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I interviewed All I Know About Teacher Li director Zhuzmo at Venice Immersive 2024. Due to the sensitivities of the topic of Chinese censorship, then the director Zhuzmo has requested that he remain anonymous. I did an interview face to face with them in Venice, got a transcript, and then fed the text back into a text-to-speech AI at Eleven Labs in order to mask his voice. See more context in the rough transcript below.
All I Know About Teacher Li also happened to top the unofficial Venice Immersive 2024 Survey results that I did in collaboration with XR Must for both the Top 5 as well as for the Audience Favorites. I found last year's survey results to be really useful in organizing the order of discussing pieces in our critic's roundtable, but also helping to understand the audience's reaction to the selection. Last year there were 50 respondents, and this year there were 82 respondents who on average saw 21.9 experiences each.
Here's a list of the Most Seen experiences from Venice Immersive 2024, which is sort of a proxy for popularity and buzz, but also throughput.
The next result is the audience favorites (no limit), which is calculated by how many people listed it as a favorite relative to how many saw it. This tends to have the most robust overview of the entire selection, and is also an interesting calibration process to see what you personally liked vs what might have been favored by the zeitgeist.
Finally the top 5 ranking usually is a proxy for seeing which projects might have been in the running for a jury prize, but there was a lot more variance this year, which was reflected in the range of projects that people were predicting to be a prize winner. The top prize from the jury was awarded to Ito Meikyu, which was ranked 10th by the audience. The second place from the jury went to Oto's Planet, which was ranked 5th. And then the third place from the jury went to Impulse: Playing with Reality, which was ranked 2nd. I find it increasingly difficult to predict what will resonate with the jury as even the audience favorites can vary widely from my own personal favorites.
Again what resonates with you may not resonate with others, and there are so many other qualities and nuances of each project that can’t be reduced down to numbers. Nonetheless, I found last year’s survey results to be quite an interesting cross section and sometimes confirms an intuition and many other times can be surprising. Either way, it’s additional data to help make sense of the selection and the industry.
Here's my top 10 that I published after finishing watching all of the pieces on Wednesday, August 28th. I about watched 1/3 of the pieces ahead of the festival, 1/3 on the press preview, and the remaining 1/3 on the press & industry day and the first day bookings are available.
Also, the essence of each project can't be reduced down to numbers, which is a big motivation that I have to record over 30 hours of coverage for Venice Immersive 2024 over the course of 5 days in order to unpack more of the design process, experiential design tradeoffs, and some of my own embodied experiences and impressions.
#1416: Preview of Venice Immersive 2024 Innovations in Immersive Storytelling & Art Installations with Curators
#1417: Kicking Off Venice Immersive Converge with Translating "Riven" Classic Point-and-Click Adventure to Open World VR Puzzler
#1418: Award-Winning Animators Experiment with Sandbox Social VR "Garden Alchemy" Research Project
#1419: Creating a Four-Sided Pepper's Ghost Pyramid Illusion with "Telos I" Dance Piece
#1420: Experimental Documentary "Mammary Mountain" Captures Oral Histories of Breast Cancer Journeys
#1421: Interactive Mixed Reality Doc on ADHD "Impulse: Playing With Reality" Takes Home Immersive Achievement Prize at Venice Immersive 2024
#1422: A Simple Silence Wraps Up Craig Quintero's Trilogy Exploring Spatial Transformations & Immersive Encounters -
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I interviewed Play Life (Žaisti Gyvenimą) co-directors Zilvinas Naujokas, Vilius Petrauskas, and Mantas Pronckus at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here's their artist's statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc2KspZgGRk
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality -
I interviewed Mamie Lou director Isabelle Andreani at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here's her artist's statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJT99fqzyiw
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
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I interviewed Body of Mine director Cameron Kostopoulos at Venice Immersive 2024 about his impact campaign since winning a special jury prize at SXSW 2023 (see my first interview with him here.). He showed Body of Mine as a part of the competition at Venice Immersive 2023, and he was back on the Immersive Island this year pitching his latest project A Cure for Straightness at the Venice Production Bridge. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here's the launch trailer for Body of Mine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE7KYISf7cI
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
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I interviewed Une Eau La Nuit (Bodies Of Water) co-directors Chélanie Beaudin-Quintin and Caroline Laurin-Beaucage with producer Laurence Wells at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here is their artist statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_XVyHOle3Y
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
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I interviewed The Art Of Change co-directors Simone Fougnier and Vincent Rooijers with producer Peter Ariet at Venice Immersive 2024. I had a chance to get an early look at this piece, and I watched it three times before stepping foot on the island. I absolutely loved this piece, and it was at the top of my personal favorites from the festival.
I found this piece to be so emotionally moving, as well as innovative in it's spatial transformations and use of consonance and dissonance cycles within pacing and editing. I also really enjoyed the time-travelling self-reflective narrative conceit that's woven throughout the album, and then condensed down into each of the beats of that story. Overall, I loved this piece, and look forward to having more folks be able to see it on the festival circuit or if it picks up more distribution through domes or other LBE efforts.
Fun fact is that I've been listening to the full Droeloe concept album also titled The Art of Change on repeat upon my return from Venice and throughout the process of editing and publishing this series. So I can also highly recommend checking out the full album if you'd like a sneak peak to the vibe of this piece.See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here's their artist's statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPXYRnWCLaQ
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
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I interviewed Venice Immersive Worlds Gallery Producer Mike Salmon at Venice Immersive 2024 about this year's selection of 20 VRChat worlds as well as his process of scouting promising leads and trends of world building, music, art, and immersive storytelling.. See more context in the rough transcript below.
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
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I interviewed Uncanny Alley: A New Day co-directors Rick Treweek and Stephen Butchko along with Ferryman Collective's Deirdre V. Lyons and Christopher Lane Davis at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
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I interviewed Rencontres director Mathieu Pradat at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here's their artist's statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVnsFWIUgp4
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
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I interviewed Project_y: Working Title co-directors Yuzo Sugano, Taro Hirai, and Shingo Yoshimura at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here's their artist's statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-XngO8Eebs
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
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I interviewed What If…? - An Immersive Story director Dave Bushore at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. What If...? also picked up an Emmy for Outstanding Innovation In Emerging Media Programming as awarded by a juried portion of the Emerging Media Programming Peer Group of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Also, Bushore announced that he was leaving Marvel after returning home from Venice Immersive 2024. The Hollywood Reporter reported on how Bushore was really inspired by Venice Immersive and will be likely focusing on the frontiers of immersive storytelling in his next venture.
“Being invited to Venice was mind-blowing,” Bushore tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Being there and seeing the embracing of this new type of content, and the people coming through doing the experience, filmmakers and ambassadors, that was a really cool thing.”
And it’s exactly what this self-described “story nerd” wants to do more of.
Bushore is not joining a new company, but instead is bounding into parts unknown. He seeks to take his experience in the intersection of technology and new ways audiences participate in their favorite brands. His goal is to create exciting, emotionally poignant, groundbreaking experiences that continue to push the boundaries of media and entertainment.
My conversation with Bushore happened in the middle of his journey at Venice Immersive, and you can tell that his excitement about the potentials were palpable.
Here's their artist's statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3IZiZMpeRA
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
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I interviewed Strangeways co-director Adam Lieber, developers Dale P Deacon and Alex Bossman, as well as avatar creator Egbert Harm Westra at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here's their artist's statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbu54ULcUC0
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
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I interviewed The Gossips' Chronicles director Corinne Mazzoli and producer Marta Bianchi at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here's their artist statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuMwoawxscs
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
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