HOLOMagazine

How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later

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Greg J. Smith @gr3gjsmith

creativeapplications.netholo-magazine.com

CreativeApplications.Net (launched 2008)

Design I/O, Connected Worlds (2015)

Philipp Schmitt, Camera Restricta (2015)

HOLO (launched 2014, second issue due this fall)

HOLO (launched 2014, second issue due this fall)

Hugo Gernsback, TV Glasses (1963)

William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

“Virtual reality dangles in front of our eyes a vision of the media’s future, changes in the ways we communicate, and the way we think about communication. The medium that tantalizes us so has gone by a number of names: computer simulation, artificial reality, virtual environments, augmented reality, cyberspace, and so on.... It has defined the technology’s future by giving it a goal—the creation of virtual reality. Virtual reality is not a technology; it is a destination.”

—Frank Biocca & Mark R. Levy, Communication in the Age of Virtual Reality (1995)

How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later

Our agenda, broadly speaking:

• What are the cultural forces and technological trajectories driving the proliferation of VR?

• What challenges does the medium face?• What are some promising opportunities in

immersive experience design?

Our agenda, broadly speaking:

• What are the cultural forces and technological trajectories driving the proliferation of VR?

• What challenges does the medium face?• What are some promising opportunities in

immersive experience design?

The representation arms race

Ivan Sutherland, The Sword of Damocles (1968)

id Software, Quake III Arena (1999)

Jan van Eyck, Arnolfini Portrait (1434)

Our agenda, broadly speaking:

• What are the cultural forces and technological trajectories driving the proliferation of VR?

• What challenges does the medium face?• What types of unanticipated immersive experiences

may soon emerge?

Challenge #1: Remediation/growing pains

Étienne-Jules Marey, Chronophotography (~1880)

Oculus Story Studio, Henry (In Development)

The Body

Challenge #2: Nonlinear and/or

‘sandbox’narrative

Grand Theft Auto V (2013)

Second Life (2003-)

“Perhaps a cyberdramatist of the future will find a way to show us not just the large battlefield and the single soldier (as Tolstoy does in War and Peace) but also the processes by which large historic events emerge as the sum of many much smaller causes (as Tolstoy strove to convey in his interpolated essays but could not dramatically capture). All of these story patterns would be ways of enacting the contemporary human struggle to both affirm and transcend our own limited point of view.”

—Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck (1997)

The Body

Challenge #3: Engaging the body

Chris Milk, multi-channel binaural mic (2014)

SOMNIACS, Birdly (2014)

HTC Vive ‘inside-out’ tracking

Our agenda, broadly speaking:

• What are the cultural forces and technological trajectories driving the proliferation of VR?

• What challenges does the medium face?• What are some promising opportunities in

immersive experience design?

Opportunity #1Memory Palace

Sarah Rothberg, Memory/Place: My house (2015)

Sarah Rothberg, Memory/Place: My house (2015)

Sarah Rothberg, Memory/Place: My house (2015)

Opportunity #2DIY Workflow

James George & Jonathan Minard, CLOUDS (2015)

James George DepthKit

Specular Studio, Blackout (In Development)

Specular Studio, Blackout (In Development)

Opportunity #3Mixed Reality Experiences

Simon de Diesbach, OccultUs (2014)

Simon de Diesbach, OccultUs (2014)

Opportunity #4Radical Empathy

BeAnotherLab, Machine to Be Another (2014)

BeAnotherLab, Machine to Be Another (2014)

How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later

How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later

“However, I will reveal a secret to you. I liked to build universes which do fall apart.... I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it ... The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish.” —Philip K. Dick (1978)

HOLOMagazine

Thank you for your attention!

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Greg J. Smith @gr3gjsmith

creativeapplications.netholo-magazine.com