The 8th edition of the Venice Immersive 2024 will be kicking off on August 28th, which will be featuring over 28 hours of immersive storytelling and immersive art content across over 70 different projects. This year there area a lot more immersive installations representing over a third out of the total number of on-site projects (18 out of the 52). There’s eight mixed reality projects, a couple of projects featuring haptics, and one that prominently featuring AI character interactions. There are also 20 VRChat worlds in the Worlds Gallery along with 3 VRChat worlds in competition with 1 project that’s using Resonite social VR platform.
I had a chance to catch up with the co-curators Liz Rosenthal and Michel Reilhac again this year to get a sneak peak of the 26 projects in competition as well as 9 of the projects within the Best of Selection (note that it was announced just this morning that the Apple Vision Pro experience Adventure was pulled from the festival). We also talk about how there’s going to be a private think tank on September 1st looking at LBE distribution challenges and opportunities. Be sure to check out their previous report titled “Think Tank: Immediate Options to Address the Pressing Needs of Immersive Distribution.”
17 out of the 20 VRChat worlds in the Worlds Gallery are already currently publicly available, and the three that are not are Concrete: Pale Sands, SNR Labs Test Facility, and Sanctum (though this one will be available after the festival run). Each of these are featuring some volumetric and holographic shaders that VJs are using in the VRChat clubbing scene, which I covered extensively in my previous three episodes, particularly in #1415 talking with two VRChat VJs and a DJ about the evolution of volumetric effects in music shows. But also check out #1413 where I talk with the SNR Labs team and in #1414 about how dancer SoftlySteph used the holographic shader tech that’s demonstrated in the SNR Labs Test Facility experience.
Below is a cheat sheet of the Venice Immersive 2024 experiences ordered by length. Note that the Free UR Mind is actually closer to 55 minutes, and that Adventure is no longer in the Best of Selection. Also included is a copy of the map for where the experiences are located with some quality of life improvements that I made so that the text is all horizontal and a bit easier to read. I also have a version of the Venice Immersive experience map with the length of the experience embedded to make it easier for when you may be in standby mode.
Here are links to the Best of Experiences that are publicly available: Museum Alive Immersive With David Attenborough [Apple Vision Pro], Nightmara: Episode 3, The 7th Guest VR, Riven, Astra, 40 Dias Sem O Sol (40 Days Without The Sun), & What If…? – An Immersive Story [Apple Vision Pro].
And here’s the links to the VRChat worlds that are featured in the Venice Immersive Worlds Gallery. 17 of the 20 are currently publicly available. Sanctum should be available once the festival starts, and there aren’t currently plans or availability dates for replayable versions of Concrete: Pale Sands or SNR Labs: Test Facility as of the publication of this episode. The official Venice Immersive Hub in VRChat will be launching on August 28th with in-world portals to each of these worlds.
- 1 MormoVerse˸ Under the pillow
- 2.1 Finishing Touch – Art Studio ＆ Gallery
- 2.2 VRC Museum
- 2.3 Phatta
- 3 Liminal Dreams˸ The Poolrooms
- 4 Endless Residents Super Ultra Deluxe Edition
- 5 Magnetize
- 6.1 Magic AI-Art˸ Dimensions
- 6.2 Exoplanet Journey
- 7 SUKU
- 8.1 Chromatic Frequency
- 8.2 Sanctum
- 8.3 Overview Effect Experience
- 9.1 Smew Brushǃ
- 9.2 ․⁄ complication
- 9.3 SNR Labs: Test Facility
- 10.1 Eccentric Rooms
- 10.2 Like a canvas
- 10.3 Polyrhythm
- 11 Concrete – Pale Sands
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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 future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So when I think about some of my own personal favorite ultimate potentialities of virtual reality and immersive media, I keep coming back to the structures and forms of immersive storytelling, as well as immersive art, just because it's some of the most innovation that I've seen in the entire industry of pushing forward the language and grammar of communicating and storytelling within XR, but also an opportunity to bring in all the different technologies and push the cutting edge of haptics and installations. And it's basically the most exciting stuff for me for what's happening in the XR industry. And the absolute can't miss event of the year for immersive storytelling is is Venice Immersive each and every year because they have the largest selection. They have the most people from the XR industry from funders to new projects that are coming up to projects that have been incubated to projects that are in competition. They have a whole selection that's looking at the best of selection. And so they're, It's basically 28 hours worth of content that are available across 26 projects and 13 hours within competition, 10 projects and around five hours, the best of selection out of competition. And then there's seven projects in a three half hours in the college biennale. Then there's a world's gallery that's featuring around 20 different worlds from VR chat. That is around six and a half hours worth of content that they're showing there as well. So all in all around 28 hours worth of content that's being shown there. And again, Yeah, for me, it's like my favorite event of the entire year. So I had a chance to sit down with the curators, Liz Rosenthal and Michelle Reak, to talk about the 26 projects in competition, as well as the 10 projects that are in the best of, in the out of competition. We didn't have a chance to dive into the College Biennale or the VRChat Worlds, but it gives you a good flavor for some of the cutting edge for what's happening with immersive storytelling. And I'll be hopping on a plane on Sunday to go there for eight days, and I'll be seeing all the different content and talking to as many different content creators as I can. Last year, I did around 30 hours worth of interviews from Venice Immersive. So yeah, stay tuned for a little bit of a sneak peek for what's happening in the latest trends of immersive storytelling and immersive art. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Liz and Michelle happened on Friday, August 9th, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:33.757] Liz Rosenthal: So I'm Liz Rosenthal. I'm the co-curator of Venice Immersive with Michel. I'm also executive producer of Immersive Content based out of London.
[00:02:44.682] Michel Reilhac: And my name is Michel Rayac and I'm co-curator of Venice Immersive with Liz. We've been doing this for seven years. This year, 2024, is going to be our eighth edition. And aside from this, I also run the Venice... biennale college for cinema and for virtual reality for immersive and i also do my own projects as an author in vr and since very recently i also run the new immersive festival in malta great maybe you could each give a little bit more context for your backgrounds and your journey into this position of curating these immersive experiences and stories for venice
[00:03:25.387] Liz Rosenthal: Sure. So I started my, I guess, media career in the film industry. So I was working in independent film and some of the first feature films that were shot on digital video. I got very interested in how different digital tools and interactive media would change the way that we would tell stories and engage with audiences. And my company, Power to the Pixel, was running programs for over 10 years, big programs at BFI London Film Festival and a incubator called Pixel Lab. And Michelle and I met back in, I think, 2007 and collaborated on those projects. And then I ran an event in Montreal called Digimart that looked at how cinema and interactive media would how interactive media would change storytelling. And I set up Power to the Pixel after that. And then I ran different programs to develop projects. I set up a market, a think tank, and the first exhibition in London for VR back in 2015. Michelle and I started collaborating on the program. It was in 2016 I came to Venice. Michelle was already there and I was working on the Venice Production Bridge. It was Sabina Nerotti who was the head of the college in Venice. She invited me to come and help build a new type of marketplace because it was concentrating on cinema, the festival at that point. And then Michelle and I started working together on the section that In 2017, we launched the first Venice immersive, which was called Venice VR back then.
[00:04:56.682] Michel Reilhac: And I was working at Arte, the French-German broadcaster in Paris as head of cinema, buying films for the channel, but also running the co-production arm of the company, co-producing a lot of international independent films from all over the world for 10 years between 2002 and 2012. And as I was doing this and scouting new talents starting in 2007, I started getting very, very interested in those storytellers that were mixing both the internet, video game and new ways of writing interactive stories. So I got more and more involved in this and to the point where I resigned from my job in 2012 to fully focus on interactive storytelling. And that was right when VR started, you know, with Oculus back in 2013 with their first Kickstarter campaign. And I had discovered I had curated a show back in 1992 within which I put together an installation with Matt Mullican, who was a pioneering artist in VR at the time in 1992, if you can imagine. So we organized together his installation in VR and that hooked me on it. And in 2013, as I had just resigned from Arte, I saw the Kickstarter campaign for Oculus. I felt, okay, this might be happening now. and i started focusing entirely on this and as i was working for the biennale the venice biennale at the time for the college i started pushing the idea that we needed to do something with vr i produced the first vr event at the can film festival in 2016 but despite the success of it they didn't want to pursue it and so i brought the idea of doing this to venice and they immediately bought the idea. And Liz and I right then in 2016 did the first pilot edition of what is now Venice Immersive.
[00:07:02.551] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Venice Immersive is definitely the highlight of my year in terms of getting to see all the latest and greatest in both immersive storytelling, immersive art installations. There's immersive theater. It's basically the frontiers of storytelling and art in the platform. And I feel like Venice has really become the place where a lot of the biggest pieces of the yearly cycle are getting premiered. And so I'm really excited to dive into this year's program. But before we do, I did want to point that you did last year a group discussion talking about distribution, because we're about to talk about a bunch of experiences that may or may not be available for people to see outside of Venice Immersive. And so I feel like distribution has been a persistent hot topic and you kind of had a think tank of people coming together to brainstorm it and produced a whole paper about it. So it might be a good to start there where that's at now, how you're going to be continuing that conversation, but also just the work that you're doing to think about, okay, you're featuring and curating these experiences. That's great. But then what, what happens for people to actually be able to see it? Exactly.
[00:08:06.704] Michel Reilhac: exactly i mean this is something that liz and i keep talking about because our role or our mission as a festival is really to be a launch pad for experiences but if there's no market to be launched into it's sort of you know loses a big part of its reason for being so yes we feel it's our duty to explore you know how to promote the next step after a festival and the think tank was carefully prepared where we asked the guests that we had invited to the think tank to respond to a questionnaire that we sent them so that we collected data from them on their challenges on their ideas on their potential solutions beforehand and so when the think tank happened we gave them the results of all this collected data
[00:08:54.707] Liz Rosenthal: Yes, Michelle said, I think one of the critical things in our ecosystem is distribution. And we've seen how for work that's going to be launched online, it's really difficult. Well, there's very little launch for the type of work that we're showing in Venice, even if it's a single headset distribution. experience that could easily be published, there's less and less appetite from the storefronts to do this. And so, you know, we were all quite concerned about the future of these projects. And what was really interesting about the think tank last year was we discussed, you know, the key areas and obviously online and location-based work. And we all, I think there was a real agreement that it was in locations that we're going to see some of this work. And it was really about how we could encourage that ecosystem and the way that venues could show work, promote work, work together. look at the issues around exhibiting all these different formats that we're presenting in Venice. And that's the reason this year that we're focusing on the LBE market. And we're looking at some of the challenges and hopefully some strategies and solutions for how we can move forward and more effectively tour work, how venues could potentially commission work and form new business models around that. So we're gathering a group of both venues from different kind of sectors, producers, distributors, funders and creators to discuss this.
[00:10:25.103] Michel Reilhac: So we're starting from just very quickly, we're starting from the main ideas and recommendations that came out of this brainstorm. And we're going to focus this year specifically on the next step, starting with the outcome of this brainstorm last year and try and push it further and be even more specific and more pragmatic with LBBs.
[00:10:49.417] Liz Rosenthal: And I think it's interesting talking to some of the participants who were there last year, because I think it's really affected their thinking. And we know in terms of the, especially the funders, the public funders, that they're really looking at establishing new funds. Some of them have already implemented new strategies supporting work in their territories and are thinking about how they're going to work cross-border as well. So we know that it's a really important event to hold and we hope that it has some really conclusive results for the whole ecosystem.
[00:11:20.481] Kent Bye: Okay. And I'll link in the show notes, the link to the white paper that's called Think Tank, Immediate Options to Address the Pressing Needs of Immersive Distribution, because there's a lot of really great information that's the frontier of where this issue is at. So I guess with that out of the way, I'm really super excited to dig into how you start to describe this year's selection. As I went through and did some rough tellings, it was like around 24 or 25 hours worth of content that's being featured across all these different experiences. I think last year it was around like 21 or 22 hours. And so it's a little bit more content, even though it might be around the same number of projects, they're a little bit longer this year on average. So I'd love to hear how you start to describe this year's selection across the different categories and how you start to think about what is going to be on offer for folks to check out this year at Venice Immersive.
[00:12:11.249] Michel Reilhac: I think one of the things that struck us in the submissions we received and in the end in the selection we've made is the number of installations. And at first it struck us as maybe even a bit of a contradiction where we were saying the market is tough. It's a budding market. You know, it's just starting and setting up an installation is obviously much more more costly and more complicated for venues and for producers to tour. So we saw it a little bit as a contradiction, but as we dig deeper and we're really right now in the middle of producing those installations in Venice, we see how much it represents a desire from the makers, from the authors and the producers to provide radically different different experiences from anything else that's available on the market and particularly that pushing the limits of immersiveness quite far and involving the, for instance, I'm struck on how the notions of onboarding and outboarding are key and the object of great focus from the makers.
[00:13:23.373] Liz Rosenthal: And it's interesting looking at the range of those that are these installations that are for single people to experience and are quite heavy builds. And those that are really cleverly designed for multiplayer. So digging into some titles, we're showing Ansois Avigles Impressioniste, which is the next project that was created by Emissive, which is the company that's really successfully created this multiplayer touring, heritage tour kind of format. with K-Ops, with A Turn on Notre Dame, which was a couple of years ago. And we're showing a smaller version of this because the exhibit is in the Musée d'Orsay. It accompanies a huge blockbuster exhibition that's taking place in Paris on the Impressionists. And Michelle and I both went to see it in Paris in April. And it's super impressive, just the fact that you can put around 200 people at once in a headset in different groups. I think they're up to about 10 or 20, I always forget how many people in each group, who tour together in this giant space that's mapped out. So that's a format that's really working commercially, that these formats tour around the world.
[00:14:33.018] Michel Reilhac: And if I may, just to add to what you were saying is that it's really also in the light of our focus for the think tank on LBEs, it's a very exciting way of scaling the project and finding a business model that now allows productions to break even at least and therefore find their way towards their audiences.
[00:14:58.194] Liz Rosenthal: Absolutely. And then I guess we have quite a few projects across the selection that are really looking at the body and the connection of the mind and the body and our experience of different health conditions or mental health conditions. which are super interesting. So for example, we've got the next project in the Playing with Reality series. So Goliath was the first project we showed by Anna Graham in the series that won the Grand Jury Prize in 2021. And the next project is Impulse, which looks at people who have been diagnosed with ADHD. And it's also a really powerful mixed reality project. And we have several projects that we're really excited about because I think they've really moved forward in terms of what you can do with this format that most of their headset manufacturers are pushing. So Impulse by Barry Jean Murphy and May Abdallah is going to be an installation, even though it's a single player piece that's going to launch on the Metastore. They're going to be showing it for four people at the same time.
[00:16:02.808] Michel Reilhac: Just to add to what you were saying, you mentioned mixed reality. I think aside from the thematic focus on the body and the mind, the mixed reality is definitely happening. Last year, we had the first projects that were really exploring reality. the creative resources and potential of mixed reality. This year, it's really happening. We have lots of installations exploring this new way of using mixed reality much further. So we have a piece, for instance, called Fragile Home that comes from the Czech Republic and that explores the the effect on home of war in general and the Ukrainian war in particular. And it's an incredibly convincing, emotionally striking experience to be in a home that will progressively deteriorate because of the war. And impulse, like Liz was saying, is an incredibly creative way and a playful one, if you could think of handling such a tough subject as ADHD. But creatively, it's really mind blowing what they have done with mixed reality in this piece. And of course, we should mention the use of AI in different ways coming from South Korea, for instance, in the realm of Ripley, which is a very, very complex installation.
[00:17:31.095] Liz Rosenthal: Absolutely. That is the first project I've seen that tackles a format like this, where you're combining one of the audience members is in VR. There's a cinema audience who are watching a 2D film. And what is happening with the VR user is affecting what's happening on the screen. And there's also AI actors who are involved in the whole performance who will then interact with the audience. So it's really a transmedia format that's happening in real time. And that comes from Chache, who won one of our prizes back in 2018 with a project called Buddy VR. So it's going to be an interesting experience in the first and very complex. That's one of our complicated installations that we're excited to see come together.
[00:18:16.334] Michel Reilhac: If we talk of complicated installations, there's another one which is also exploring a whole new field called symbiosis. It is done by an artist from Toronto. She's known in the VRChat world as Nanotopia, and she's been working for years exploring the interactivity of mycelium and mushrooms with humans. And she's going to be showing an installation that will be both in VR, but also in the real world where she will be cultivating a tank with mycelium and mushrooms. The tank will be wired with copper wires all across capturing the variations of electromagnetic signals produced by the mycelium in conjunction with the presence of humans near them. And she then channels those very weak electromagnetic signals through a computer to produce music. And she will be doing three performances a day where she will be mixing live with the the mycelium while the audience will be also able to interact and impact the music that the mycelium produces. It may sound a little bit far out, but it is actually happening and it's unbelievable to witness the range and the reactivity of the mycelium to the human presence. So it's also a highly scientific research that is being done as we speak, you know, on human and non-human interactions.
[00:19:57.588] Liz Rosenthal: And just to add to that, there's also, there's an audience in virtual reality exploring this incredibly intricate world where you start in a forest and you get underground, where you fly through these giant mycelium networks. And they'll also be wearing EEG headsets as well. So everything is sort of interconnected. And we saw she did an earlier piece, Mycelium. And I think she had planned this hybrid installation before and then COVID happened. And we showed Mycelium, which was a wonderful VR chat world with her performing live from her studio with her Mycelium network. So we're excited about this multi-layered installation. And so we should mention Free Your Head, which is the first time. Absolutely. Yeah. We are showing something off the Venice Immersive Island. And we're really excited about it because it's a project in Taiwan by Yen, who we showed a project of his called In the Mist back in 2021. And this is a multi-person experience where the users, people in the headset, there's going to be 32 people in the headset who are all choreographed. Their heads are choreographed by them seeing this pattern inside the headset where From the outside, there'll be an audience outside watching people almost be choreographed using their headsets. And then the center is a dancer who looks like he's conducting them. So it's a whole performance. You're in VR and then outside of VR would be a real spectacle. And we're going to be doing it on the Lido in a special construction that we've built. And it's going to be nearly every night. So it'd be a wonderful way for people in the lead out there get excited to see something that's happening, not on the island, but completely. It's the first time we've been able to do this, to attract people.
[00:21:44.910] Michel Reilhac: The cool thing about it is that it'll be a show, because as Liz said, it's 32 people in a headset at the same time, but they will be seated in four rows of chairs facing the outside of the pavilion. So people who will be walking by, even coming back from the beach or going to have an ice cream and having nothing to do with the festival in terms of not being accredited or anything, will be watching this group of 32 people moving their heads in a synchronized way, in a choreography of heads. So it's a reversed proposal where the show is actually watching what happens with humans, watching something in the headset, but what they're watching in the headset is a bit irrelevant. We look forward to... It's a very big challenge for us. It's very complex to set up, but we look forward to seeing what kind of impact it will have on an audience that... is there by chance, who will be witnessing this show completely by chance. And we are curious to see if that's going to trigger interest, you know, on the island, on Venice Immersive proper, on the island. So yeah, this will be an interesting experience regarding contacts between what we do at a completely virgin audience, virgin to VR. I think we should also say that sticking with the tradition that we started three years ago now, as you know, we are great, great fans of what happens online in VR chats, in the social VR platforms in particular. So this is something that we keep doing and showing worlds that are made in VRChat. We'll be showing 20 worlds in our best of worlds section. And I think we have three worlds in competition, world premiering with us.
[00:23:36.584] Liz Rosenthal: Yeah, so one of the worlds is by Rick Trewick, who we've shown his work quite a bit over these different years that we've been very focused on VR chat worlds. So his next project is called Uncanny Alley, New Day. And it's actually a reinvention of Uncanny Alley. I think it was his first world that he built. And he's collaborating with Stephen and Deirdre, who did Gumball Dreams, and also Screaming Colour, who's helped build the world with them. And it's a really wonderful immersive theatre piece. set in the world of rebels in the metaverse. So that's one of the pieces. And then Finns is back. So Finns, who's a champion world builder in VRChat, who builds these extraordinary, fantastical worlds. And I think this is probably around his 30th world that he's built. And it's called Lost Worlds, which is something he's been working on for quite a while. Several years, yes. Yeah, to premiere it, which is going to take you to traveling in the future when space tourism is something that becomes available, where you travel through to a new solar system and arrive at a spectacular avatar-type world. So we're really happy that he's chosen to launch it in Venice. And then the third world is by Adam Lieber, who also has shown work with us before, and it's called Strange Ways. And it's a really beautiful, eclectic, multimedia-type world. with animation and cutouts and music. That's kind of a pretty surreal journey.
[00:25:10.884] Michel Reilhac: And I think we could mention as well, for the very first time, we're going to be showing three works designed and produced specifically for the Apple Vision Pro. So this is new. It is quite a challenge for us because the Apple Vision Pro is still not available in Europe. I mean, the selling of the headset is just starting. So it will be news to the great majority of our audience who will be able to experience the Apple Vision Pro for the very first time in Italy. And I think we can say that among the three projects, we're very happy to showcase What If, which is a project done by Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios, and it stages Marvel Studios superheroes in a completely different way. And the game will be released just before, and we'll be very happy to show it.
[00:26:07.219] Liz Rosenthal: Yeah, and it's released on the headset, I believe, back in July. But obviously in Europe, I mean, there's only a few territories that have the Apple Vision Pro. And like Michelle said, in Italy, it won't be available when we're showing. So it's been quite a challenge and amazing that the companies, both Atlantic Productions, who have two projects, Adventure and Museum Alive, and ILM and Marvel, who are... coming as well and helping us with the whole sort of kitting out of both of those projects. But I think what if, I mean, from what we've seen on the headset is a really extraordinary piece because it really stretches narrative and interactivity and what's possible in that Apple Vision Pro environment. And then there's a contrast, you know, the two other pieces, two other brilliant examples of what kind of works are emerging for Apprentice Vision Pro. So Adventure is a series wishing the first two episodes, Highlining and The Parkour, project that is showing incredible athletes and people who do extraordinary things in extraordinary places. So the first one is a woman who is highlining, who's walking across a wall across this giant field with this massive drop in Norway. And the second one is about a group of parkour athletes in Paris. And yes, so it will be, we think there's going to be a huge hit because so many people haven't had a And then the other thing that I think has been interesting is we've seen quite a few projects that were submitted with using haptic costumes. And we are featuring two projects, again, that are very much centered around embodiment in the body, incredibly moving and intimate. The first is called Sissier Mon Coeur, or Here Lies My Heart, by the Blies brothers who live in Luxembourg. And it's a project about the kind of trauma that many have experienced in their body as children around traumatic experiences of abuse. And they've designed special haptic costumes. There will be projections and there's going to be a sound narrative that are all intermingled. And it's a completely new format that looks incredibly beautiful and moving. And the other project that is using haptic garments to tell its story in VR is called Mamre Mountain, which is by three female artists, Camille Baker, Tara Booth Mooney and Mavjay Alvarez, who are based out of the UK and Ireland. And it's a very sort of personal intimate story of testimonials of people who survived breast cancer. And the garment is very beautifully designed and integrated into the visuals as well of the piece.
[00:28:58.493] Michel Reilhac: we could also mention you know one of the things we try and do with liz is look at the meeting point between game design and storytelling and it's always a very interesting challenge because we're not focusing on game for game's sake but we're very interested in exploring the new ways how stories can be told using game dynamics or games that are using narrative threads to unfold the action. And we're very happy this year to show a huge IP game called Mobile Suit Gundam Silver Phantom, which is a piece around the anime and Japanese manga world of Gundam. And this piece has been produced by Atlas V and we're very happy that they managed to make it in time for us to premiere it. So this is going to be a very interesting one because it's obviously very, very articulated around a video game IP, but the way the interactivity and the way the narration is has been designed in this piece is absolutely remarkable. And we're very happy that we can show such a big game IP treated as a full story. So yeah, we look forward to that. At the other extreme of the spectrum, we're showing a piece, a Chinese piece called All I Know About Teacher Li, which is a documentary about the resistance not to say the rebellion, but the resistance. In China, the way it happened during the COVID, extremely harsh measures that the Chinese government imposed on its people. And there was a whole movement that consisted in people standing without saying anything and just showing a white page. expressing, you know, the impossibility to express anything. So this film is done by someone who needs to remain anonymous for obvious security reasons. And we will be showing this very, very brave documentary about this moment in China.
[00:31:06.331] Liz Rosenthal: And going back to the games that Michelle was mentioning, it's really nice in Venice. Obviously, we're premiering work in our competition and we ask for world premieres, but we're noticing more and more people are coming to us like Atlas V to launch big titles at Venice because they see it as a really good place as a launchpad in terms of it being an A-list festival and because of the attention that the section gets. And they'll be launching it straight after on the Metastore. But we also are noticing a lot of the games users that we're getting to show work in the best-off section because our best-off section is our out-of-competition section. And for the 10 projects that are in the We're doing something new with the best of section because we're including all of the VR chat worlds in that section as well this year. So the best of consists of 10 experiences, we're calling them best of experiences, and 20 best of worlds. And so the 10 experiences, we often show some of the top sort of narrative games that have been launched over the last year, because to be in the best of section, you have to have launched everything. after the last Venice, but you're not eligible for our competition section. So two other big titles are Riven, which come from Scion. A very famous title, Myst, was the last VR project in that whole IP world. And The Seventh Guest, which is an iconic video game that's now been made as a VR title. And these projects are absolutely spectacular in terms of the environments, and the visuals. And we think it's really important to show, first, the world that's coming from game studios in terms of the sophistication in UX and narrative design, and also the cinematic quality, which is quite incredible for both those two titles.
[00:32:55.509] Michel Reilhac: There's also, I mean, we're very proud to show Astra, which is the new piece by... Liza McNett, yeah. Yes, thank you. Liza, who won our very, very first Grand Prix back in 2017. And it's again a piece about astronomy where you are experiencing what it's like to be on the surface of the main planets of our solar system. But the realism, the precision, and the intuitive quality of how you interact as a scientist that has landed on the ground on these planets and make you experience either the extreme heat, extreme cold or extreme wind, et cetera, is absolutely stunning. So we're very happy to be able to show this. And the same way that we are exploring, you know, the common frontier between game and storytelling, we love to also look at visual arts and installations that also use the concept of an immersive experience in different ways. And this year we will be showing a piece that premiered at Cannes called Telos One. And it's truly a solo dance that you watch performed by a hologram. The hologram is quite tiny. It's maybe, you know, under a foot, maybe half a foot. And it's enclosed in sort of a glass pyramid. And as you walk around the pyramid and seeing from the four different faces of the pyramid, the dance changes. It remains the same performer, but the dance changes. And you're truly watching an incredibly realistic show. human female dancer performing this solo you could swear she's really there she's i mean the definition and the precision of the hologram is unbelievably convincing so we're very happy to to show this
[00:34:55.612] Liz Rosenthal: And then going back to older formats, Michelle and I are always blown away by the 360 videos that are submitted and we have some absolutely beautiful projects here. One of the projects that was completely new to us, it was from Lithuania and it's called Play Life. And one of the collaborating directors, and there are a few directors from Lithuania, is an artist who is called Algis Krigiannis. Sorry if I've mispronounced that. And it's based on his paintings and his storytelling. Incredibly moving and beautiful piece of work. that is around grief and a love story that is no longer. And another piece I wanted to mention was Chant de bataille by François Vautier. And we showed his work, I think it was back in our first Venice VR.
[00:35:46.519] Michel Reilhac: Yeah. Also like space age type of transformation in space. Yes. Very beautiful. This one is completely different, isn't it?
[00:35:54.701] Liz Rosenthal: Yeah. And it's a live action piece that is an incredibly visceral piece that's set in the trenches of Verdun in 1916 during the First World War. And it's quite extraordinary as a live action.
[00:36:09.009] Michel Reilhac: And you should also mention in the 360, A Simple Silence, which is the third part of the triptych done by Craig Quintero from Taiwan. You have seen All That Remains, his amazing piece that revealed him to the immersive audience. Community, a brilliant theater piece shot in 360 video and last year he showed the second part of the triptych over the rainbow and now we're showing a simple silence which will conclude the triptych and it's once again an amazing way of using live theater and processing the experience of being a spectator of a live show, a live theater show, through the lens of the immersive scale and dimension. So that is, once again, very, very convincing. But it's the same thing with Bodies of Water, a project coming from Quebec, which is a dance piece entirely shot underwater. just pure poetry. I think that now that we're talking about it, I'm seeing that poetry or a poetic approach to storytelling is definitely something we've been seeing happen more and more. And I realize now, I mean, I didn't think of it before, but as I look at our selection, this poetic dimension and a more emotional approach to storytelling is definitely something that infuses quite a lot of our projects. You will tell us, Kent, when you see it, if you feel that as well.
[00:37:37.341] Liz Rosenthal: I think it shows the sophistication in terms of the directors. Quite a few of the directors have been working for a while in the format, and they're really starting to understand what is working instead of... For example, something like Chant de Bataille, which could have been done very literally, and that's what I was expecting. It has so much more... visceral and poetic approach where there's limited dialogue. I think some of my director would have been tempted before to direct that in a very different way. And I know that's one of the more literal pieces, but it's very transcendent in terms of how they tell the story. But yeah, I totally agree. There are so many pieces. You couldn't show in any other medium. They are made for the medium.
[00:38:15.646] Michel Reilhac: And if I can add, I think it's good to say that the college, as you know, Venice is involved in showing work. You know, that's what we do with Venice Immersive. But you do know that at the same time as we show work in the show in Venice Immersive, we also hold a market where we invite 12 projects, actually more with 16 projects this year from all over the world who are in their financing phase of their production and they're looking for money. So we're inviting projects. that already have part of their financing and who come to Venice to meet potential investors, partners, distributors to close their financing. But we also do our best to help projects in their development phase. And that's what the Venice Biennale College is about. So we have a Venice Biennale College cinema project. where we help develop 12 micro-budget films in flat, you know, traditional feature-length films. But we also have this year our eighth edition of the Venice Biennale College Immersive. And we reserve a special section of Venice Immersive to show the outcome of the college. And any project that has gone through the college development workshop is eligible once they are produced. they become eligible to be in that section. And this year will be our biggest section yet with seven projects that have gone through the college and will be presented and premiered through the college section. And they're also extremely diverse. completely different genres, and it does show the range of the creative process happening right now in the immersive field. So these are most, most of them are first-time makers in VR, and they are the outcome of our Venice Biennale College immersive process.
[00:40:09.386] Liz Rosenthal: And a lot of them are incredibly sophisticated installations as well. We had one of our big wins because in Venice Immersive on the island.
[00:40:17.253] Michel Reilhac: It took a lot of place this year.
[00:40:20.755] Liz Rosenthal: Yes. So, but they're really, I mean, they're so abundant in terms of formats.
[00:40:26.440] Michel Reilhac: So we cannot mention every single piece. I mean, we've talked a little bit about several of them, but there's more. And really, the only way to appreciate is just come to Venice, be with us for some of the 10 days. And truly, it's an incredible show. It's an incredible opportunity to witness. how creative, varied, and diverse the field of storytelling in immersive medium is right now. It's such an exciting time. Nice.
[00:40:57.696] Kent Bye: Well, we do have some more time left, and I don't know if you have a hard stop, but we have nine more projects that we didn't cover. You did a pretty comprehensive job of going through. I don't know if you wanted to have anything to say about those last nine projects and competition that we didn't talk about.
[00:41:11.857] Michel Reilhac: When we talked about the poetic dimension, there's a piece in The Best Of called 40 Days Without a Son, which also treats the pain of losing a child, basically. But it's incredibly delicate and touching in the way that we said, I think we talked about the art of change, but we could also talk about Rencontre, which is a big installation, which is entirely about sensations and longings and produced feelings through a very, very subtle process of being in a space and moving in a large space. It's a very large-scale installation. So here again, this is a piece from Taiwan. It's all about feelings, intuitions, and emotions. And like Liz was saying, it's wonderful to see work that is now mature enough that it can rely on this more intuitive quality. If you remember Songs for a Passerby last year was already a wonderful proof of how immersive can really trigger intense emotions without relying on traditional storytelling.
[00:42:20.673] Liz Rosenthal: Absolutely. And that's by Mathieu Prada. We showed The Roaming back in, was it 2018, I think? 2018, we showed that piece.
[00:42:28.499] Michel Reilhac: Yeah, it was very early on.
[00:42:31.403] Liz Rosenthal: Yeah. And so, yes, it's a French-Taiwanese co-production and it's all around connections. And I guess making a comment about in real life connections and the fact that so many have been changed by our virtual lives now. And then I guess we want to move through another large-scale installation. It's called The Guardians of Jake Mountain by Hayoung Kwon. And that's from the company Innerspace, who both make incredible games that are published online like A Fisherman's Tale and another Fisherman's Tale, which we featured in Venice. And they also do very beautiful LBE pieces. And this is set in Taiwan. And it's the story of a Japanese botanist who is going up the Jade Mountain and meets a the indigenous tribe who live there. And it's a beautiful project that's really universal around connections and idea of, you know, exploration and colonization. And it really has a, it's really, it's very poignant for today, but a beautiful multiplayer piece that they've created, which they're also used to doing large LBE exhibition, especially in Korea where Arun is from.
[00:43:44.375] Michel Reilhac: Well, we have Otto's Planet, which is a beautiful story told on a micro, someone living on a micro planet and accidentally some cosmonaut is going to crash on his planet and he's going to come with a completely different approach to life. first thing building a wall protecting his territory and it's really an incredibly timely fable about ostracism and rejecting the other instead of embracing difference and working and living together and in a time when Unfortunately, we have walls, you know, building up everywhere on the planet, separating people, preventing people from invading the neighbor country and such isolationism. This is a beautiful fable on how to avoid this and the absurdity of building those walls. So it's sort of a modern little prince story for adults and it's incredibly well made. So yeah, this is another charming one.
[00:44:46.800] Liz Rosenthal: And then another project that is totally new, Michelle and I haven't seen a format like this, is Project Y, which we would describe as the Blair Witch of VR. It's a horror story and it's actually shot in video, but it's an interactive piece where you are a journalist. So it's all showing through a kind of like rough background. kind of 360 video, who is exploring the story of people who have suddenly got ill and died by supposedly seeing, you know, strange occurrences happening. And you watch the whole thing through, and then I actually don't want to give it away.
[00:45:24.819] Michel Reilhac: Don't say more. Don't say more.
[00:45:26.859] Liz Rosenthal: I don't want to say more because I don't want to give it away.
[00:45:29.419] Michel Reilhac: It's quite surprising. Yeah.
[00:45:31.560] Liz Rosenthal: Yeah. So that's the first time where we've never seen anything quite like that.
[00:45:35.181] Michel Reilhac: Yeah. Yeah. And from Japan, we have another one that is completely, completely different, Pudica. And this is a very interesting one because the artist who makes this is known in Japan for his work as a graphic artist. And five years ago, he applied to come to the Venice Biennale College VR to try his first experience in VR. And he did a beautiful, beautiful piece called Feather. And since then, he has submitted a project every single year for Venice Immersive, every time completely different. And the last one he showed was Type Man when he experimented with building a world in VRChat. And so he has constantly been experimenting in completely different ways. He showed last year Zen, which was this piece that happened inside a teacup, a real teacup that you were holding in your hand. And this year, it's pure fun. It's an animation musical film that is very, very charming, almost kitsch and very kawaii, you know, in the sense of the Japanese aesthetics. But every year, he's been coming back, surprising us with a completely different approach. And yet again, Purika is his new exploration with the medium.
[00:46:56.365] Liz Rosenthal: Yeah, very impressive mixed reality piece. Another example of how that form is really evolving. I want to go back to the Quill projects, actually, because again, we're seeing such inventiveness using this software. So the Art of Change is by the makers behind... Soda Island, they showed last year, yes.
[00:47:20.035] Michel Reilhac: The Tales of Soda Island, yeah.
[00:47:22.196] Liz Rosenthal: Yeah, and it's a beautiful piece, it's such an amusing, very, very moving piece that's been designed in Quill. And I wanted to also mention another project, because you mentioned the best-of section, sorry, I'm going into the best-of section now, you mentioned 40 Days Without a Sun. There's another project that was totally new to us, and I felt really ignorant that we hadn't discovered it before, the Nightmares series, they're showing episode three. which is by Gianpaolo Gonzalez, who's based out of the States. It's the most brilliantly inventive project that he's created totally by himself. And it's a superhero girl who enters people's dreams and wakes them up from a nightmare-induced coma. And it's so well-directed. I've never seen anything quite like it. So really excited on that discovery.
[00:48:10.209] Michel Reilhac: And maybe we should say a word. I think this is among the last ones of turbulence, which is also in our best of section. It's a piece about talmic migraine. It's people that suffer and the maker suffers from this, where the migraine that they have completely disturbs their perception of space and everything becomes completely distorted. And it's absolutely fascinating to look at this project and see how the maker has been able to convey in a very, very realistic way the twisted perception of the world when you experience such ophthalmic migraine and you sit at a desk and you're trying to make sense of what you're seeing in front of you and it progressively shifts and moves and it's incredibly disturbing. And like Liz was saying before, this is another example of how virtual reality can really convey the realness of a condition that you couldn't understand otherwise. You know, one of the premises of this, if you remember back in the days, notes on blindness, you know, that had such a powerful impact on people to make them empathize with a condition of blind people. This does the same in a completely, completely different way, but does the same with people who suffer from the condition of atomic migraine.
[00:49:32.369] Liz Rosenthal: And the two other pieces, I think we haven't mentioned, oh, three, I can see. So Mammy Lou, which is by Isabel Adriani, produced by Small Studios, which is a really moving animation piece around a grandmother who is dying and you're with her in her last days. So really well-crafted animation. And another piece is from Taiwan and Japan. We've got quite a few pieces this year from the Far East, from Japan and Taiwan. So this project is called Address Unknown, f*ckushima Now, and is actually by a director who's based in Japan, but comes from the New Cape originally. And it's a documentary told through testimonial of people who lived in f*ckushima. And it really tells the story of a place and home and community, as well as obviously the tragedy that happened to that environment. And it's a very beautiful example of very artistic point cloud, the way that the environments have been scammed.
[00:50:34.540] Michel Reilhac: And I guess the last one is Ito Meikyu, which is a very also new approach. It's a virtual installation. You're free to roam inside a very complex, very full installation of wires and meshes within which scenes happen. and you walk from one scene to the next, and they seem to be completely disconnected. Things don't really connect with each other, but it creates an atmosphere of poetic interactions between people, and so you're free to roam. through the whole installation, but at the end of a given time, it all ends the same regardless of the path you will have taken through the installation. And it all ends in a sort of a resolution that I don't want to spoil, but the path makes sense in the end, and all these scenes of daily life or poetic behaviors of people come together for a poetic conclusion. It's a very interesting way of not pulling a narrative thread, letting you make and build your own understanding or sensation of the story within this installation, and providing a common conclusion to everyone, regardless of that path you will have weaved through the installation. Quite a new approach. Amazing.
[00:51:59.142] Kent Bye: We did it. We got through all the competition, all of the best of, and basically talked about everything except for the college biennale, but I think we'll leave it at that.
[00:52:10.126] Liz Rosenthal: And the 20 worlds.
[00:52:11.886] Kent Bye: And the 20 worlds, yeah. And those worlds, a lot of them are available, not all of them. I think my count, I saw 17 out of the 20 have already launched. Some of them have not launched. And so I'll put some links for folks to go check out and do some world hopping there. I started to check out some of them already. But yeah, I know last year I had a great time being able to see all these different experiences. And I think I did around 30 hours of interviews and coverage because I really think that this event is highlighting the frontiers of immersive storytelling and immersive art. And there's so much to be learned from what these artists and these creators and these makers are doing with the medium to explore new ways of sharing different dimensions of the human experience. And I feel like You did a brilliant job of weaving together the meta story of all the different stories that people will be able to see there. So I'm really hyped and psyched to go see everything. It's always kind of a challenge to kind of see as much as people can. But yeah, it's definitely a great selection and pretty much looking forward to seeing it. And I guess... As we start to wrap up, I'm curious what each of you think, as you've been curating and looking at the frontiers of what is coming next with how people are telling stories and expressing themselves through art, what do you think the ultimate potential of this type of immersive media might be and what it might be able to enable?
[00:53:27.415] Michel Reilhac: Wow. As a last question, it's like opening a whole new door to hours of discussion. It's really hard to give a quick answer to such a question, but I guess I'll try and say that obviously Liz and I, we spend quite a lot of time in the headset and we are so lucky and privileged to have access to such a panoramic understanding of what's happening in the world, because to select the 30 or so films in competition, we see a lot. And we see, I mean, quite an extensive range of what is happening at the moment. I would say that for me, every year, I see how the form is maturing, is maturing into a full... fledge artistic language. And each year it matures, it branches out and it flourishes just like a tree, you know, with new branches and with new flowers all around. The other thing is that the fact that the media in general feel that, okay, there was a time for VR, we spoke about it, we're no longer interested, all we talk about now is AI, and they leave us alone. And the fact that we're no longer under the pressure of the examination by mainstream media is a luxury because we're able, and the makers and the producers are able to really dig, and the people who are working in the field are people who are truly motivated by the essence of what it is. They're not motivated by media visibility and they're certainly not motivated by making money. So it's the hardcore, pure motivation that is at the heart of what is happening today. And to me, this is the reason why there's so much creativity in the field right now, despite the fact that the bigger public VR has had its moment and they say, oh, but we don't hear about VR anymore. What's going on in the metaverse? We don't hear about it. And we say, yes, please leave us alone for some more time so we can keep digging and exploring the form. So I would say it is a luxury. It is a luxury because we will not be able to stay in that state forever. There's going to need to have a market. There's going to need... for the pieces to find a way to generate income, otherwise it's gonna die. But that moment we're in right now creatively is an incredibly rich, intense and privileged moment for that reason.
[00:56:06.243] Liz Rosenthal: Yeah, I think when we are doing selection, it's always that moment. You mentioned the market is so difficult and it is incredible the work that we're seeing and there is incredible inventiveness. And by the end of selection, it's amazing what we've seen and how... All these different formats we've talked about have evolved or new formats have emerged. But at the same point, there's always a nervousness when we start selection and we go through because you wonder how artists and studios can survive. And, you know, testament to these pioneers who are both incredibly curious and inventive and really care about the medium that they create. continue to invent because it is so difficult. And I sometimes wonder, both of us do, we're watching a lot in a very short time. We always wonder, are we going to see wonderful work each year? Are people going to be able to sustain? Which is obviously one of the reasons why we feel the think tank is so important and that people continue discussing how we're going to support this incredible medium. Because It's so hard to translate. I think for those who don't have the privilege of being in a film festival like Venice, don't have the chance of coming, it's a very, very hard medium to translate to a wider public. So yes, it's extraordinary, the work that we're seeing. And I think there are some key things we're seeing emerge over the last year. I mean, this idea of, you know, you were talking about poetry, a medium that is hard to describe in words. It's almost making the invisible visible, making these things that are very 3D world-like, I know people were saying that virtual reality or spatial computing is about translating something into a 3D environment as opposed to a flat screen. There's something more than that. It always taps into other layers, other realities, our intuition, our emotions, and enables us to explain things that no other medium has been able to allow us to feel. So I think that's what we're totally excited about and why we feel it's such an important medium as we can see with this thematically. There's so much that's around our perception of reality and our place in different realities, what that actually means. And that's very important for us as human beings on this planet and in the universe at the moment to be able to consider because we're at such a critical time as human beings and the environment.
[00:58:46.440] Michel Reilhac: Amen to that.
[00:58:48.082] Kent Bye: Indeed. Indeed. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the immersive community?
[00:58:53.968] Michel Reilhac: Come to Venice. If you can, it's worth it.
[00:58:57.498] Liz Rosenthal: And we would love to see you on the island because beyond seeing all these amazing artists work, it's just such a wonderful environment to hang out and meet everyone. We have two gardens, one where we do our meet the creator sessions every evening. You can hear from the makers of all of these pieces where Michelle and I do a Q&A with everyone who's in the Selection, apart from the world builders, unfortunately, they don't come to Venice yet. Apart from those who are in competition, there's also loads of other events going on on the island. And it's such a great place to meet the global community. We have people from... all of the different continents who are involved in this amazing medium. And there's also the market. There's another garden where the market's taking place. And it's just a great mix of, you know, makers, talent, creators, producers and financiers and distributors and exhibitors. So the world is there and it's a beautiful environment to meet everyone.
[00:59:58.151] Kent Bye: For sure. Yeah, it's really a destination where it takes a lot to get there. And once you're there, you just kind of hang out and either see experiences or there's basically the entire immersive storytelling, immersive art, XR industry that's there on that island for that time period. And just an amazing networking time, but also just a time to see a lot of great work and to see what the latest innovations are when it comes to the future of storytelling. Yeah. Very much looking forward to coming into the latest edition and seeing as much as I can and talking to as many folks as I can. And yeah, it's always a highlight of my year and definitely looking forward to coming back this year. So Liz and Michelle, thanks again for continuing to be dedicated to highlighting and curating these amazing works and having a place to feature them in this place. It's such a needed aspect of really highlighting what's possible. And then from there, the LBE and other distribution aspects, I think will eventually catch up to what you've been aggregating and curating these artists and providing a space for them to really push the limits of their creative imaginations for what's possible with the medium. And so very much looking forward to seeing what the latest trends are and to see all the latest work. So thanks again for taking the time to help break it all down.
[01:01:06.087] Michel Reilhac: Thank you. Thank you, Ken. See you in Venice.
[01:01:08.728] Liz Rosenthal: Thanks, Ken. Thank you so much.
[01:01:11.209] Kent Bye: So that was Liz Rosenthal and Michelle Reak. They're the curators of the Venice Immersive Festival 2024, which is happening in Venice from August 28th to September 7th, 2024. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that first of all, Well, we managed to get through 36 of the different projects, the 26 in competition, the 10 that are in the best of selection. And yeah, I'm super hyped and excited to get onto the island and see all these different pieces. It's always a challenge to actually get in to see these works. I think that's one of the things that when you go to the island, it's kind of a stressful moment to actually get the tickets booked. And if you don't get it. Then it's kind of a scramble to actually get to see the content. What that says to me is that there's a huge demand for the people who are in the industry to see the kind of latest innovations for what's happening with immersive storytelling. And I think there's enough there to merit larger location-based entertainment and other things. That's going to be one of the think tank areas. discussion items that are happening there on september 1st so where's the location-based entertainment at at the moment i think with the pandemic it really was a dampener for the overall xr industry especially for location-based entertainment that was one of the areas where you actually saw a lot of market success just in terms of like creating compelling content it's something that was truly deeply immersive and could attract audiences and to have sustainable viable businesses there It's been picked up for a lot of the different museums and other places that have really carried that torch. I know the Fi Gallery and Miriam Arshad, who I've talked to before. And there'll be a lot of folks across the world who are really at the frontiers of location-based entertainment that will be gathering for a think tank there to talk about where things are at and where they need to go. And then there's a Venus Production Bridge. And so you have all these different funders that are coming in. So on the 30th, from like 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., there's going to be 12 or 16 different projects that are presenting there to present their case for getting a lot of finishing funds. I think a lot of the projects that are there have already been in production. So the College Bean Alley is a little bit more of folks that are incubating different projects. And then once they get to the point of being able to be ready to show, then this year they have seven different projects that are being shown as a part of Venus Immersive. and a lot more installations that are happening this year. So really curious to check out all the different ways that people are either doing onboarding or offboarding or mixed reality or ways that the installation is actually feeding back into the content that's being shown. So I always love to see all the different content and I'll be doing deep dives with lots of different artists and creators. Just because for me, I think that immersive storytelling is something that is some of the most exciting content that's out there in the XR industry, for me personally, at least to just folks that are taking the content and being innovative, pushing forward what's even possible, integrating all these other technologies together. And yeah, just the artistry that's involved to be able to tell a good story within the context of XR. So yeah, looking forward to seeing all the different content and then talking more with lots of different creators. And so stay tuned for lots more coverage on that. One other point is that a lot of the best of selection is actually generally available for folks to see at home. I'll put some links down in the descriptions below for you to be able to check out some of this content if you haven't had a chance to see it. As well as the VRChat Worlds Gallery is going to have 20 different worlds. And from my accounting, about 17 of them are publicly available. And the three that are not, I talked a little bit about in the previous episode where they're more like live performance spaces that either... require people being there to have a live video stream to do these kind of holographic 3D effects within the context of VR. So the concrete pale sands was absolutely mind-melding and incredible to have this huge vast open space with these sand dunes to have these kind of projection mapped holographic effects that are just really quite stunning and awe-inspiring. Definitely check that out. There's the SNR Labs test facility, which is by SNR Labs with adidas and apple blossom and name her on i've talked to apple blossom and adidas and in three episodes ago to go into this kind of holographic technology with what they call apple global illumination or this kind of holographic technology to be able to input 2d videos and then translate them into 3d objects and So the SNR test facility is looking at more of that 3D spatialized objects. They also have a publicly available world called Night Under Lights, the seasons at the moon pool. There's a replay of that that is under Apple Blossom's username. I'll put a link into it for you to check it out. Or you can check out the previous episode where I dive deep into two of the VJs and one of the VJs that were working on that. But that's just an incredible use of not only holographic technology, but having lighting effects that are really awe-inspiring. And then the Sanctum is a little bit different take of this kind of holographic VJing where you have more of a 2D screen that's billboarded that has more of a stereoscopic video. And that's in the context of a virtual reality world that also has lighting effects. And so that's kind of a unique take. twist on everything that you're able to do this different type of effect of a little bit higher resolution but also kind of billboarded holographic look that has lighting effects that kind of is a little bit of a perceptual illusion where you're trying to figure out okay how are you actually like working this out so that's in sanctum so the sanctum concrete labs pale sands as well as the snr labs test facility are all the three experiences that they're not generally available and uh I'm not sure if Sanctum is going to end up doing a replayable version of the world or not for folks to go check it out. But that's all yet to be determined. One other note is that in the description, I have kind of a cheat sheet for scheduling within the context of Venice Immersive. They'll list it by the longest worlds first. And then there's also a map that you can see the kind of layout of the different wings. The first wing and second wing are really a lot of the competition pieces with one of the best of Talos one in the first wing and And then the third wing up top is a lot of the College Bean Alley, although there's a couple of competition installation pieces there as well. And then kind of the main hallway is where a lot of the more self-contained VR and MR experiences are going to be at this year. So that's all I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listener-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
