The IDFA DocLab is celebrating it's 15th year anniversary, and I collaborated with DocLab to produce a series of a dozen interviews reflecting on the evolution of immersive storytelling and interactive documentaries since 2007. I'm kicking off the series with an interview with DocLab founder Caspar Sonnen, who takes us back to the very beginning of featuring web-based, digital projects, then onto theatrical screenings of interactive pieces, and now full-on exhibitions, immersive performances, and interactive documentaries.

#1031: IDFA DocLab 15-year Retrospective with Founder Caspar Sonnen

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Virtual land speculation within cryptocurrency-based Metaverse platforms has gone from boom to bust over the past couple of years. I sat down to do a deep dive with the Voxels platform (formerly Cryptovoxels) founder Ben Nolan to interrogate the premise of idea of buying and selling virtual plots of land. Nolan is not all in for all aspects of cryptocurrencies, including the carbon footprint of proof-of-work chains like Ethereum that Voxels uses, and surprisingly the buying and selling virtual plots of land as a speculative investment. Nolan says that 'Voxels isn't a way to make money. Voxels is a way to build the Metaverse and to capture the value that they create. It's not an investment vehicle.' He's increased the supply of virtual plots of land over the last years to keep it affordable, but to also capitalize on the NFT boom and crypto Metaverse hype to the tune of $22 million of 2021 revenue in New Zealand dollars.

#1117: Deconstructing “Voxels (formerly Cryptovoxels)”: Virtual Land Speculation & the Experiential Gap of Crypto-Based Metaverse Neighborhoods

Photo of The Beast Prototype courtesy of Rony AbovitzI had a chance to sit down with Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz for two hours to unpack some of the many threads Magic Leap's behind origin story, including some of the underlying philosophical questions and aspirations towards what he calls 'Neurologically-True Reality.' Considering the many tens of billions of dollars of XR R&D that companies like Meta, Apple, and Microsoft have been spending, then the multiple billions of venture capital raised by Magic Leap seems like a relatively efficient and tight budget.

#1116: Magic Leap’s Origin Story & Goal of “Neurologically-True Reality” with Founder Rony Abovitz

Time Detectives AR by Picture This Productions is a site-specific AR trail experience meant to be seen at the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, UK, but you can also experience it remotely as a table-top experience at home. Time Detectives AR asks users to investigate the sinking of the Mary Rose in July 1545 using a mobile phone as 'a magical spyglass to reveal secrets from the past and complete your mission for King Henry VIII.'

#1115: Using Multi-Sensory, AR Storytelling at the Mary Rose Cultural Heritage Museum with “Time Detectives AR”

Living Cities is a digital twin XR startup announced on May 26th, 2022 with an article titled 'Reality is Scarce...and The Metaverse is infinitely abundant.' that shares a list of '9 principles for connecting the real & virtual.' The founders of Living Cities include XR luminaries Matt Miesnieks (who sold his previous startup 6D.AI to Niantic), John Gaeta (who did visual effects on The Matrix, worked on the HoloLens, co-founded Lucasfilm's ILMxLAB, & was a senior Vice President at Magic Leap), as well as Dennis Crowley who co-founded the geospatial social networks Dodgeball and Foursquare.

#1114: Capturing the Lore & Spirit of a Place with the “Living Cities” Digital Twin XR Start-Up

Matthew Ball's 'The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything' book (launching today) is the most comprehensive articulation of the Metaverse technology stack, as well as it's foundational principles catalyzing a paradigm shift from 2D into 3D into spatial and immersive computing. What started as an essay on Fortnite (Feb 5, 2019), then evolved into an essay on the Metaverse (Jan 13, 2020), then evolved into a series of essays with his Metaverse Primer (Jun 28-29, 2021), and now has tripled in size with the publication of Ball's The Metaverse book (Jul 19, 2022) that dives into specifying each layer of the Metaverse tech stack, where it's at now, and where he expects it might go in the future.

#1031: IDFA DocLab 15-year Retrospective with Founder Caspar Sonnen

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