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Voices of VR Podcast
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293 episodes
  • Gathering (79)
  • Social VR (78)
  • Culture (51)
  • Social Change (49)
  • Metaverse (28)
  • BIPOC (23)
  • Virtual Event (20)
  • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (17)
  • Rituals (13)
  • Awards (13)
  • Politics (11)
  • Virtual Beings (8)
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#1012: Decentralized Metaverse combining VR + Blockchain: Towards an Economy of the Imagination with Boost VC’s Adam Draper

by kentbyeOctober 21, 2021

Adam Draper is the founder of Boost VC, which a technology accelerator that has funded over 70 VR companies and over 100 crypto companies since 2012. He's been in a really unique position to understand how blockchain technologies and the more...

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#1009: Curating Immersive Stories & Building WebXR Events with FIVARS Founder Keram Malicki-Sánchez

by kentbyeOctober 15, 2021

The Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories (FIVARS) is holding a hybrid event where the IRL component in LA starts today October 15th, and the virtual festival starts on October 22nd. FIVARS has been curating independent and...

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#1006: Preview of London Film Festival Expanded Selection of Immersive Stories with Ulrich Schrauth

by kentbyeOctober 6, 2021

The London Film Festival Expanded runs from October 6-17 with a total of 18 pieces of immersive stories and art, with 9 of those pieces available remotely via their LFF Expanse art gallery that is available for free on Viveport (with nine...

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#1005: CONTAINER is a Poetic Exploration of Modern Day Slavery through Hyperreal Spatial Installations & 180-degree video

by kentbyeSeptember 7, 2021

Container is a hyperreal 180-degree spatial art installation that explores modern day slavery. Visual artist/visual anthropologist Meghna Singh and documentary filmmaker Simon Wood utilize the shipping container as consistent piece of architecture...

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#1001: Sneak Peak of Venice VR Expanded 2021 + New VRChat Worlds Gallery

by kentbyeSeptember 1, 2021

The Venice VR Expanded portion of the Venice Film Festival opens today, and runs from September 1-19, 2021. I had a chance to talk to the co-creators Liz Rosenthal and Michel Reilhac to get a sneak peak of the 37 immersive storytelling projects with...

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#1000: Voices of VR Retrospective on the Ultimate Potential of Virtual Reality

by kentbyeAugust 28, 2021

Episode #1000 of the Voices of VR podcast is a special, three-hour retrospective featuring over 100 of the best answers I've received about the ultimate potential of VR over the past 7 years. I hope that it serves as a primer on the scope and...

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#995: Breonna’s Garden AR Experience as a Healing Balm to Share Memories of Those You Love with Lady PheOnix

by kentbyeJune 17, 2021

Breonna's Garden is an augmented reality experience that premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival that was created by Lady PheOnix in collaboration with Ju'Niyah Palmer to honor the life of her sister, Breonna Taylor. I found it to be a...

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#992: “Immersive Arcade” Retrospective of UK Immersive Storytelling by Digital Catapult in Museum of Other Realities

by kentbyeMay 7, 2021

The second volume of the Immersive Arcade Showcase featuring four immersive stories from the United Kingdom launches today as DLC within the Museum of Other Realities. The theme of the second volume is Memories & Dreams and features Vestige, Limbo...

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#991: Critiquing Facebook’s Responsible Innovation Principles & Project Aria through the lens of Anthropology & Tech Ethics

by kentbyeApril 30, 2021

Facebook's Project Aria announcement in September at Facebook Connect raised a number of different ethical questions with anthropologists and technological ethicists. Journalist Lawrence Dodds described it on Twitter by saying, 'Facebook will send...

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#990: Sneak Peak of Tribeca Immersive 2021 with Loren Hammonds

by kentbyeApril 29, 2021

The 29 immersive experiences that are a part of the Tribeca Immersive 2021 line-up were announced on Tuesday, April 29. There will be 11 Virtual Arcade experiences available starting on June 9 within the Museum of Other Realities, 5 Storyscape...

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#986: Live Mocap Theater Performance in UE4 with “Dream” by Royale Shakespeake Company & Marshmallow Laser Feast

by kentbyeMarch 24, 2021

Dream was a series of 10 live performances over 8 days that used motion captured actors who had virtual embodiments set within an immersive storyworld of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream powered by the Unreal Engine. This project was a research...

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#984: Live Theater + VR Experiments with Kiira Benzing’s “Loveseat”

by kentbyeMarch 16, 2021

Kiira Benzing's Loveseat was an ambitious fusion of live theater performance with VR technologies that premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2019. They performed live for the audience in Venice while wearing VR headets as their performances were...

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#983: Sneak Peak of SXSW Online XR Program with Curator Blake Kammerdiener Neural Input

by kentbyeMarch 13, 2021

SXSW Online is happening March 16-20, and I had a chance to get a sneak peak of the SXSW Online XR world in VRChat and talk with the chief curator of the SXSW Virtual Cinema program Blake Kammerdiener about the program and special events that he's...

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#982: The Polys WebXR Awards Highlighting the Best WebXR Experiences of 2020

by kentbyeMarch 10, 2021

The Polys WebXR Awards was an awards show on February 20th, 2021 founded by Ben Irwin in collaboration with Sophia Moshasha and Julie Smithson. Irwin wanted to feature a lot of the work that's been happening on the immersive web in the year 2020...

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#981: Worldbuilding with the Guild of Future Architects’ Futurist Writer’s Room: “Traveling the Interstitium with Octavia Butler”

by kentbyeFebruary 23, 2021

One of my favorite pieces at Sundance New Frontier 2021 this year was a series of four open web experiences created as a part of the piece Traveling the Interstitium with Octavia Butler. Born out of The Guild of Future Architects' Futurist Writer...

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#980: Designing Community Worldbuilding Conversations with “Beyond the Breakdown”

by kentbyeFebruary 18, 2021

Worldbuilding and speculative design was a big theme at Sundance New Frontier 2021, and I had a chance to participate in an experience that facilitated a collaborative & deliberative process of worldbuilding that was called Beyond the Breakdown...

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#977: “The Changing Same:” Volumetric Storytelling Innovations, Connecting the Past to the Present with the Cycles of Racial Terror

by kentbyeFebruary 18, 2021

The Changing Same is one of the most ambitious pieces of volumetric filmmaking yet since it combines all sorts of volumetric capture techniques with Scatter's new Depthkit Studio multi-depth sensor set up, photogrammetry, and a fusion of rigged...

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#974: VR Industry Defector Reflects on Google, Owlchemy Labs, Game Dev Culture, Stagnation of Innovation, & Toxic Positivity

by kentbyeJanuary 23, 2021

On January 14, 2021, VR developer Fox Buchele announced on Twitter that he was fired by Owlchemy Labs in 2020, and 'I'm sharing this now because I'm done with this industry. And I don't see myself coming back.' He described being a VR developer as...

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#973: Sundance New Frontier 2021 Sneak Peak + Virtual Film Parties & Gatherings

by kentbyeJanuary 19, 2021

Sundance New Frontier 2021 features 14 immersive experiences that will be accessible via the $25 Sundance Explorer pass starting on Friday, January 29th until Wednesday, February 3, 2021. The New Frontier site will also be hosting virtual premiere...

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#970: Retrospective of 2020 Immersive Storytelling Residency at UNCSA’s METL

by kentbyeJanuary 8, 2021

Note: This is a sponsored content post from the University University of North Carolina School of the ArtsI was a mentor for the UNCSA's Media + Emerging Technology Lab's Immersive Storytelling Residency program in 2020, which was a 6-month program...

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#969: Retrospective of “The Devouring” Epic Horror Adventure, New Social Gameplay in VRChat, & Prefabs Community Tools

by kentbyeDecember 22, 2020

The Devouring is an epic, 5-6 hour horror adventure game within VRChat that launched on August 14, 2020. It quickly went viral in the VRChat community because it was a unique, shared experience that had a vast world to explore, an evocative...

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#968: Virtual Market 5 is an Inspiring, Community-Driven Artist Expo in VRChat with Worldbuilding & Avatar Innovations

by kentbyeDecember 18, 2020

Virtual Market 5 opens today December 18th, 2020 at 6p PST (Dec 19th at 11a JST), and will run until January 10th at 6a PST (11p JST). It will feature over 1500 VR artists and creators in 30+ worlds in VRChat that features avatars, meshes, clothes...

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#961: Reimagining the VR Awards Show as a VRChat World Hopping Adventure with AIXR

by kentbyeNovember 18, 2020

The first VR Awards shows was produced by Academy of International Extended Reality (AIXR) in 2017, and after producing three annual events in London the producers were forced to produce their fourth show in 2020 virtually. After evaluating many of...

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#960: How Burning Man’s 10 Principles Got Translated into VR & AltSpace with Athena Demos

by kentbyeNovember 17, 2020

Athena Demos is the Chief Cultural & Community Officer for Black Rock Creative and Black Rock City VR (BRCvr). I previously covered BRCvr's officially-sanctioned multiverse world in AltSpaceVR for Burning Man 2020 with my conversation with lead...

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#959: Networked Tribalism: Filter Bubbles + AI Algorithms + Political Polarization

by kentbyeNovember 8, 2020

John Robb has a concept of Networked Tribalism, which is a result of the combination of filter bubbles, AI algorithms, and political polarization. Robb is a military analyst who looks at the impact of technology on culture, and he started his Global...

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#957: How FIVARS Festival is Using WebXR to Deliver 360 Video

by kentbyeOctober 29, 2020

I talk with the founder of the FIVARS VR & AR story festival Keram Malicki-Sánchez & WebXR developer James Baicoianu to talk about how the repurposed the open source JanusXR code in order to create a platform to deliver 360 video. It's a pioneering...

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#956: Sneak Peak of Raindance Immersive’s 50 hours of VR selections from Oct 28 to Nov 7

by kentbyeOctober 28, 2020

Mária Rakušanová got her start in the VR industry in 2014 when she was a product marketer for the Gear VR at Samsung. Her job meant that she would watch a lot of immersive content that she would use to market this stand-alone, mobile VR headset. In...

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#952: XR Association Industry Survey & Lobbying Congress on XR Policy

by kentbyeOctober 13, 2020

The XR Association is a non-profit 501(c)(6) trade association with members including Facebook/Oculus, Google, Microsoft, Sony, & HTC. They're focused on general awareness and education, lobbying Congress on XR policy issues, and promoting research...

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#949: My Wife & I Can’t Stop Talking About “Gnomes & Goblins”

by kentbyeOctober 1, 2020

My wife, Wonder Bright, has absolutely fallen in love with the VR experience Gnomes & Goblins. Her mindset and approach to the game was almost totally opposite from my own. While I focused trying to solve the scavenger hunt puzzles within their core...

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#946: “In Protest:” 360° Video of Black Lives Matter Movement, Memorials, & Many Ways to Bear Witness While Black

by kentbyeSeptember 25, 2020

In the aftermath of George Floyd's murder by three police officers on May 25th, 2020, there were Black Lives Matter protests that erupted around the world. Immersive filmmakers Alton Glass and Adam Davis-McGee felt the historic nature of this global...

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#945: Unpacking the Facebook Connect AR Announcements with Doug North Cook

by kentbyeSeptember 25, 2020

Oculus Connect has been rebranded Facebook Connect, and what would have been Oculus Connect 7 is now Facebook Connect 1. Facebook Connect happened on September 16, 2020, and I talked with Doug North Cook on the following day. North Cook is the...

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#940: The Burning Man Multiverse: The Story of Black Rock City VR in AltSpaceVR

by kentbyeSeptember 5, 2020

In 2014, Greg Edwards took photos of all of the work on the Burning Man Playa, and then set out to create a 1:1 scale 3D model of Black Rock City all in virtual reality (BRCvr). He showed a demo on the Google Cardboard to the Burning Man Board in...

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#928: Play Therapy in VR with Virtual Sandtray & Dr. Jessica Stone

by kentbyeJuly 21, 2020

Dr. Jessica Stone is a licensed psychologist and registered play therapist who has been experimenting with integrating technologies into her therapeutic practice specializing in working with children. She and her husband developed a Virtual Sandtray...

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#926: Invoking Double Consciousness with VR & Psychedelics + Navigating the New Screen Deal

by kentbyeJuly 11, 2020

Carl H Smith's work is at the intersection of VR, psychedelics, and esoteric contemplative practices. He's the director of the Learning Technology Research Center at the Ravensbourne University London, co-founder of The Cyberdelic Society, co...

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#925: Cannes XR/Kaleidoscope Development Showcase + Online Exhibitions of Immersive Stories with Tribeca, VeeR, & Positron

by kentbyeJuly 8, 2020

Cannes XR is a part of the Cannes Marché du Film, which is the business side of the Cannes Film Festival. For the past two years, they've collaborated with Kaleidoscope VR to curate a development showcase featuring the creators of immersive stories...

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#924: Tender Claws’ Live Immersive Theater Show “Tempest” Creates a New Fusion of VR Storytelling

by kentbyeJuly 6, 2020

Tender Claws continues to be one of the most innovative studios pushing forward what's possible for immersive storytelling in VR by launching a Tempest, which is a live, immersive theater show within The Under Presents. It's a show that blends the...

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#923: Shola Amoo’s “Violence” is a Provacative Exploration of Race, Bias, Perception, & Agency

by kentbyeJuly 4, 2020

Shola Amoo's Violence is a provocative virtual reality experience that 're-contextualizes the notions of violence by examining it through the lens of state oppression against marginalized groups.' It's difficult to say too much about my experience...

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#921: Highlights from CannesXR Showcases by Tribeca, Kaleidoscope Development, VeeR 360, & Positron with Pola Weiss

by kentbyeJuly 1, 2020

The CannesXR Showcase features over 50 different immersive narrative experiences in the Museum of Other Realities from June 24 to July 3rd, with showcases featuring 12 experiences from Tribeca Film Festival, 12 360 video curated by VeeR, 6...

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#919: Equality and Equity in Emerging Media: Kamal Sinclair’s Making a New Reality Research

by kentbyeJune 6, 2020

The Ford Foundation’s JustFilms program with supplemental support from the Sundance Institute commissioned Kamal Sinclair to do an intensive research project called 'Making a New Reality.' She looked at a number of questions including: 'What is...

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#918: Philosopher Lewis Gordon on Racism, Moral vs Political Responsibility, and Relational Metaphysics

by kentbyeJune 5, 2020

I had a conversation with philosopher Lewis Gordon at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Meeting in January 2019 that really stuck with me. He writes about the philosophy of racism, and takes a very holistic and systemic approach in...

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#916: Educators in VR Meetups & Virtual Conferences

by kentbyeMay 30, 2020

Back in November 2018, Daniel Dyboski-Bryant and Lorelle VanFossen started a regular meetup of Educators in VR within AltSpaceVR. They've been meeting consistently for the past year and a half, and they're currently hosting 5-8 gatherings per week...

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#913: All of Microsoft’s AR & AR Announcements from Microsoft Build with Director Greg Sullivan

by kentbyeMay 20, 2020

There were not a lot of AR or VR announcements that happened during the main keynotes of Microsoft Build 2020, but there were a number of announcements that I was covering as comprehensively as I could in real-time in this Twitter thread. But Azure...

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#912: Virtual Conference Lessons Learned from IEEE VR 2020 + Experiential Design Tradeoffs

by kentbyeMay 9, 2020

On March 6th, 2020, the IEEE VR announced a venue change on their website from Atlanta, Georgia to online in virtual reality for the academic conference set to happen between 22-26 March, 2020. The organizers of the IEEE VR conference had two weeks...

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#911: VTubers & Bridging Japan with France with Akihiko Shirai

by kentbyeMay 1, 2020

Akihiko Shirai has been doing research and development in VR live entertainment since 1995, and he's been a key liaison between the XR communities in Japan and France going back to 2004. Since June 2018 he's been researching vTuber (Virtual...

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#909: Laval Virtual’s AR/VR Business Intelligence with Marie Leblanc

by kentbyeMay 1, 2020

Laval Virtual has a AR/VR Business Intelligence division that tracks the use cases and evolution of XR applications, and produces a number of VR/AR newsfeed email lists and reports (like this free magazine on Health Applications of XR). I had a...

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#908: 22-Year History of Laval Virtual with Founder Simon Richir

by kentbyeMay 1, 2020

The first Laval Virtual Conference happened on 3-4 June, 1999 in Laval France, and had a chance to talk with the founder Simon Richir about the 20+ year history of Laval Virtual when I attended in 2019. It's an amazing history of the evolution of...

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#907: Tribeca Immersive’s Cinema360 Program Starts Virtual Screenings on Oculus TV

by kentbyeApril 17, 2020

The Tribeca Film Festival is releasing fifteen 360 videos that were programmed within their Cinema360 program for free via the Oculus TV platform, and they'll be available to watch until April 26th. This is a great opportunity to see a portion of...

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#905: VRChat: Empowering the Creativity of User-Generated Virtual Worlds & Avatars

by kentbyeApril 14, 2020

VRChat is one of the most popular social VR applications out there, and Chief Creator Officer Ron Millar recently told me that they had over 18,000 concurrent users this past weekend. I had a chance to catch up with the co-founders Jesse Joudrey &...

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#904 Sundance New Frontier Recap & Themes with Chief Curator Shari Frilot

by kentbyeMarch 13, 2020

In my final episode of my coverage from Sundance New Frontier 2020, I speak with chief curator Shari Frilot about some of the themes of the line-up of XR experiences that were programmed this year. There were a number of themes the embodiment...

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#903 Sundance New Frontier Behind-the-Scenes with Curator Milo Talwani

by kentbyeMarch 13, 2020

Milo Talwani (pronouns they/them) is a curator, and creative technologist who oversees the selection process for New Frontier at the Sundance Film Festival. They're also the technical coordinator for Tribeca Immersive, and they also help curate...

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