I spoke with Kaerun about being featured in Madame Kana‘s documentary about him called a Dutchman in Virtual Japan | A VRChat documentary as a part of my Raindance Immersive 2025 coverage. Kana also previosly made a short doc about Kaerun’s VR photography called Kaerun, event photographer on #vrchat. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So today's interview is with Kay Roon, who's a Dutch photographer who is being featured within a short film documentary by Madame Kana. It's called A Dutchman in Virtual Japan. So Madame Khanna, I featured previously, and she's a really great documentary filmmaker who's been producing some really solid documentation of different aspects of virtual culture within VRChat. So definitely recommend checking out my interview with Madame Khanna from last year. And I wanted to do an interview with her main subject of K-Room, just because I've met K-Room and run into him all the time. He's always at these different events, taking photos. And there was a previous documentary that Madame Khanna did on K-Room, specifically around the event photography that he's been doing within VRChat. That piece is called K-Room Event Photographer on VRChat. Very clear title in terms of what it's about. And then this piece is called The Dutchman in Virtual Japan, which is focusing more on K-Room's relationships and friendships and connections that he's been making over the years within the context of the Japanese side of VRChat. And so he's in the Netherlands and been a longtime fan of Japanese culture and anime. And so within the context of VRChat, he ends up making a lot of these different friends and connections to the music community and different aspects of the virtual culture within Japan. And so the documentary does a really great job of just kind of showing that. So I definitely recommend checking out the video first and then unpacking more aspects of his relationship to Japan here later. in this conversation. And again, the themes of Japan and what's happening in Japan is going to be featured in the next couple of episodes as well, specifically around like this Yamaha Synchro technology that because Japan is so small, they have this special technology that is on the small island of Japan that allows them to have like very low latency connections audio wise. So people can do live music collaborations, like live jazz. And so that'll be The next episode of 1639, we'll be talking to EMN Records and some of the different live jazz performances that they're doing in the context of VRChat. But this conversation with K-Run is just giving a broad overview of his journey into VR and his process of taking photographs within VR and also his connections and relationships that he has with the Japanese community. So, becoming all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So, this interview with Cairn happened on Thursday, July 10th, 2025, and it was happening virtually over Zoom, and as a part of my coverage of Rain Dance Immersive 2025. So, with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:45.624] Kaerun: Hello, my name is Yelakai, aka Cairn, as I'm known as my online moniker, and I am a VRChat photographer, and I mainly photograph... amazing VR experiences, not only VRChat nowadays. I cross to other platforms as well, and I try to capture these wonderful things that people create in VR.
[00:03:06.041] Kent Bye: Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into VR.
[00:03:10.250] Kaerun: Well, I think I started VR when my friend Shell, who's a 25-year-old friend of mine, long friend of mine, like nagged me about like, hey, you should come to VR. And I was like, no, no, I'm not going. I'm way too busy with things. And eventually after a year, I finally bought my headset. He kept nagging me. And I entered a space called VRChat. I'm mostly focused on social VR. And yeah, that's how I kind of found my way into VRChat and got introduced by Shell to the wonderful Japanese side of things in VR, which is apparently very big. And it's kind of a place where a lot of the Westerners don't really know about. So it's kind of like a very close-off space, mainly because of a language barrier, but also a very big cultural barrier as well. And me having experience with the Japanese culture, the language, I kind of adapted into that space and became quickly friends with a lot of people. And I think a lot of these people were super creative, like musicians, particle jockeys. world creators, event organizers. You meet so many interesting people. And I decided that, you know, creativity inspires creativity. So I started to pick up a camera and that's when I started to photograph these beautiful events that people organize, but also the musicians. And later on, I ventured into like world photography. So the beautiful VR worlds that people create. And eventually, well, things went rolling, I guess. Yeah, from there.
[00:04:45.558] Kent Bye: Yeah, I always like to get a bit more context for different types of insights or design disciplines or experience that people are bringing in. So for whatever you're willing to share, I'd love to hear any additional context about your background and if you used photography before or yeah.
[00:05:00.668] Kaerun: Actually, I have not been a photographer in real life. So I've always had a little bit of interest. I have experienced, to give you a little bit of background about me, I've been very interested into Japanese culture when I was like, since my teens. Me and my friends started to organize a big convention in the Netherlands, which is actually now the biggest one. And my friend Shell was also a photographer there. So I kind of started to take interest in people walking around with these cameras, taking these very beautiful shots. But I never really, like, made the step to buy my own camera and, you know, trying it myself. And in VR, all it takes is you can grab the default camera, but you can also install a plugin that costs you like $5. And you have this very advanced camera and tools in your hands. And it's a very interesting journey to discover all of these features and try different things without even having the experience yourself. It's a really nice journey, yeah.
[00:05:58.186] Kent Bye: Well, I know that as people are going into VRChat, there's kind of the public instance realm, and then there's all these other private events. And so as you were starting to crack your way into what's happening in the Japanese scene, what was your strategy for starting to even find some of these different events, but also with the language barrier? What was your approach to try to actually enter into it?
[00:06:18.656] Kaerun: I think my actually real experience with VRChat was actually... I didn't even have a headset, so I installed VRChat and I entered the public lobby. And this was like way before I entered VR. I think I uninstalled VRChat right away after that because that experience was very horrible. And I think it's the experience that most of the people have when they first enter VRChat. It's full of trolls, the public lobbies, full of children slurring things and not a very nice place to be as a normal person. So I immediately uninstalled VRChat after that and until I got my headset pretty much. But to discover these events, this was before the group option was implemented into VRChat. So basically, you had to make your connections in VRChat. So become friends with people. And there's this really nice feature in VRChat where you can see where all the people are at. So if you befriend somebody, you'll know they're at event X or they're at event Y. And that's how I made a lot of friends, pretty much. Used my connection skills that I already had from AnimeCon because I used to be the head of HR. So I'm pretty good at connecting people. And that's how I basically made my way into VRChat, knowing more people, talking to them. And at first, what you do is, because there's this big, very big language barrier. For Japanese people, it's a very huge thing. Like English, it's kind of like, oh, no, let's not do that. So my strategy for that was like, I just used AI to translate what I said. in Discord or maybe on Twitter or on X. And I just would send them messages like that so they didn't even have to do the trouble to translate the stuff. I was doing that for myself and for them as well.
[00:08:02.867] Kent Bye: I know in the context of VRChat, there's a chat box, but there's also the capability to potentially add things to your avatar to be able to help with real-time translation. Maybe you could talk a bit about some of the tools that you use in order to do real-time translation with chat boxes above your head.
[00:08:17.677] Kaerun: Yeah, there's a tool called VRCT, which is basically a tool that allows you to translate any... But what it does, basically, it transcribes your own voice. And with that transcription, you can basically run it through an AI translator to translate it to any language that you want. And you can project that above your head. But there's also nowadays the option to actually transcribe other people as well. So for example, if I had a conversation with somebody, I could just transcribe them and get a rough general idea of what they're saying. You need to have a little bit of knowledge about Japanese and the language itself. So my knowledge about Japanese is about 60% in understanding. And I think those translators actually fill in the gaps that I'm missing. And I use another tool, Kikitan nowadays to actually translate my own voice, which is a little bit faster. to speak back. So the load is a little bit more divided on your PC because VR is very heavy, right? So, and that's how I actually managed to have conversations now with people. It's pretty nice.
[00:09:22.441] Kent Bye: And so was it 60% that you learned? Were you already at that level or was that just from being immersed and having conversations with Japanese people?
[00:09:31.450] Kaerun: It was a little bit worse, of course. I didn't actually meet a lot of Japanese people outside of VRChat before, but I watched a lot of anime, drama, and you pick up things in 20 years of consuming a media, right? But I think helping, it really helps out when you talk to, you know, face-to-face to other people. You learn little quirks of the language. You learn certain words, what you can say, what you can't say, and all those things. And I think it definitely helped me to develop a little bit more in actually understanding Japanese and, you know, speak it a little bit better. Yeah.
[00:10:07.927] Kent Bye: Well, I know that any time you're learning a language, there's a process of listening and understanding, but also speaking, but also writing. And so those can be pretty distinct in terms of the writing. How's your reading and writing of Japanese?
[00:10:20.177] Kaerun: My reading and writing is none. I can't read anything of it. No. Well, I know certain characters. I tried learning hiragana, katakana, and kanji, but this is when I was very young and I decided to throw it away and never look back at it again. So my knowledge of the written Japanese is basically none. So I usually have to run everything through a translator. And there's actually a very nifty tool in VRChat that allows you to spawn a window and you can actually translate what the text says on a piece of, on the wall or something, or an image, or it will translate it back for you. So I don't know what it's called again, but it's very useful when you actually need to read something really quick and you don't really have the time to, you know, take a screenshot, run it on your phone and, you know.
[00:11:06.170] Kent Bye: Is that a prefab that you added to your avatar?
[00:11:08.419] Kaerun: Yeah, it is. It is. Oh, no, actually, no, it's a SteamVR overlay.
[00:11:11.882] Kent Bye: Oh, okay. Yeah. So you do a SteamVR overlay and then it kind of takes a screenshot and then it does a real-time translation.
[00:11:17.106] Kaerun: It takes a screenshot. You do it like this and you stretch it and you project it onto the text and you let it go and it will pop up a text box as an overlay and it will translate what it says.
[00:11:28.655] Kent Bye: Okay, so for listeners, you're kind of making the picture that you use with your hands to make a picture like two Ls.
[00:11:34.040] Kaerun: Yeah, it's kind of like, you grab it like this.
[00:11:36.922] Kent Bye: You form a box with your index finger and your thumb and you kind of stretch it out. You stretch it out. And it takes a picture of that and then it does a real-time translation. Okay. Yeah, what's interesting around that is that it feels like some of the tools that you're using within the context of engaging with the Japanese community, seems like this could be like future augmented reality tools that everybody uses. Definitely. You're kind of in VR using these AR-like tools to augment your experience so you can better communicate.
[00:12:05.547] Kaerun: Exactly, exactly. And I think that's where VR and AR are very interesting, right? Yeah. think the japanese side is kind of like five years ahead of us when it comes to vr and xr things or everything related but i can certainly see this entire platform you know turning into something else as an experience i mean now we all wear these very big bulky headsets but maybe in 20 years i mean they're just the size of your glasses and what can we do with them at that time i mean Will it replace our monitors? Will it replace our televisions? Will it give an experience to elder people who have broken bodies and they can't move again in their elder homes and maybe bring them back into some sort of a social experience for them? There's so many possibilities what you can do with AR and VR. And I find it very interesting.
[00:12:59.963] Kent Bye: Yeah, I've often also said that the Japanese community and VR generally just seems like it's ahead of the curve in terms of the types of technology and the culture. And I look at things like VCAT and what's happening in the live music scene. But from your perspective, what's the other supporting evidence that you have in terms of why are you saying that the Japanese community is five years ahead? Yeah.
[00:13:21.511] Kaerun: I think the way how they handle certain things, certain events. When I look in VR, when an event is organized in, for example, Europe or the United States, or I see a Japanese event, it's the way how these events are being handled is way different. Like it's more on a professional level. And I've been part of those events as well as a team member. And it's super professional. It's also a little bit of corporate. Corporate is starting to leak into places like VRChat. You've got companies like Sunrio, for example, and you've got Hickey, you've got Guggenka, big companies who are putting their money into VRChat as well. And I think VRChat in general as a social platform is greatly ignored in the West. You see Meta trying to push their Horizon platform. You know, for me, it's not it, you know? And I think VRChat is now, nowadays is still untainted by the very big presence of the big corporate, right? So there's a lot of creativity flowing there without any barriers or limitations.
[00:14:25.171] Kent Bye: And so when you say it's more professional, do you mean that artists are actually being sustained by people paying for events? Or do you mean more of like... Actually, they do.
[00:14:33.095] Kaerun: Yeah, some of these are actually paid. And I actually have been paid as well before for a Japanese event as, you know, a public relations for the English speakers. So it's getting there in a professional level as well.
[00:14:46.323] Kent Bye: And then I didn't know if you also meant that it was just like things like starting on time or other things of like what you meant by professional exactly. Yeah.
[00:14:54.116] Kaerun: It's more like, well, how an entire project is being handled as well from A to Z. So I am, my friend Susabi, who works for a company called Ori, he's one of the best managers that I know. And he does everything in a typical Japanese way of arranging things. Like the tiny little details are just noted everywhere. And The timing is super strict. Everything, if something fails, they will switch to plan B. It's super highly professional. When I see, for example, you see it coming up right now. Like you see US events and European events are getting there. Like two years ago, I couldn't imagine that Europeans or Americans would organize these events in VRChat. And nowadays I see they're getting there. They're getting there. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:39.929] Kent Bye: Yeah, most of my exposure to the Japanese scene in VRChat has come through the events that have been curated by Raindance. And this year, when I was talking to curators of Fangs, Maria and Joe, and Fangs was saying that all of the four live music shows were coming out of VRChat. Because they have special technology with the Yamaha sync that allows them to do low latency collaboration. So at what point did you start to really find yourself exploring a lot of these live music events within VRChat? Like what was your entry point into that?
[00:16:11.243] Kaerun: I think, well, it started out when I was first introduced to that musical venue, what I talked to you about. And also in my movie, it's called SLT, Spotlight Talks. And the Japanese use a plugin called Topaz Chat to connect to their worlds. And Topaz Chat allows you to use a tool called Yamaha Sync Room. And I will get into Yamaha Sync Room in a bit. But I think that certain plugin was specifically created for Spotlight Talks, that bar. And now you see it like spread around throughout the entire Japanese community. It's kind of like VRCDN. If people are familiar with VRCDN, it's like a streaming service like Twitch, but specifically for VR. And that's basically the Japanese variant of it, but it doesn't cost any money. It's all donation based. So the Japanese have this advantage that they can play in very low latency because of Yamaha SQL. And it's basically a tool that allows artists to connect to a room and allow them to play like in real time together. And the audio of that, the streaming audio of that plugin, that can be routed through TopazJet into a VRJet world. And if I remember correctly, what people were saying, like you got artists like Sheena Baabab, during COVID, they couldn't go anywhere. So it kind of made its rise back in those days. So they started using VRChat and that's how they got that system implemented in all of those worlds. And they have a plus on us because they can play with low latency. You cannot imagine somebody from Europe, for example, somebody in the Netherlands playing with somebody in Spain, or maybe somebody from the US East Coast and West Coast. You can't really imagine that because there's too much latency to actually have it synced up. And pretty much SLT was the place where it all started. And that's where I started exploring all of these music events that are all around that big event.
[00:18:01.974] Kent Bye: What's the time difference between where you live in Netherlands and the main time zones in Japan?
[00:18:07.636] Kaerun: In summer, it's seven hours and seven hours behind. And in winter, it's eight hours because winter time. And I used to be able to manage it pretty well because I was like coming home from work at like 4 p.m. because I would work early shifts. And I would just hop in in the middle of the event when people were already having a good party. And I would just hop in into VR when I got home. And I could enjoy the final hours of an event. And that's how I basically rolled into it. And you get to talk, you get to know a lot of people. And usually the weekends. Usually the weekends are very nice. I think the Pacific time zone actually has it the worst for the Japanese time zone. I think, yeah.
[00:18:52.378] Kent Bye: Yeah, that's where I'm in. It makes it a little bit difficult. It's like super early or super late. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, Maramkana did a whole documentary about you that was featured at Ring Dance. And that's in part why we're speaking, because there was a lot of great profiling of your journey into the Japanese community. And so maybe just talk a bit about how that documentary project came about.
[00:19:12.905] Kaerun: Oh, well, we actually did a little project before that, a year before. I know Madame Cana. I met Madame Cana, I think, three years ago during Raindance. And, well, me being a photographer and Madame Cana being a filmographer, we pretty much high-fived each other every time that we met. And I am a Twitch streamer as well. So on Twitch, I stream VR chat worlds. Like, I showcase these worlds. But I'm kind of dropped by a couple of times. And eventually she contacted me because I became an ambassador for a virtual market. And she was like, yo, Kayvan, can we make a documentary about you and your photography? And I was like, yeah, sure, why not? But let's do it. Let's have some fun. And that's when we did the first documentary, which is more about photography in general than, you know, about me. And I think she was so intrigued with what I was doing and with the people that I was talking and the connections that I have that she was like, yes, I want to do more. But we shelved the idea a little bit. We put it into a freezer for a couple of months because she was working on other stuff and I had my own things. And I think around somewhere about... November last year, we finally put it back out of the freezer and started filming, arranging things and yeah, and started filming.
[00:20:29.966] Kent Bye: Nice, yeah. It's a real great profile of some of your, you know, I think it's more around this documentary, more of your connections in the Japanese community, more so than your photography. I think for me, the previous piece was more specifically around the photography itself.
[00:20:43.552] Kaerun: Yeah, it's, well, I think it's not my photography that actually stands out. It's more like the connections that you make, the meaningful connections that you make in VR chat. And I honestly do care a lot about these artists, about their well-being as well. And... You just create genuine bonds and friendships throughout VRChat. And it doesn't really matter where you're from and what language you speak. You just feel each other. And I think that's a wonderful thing to make friends from all over the world.
[00:21:11.581] Kent Bye: Yeah, I did notice that your name came up a number of times while people were going through their awards accepting speeches and getting shout outs and things because you would often be taking photos of their projects and just helping to document. And I think anytime people are working on art, a big process is documentation and you're there kind of helping to document everything.
[00:21:30.381] Kaerun: Yeah.
[00:21:31.182] Kent Bye: In the documentary, you said that the first year that you're hanging out in the Japanese community, that you spent a lot of time as a mute, meaning that you weren't really speaking all that much. And so maybe you just talk around that transition from just being an observer and being more of an active participant and how the camera was maybe an icebreaker for you to start.
[00:21:48.750] Kaerun: It was an icebreaker. Yeah, it was certainly an icebreaker for me. Like I said, inspiration, you know, you get inspired by creativity and creativity. I really wanted to do something. And my friend Shell, he was already taking photos. He was already pretty known as one of those photographers. But he became ill, like physically ill. So I decided to take over his camera progress or his role and do it for him. That's how it pretty much started.
[00:22:18.202] Kent Bye: And what I would do during an event, I would take a- Just to clarify, when you said you took over the camera for him, was that meaning that you were shooting a live event and it was being live streamed? Or what do you mean by that?
[00:22:30.366] Kaerun: Just shooting photos of an event. Because there's a couple of types of photography. We'll go into that later. But Shell was just shooting photos for an event. And he would give the photos to the artists, to the event organizers. But he became too ill to actually do it. And that's when I basically picked up the camera and started doing it. And I got so much fun out of that, that it kind of became more and more and more. And as you make those connections with people, you eventually, you start to talk. You start to talk to people and you start to create these wonderful connections and bonds.
[00:23:06.940] Kent Bye: Yeah, maybe you could talk a bit about the different cameras that are available within VRChat, because I know there's a prefab that you can buy.
[00:23:12.505] Kaerun: Oh, there are so many different cameras, yeah. Well, nowadays, I mainly use the default VRChat camera. It became so good. When we started out at first, it was kind of like limited. But nowadays, you have a dolly cam. You have so much different options on the default VRChat camera. but i use also a tool by vrc lens by hirabiki which is a prefab which you can install in your avatar and you can add a custom camera model to it as well And it allows me to fly it as a drone. And you can already fly a drone in VRChat, but everybody will see it. And the VRC lens drone, nobody can see it. So I can fly unintrusive to an artist, like just in front of them. They won't even hear the clicking sound anymore. And it's just a very nice way to take photos as well. The drone kind of flies like with movement control. So I can actually control the movement with my hands, which is very nice, which you can't really do with the VRChat default camera. So I can make these very nice angled shots, but also when filming, because later on I started doing videography as well, I can fly a drone like how you would fly a drone in real life, like almost, but more precise because you have precise controls with your hands. So you can really steer your drone very nicely like that. And there's more tools. There's virtual lens too, which the Japanese use a lot. For me, it's, I don't know, it's a little bit different. I prefer VRC lens a little bit more. It has more options. And there's plenty of other cameras. There's the fisheye lens, which allows you to zoom in your target and make like a fisheye effect. There's integral cam, which I know it's more like shutter speed, which allows you to control shutter speed in your camera and make these beautiful pieces of art. I haven't mastered that camera yet because I just recently got it for my birthday. So I still have to experiment a little bit with it. But mostly PRC lens and VRChat default camera are my tools of, yeah. and little post processing as well.
[00:25:10.560] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's interesting to think around the conceits that the phone cameras started with. Like, for example, it would always have a click at the very beginning of phone cameras. And then eventually they have the ability to turn that off. And within VRChat, I've noticed that I will tend to just turn down the UI sounds because that will eliminate the phone clicks. I don't know if that's just like what everybody is doing these days. It's just turning down the UI sound. Because otherwise, if you're in an event, then... you'll hear other people's clicks. So I'm wondering how you navigate that if people feel annoyed.
[00:25:45.475] Kaerun: I actually had a situation like that during SLT. This is when I first, like my first month as a photographer there. And I was not using VRC lens back then. So I was really flying my little camera in front of them and constantly like taking, trying to take the perfect shot, but not only like taking one photo. No, you take 10 photos after each other. And Not only the artists heard the click, but also the people around you that surround you hear the click. So I think somebody poked me like, hey, sorry to say. This was just after an update that I think they changed the sound system that the click was very loud after that. So people started to notice that I was taking like 50 photos in a span of 10 minutes or something. And they were like, was this there before, right? And I kind of scratched my head because when you go into the Japanese community, you kind of be like, you blend it. You kind of be like, be like a Japanese. In Rome, do as the Romans do. In Japan, do as the Japanese do. So you try to be like part of the group and be as intrusive as you can be. But the cliques, of course, they kind of... made a little bit of a noise, and I was very worried after that. But I think they all accepted it because there were more photographers over there, also in the Japanese community.
[00:27:02.236] Kent Bye: Or they just turned down their UI sound down.
[00:27:04.620] Kaerun: Probably. We later, we did that, of course, yeah.
[00:27:09.195] Kent Bye: Yeah, I mean, people who are new coming in, they may not know that. So I tend to take a number of different photos too. And I was more self-conscious of it when I was hearing my own clicks. But once I turned it down, then I was like, I'm just assuming, I'm hoping that other people know that trick.
[00:27:24.848] Kaerun: You see, everybody takes photos now. It's so easy. Everybody just picks out a camera and they start clicking and... It's such a powerful tool nowadays and so easy to access and so many options. It's a simple tool, but it takes a while to master. It has so many options.
[00:27:41.049] Kent Bye: Well, there's another interesting aspect of like here in the United States, if you're out on the sidewalk, it's considered to be public and you're in a public space and you can take photos. And I don't know if the rules are similar around the world, but there's basically like public and private spaces where it's okay to take photos of anybody versus like when you're in a private space, you tend to want to get consent. And I noticed that there's a catchphrase that you have where you ask people, can I take your photo?
[00:28:05.479] Kaerun: Can I take your photo? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:28:07.560] Kent Bye: And so I'm wondering how you like navigate that, whether or not in some situations you just go ahead and take the photo without asking, or if you try to always ask.
[00:28:15.404] Kaerun: It depends on where I am. If I do specific photography for an event, I will just take the photo because they know they will get, you know, they know the photographers are walking around there. But if I go to a public space, like say the Japanese version of the Black Cat, I will always ask. Because some of these avatars feel very personal to people. Like they're like, they're virtual selves. So it feels very personal. So I always try to ask them before, even in public space, like, hey, can I take your photo? And if they say yes, I will take it. And later we'll try to send them if I have their contact. Yeah. So real life rules applying to Yaroslavl.
[00:28:56.727] Kent Bye: How do you typically share your photos with these people? Is it through Discord channels, Twitter?
[00:29:01.490] Kaerun: Discord, X, usually X. The main platform for Japanese is X. And no matter how much dirt there is on X, they will never leave X, pretty much. They will always be in Twitter X. And some of them have migrated over to Blue Sky, but most of them are on X. So when I get to know people better, I usually do it through Discord. I add them on Discord and I send them a photo. sometimes google drive as well if it's like a big event lots of photos and i want to share everything with the event organizer i just give them my google drive link and they can fetch it from there yeah and that's how we share
[00:29:36.158] Kent Bye: In terms of like the ratio between how many photos do you take versus how many do you end up sharing or public? Like what percentage never see the light of day?
[00:29:44.601] Kaerun: I think about 80% I throw away. It's just garbage. And 20%, I think, yeah, 20% I keep. So I don't know if you, you were to Rainland last year, right? Did you visit the Taiko Takumi dance event, which is the drums and the fire dancing? I believe so, yeah. Yeah. During that event, I usually take 4,000 photos throughout the entire event. That's an extreme, right? Nowadays, when I do an event, it's like, if it's two hours long, 500, 2,000, depending on what kind of event it is. If it's dancers, more photos, a lot of photos, because it's very hard to capture a dancer. Is it a music event? Then it's a little bit easier, depending on what people are using. If they use face tracking, for example, it's already a little bit tougher because people see their eyes and face moving, and it's very easy to take a very bad shot of somebody. Right.
[00:30:36.545] Kent Bye: Right. If their eyes are like not.
[00:30:37.886] Kaerun: If their eyes are like half closed or like mouth. Yeah.
[00:30:42.630] Kent Bye: Interesting. You said in the movie that, you know, sometimes you would like to finish an event and then go home and try to edit by the time that the Japanese community were waking up. And so what's your general goals for the turnaround? Yeah.
[00:30:54.804] Kaerun: Well, I think, let me tell you a little bit about my workflows. I think the seven, eight hours time difference actually works in favor for me because usually events start about like 4 p.m. for me and they end about 5, 6 p.m. So I would finish an event, have my dinner, and then I would start editing. And my Japanese friends are, they're all in bed. So I started editing the photos and I sent them through Discord and the morning they wake up, they have their photos and I'm in bed. So they get instantly pulled back into that, like that little memory of the previous evening. And I think that's one of the goals for me, like to capture those precious memories they had, those experiences. And when they wake up and they have to go to work again or the real life stuff, they look at the photo again. Oh, and they get that warm, fuzzy feeling again that they had the evening before. Yeah.
[00:31:45.427] Kent Bye: I know that in VRChat, there's quite a number of people that I know within the context of these communities that have their own custom avatar, their own identity. Yeah. Some people, like I just wear a public avatar that I feel very connected to. It's just like the cosmic man or the cosmic person.
[00:31:59.681] Kaerun: The cosmic man, yeah.
[00:32:00.321] Kent Bye: The cosmic person that's from the polygonal mind did the 100 avatars and did a number of other types of sets that are just public avatars. But some people sometimes use the same avatar. And so...
[00:32:11.151] Kaerun: me too i i'm no exception yeah i always use my my own model but it's not my own model i just bought it on booth and i modified it but vrchat actually does to you does it to a normal person it creates it makes a half a game developer of you so you need to learn unity you need to learn blender and you start modifying your avatar and uh you know to your heart's content and you basically become half a game developer
[00:32:35.592] Kent Bye: And so the people that you're taking photos of, do you think that the majority or nearly all of them are usually having some sort of custom avatar?
[00:32:43.178] Kaerun: Yeah, they do. They do. I think about 80% of the people that I meet have their own customs, like their own modified avatars. Because like I said before, a lot of these avatars feel very personal. It's their alter ego in virtual reality and they take it very seriously.
[00:33:00.128] Kent Bye: Well, I know that whenever I would go to family events, my dad would always like to take photos, like a group photo. And I feel like that's a part of the VRChat culture, which is like at almost every single event that I go to, there's always like a photo. Yeah, there's always group photo, yeah. Can you talk about the group photo culture within VRChat? Because it's something that's unique in the sense of like...
[00:33:23.217] Kaerun: I don't know why people actually do it. I mean, in real life, we actually don't really do it. Well, maybe during a musical performance, you know, where the artist does a pan shot back from the stage, right? But I think about 99% of the time, we always take a group photo after an event is over. And I don't know what it is. Maybe it's a personal memento for people. You know, I've been to that event and it was so much fun. It's a good question. I always wondered that myself as well. But I'm usually the one taking the shot, so...
[00:33:53.956] Kent Bye: Well, you know, being in a public avatar and also I feel like it's sometimes like there's almost a prioritization of that group photo rather than the emergent social dynamics or the discussions that happen. It feels like it takes everyone's attention and to do this one thing. And I understand that some people want to have that photo as a memory, but it also it feels like everything is prioritized around that. It just feels like something that I think.
[00:34:16.994] Kaerun: quite understandable. It's more like a social thing as well. We're in social VR in VRChat and it kind of connects people as well. So everybody's doing the same thing. Everybody's posing for that photo with their hands like this or this or you name it. But it's kind of a feeling like we're part of this group. like we were part of this and uh it creates a nice bond and after the group photo usually people start chatting to each other and at random and it's a nice way actually after that to make good conversation with people that enjoy the show as well or maybe with the artist how many group photos do you think you've taken Different events. Oh, that's a good one, Kent. I don't know. I've been photographing for three years and I keep about 60,000 photos every year. So I don't know. Oh, wow. Okay. How many gigabytes or terabytes of photos do you have now? According to my Google storage, I'm at about three to four terabytes right now. Okay. Yeah.
[00:35:12.148] Kent Bye: Do you save every photo or are you throwing away that 80% and just... The 80% I just throw away.
[00:35:17.913] Kaerun: Okay. I could save everything, but that would take... No, I can't afford so many hard disks or Google Drive space. I think it's worth keeping the photos that you really like. And later... I was recently browsing through every single one of them again because I have... Part of my work being shown in Kanazawa, Japan at the end of this month in a real life museum as part of an exhibition. And it's very nice and cool to see where you started with photography and where you are right now, because you can see your timeline. Like, how did you improve as a person, as a photographer? But how did avatars go through the years and how did venue change? And it's a very interesting thing to see how things are progressing throughout the years.
[00:36:04.261] Kent Bye: Well, the very early days of VRChat, they actually had custom integration where you could like upload the photos that you were taking and then it would actually go onto a third-party service. I think they disconnected that at some point, but there was like a pretty vast archive of the early days of virtual culture. And so, but now that that's not like an automated service, I think it's folks like yourself who are helping to archive and preserve the culture within VRChat by taking these photos. And so... Yeah, just maybe you could elaborate a little bit on, like in the film, there's some exhibitions that you're doing of different photos you've taken. It sounds like you're also having some of your photos being exhibited in museums. So yeah, just talk a bit about what kind of curation some of these exhibits are, if there's events or if there's a story that you're telling.
[00:36:47.788] Kaerun: I think the one that you saw was an event by a person called Beige, who's a beauty photographer. There's actually different kinds of photographers in VRChat. So you have event photographers like me, But you also have beauty photographers and world photographers. And it's all different skill set. So I can't really make beautiful photos, still photos, and turn it into a piece of art. That's not my skill. But a lot of other people do that as well. And he was showcasing his own world. He was like, okay, every photographer that I know gets his little booth and little stall to show a couple of photos. And that's basically where I put my, I just selected a couple of photos on the whim because I ran, I was pretty short on time. So, and I just selected four photos that I really liked and put it over there. But for the exhibition in Kanazawa, it's not the most beautiful photos that I took. It's more like the most relevant photos for the audience in Kanazawa, which are mostly Japanese people. Because I take photos in the Western community as well. So I selected it based on, does it have significance to the people that are going to watch that exhibition?
[00:37:56.977] Kent Bye: Have you thought about publishing a book or having any other types of ways of aggregating?
[00:38:01.339] Kaerun: I really do love to, would want to do that. But I think here in Europe, I think people are not ready for it yet to see it as a piece of art. If I have to go through my own dad, for example, he doesn't take it seriously, but I do. I mean, I remember telling him about that movie and he didn't take it very seriously. And it makes you wonder, right, how long it will take for the general public to catch on to it. And it's probably when things are starting to turn glass-sized and it starts replacing your television. That's the time when things are taking a turn, I think. And we are just all pioneering right now.
[00:38:42.022] Kent Bye: Well, I know there's some like Instagram channels that have portraiture of different people and they tell the stories like the humans of New York is something that comes to mind. There's a photo of someone and it tells a little story. Have you thought around having more of a public facing documenting the personalities and stories of people?
[00:38:59.271] Kaerun: Not per se. I am usually more interested in capturing an event and a memory than actually following a person around. That's another piece of skill. That's also, it takes a little bit of skill to take a photo and let people think what's going on in a photo. It's kind of like... You can draw, as an illustrator, you can draw a very nice illustration, but it takes skill to actually have people stand in front of it and look at it and think, well, what does it mean? Does it have a story? And for me, I'm just... Very good at capturing people's memories, but not telling a story.
[00:39:38.044] Kent Bye: Okay. And, and so you also mentioned that you do some world photography. We've been talking a lot of the portraiture that you've been doing, but what's the context in which that you want to start to document a world? Is this a world hop that you go on your own or is this, you know, is something that you're going on a tour or like when, when does that usually come up that you start to take photos of worlds?
[00:39:55.422] Kaerun: I think, well, I wanted to improve my photography. That's when it all started, actually. I was already pretty good at photographing artists, stages and artists, but I was like very bad at taking these composite shots or beautiful shots of worlds. So I just started to take photos of worlds like that I really liked. And I was thinking like, okay, let's just post them online and see if people would like them. And so I started to post them on X and later on Blue Sky as well. And actually people started to like them. And I decided to know, let's just post three to five worlds every day and see the beautiful places of VRChat. And I got very invested into what people create and the creators itself. Because only then I was actually starting to talk to world creators as well. People like Coquelicots, Chopow, Quartonix, the giants of VRChat, Finns as well, a couple of times. And you start asking, OK, what's your general idea behind a world? Does it do certain items in a world or maybe specific lighting or specific said does it have a special meaning to you and it's something i find very intriguing because i think a couple of weeks ago i went to a world and it was a very nice cozy world like nice and tranquil and there was this i think like this vase on the table with a flower and i can't honestly remember which world it was but and then i started to read like the description of that place And it was like, this is dedicated to my fallen friend. And then, you know, that world gets a different load. It gets a totally different meaning. And I think it intrigues me as somebody who lost people. Like, what's the driving force behind the creativity of certain people?
[00:41:45.072] Kent Bye: Well, you mentioned that you were like an ambassador to VCAT. And maybe just talk a bit about what does that mean in terms of being an ambassador to VCAT?
[00:41:52.998] Kaerun: Yeah. Well, it's just me promoting virtual market. Well, for people who don't know what virtual market is, virtual market is like the biggest indie market space for digital items like assets, avatars, clothing, world props, you name it. The things that you can see on Gumroad and Booth and that you can use on your avatar on your in-worlds. And I think what got me into VCAT is like the first time I visited, I saw these beautiful, magnificent little booths where people just stole out their items. And you can pretty much see the creativity like from people in there. And I think they started out, there was already a Japanese ambassador site. And then they were like, okay, we're going to do the international ones. I'm like, yes, I want in on this. I want to showcase these beautiful creations that people make on my Twitch stream, for example. And also photograph these events. People are having fun. I think the two VCAT events every year are like one of the biggest happenings that are going on in VRChat. Well, VCAT is just around the corner. I mean, it starts this weekend again. So it's going to be a very busy time again. Yeah.
[00:42:59.622] Kent Bye: What's your plans for your coverage, event coverage? Do you just go into the world or are there specific events you're going to help cover?
[00:43:06.310] Kaerun: For me, I'll try to hop in as many events as I can to also capture those memories. So there's going to be a couple of events organized in the American and European countries. time zones but also a Japanese one so during the day I will probably hop into a Japanese event maybe just a random Japanese streamer you know I know a couple of VTubers as well I just join in there and I'll just hide in the background and take some photos for them and of course give them to Hickey as well but I think I will also just stream the event like my Twitch channel we'll go through each of these worlds and we'll go to the booths and see what people have created yeah Just what they have on offer. Yeah.
[00:43:45.768] Kent Bye: And Maram Kanna's documentary on you, there was a moment where you're talking around becoming like the official photographer for Club Neon. What's that mean in terms of your responsibilities there?
[00:43:55.210] Kaerun: Ah, Cinematic Neon Club. So Cinematic Neon Club is a Japanese formation, a band. And they started out as a, it's a pretty interesting story. I knew the singer for a couple of years. She's called Mercury. And I met her in a bar before and she already knew a little bit of English. And so we started chatting. And later she formed a deal with a producer called Tomatom. He's a very talented producer. And I think they made a song. And Macri later told me, like, that song is actually, it was inspired by you, by your photos. Because I went to a club. It was a rave. And I took photos of there. And she was pretty much inspired to that. And the song is called Rave All Night. And it was pretty much inspired by me. I felt like, oh, I feel very honored, you know. And later, Aya Fuji, the particle jockey. For people who don't know what a particle jockey is, a particle jockey makes wonderful particle effects, makes the world change around you. And basically, whatever you see around you, yeah, that's what a particle jockey does. And I was approached by Macquarie again for the name Cinematic Noon Club. Because, well, they wanted to know if, they gave me a couple of names for the band. I was like, okay, what do you want to do? Well, please, Karen, select the correct one. So I went downstairs to my girlfriend. We sat down, like, okay, which name is the best? And voila, there you have it, Cinematic Neon Club. That's what they're called today. And I remember the V-Cat was going on and they were having like a big performance on the big stage. And this was around the time that I started to do videographing. So like I tried to capture the performance in a video and I think Aya Fujii was very impressed with that. And he was like, do you want to film more? I was like, yeah, sure. Why not? And I started following them around and eventually, you know, I became part of their production team, like as like the hidden member of their team. So I will never appear on the poster, but I will always be hidden somewhere in the darkness with my camera. Yeah.
[00:45:52.116] Kent Bye: Do you have aspirations to turn this hobby of taking photos in VR into like paid gigs or a full-time job?
[00:46:00.041] Kaerun: I wish I could, but I think the industry is just not ready for it. I tried it last year when I was, I was unemployed last year and I tried to find work in the VR space, but it's just not there. At least not in Europe. I know a couple of friends, Japanese friends who actually have paid gigs in VR. They're like, they actually make a living out of VR. And I tried asking them like, hey, how do you do it? But it's so specific for the Japanese side of things. It's just not there yet. And if you really want to have a gig in the XRVR industry, you either have to go with somebody who creates software, a platform, or the hardware itself. That's where you basically end up.
[00:46:40.626] Kent Bye: Well, I know as you were talking about VCAT and Gumroad and Booth that even VRChat itself is, you know, in some ways they've had and featured this collaboration with Hickey and Virtual Market, but they've created this whole external ecosystem of assets and the economy is like totally outside of the platform of VRChat where it's created this amazing ability for people to innovate and sustain an economy outside of itself. But even within the context of VRChat, I think they're
[00:47:08.556] Kaerun: thinking a lot around trying to rein that back in and figure out how do you have the economy- Yeah, you see them right now because, well, VRChat actually needs to generate money right now. They actually need it because I think VRChat has become too popular for its own good. And you see a lot of users coming in and they need to generate revenue right now to sustain themselves. It's either that or it's Big Corporate is going to come in and sweep it up. Either one of those two. And I think they're, I don't know the internals of VRChat, but I think it's, they're about at crossroads right now. So they're trying to generate income from, you know, VRChat Plus and the creator economy and stuff like that. But if it's going to fail, you know, we don't know what's going to happen. Maybe Big Corporate is going to finally going to come, you know, take it over.
[00:48:00.376] Kent Bye: Yeah, it was about a year ago where they had layoff around 30% of their workforce. And so I did have a chance to talk with some folks from VRChat. And one of the things that was interesting where they were talking around how it seems as though like there's the people who have their own avatars and then there's people who want to just have something that looks good without having to spend too much energy. And so there seems to be like two different demographics there of like the people who are the power users are not necessarily the ones who are going to be paying for the avatars.
[00:48:28.965] Kaerun: That creator marketplace, it's not for people like me. I mean, we customize our avatars until we really like it. But let's say John, who comes home from work, you know, has a bad day at work, puts on his VR headset. He's not very technical and he just wants something personal. But not a lot of people have. So he can just click the marketplace and just buy an avatar like that. And he doesn't have to learn Unity, be a game developer. He just wants to have fun with his friends in VR chat. And that's what that creator market is for. for that specific target audience, I think.
[00:49:02.744] Kent Bye: Right. Yeah, so I guess it'll be interesting to see how that continues to play out. Do you have any other interface to the economy within the context of VRChat in terms of either the worlds or other ways of monetizing it?
[00:49:14.778] Kaerun: Well, there is the creator space nowadays where you can buy these VR chat points and you can just invest them into those. I think a lot of people are using Patreon as well for special features and mentions, I think. And I think that's about it, I guess. Well, there's booth. There's always booth. A lot of creators are on booth. For example, my friend Hash, who makes these face tracking modules, he's selling them on Booth and they're very popular and he's being so successful right now, which I am very happy for him because I know he struggled around with it like a year ago. But since face track headsets are becoming the norm now, it's gaining more traction.
[00:49:54.113] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah, it seems like that there's still a split between the economy that's on VRChat and off VRChat. And the power users are all kind of on these other external ecosystems, even the ones that are trying to have classes or whatnot. They might use Ko-Fi to have that because the...
[00:50:13.482] Kaerun: VRChat doesn't really have an avatar creator itself. And if you look at a platform called, for example, Cluster, I don't know if you're familiar with Cluster. It's basically a Japanese competitor to VRChat. It's a lot simpler, but they have an avatar creator in there and it's very easy to use. The interface is intuitive. It's very simple. But also the uploading of a custom avatar, which is done in a VRM file, is so easy to do. And you see a lot of these regular users, the normies, as we call them, just use Cluster because it's a way easier platform for them. And like I said, before all of this marketplace and public avatars, you have to become half a game dev to upload something in VRChat. I found it a very, very difficult thing to do when I first started out. And I needed a lot of help. Yeah.
[00:51:05.126] Kent Bye: Right. Right. Well, I think that's part of the pain points they're trying to address on different fronts. Yeah. Very cool. Well, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and social VR platforms like VRChat might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:51:22.884] Kaerun: Well, VRChat itself, I think in general, social platforms really help to connect people all over the world. It doesn't really matter what kind of politics are going around in the world. It's just a nice way to meet a lot of creative people right now as we speak. VRChat is a place full of creative people. And I think it's a very good way to gain some good connections and to be inspired as well. And I think if I look at the future of XR and AR or XR in general, eventually these monitors that we were currently watching at, they're gone. I think when the technology turns into glass size, things will start to change and people will start to accept this platform. And I've worked in maritime before and I can see the potential, like having a captain on a bridge with glasses, XR glasses on. you know, going through the mist in his boat and he can actually see what's going on around him, what kind of objects are around him. I can see it having potential in surgical. I can see potential in, you know, for the elder. And I truly hope that eventually it will come to that, that it will become this glass side, that you can just put a pair of glasses and it will open up the world for you.
[00:52:33.439] Kent Bye: Nice. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:52:39.414] Kaerun: Well, take up a camera and start photographing now. I'd say if you haven't tried VRChat yet, because I know a lot of people are just doing other things, try VRChat. But try to find the creative spaces in VRChat, not the public spaces, but more the creative spaces. And you'll be amazed at what you see.
[00:52:58.843] Kent Bye: Awesome. K. Rune, thanks so much for joining me here today on the podcast. Yeah, you're welcome. And I really enjoyed Madame Kanna's documentary called Dutchman in Virtual Japan, which debuted at Rain Dance Immersive and then just got published like four days ago. And so I highly recommend people go check that out to get a little more context as you your kind of journey into the Japanese scene and some of the other Japanese artists that are featured there. It is a language barrier that sometimes becomes difficult to cross over. And I really appreciate having events like Raindance to be able to introduce me to some of these different events, but also really enjoyed to see your kind of journeys into these different spaces. And yeah, just to see how you're at this intersection of overcoming some of these language barriers through all these different tools. So yeah, just real pleasure to get a chance to learn a little bit more about your story and to-
[00:53:43.763] Kaerun: thank you so much for having me Kent. Yeah, really. It's been a pleasure. Yeah.
[00:53:48.166] Kent Bye: Awesome. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the voices of your podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast and please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a, this is part of podcast. And so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
