The VOID was a location-based entertainment company that shut down during the pandemic and maybe coming back at some point. The VOID Co-founder & Chief Creative Officer Curtis Hickman convinced his partners to allow him to reflect upon and share...
Chloé Lee’s immersive art piece Temporal World: A Haptisonic Virtual Reality Memory World uses a custom-made haptic vest that is intimately integrated into the ambient sound design of this point-cloud, spatial exploration around memory. Lee wanted...
Ikhet (Sound Pyramid) is a 14-channel spatial audio installation that included ButtKicker Haptics, LED tubes with diffractive glasses giving a ghostly, analog Holographic effect, experimental field recordings, and a harsh electronic music track that...
Polymorf's Symbiosis is a multi-sensory VR experience that uses soft-body haptics, a bespoke, microdose smell dispersal system, and different tastes. The piece debuted at IDFA DocLab 2021 (see my previous interview here), and it has a sold out run...
#1135: Combining Opera, Theatre, & Long-Distance Walking in VR for “Eurydice: Descent into Infinity”
Eurydice: Descent into Infinity sets out to combine theatrical staging with opera with walking incredibly long distances in VR to reimagine the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus. The take-away feeling that I had from this experience was a deep and...
One of my favorite experiences from SXSW was Vincent Morisset's Composition, which is a physical installation of a table with blocks that serves as the interface of a interactive music piece that continually shifts the algorithm for how it generates...
Tetris Effect is one of the most surprising VR games I've played in so far. It's taken a classic 2D puzzler, and re-imagined it into a multi-modal experience in VR with dynamic difficulty synchronized to music, three layers of haptics, and immersive...
Living Distance is a contemporary piece of immersive art from China that casts the audience in the role of a tooth that takes a celestial journey into space. Director Xin Liu 刘昕 is an artist and mechanical engineer, who built a physical, crystalline...
Spaced Out is an aquatic virtual reality piece that premiered at the swimming pool at Sundance's Festival Headquarters at the Sheraton Park City Hotel. It uses Ballast VR's DIVR system that includes a waterproof VR headset, a snorkel,as well as a...
Chelley Sherman is an XR artist who has been working in VR for 4 years, creating audio-visual performances, and exploring how to created heightened, highly-perceptive experiences. Sherman says that her experience with scoliosis early in her life...
The HaptX Glove that was showed at Sundance was one of the most convincing haptics experiences that I've had in VR. While it was still primitive, I was able to grab a virtual object in VR, and for the first time have enough haptic feedback to...
AxonVR was awarded US Patent No. 9,652,037 of a 'whole-body human-computer interface' on May 16th, which includes an external exoskeleton as well as a generalized haptic display made out of microfluidic technology. I had a chance to demo AxonVR's...
Back in 2015, Neuroscientist David Eagleman gave a TED talk about the potential to expand and create new senses. He showed off a haptic vest prototype that could translate audio input into an array of 32 vibrating motors that could be fed directly...
One of the most immersive flying experiences that I've had a chance to have so far was Mindride Airflow. I had a chance to try it out last fall at VRLA, and the weightless harness combined with a variety of different wind speeds gave me a deep sense...
SynTouch has created a system that can quantify the sense of touch on fifteen different dimensions called the SynTouch Standard, and they're one of the most impressive haptic start-ups that I've seen so far. SynTouch isn't creating haptic displays...
Deep in the basement of the Sands Expo Hall at CES was an area of emerging technologies called Eureka Park, which had a number of VR start-ups hoping to connect with suppliers, manufacturers, investors, or media in order to launch a product or idea...
It was on a San Jose sidewalk in 2015 that I first tried the SubPac, and it blew me away. I felt like I was immediately transported into a dance club standing in front of giant subwoofers with the soundwaves of bass rippling through my body, but yet...