Entertainment

PHI Studio sponsored today’s episode to highlight that they are expanding their location-based entertainment distribution network to the United States with their EXP Rosemont location in the greater Chicago, IL area that is opening to the...

Charlotte Mikkelborg is the series director of the Adventure series on Apple TV, which is shot on Apple Immersive Video and co-produced by Atlantic Studios (formerly Atlantic Productions) and Apple. I think it has the strongest storytelling released...

Ant Williams is a freediving athlete featured in the third episode of The Adventure Series titled “Ice Dive” that’s co-produced by Apple and Atlantic Studios (formerly Atlantic Productions). In the episode, Williams attempts to...

CURRENTS is a stunning debut from Jake Oleson as it pushes the grammar of 180 filmmaking to new heights. Oleson comes from the world of advertising and music videos, and he went through a rigorous pre-production process where he had actually already...

OTO’S PLANET was being exhibited on the Quest at SXSW, but I had a chance to check out the Apple Pro Version ahead of the SXSW festival and I felt like I much preferred it. OTO’S PLANET picked up the second place prize at Venice...

Another Apple Vision Pro piece at SXSW 2025 was COSMOS IN FOCUS by Atlantic Studios (recently rebranded from Atlantic Productions). This was a short and sweet educational experience that allowed you to explore the imagery of the James Webb...

FLY TO YOU tells the story of Kang Songjeol who was separated from her childhood friends in the aftermath of the 1950 split between North and South Korea. Oral history interviews were captured in 360 video, and her childhood memories were recreated...

There were a number of pieces at SXSW that were centered around embodied interactions including HONEY FUNGUS, which is a series of interactive embodied experiments telling a broader story of cultivating intimacy with ecology. This piece leans more...

THE CHOICE returns to SXSW with the latest Chapters 2 and 3, and continues to capture intimate testimonials of women and couples who make the choice to abort their pregnancies. Chapters 1 and 2 take place in Texas where abortion is now nearly...

WAYS OF KNOWING: A NAVAJO NUCLEAR HISTORY tells the story of the impact of uranium mining on the Navajo community. This film is a unique collaboration between a Navajo storyteller Sunny Dooley and nuclear nonproliferation expert Lovely Umayam where...

SHELTER is a 360 video documentary telling the story of civilians in Ukraine seeking protection in bomb shelters. The film poetically transports you the many different ways Ukrainians are sheltering from small cramped basements to parking garages to...

TRACES: THE GRIEF PROCESSOR is a multi-user interactive VR experience where four people are invited to poetically explore and learn more about their grief. Created by documentary filmmaker Vali Fugulin, it features didactic conversations about grief...

There were a number of projects exploring social dynamics within immersive pieces, including the special jury prize winner for the XR competition PROOF AS IF PROOF WERE NEEDED. This was a projection-based video project that featured video feeds from...

The SXSW XR Competition jury prize winner REFLECTIONS OF LITTLE RED DOT had some really innovative mixed reality integrations, and was also a part of a new trend of cultivating an archive of material as an artistic practice. This piece by director...

THE SECRET LIFE OF MONSTERS: THE GATEWAY EXPERIENCE is a mixed reality puzzle game created by Wallrus Creative Technologies as an immersive demo in order to feature the unique tracking technology they’ve created in order to better facilitate...

Andrew Schneider’s “NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars)” absolutely blew me away, and it was a story-driven, immersive art exhibit at the University of Texas Performing Arts Center that opened at the end of SXSW. It uses a cube of 4000 LED lights...

Wayne Powell is the Global Artist Relations Manager for d&b audiotechnik, and he’s been getting more and more interested in how independent artists and musicians are using spatial audio. He was in Austin, Texas with an array of 13 speakers...

On the last day of immersive exhibitions, I saw Roman Rappak’s latest RISTBAND mixed reality live performance experiment, which now has a 4-year streak going at SXSW. This year he added an array of 13 d&b audiotechnik speakers that used...

The Polyphonic Spree band founder Tim Delaughter was looking for innovative ways to get people to listen to the entirety of his latest album called Salvage Enterprise. He was driving around a lot of speakers in his van and setting up pop-up...

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...

Tenderclaws debuted their first piece in competition at SXSW with a short called FACE JUMPING, which was a surreal, seemingly open world experience with a number of interactive experiments leveraging eye tracking in novel ways. Tenderclaws has...

IN THE CURRENT OF BEING is a powerfully-told story about electroshock conversion therapy using haptics, mixed reality, and a free-flowing dream logic structure paired with a documentary interview of a survivor. It was a deeply moving experience, and...

There is a six-month exhibition titled “Other Worlds Are Possible” featuring a retrospective of a dozen different immersive storytelling pieces that will shown at the Le Pavillion in Nemur, Belgium from March 22 to September 21, 2025...

The SXSW XR Experience Selection runs from March 9-11 and contains 15 pieces in competition and 16 pieces in the spotlight, and I had a chance to chat with SXSW’s XR programmer Blake Kammerdiener about each of these pieces. He provides some...

The Theater application for the Apple Vision Pro by Sandwich Vision launched in June 2024 with the spatial livestreaming of John Gruber’s live interview of Apple Executives at WWDC. They have been collaborating with independent producers of...

Lovesick is a narrative game featuring a character-driven story of a bank on the brink of collapse that faces a series of supernatural events that they must escape from. It features a lot of escape room and puzzle mechanics that are mixed with...

I interviewed producer Dan Tucker at IDFA DocLab 2024 about the lessons learned from touring In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats across 20 different venues over the past couple of years. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation...

I interviewed Myriam Achard about the new distribution arm of Phi Studio (as of now there is still no official name yet) as well as the exciting new Phi Contemporary set to open in 2028 that will be fusing together the contemporary art world with...

I interviewed director Lisa Schamlé about Me, A Depiction that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality :...

I interviewed director Queer.Space about Dollhouse for Queer Imaginaries that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon...

I interviewed director Aphra Taghizadeh about Speechless Witness of a Wandering Tree that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR...

I interviewed director Wen Yee Hsieh and producer Sebox Hong about Limbophobia that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon...

I interviewed director Wen Yee Hsieh about Limbotopia that showed at Film Gate Interactive in Miami Florida back in 2023. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of...

I interviewed director Stanislaw Liguzinski about ROAMance that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality :...

I interviewed director Vincent Abert about Walking Alone Text You When I’m Home that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR...