayability of it.
[00:15:00.017] Kent Bye: Yeah, I love the combination of the music and being able to explore around. And the music does seem like the heart and soul of this piece as well because it was created to feature the music. But I feel like that's a differentiating factor that if I was just exploring around these worlds without any of that background context, then I don't think I would have as much of an emotional reaction because there's something around the music that just ties me to my emotions and to my body in a way that I wouldn't have otherwise. So yeah, I just really enjoyed the album.
[00:15:30.441] Peter Adams: Thanks. Yeah, that is kind of the goal is, you know, I call these interactive music videos, but I want the interaction to actually lead to maybe a deeper connection than just watching a normal music video, because there are some moments where like things obviously change with the music, like, oh, the colors are changing on the beat. So that's one way you can think about visualizing music is kind of a very literal, here's the beat or here's a change in the music. So I'm going to change something on the screen. But I also try to set up each level so that there are moments of serendipity where I hope maybe you'll be in this area when this certain thing happens or when these lyrics appear. And it doesn't always happen for everybody. And there are multiple points like that in each level. So I try to hopefully everybody gets a little bit of an experience like that where something happens and they're like, did I do that? Is it because I went there or is that planned? And it kind of adds another element of... mystery or like, how is this working? Or, you know, it creates a memorable moment.
[00:16:29.363] Kent Bye: Great. Yeah, definitely had that experience. So job well done there. So let's go to the second one that you created. What was the title? And just maybe kind of recap some of the journey to trigger some of my memories of it.
[00:16:40.188] Peter Adams: Yeah, the second one is called Always Here. So you start with two screens. One says always and one says here. So this one I was definitely branching out more a little bit, trying to get more dynamic. The big thing development wise in this was the field of grass I made. So you kind of start in this tower that shatters and you fall down. and the landscape kind of coalesces around you it's a bunch of triangles that kind of float together so that was actually using a 3gs example like on their documentation where i think it's called the tessellation effect or something where you can take a mesh and basically burst it into a bunch of triangles so i took that and kind of modified it so that i could make the triangles you know spread out and look chaotic and then coalesce back into the original form had a lot of fun with that how the landscape comes together and then i coded these very basic you know just like a field of triangles that look like grass that kind of wave back and forth and one thing i wanted to do in this song i'm always trying to recreate this moment in the miyazaki movie princess mononoke there's a scene i don't know maybe midway through or there's this kind of like stag god kind of thing that's walking through the forest and as it takes a step each step like you see things sprout up and grow and bloom and then die so it's like this very fast movement of nature you see things like sprouts you know bloom and die back down with each step I've always loved that image. That's obviously beyond my capabilities to code something that looks as beautiful as that. So I went with this route of having the seasons kind of cycle around you. And as the song progresses and kind of reaches a crescendo, the seasons get faster and faster and it becomes this kind of unnatural, like speeding up of time, even though you are walking at the same space, the environment around you is speeding up and getting kind of out of control. Yeah.
[00:18:30.929] Kent Bye: And there's some little bridges that are connecting too, right?
[00:18:34.474] Peter Adams: Yeah, again, I just tried to put you in the middle of an environment with any number of ways to go, so I'm not sure which direction people are going to go from that central point, so I just tried to make nice paths in all directions so people can feel free to explore. That's another one where I've gotten, surprisingly, one of the most simple effects, I've gotten a lot of feedback here, is when you go under the water there, there's little pools of water, the sound kind of gets muffled, and people seem to really enjoy that, which took me by surprise, so I'm glad people like it so much.
[00:19:03.171] Kent Bye: Yeah, this is one that I did twice in my quest to see them all. And so I think the first time, I was on the bridges on one path and walking around. But when I saw the change to the seasons, there's this interesting experience within VR, which is like it sometimes can change your perception of time. And then so when you're place where the seasons are changing so quickly then it's like this hyper acceleration of what we normally perceive as these larger swaths of like three months at a time of these seasons and that it's you know changing in the matter of seconds rather than of these months and so yeah it's kind of playing with time in a way that it's playing with the symbol of time as you're moving through a space and so yeah I found that particularly interesting and compelling in that piece is that modulation between the rapid cycling of that representations of time
[00:19:50.643] Peter Adams: Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you liked it. And then does kind of tie in, you know, the lyrics in all of these songs are not specifically about anything, but there's certain themes I like to come back to, including like just memory, dreams, the kind of impermanence of things. And so that idea of always here at the end of all these seasons, cycling super fast, you kind of fall down again, find yourself in a hallway, you go down the hallway and you get back to where you started. So I hope people find it as a nice kind of full circuit experience.
[00:20:21.662] Kent Bye: Awesome. And so what about the third world that you built?
[00:20:24.502] Peter Adams: Yeah, the third one is called Asleep in Trees. This one, you kind of begin in this, and again, one of my big inspirations is kind of like postmodern architecture. A lot of people, when they are composing music or listening to music, they describe seeing colors. For me, it's always been more geometric and almost architectural. When I hear music, especially when I make my own music, I really visualize spaces. And a lot of those seem to manifest themselves as this kind of like postmodern looking architecture. So this is one where you start in this kind of off culture, I almost want to call it a temple where there's vines hanging down. You start exploring it, the music starts kind of mellow and then all of a sudden it picks up and the building around you starts to fracture and shatter and eventually kind of explodes and you find yourself floating in these clouds. that eventually you are surrounded in, I have to go back and look at the code into how many lines there are, but it's like millions of lines that are arranged according to an algorithm called curl noise. So it's this kind of like undulating, not random, but each time you do it, it's different environment of kind of like ethereal strings all around you. So you wander through that for a little bit and then a portal opens up that takes you back to where you were at the start as things kind of fade into black and white as the song comes to an end.
[00:21:48.422] Kent Bye: Yeah, my recollection of that one, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that you're on like a bridge that's going across that disintegrates or is that a different one?
[00:21:56.284] Peter Adams: That's actually the Always Here. That was the previous one where that falls you down. Okay, okay.
[00:22:00.946] Kent Bye: But is it using like a similar effect where the world is kind of fracturing into these little like triangles?
[00:22:05.603] Peter Adams: Yeah, it's definitely using the same effect. I'm always looking for ways to let people go where they want, but also at some point I want to kind of force people into a new place. So the second and third one always here on A Sleep in Trees, I definitely use this idea of just like, what if I just blow up the environment around somebody and put them in a new one? So that's a little bit, you know, it's not as strict as like I'm just suddenly like cutting to a new scene. I'm still letting the scene kind of change around you. But I still do some shortcuts like that where I'm like, OK, I need to get you out of this environment and get you into this environment. So it's like a fun, natural way to do that.
[00:22:39.992] Kent Bye: in this piece i remember like being able to explore around the space and then it gets exploded and then i have a chance to like explore around a little bit more but yeah just this idea that there's not just one path to go through this like little house but you can go to left to the right you can actually go behind you there's like a little screen i didn't stay and watch the screen because it felt like oh this could be like a video installation and maybe maybe it changes but i was more interested in exploring the virtual architecture So if you just stay and watch the screen, does it stay pretty similar or does it have like a whole video-based installation in the context of the video?
[00:23:12.391] Peter Adams: If it's the part I think you're talking about, those, yeah, they're just there kind of as little decorative things. So you don't need to stay and watch it. So what you did was fine. Okay.
[00:23:22.041] Kent Bye: Great. Yeah. So what's the fourth one that you did then?
[00:23:24.844] Peter Adams: The fourth one I believe is Atomize. This one you start kind of in, looks kind of like an office or a bedroom. And again, you wander. I'm really big into like hallways and having light kind of look like it's coming in at like golden hour, kind of at a low angle, casting shadows on walls. I feel like that maybe is in almost every level. It's just a recurring visual that I like. So you can walk down, again, various paths. One of them, leads to a more familiar looking kitchen with like a ceiling fan but then it goes out on a bridge through these clouds. There's another path that kind of goes through this tangle of lines and both of those lead to this sudden change into an underwater environment where there's like a giant very simple black figure kind of sitting in this water while bubbles go up around them. And then the transition, like I said, I'm always looking for ways to transition. This is one that the scene actually shifts to a TV screen. So what you're seeing is on the TV and you back out and you realize now you're in a living room. There's a couch there. And then again, there's a few different paths you can take up to this kind of, I call it an astral swamp, kind of like this strange environment with... abstract flowers and very colorful sky that kind of swirls around you and as the piece kind of reaches a crescendo your walking speed picks up also so you kind of move quickly through this outdoor environment until it comes to a close.
[00:24:53.191] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah this one I chose to take the turn to the right through like the squiggly lines and into the water and then I was like oh wait but I want to know what was on the other path and so then this is one that I actually tried to do again but then I realized that it was rotating and it like took me a while to actually get back to it to do it for the second time because it was a different enough I just had a curiosity I was like oh wonder what happened if I would have taken that path but Also just the experience of the change of floating in space and there's a certain way where you get a certain level and you can't go further back down because I tried to go back down and it's like oh but there's another like little portal water over there and I realized that's where you come out if you go the other way but in that piece in particular you're able to have this contrast between really tight hallway spaces and the big vast open spaces and then floating in water and then going up and i could see like the progression as you're getting into more and more of these transitions into these alternate environments that have different gravity or different ways that you're exploring large spaces and there's also a piece that i wanted to come back to and explore around again because i wanted to see what the other choice was so
[00:26:03.681] Peter Adams: Yeah, the underwater environment was kind of the technical issue I worked with on this because I've always wanted to keep the controls very simple. Like I just want traditional, like you can move forward, you can move in all the directions. I don't want any special like swim button. So I tried to figure out, well, how can I make people feel like they're underwater, still give them control? So yeah, I just have it. So as you move forward underwater, you also go up. And if you stop moving, you slowly float back down. So I feel like that's actually a good restriction to put on myself so that the game doesn't get out of hand. It keeps the focus on just, you're just moving. There's no doors. You don't have to click any doors to open them. You know, you just need to be moving. Because I do want people who are not gamers to be able to enjoy this also and keep the controls very simple.
[00:26:50.151] Kent Bye: Yeah. And what about the fifth piece then?
[00:26:52.012] Peter Adams: The fifth piece I think is In a Plaza Darkly. This one I think has maybe the most different look from the others. It's a little bit darker. And I realize a lot of these other ones I've kind of made things, I want to say like quote unquote pretty, like I want the lighting to look good. I want things to be kind of like nicely arranged. So for this one, I want to think like, what if I make this look a little grungier? So you're kind of in this swampy grassland. There's like disused shopping carts in like in a puddle. There's like broken fragments of highways. There's billboards. There's like a tower of... discarded like TVs or monitors and then in the middle is this kind of bright shiny chrome again just very simple like geometric like sphere cone but very shiny so I wanted this kind of comparison between these shiny perfect geometric objects and then this kind of more gnarly environment that you find yourself in. This one I feel like also gets a little wild later on. There's these kind of cubes that fall from the sky and burst into skulls and then as it gets more intense the music kind of reaches a crazy crescendo. You actually start flying and you fly through these huge pillars that come up and kind of end up in this stormy environment as it comes to an end.
[00:28:10.222] Kent Bye: Yeah, this is one that I had probably one of the more exalted experiences of like exploration and serendipity because I had explored the rough architecture of the space and I saw this highway that was going up into the sky. And then, you know, I was like, well, what happens if I go to the very end of that? And so as you're walking forward, there's not as much to look at as if I were looking backwards. I was actually like walking backwards up the this and then all of a sudden things start falling and then I'm flying around so it felt like I went from ascending up this broken highway up to seamlessly transitioning to being able to fly around and when you're flying around you're moving at a much higher velocity so I was able to really cover a lot more ground but yeah and also this kind of raining of different shapes Yeah, like I said, it was sort of like the type of experience where it was distinctly different in terms of the type of locomotion mechanics than the other ones where it gives us much more exalted like flying experience than I had seen before.
[00:29:07.256] Peter Adams: Yeah, the flying is really fun. If I had realized how fun the flying was on VR, I probably would have done more of it. But I love how you can just kind of like move your head to aim where you're flying. This one also another inspiration is practical effects from like 80s movies. Like for this one I use, I generate clouds by just overlaying different opacities of like just cloud images and they kind of cycle around. And I really like that kind of like almost matte painting look that it gives to the level where, again, none of these, I'm not trying to recreate reality on any of these. I want to draw your attention to the abstraction of it and the digital nature and the kind of like tricks that are used that still make you feel like you're in this strange environment.
[00:29:53.127] Kent Bye: Great. And so how about the sixth song?
[00:29:55.512] Peter Adams: Yeah, and I realize I'm totally forgetting. There's another one called One Stop that I forgot about. That's one where the screen moves into fragments around you and falls apart. But then, yeah, the most recent one I've done is called Morning Door. It kind of has three different vignettes that it moves you through. So this one I did kind of cheat and really like go from one environment to the other just with like a transition. So you're kind of looking at this large window with a figure on a chair out into this kind of cosmic environment and you can explore through there. This one was a big one where I finally used dynamic lighting as opposed to just baking all my lights. So I have lights that's moving and casting shadows from the window frame. Again, I love this idea of low angled light coming through windows and casting shadows. So he moves from that environment to another kind of grassland with another giant figure that's walking around as the wind kind of whips around and the grass blows and there's a flag whipping around. And then it finally leads you to this, people have described this as like M.C. Escher, where there's lots of parallel girders with figures walking around on them, where you can stay up there, you can also drop down to this other exterior environment with water and other stuff to explore down there.
[00:31:07.734] Kent Bye: Yeah. And this one was pretty vast, right? It was pretty big to explore around.
[00:31:11.595] Peter Adams: Uh, yeah, I think so. Since I'm moving you from one to another and you don't have as much time to go around in each one, I think that does give an idea. It was easier to give a sense of like, well, I know they won't have enough time to like get to this point so I can, you know, fill it out that way. Yeah.
[00:31:25.342] Kent Bye: Yeah. I felt like this is probably one of the more, lots of choices and things to go explore. What's the one that ends where you're like in rocks and water and you can jump deep into the water.
[00:31:35.367] Peter Adams: That one I think is Mourning Door when you jump off of the kind of M.C. Escher parts, you fall down into those rocky water area, yeah.
[00:31:42.953] Kent Bye: Yeah, that was fun just because it was modulating the music, but also it was like, oh, I want to try to get to this location. And then it was a matter of diving in the water and then trying to like jump in. Oh, it's a dead end and they have to go this way. So yeah, this other exploration moment. And there was another world that seemed like it was really darkly lit and kind of going through kind of mood light. I don't know if that's the one that we haven't talked about yet or if that we've already talked about that one.
[00:32:07.571] Peter Adams: Yeah so that one I think is one stop where you start in kind of this grassy field with little kind of sky bridges going to different houses. In the middle of this one my way of transitioning was to fragment the screen so you're kind of half in one environment half in the other. And I think a lot of people get a little bit confused while it's happening. Hopefully they stick with it and see how it ends up, where the fragments of the screen that you were looking at coalesce into your new environment and then drop to the floor and you're fully in the next environment, which then also lets you float up and down with the music. Eventually you float all the way up into yet another room that leads you out into this bridge, you know, kind of surrounded by thick black lines, kind of like you're in the middle of a web.
[00:32:55.638] Kent Bye: yeah was there any other of the other experiences that we didn't talk about yet okay that was it yeah i think we covered it yeah okay yeah well i think overall you know one thing i would say is that it'd be nice to have like a mode that you could choose as to whether or not you wanted to do the chill random mode or the more locked mode to systematically explore everything because that was probably like the most frustrating thing was to try to like I mean, you also said you wanted to have people puzzle and figure stuff out. But if there is an option to be like you don't want to have to bother with the puzzle and just kind of like go into your favorite world and do it through the locomotion rather than because you do have a text with the name. But it's something to consider because that was that was just personally one of my frustrations is like wanting to see everything and then being blocked by that design decision of not being able to like fully explore everything.
[00:33:41.075] Peter Adams: Yeah, I think that I didn't realize that that would be more of an issue with VR. Because when you play it on a traditional setup, you know, you can just click that levels button and, you know, refresh it and jump around that way. So yeah, that does make sense for VR to have it a little bit more predictable. There was a time when I actually had signs out front of each level. And so that would also help. But I thought that made it look a little bit too cluttered. So that is something I'm still working on is how to get people to kind of identify which portal to go down. Yeah.
[00:34:10.262] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah. Cause I mean, some people may see that it's repeating and they're like, Oh, I've seen everything. And then they don't see the rest of the album and you and the music and worlds are so good that, you know, I just make sure that people see all the things. So you're showing it here at South by Southwest and you know, had you had any other public exhibitions of this or was it released online? I'm just trying to get a sense of like when it came out and then what's been some of the reactions so far, both online as well as here at South by Southwest.
[00:34:35.342] Peter Adams: Yeah, so this has been a good project in that I released it back when I just had the one level black cassette. So that was like two and a half years ago or so. So it's been online this whole time. It's just been kind of growing. I've been adding more things to it. Just in the last year, I did get into a couple other festivals. There was the Five Hours Festival in Toronto and then the Aesthetica Film Festival in York, England. So it was those two. And then I saw, oh, South by Southwest has XR stuff. I should apply to that. And here I am.
[00:35:07.027] Kent Bye: What's been the reaction so far from folks?
[00:35:09.209] Peter Adams: It's been really positive. You know, I really had no idea what to expect. I think it helps that you can do my experience in bite-sized pieces because, you know, there's so much to see here. There's so much cool stuff. People are kind of like really wanting to like get around and see as much as they can. So when I tell people, you know, this, you could just do like a four or five minute, do one of the levels and get a sense of it. so we've had a lot of throughput a lot of good reactions a lot of nice comments about the music i think people and this happens to me too so i'm not you know angry about it it gets overwhelming in vr like all the especially the ones where you move up and down so sometimes people can only handle a couple levels and they need to like take it off and they say that was super cool but i'm just it's a little bit overwhelming so uh overall really good response i'm super happy that i came
[00:35:53.964] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so I came across the website for your project, actually looking at the Viveverse Discord. And I was like, oh, wait, this project's actually at South By, so I can go ahead and experience it. So is Viveverse something that you're also considering potentially doing a port over into getting some of these same levels working on that platform?
[00:36:11.843] Peter Adams: Yeah, so Vyverse contacted me after seeing this project at 5Rs and they've commissioned me to do a new experience for their platform. So that's actually what I'm currently working on. I'm in the middle of it. I should be finished up here in the next month or so. It's a similar experience to what's on my current sites. It'll be a new musical track and a new experience to walk through. The only difference is it'll be hosted with Vyverse. So I'm really excited to have that work and to be finishing that up and releasing it on their platform.
[00:36:41.294] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's exciting to see that there's lots of different artists from different platforms, refugees from other platforms, but also a lot of world creators and builders, and also the web community, since they're using, by default, they're using Play Canvas, but they also said that they have support for 3GS. And so are you going to start to learn Play Canvas, or are you just going to stick with their integrations with 3GS?
[00:37:01.829] Peter Adams: I have such a library at this point of stuff that works with 3JS. I'm way more comfortable doing that, so they're very accommodating. They said I can just kind of deliver it in that format, and they can make it work. I agree, Play Canvas looks super cool, and I might investigate that down the line, but for this project and probably the next few, I'm just really happy with 3JS. I love working with it. I think I can do exactly what I want to do with it, so I'm going to stick with that for the time being.
[00:37:28.433] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's cool just to see that they have support for both, because usually these platforms would only have one or the other. So Play Canvas, they have core support. 3GS, they're integrating. I didn't hear any mention of Babylon.js, but maybe in the future they have that as well. But yeah, it seems like it's a really exciting platform for artists like yourself to be able to experiment and push the limits. So I'm really excited to see some of the different projects that are shown there. And also, I think people may have been sleeping on the open web and WebXR for a long time. There is a dynamic that Safari hadn't released any support at all for WebXR. And so now that there's support within the Vision OS, it's at least a start. And I didn't have a chance to actually try it on my Apple Vision Pro, but have you had a chance to try it on Safari and Apple Vision Pro at all just to see if it works at all?
[00:38:13.712] Peter Adams: I have not, so I've only used it on the MetaQuest 2. I hope it would work on that, but I haven't verified it. We've had a few people come through at the festival asking, run on this or run on this, and I just say, you know, if it has a web browser, it should work, but I haven't verified that on all the devices.
[00:38:30.293] Kent Bye: Yeah, the difference is that a lot of the web browsers are Chromium-based, and so any Chromium-based browser should work. But with Safari and WebKit, their support isn't always as robust. And so I'll try it out before I publish this interview, just to give it a little kick in the tires and see how it runs. So yeah, well, anything else that you're kind of working on next? It sounds like you still got the day job of the web developer. And this is a new outlet for your music. And it's really great to hear that you got a commission. So there's a way that you're getting hybrid funding for both your development and your music. So I'm just curious where you want to take it all here in the future.
[00:39:05.478] Peter Adams: Yeah, there's a lot of avenues. You know, there's the potential for other musicians to want to have a kind of interactive music video. So that's, you know, one avenue. I'm not really sure how much I'm looking to monetize this. Obviously, it would be great to like do this as a full time job. But I also kind of like the freedom that goes with, you know, not having to worry about how is this going to make money and kind of just doing it as a passion project. So I'm kind of torn in both directions. Like there's definitely some avenues I could see this being a more commercially viable avenue, but maybe I'll just keep getting commissions from divers and that'll be awesome. And I'll just keep doing what I want that way.
[00:39:40.931] Kent Bye: Have you had a chance to see the art of change piece?
[00:39:43.553] Peter Adams: Yes, they're right across from me and they have a great project. I love how we're both kind of approaching the same idea, like visualizing music. Both I think are super successful at doing it, but very different experiences, I would say.
[00:39:58.683] Kent Bye: That was one of my favorite pieces from Venice this past year. Just to see those two different approaches. There hasn't been a strong tradition of people who are, let's say, paying money to watch music videos. I can't think of an example of when I've paid just to watch a video about music because there's just the idea that there's other ways of monetizing it through... album sales touring it's like more of a marketing context under which that it's given away for the masses to enjoy for free so yeah but as we move forward it's like at what point do you decide that the immersive quality of these other elements does it become something that you want to support so it feels like we're still in this weird interim phase where it's great that you're doing it as a passion project but in order for you and others to continue to really have it grow then this is one of the areas where I don't think that the market has necessarily developed into what that value exchange necessarily would be and I think it's a long kind of history of musicians Kind of being on the frontier of technological innovation and other things, but also having other technology companies come in and create, let's say, not so favorable economic environments for musicians to make a living doing that. So I don't know if you have any reflections on the larger context of what it means to be a musician today, and if you see any pathways that give you hope for where things might go in the future.
[00:41:25.683] Peter Adams: Yeah, I think it's always been difficult to be a musician, but I think it's especially hard today the way everybody kind of relies on Spotify. And, you know, their streaming payouts are pretty dismal for people who don't have millions of streams. You know, when I started, I was at least able to sell CDs so I could like play a show, sell some CDs, at least have enough to like pay rent for the month from that. And partly it's just because I'm not performing anymore, so I'm not really getting out there like I used to. So I don't have expectations that I should be totally making a living from Spotify streams. But there is just such a frenetic competition for ears, for listening. And it's like, how do you get people to value this enough to pay money for it? I mean, do you just have to get your song on a commercial? Do you have to get some kind of corporate sponsorship? You know if you're not just like touring all the time and you know exhausting yourself that way it's very hard to see what the environment looks like for making a living as a musician. So this is yeah it's been kind of like this has been my way to promote music but also I'm not really expecting for that income to pick up to a substantial level where I could just do that for a living.
[00:42:34.929] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential for this type of intersection between immersive art and music might be and what it might be able to enable?
[00:42:45.513] Peter Adams: I think there's a lot of potential for it. I think this is such a new technology. People are still kind of learning what it can do, what it's capable of, what it's best at doing, what it's not good at doing. It's very much like cinema in 1900 or video games in the 80s, kind of this just... emerging art form that people see potential in. Not everybody has used, not a lot of people have been exposed to it. So there's really, I would, I'm in no position to predict where it's going to go, but I think it is exciting. I think there's a lot of potential for it.
[00:43:18.146] Kent Bye: Right. So anything else left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:43:24.051] Peter Adams: I just like to say I am thrilled to be a part of this festival. I feel like when I first got the acceptance, I was excited. And then when I saw kind of the scope of the expo and like the other kinds of productions that would be here, I got a little bit overwhelmed. Like, am I really going to be part of, you know, these incredible content creators that have been doing this, you know, kind of professionally. But I felt very welcomed and I feel super at home here. Everybody's been very friendly and I'm so happy to have been accepted. Yeah.
[00:43:53.004] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, I think it fits right in. It was one of my, certainly one of my favorite music experiences that are new that I saw this year. And yeah, I just really enjoyed going through and playing through this and just the way the rising and falling of tension of a song and how that is mirrored and the way that you're modulating the space through different shaders and transitions in the world. It's open in a world enough where you can't always predict where people are going to be, but there are some basic timings that you have that have a good probability that they're not going to get to the other side of the bridge and everything explodes as an example. So there's just some really beautiful timed moments that allow me this freedom of exploration and serendipity that then get tied back into the music and Yeah, I just had a really powerful experience and really enjoyed exploring all the worlds that you created. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast to share a little bit more about your process and how it all came to be. So thank you.
[00:44:44.127] Peter Adams: Thank you for having me. It was great talking to you.
[00:44:46.325] 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 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 voicesofvr. 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.
