Voices of VR

I interviewed Russell Patton about Snap Specs on Tuesday, June 16, 2026 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Agog is having their first open call on Climate Futures + Immersive Media that closes on June 12, 2026, at 11:59p PDT. Agog is "committing up to $1 million in grants to support innovators, technologists, artists, organizers, researchers, organizations, studios, and creative teams using immersive media to engage people on climate, from awareness to action." Their official page has a lot more detail...

I gave the opening keynote of the Meaningful XR Conference on May 30, 2026, and here's the video version of my keynote talk titled: "Patterns of Meaning, Transformation, and Impact in XR" and here is the PDF of the slides with clickable footnotes. In this talk, I cover my Experiential & Phenomenological Framework, discuss the Impulse Impact Study that came out on May 28th (see my discussion in epi...

On May 28, 2026, Anagram released a report titled: "Results of Impact Study Carried Out for Mixed Reality Experience Impulse: Digest for General Public," which was commission by Agog. This 43-page report was written by Dr. Alexandra Sierra, and there's also a more extended 121-page version from December 2025 that's titled "Impulse Research Study Detail and Results" that was also written by Sierra...

The Immersive Impact Review launched on March 13, 2026 at 4p CDT in Austin Texas during SXSW, and they describe themselves as "a hybrid journalistic and academic magazine examining immersive media’s strive for social impact." The first issue theme is titled “Value(s) in Practice: Impact and Sustainability in XR,” which is investigating the following questions: "How do we measure and demonstrate so...

On March 30, 2026, Rec Room announced they would be closing on June 1, 2026 at noon PDT. I had a chance to speak to former Rec Room employee Shawn Whiting, who previously the roles of Head of Creators, Head of User Acquisition, and Head of Community. He shares some additional context for the past decade of Rec Room including reflections of some of their top milestones, riding the Metaverse hype, t...

On February 3rd, 2026, Joe Pine released The Transformation Economy, which is a follow-up to The Experience Economy co-written with James Gilmore and published in 1999. They identified a key pattern of how economic offerings have evolved beyond commodities, goods, and services, and moved into experiences as well as transformations. Their prescient predictions about these underlying patterns in the...

The Human Spatial Computing book was published by Oxford University Press on February 5, 2026, and I had a chance to interview the co-authors Reginé Gilbert and Doug North Cook a few weeks after it launched. They alternative as the lead author on each chapter, which provides a comprehensive overview of designing for XR through a variety of different lenses. The entire book is grounded in human rig...

BurnerSphere is part immersive documentary, party social VR platform, and part digital twin of Burning Man. It's a standalone VR experience that launched in early alpha for both Quest and Steam on July 22, 2025. It's an evolution of the original Burning Man on AltSpace that I covered back in episodes #940, #960, & #1192, and now they have their own standalone social VR platform that has a digital...

The Lincoln Center for Performing Arts has been stage a variety of different types of immersive experiences as a part of their interdisciplinary programming, and I had a chance to catch up the lead immersive programmer Jordana Leigh at Venice Immersive in order to get an overview of what they've been showing, XR experiences they've commissioned, how audiences connect to each other about the unique...

The CIIIC is the Creative Industries Immersive Impact Coalition based out of the Netherlands, which will be spending about €200 Million in Public Funding over the next five years. It is a really exciting development in Europe that is promoting the development of Immersive Experiences (which they abbreviate IX). They will be cultivating knowledge and methods of experiential design, developing immer...

I interviewed SXSW XR Experience 2026 curator Blake Kammerdiener about this year's selection, and how immersive artists are using Generative AI in a series of different projects. Below is the selection (ordered from longest to shortest). This year's program runs from 11a to 6p CDT from Sunday, March 15-17, 2026. XR Experience Competition Escape The Internet (Part 1) (50 min) Inter(mediate) Spaces...

This is the panel discussion of Mission Responsible 3 featuring the winners of the Polys Ombudsperson of the year including: Kent Bye (2020), Avi Bar-Zeev (2021), Brittan Heller (2022), Micaela Mantegna (2023), Ingrid Kopp (2024), and Nonny de la Pena (2025). Introduced by Renard T. Jenkins. The big topic this year was AI, but lots to say about XR as well. Here are some links that I mentioned in t...

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a rousing speech at the World Economic Forum on January 20, 2026 about the rupture of the rules-based order of the globalized economy, and he emphasized the need to build new coalitions to sustain the pressure coming from the United States' emerging authoritarianism. Carney said, “Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as lev...

On Wednesday, January 28, 2026, Ian Hamilton announced on Bluesky that "I've been fired from UploadVR." He was the editor in chief at UploadVR, and he wrote a Substack post titled "Ian is Typing" on January 30th detailing how is co-workers were pushing to do a test of a "clearly disclosed AI author for UploadVR," and that he had three specific concerns that it be brief, for the ability for readers...

I interviewed Andrew M. Davis about his forthcoming book titled Whitehead's Universe: A Prismatic Introduction on Thursday, December 4, 2025. It's absolutely the best introduction to Alfred North Whitehead's work in Process Philosophy, and I can't recommend it enough. The worst part is that it isn't set to release until sometime next year, but you can get an early look at some drafts if you sign u...

I interviewed Karim Ben Khelifa about In 36,000 Ways on Sunday, November 16, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Here are the 26 episodes and more than 24 hours of coverage from my IDFA DocLab 2025 coverage: #1682: Preview of IDFA DocLab's Selection of "Perception Art" & Immersive Stories #1683: "Feedback VR Antifuturist Musical" Wins Immersive Non-Fiction Award at IDFA DocLab 2025 #168...

I interviewed Khalil Ashawi, Sami Sultan, & Hail Khalaf about Under the Same Sky on Saturday, November 15, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Alexander Devriendt about Handle with Care on Wednesday, December 3, 2025. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Iris van der Meule about Lesbian Simulator on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Anne Jeppesen & Omid Zarei about Reality Looks Back on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Maisha Wester about Coded Black on Monday, November 17, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Celine Daemen about Nothing to See Here on Monday, November 17, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Sarah Wolozin, Scarlett Kim, Julia Scott-Stevenson about MIT Open DocLab's Co-Creating XR Distribution Field Initiative on Wednesday, November 19, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Avinash Changa about The Institute of Immersive Perservation on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality