Virtual economies, fashion video game, and Artaud on VR
A weekly digest charting developments across live performance, technology, and the emerging Metaverse
New Forms and Audiences
The fashion house Balenciaga launches a video game showcasing their AW21 collection
Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow is a cloud-streamed video game in which players are guided through virtual environments featuring volumetric video models donning pieces from their new collection.
Gamerbait, the logic of the internet is bait
Sean Monahan explores how gaming culture is leaking into other areas—"the mainstream is the game stream"—and how gaming is the primary cultural framework for younger generations—"the most important social space for Zoomers is the Twitch stream, the Discord server, and the video game.”
Interview with Trevor McFedries on the future of art and entertainment
McFedries also says that gaming is replacing music as the lynchpin of emergent socials scenes. Here he discusses his company's computer-generated character Lil Miquela, and how he's leveraging cryptocurrency to sell Miquela's digital artwork.
An "underground" dance club inside GTA online
The Music Locker will open on December 15 inside Grand Theft Auto and feature sets from DJs Moodymann, Keinemusik, and Palms Trax.
Tech and the Metaverse
A comprehensive survey of the "virtual economy" and the implications of distributed ledgers, virtual reality, computer vision, real-time ray tracing, cryptocurrencies and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on creative practice in virtual environments.
New Models and Trevor McFedries will give a fireside chat inside the virtual event Complexland, unpacking the Metaverse, virtual characters, and the digital economy. Join them on Thursday 12/10 at 9 pm EST.
The history of mobile VR, as told by an insider
As Facebook announces the shut down of new app submissions for Oculus Go and Gear VR, Nick DiCarlo — who led Samsung's Gear VR and immersive media efforts — shares his insight into the history of mobile VR.
Snapchat’s AR Showcase Lens Fest
The first-ever public AR Festival runs December 8 - 10, and will be held in an immersive, interactive environment you can experience from the comfort of your web browser. Attendees will navigate between live sessions and demonstrations showcasing the latest in AR developments.
The A.I. behind unique 'interactive reality TV' game Rival Peak
Lead AI engineer Sol Sliwinski shares technical details of the AI-driven character system created for the Massive Interactive Live Event (MILE) Rival Peak.
Entangled Histories
This week we're looking back to A Hole in Space (1980) by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz as an important example of early artistic experiments around video chat.
“On a November evening in 1980 the unsuspecting public walking past the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, and The Broadway department store located in the open air Shopping Center in Los Angeles, had a surprising counter with each other. Suddenly head-to-toe, life-sized, television images of the people on the opposite coast appeared. They could now see, hear, and speak with each other as if encountering each other on the same sidewalk […] A Hole in Space suddenly severed the distance between both cities and created an outrageous pedestrian intersection. There was the evening of discovery, followed by the evening of intentional word-of-mouth rendezvous, followed by a mass migration of families and trans–continental loved ones, some of which had not seen each other for over twenty years.”
To those interested in / building the Metaverse, from 1938
And finally, Antonin Artaud was talking about la realite virtuelle way back in 1938—"in which characters, objects, and images take on the phantasmagoric force of alchemy's visionary internal dramas.”
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Part aggregator, part independent journal, Scenospace delivers a digest charting developments across live performance, technology, and the Metaverse. Scenospace is delivered every week to your inbox.