Roman Rappak's Miro Shot band returned to SXSW again this year for an updated mixed reality, live concert performance with a much needed upgrade from the high-latency and outdated GearVR headsets to the much more cutting-edge HTC Elite mixed reality headsets. There was a capacity drop from around the 100 GearVR headsets that he had for his MR performance last year down to just 7 HTC Elite headsets where Miro Shot played the same song on repeat for a couple of hours inducing a trance-like vibe where you listen to the same some on repeat. He's been able to really streamline the experience and find a real sweet spot in live mixing this juxtaposition between short VR journey vignettes and mixed reality passthrough moments where you can see a modulated version of the live band performing on stage.

Live music has it's own compelling experience, and I feel like Miro Shot was able to find a good mix of preserving what makes a live performance compelling versus exploring the affordances of virtually-mediated embodied experiences. Most immersive concert experiences are far from having any live performative aspect at all, and even if it is live, then sometimes it is indistinguishable from it playing back in a canned, pre-recorded version. The liveness of the live of a musical performance is preserved in this mixed reality context, and Rappak continues to explore the more digitally-mediated domains on the Ristband platform that I covered in it's launch last year in my conversation with Rappak and conversation with his co-founder Anne McKinnon.

There was an interesting time-constrained exploratory aspect in this latest Ristband translation of this experience, which created a digital twin of the SXSW venue where he played, which happens to be called "The Venue" in Austin. You're on a quest to find some character who will give you the chance to buy an NFT you find him, but you also explore this sci-fi cityscape that has a radio broadcast that's playing some of Miro Shot's latest songs -- especially the one that they performed over and over again during their intimate, immersive preview experience that they would play to make available to certain fans ahead of their concerts. Within the virtual experience, I found myself loitering around the speakers to hear the music, but then realized that I could move around a bit more once I found the main virtual music venue, which again was a digital twin copy of The Venue.

Overall, Rappak, Miro Shot, and Ristband continue to tinker and experiment with this fusion of virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality. I feel like there are some really compelling dimensions to this fusion and juxtaposition of virtual reality and mixed reality, especially coming from a touring band that is prioritizing different live elements. Rappak has a monitor where he watch what the audience is doing and paying attention to, and then dynamically alter the pacing and sequence of immersive vignettes based upon that feedback. Sort of metaphorically similar to a DJ reading the energetic vibes of a crowd that would provide intuitive omens for what experiential dimensions to fuse in next. This type of attention towards the unique character of live performance is something that I have not seen a lot of other innovation around. There's a tendency to want to just automated it at that point, and then what live performative element does the human have to offer at that point? These are the types of questions that Rappak is continuing to interrogate and explore in these types of explorations, and this latest iteration is a huge leap in quality and coherence of the experience and on the bleeding edge of the next generation of headsets with the HTC Elite. Incidentally, while the diopter on the HTC Elite is really cool, it also introduced quite a bit of onboarding friction and potential confusion for new headset users who may not be familiar with the need to twist the diopter until what you see is clear.