I did an interview with Kiira Benz and Joanna Popper during my remote coverage of Venice Immersive 2020, where her Finding Pandora X project won the Best VR Immersive User Experience award. This is a second in a trilogy of interviews with Benz, and you can check out our conversation about Runnin' and our latest interview conducted at Meta Connect 2025 where we do a bit of career retrospective of her journey into the realm of immersive storytelling. In this conversation, we talk about her immersive theatre production called Finding Pandora X, which she brought into VRChat during the pandemic. Be sure to check out her "The Making of Finding Pandora X Documentary - Virtual Theater" to get even more details on it. See more context in the rough transcript below.

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I'm featuring a trilogy of interviews with Kiira Benz (formerly known as Kiira Benzing) with this first part covering her Runnin' music video piece that showed at Sundance 2019 and won the top prize at SXSW 2019. I'll follow up with an interview about her immersive theatre piece that won a prize at Venice Immersive 2019 called Finding Pandora X. And the final I did with her at Meta Connect 2025 doing a bit of a career retrospective, including some work she did in Horizon Worlds and her latest piece focusing on accessibility and dance performance. Also be sure to check out the second recorded interview that I did in 2019 about her hybrid theater and VR piece Love Seat, which showed at Venice 2019. See more context in the rough transcript below.

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I did an interview with prolific Horizon world builder Paige Dansinger at Meta Connect about the latest Meta Horizon news including the new Meta Horizon Studio as well as Meta Horizon Engine. She also was wearing some custom, hand-made pants that were inspired by virtual pants that she designed for her MetaversePaige avatar. See more context in the rough transcript below.

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I did an interview with Scott Stein at Meta Connect 2025 reflecting on the biggest news of the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses and the associated Neural Band. Stein has been covering the XR industry since 2012, and always has some deep thoughts on the broader implications of the latest news. You can check out his hands-on first impressions in his CNET video here, and his interview with Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth here.

Stein and I had a chance to catch up after the day 1 Meta Connect keynote announcements, and also speculate on the future of the ecosystem in around the Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses. The Meta Wearables Device Access Toolkit wasn't announced until the following day at the end of the developer keynote at Meta Connect, but there still hasn't been any announcement about if or when third-party developers will get access to develop apps for it as Meta seems content to focus on their own first-party apps at the launch of the device today.

See more context in the rough transcript below.

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I did an interview with Moor Insights and Strategy principle XR Analyst Anshel Sag at Meta Connect to hear some of this latest thoughts on the biggest announcements, but also a broader reflection of how Meta is focusing on how these new AI glasses wearables like the Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses as well as upgraded Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 and Oakley-branded AI glasses will provide a platform for Meta's AI products. You can see more context in the rough transcript below.

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I did an interview with Norm Chan at Meta Connect about the Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses and Meta Neural Band. Be sure to watch Chan's full 58-minute Tested.com report including an interview with Meta CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth as his hands-on impressions of the biggest announcement at Meta Connect 2025. You can also see more context in the rough transcript below.

This kicks off my Meta Connect 2025 coverage, and I'll be including about a dozen interviews that I did on site that will also be unpacking different news and reactions to Meta's emphasis of AI-driven wearables, and what's happening within the broader XR industry and VR gaming ecosystem.

Here's links to all of the interviews that are a part of my Meta Connect 2025 coverage:

#1652: Kick-off of Meta Connect Coverage with Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses Insights from Norm Chan

#1653: XR Analyst Anshel Sag on Meta's AI Glasses Strategy

#1654: CNET's Scott Stein's Reflections on Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses Implications

#1655: Meta Horizon Studio News and Virtual Fashion with Paige Dansinger

#1656: Kiira Benz Part 1: "Runnin'" Large-Scale Volumetric Music Video (2019)

#1657: Kiira Benz Part 2: "Finding Pandora X" Bringing Immersive Theatre to VRChat (2020)

#1658: Kiira Benz Part 3: Immersive Storytelling Career Retrospective (2025)

#1659: VR Gaming Career Retrospective of Chicken Waffle's Finn Staber

#1660: Enabling JavaScript-Based Native App XR Pipelines with NativeScript, React Native, and Node API with Matt Hargett

#1661: State of VR Gaming with Jasmine Uniza's Impact Realities and Flat2VR Studios

#1662: Meta Connect Highlights & Meta Horizon News with JDun and JoyReign

#1663: ShapesXR Updates & Neural Band Design Implications of Transforming Your Hand into a Mouse

#1664: Resolution Games CEO on Apple Vision Pro Launch + Gaze & Pinch HCI Mechanic in Game Room (2024)

#1665: Resolution Games' "Battlemarked" Blends Mixed Reality Social Features with Demeo and D&D Gameplay

#1666: VRChat CEO Graham Gaylor on Exploring Various UGC Monetization Strategies

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PHI Studio sponsored today's episode to highlight that they are expanding their location-based entertainment distribution network to the United States with their EXP Rosemont location in the greater Chicago, IL area that is opening to the public on September 26, 2025. They will be launching with a couple of Excurio pieces including The Horizon of Khufu and Life Chronicles that feature large-scale, free-roaming VR guided tours that I've covered previously in episodes #1430, #1431, and #1588.

Both Excurio and PHI Studio are interested in collaborating with creators who are interested in creating large-scale LBE experiences that could draw 100-150 people per hour, and you can reach out to Fabian Barati and/or Julie Tremblay on LinkedIn. Excurio will be making their tools and SDK available to third party developers to expand the number content producers creating this type of large-scale work, and PHI Studio continues to do co-productions across a wide range of formats and throughput scales.

I'm excited to see PHI Studio continue to build out their independent distribution network across Canada and North America as they continue to produce and distribute their own experiences as well as distribute the best of large-scale, free roaming experience from Excurio. EXP Rosemont will be launching with a couple of Excurio pieces, but I expect them to eventually distribute some of their own large-scale VR and non-VR, immersive works as well. PHI Studio continues to build out their own independent distribution networks, which will provide new outlets and opportunities for immersive stories that have featured on the festival circuit to have a home beyond this more insular XR industry exhibition network.

Not all projects will be a good fit for this high-throughput format, but the revenue generated will help support their other more experimental efforts that are helping to push the boundaries of the medium. Look for my more in-depth coverage of Blur coming out here within the next couple of weeks, which was my personal favorite from Venice Immersive and one of the hottest tickets at this years festival.

Thanks again to PHI Studio for sponsoring this episode, and keep an eye on this new location in the greater Chicago area (and apparently only a 10-minute ride from O'Hare Airport if you happen to have an extended layover). I'll be diving more into more 30+ hours of coverage from Venice Immersive within the next couple of weeks, likely after I return from Meta Connect.

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I spoke with Venice Immersive curators Liz Rosenthal & Michel Reilhac about sneak peak of their 2025 selection, which is their largest selection yet. See more context in the rough transcript below.

[UPDATE August 10, 2026]. Here's all of my 30+ hours of interviews from Venice Immersive 2025

#1650: Sneak Peak of Venice Immersive 2025 Selection with Curators Liz Rosenthal and Michel Reilhac

#1750: Doug Liman's "Asteroid" Short Immersive Film with Google Gemini Story Extension + Kickoff of Venice Immersive 2025 Coverage

#1751: "Ghost Town" Narrative Integration in Puzzle Adventure with Exquisite Worldbuilding

#1752: Blending Embodied Game & Narrative Genres with "One True Path, Part 1"

#1753: Mixed Reality Town-Building and Sim Game "Wall Town Wonders"

#1754: Screen Life Thriller "LILI" about Surveillance Fuses Game Design, Film, and MacBeth Adaptation

#1755: Hand-Tracked Sign Language as Story Beat Triggers in "Eddie and I"

#1756: Exploring Narrative Potential of Generative AI in "8pm and the Cat"

#1757: Embody a Geranium in Immersive Comedy about Boredom in "The Great Escape"

#1758: Reckoning with Mental Health Taboos in Japan with "If You See a Cat" Immersive Animation

#1759: Mother-Daughter Team Explore Personal Challenges with Depression and Anxiety in "Mirage" Immersive Animation

#1760: Immersive Fairy Tale about Automation with "The Sad Story of the Little Mouse Who Wanted to Become Somebody"

#1761: Unpacking the Immersive Orchestral Mix of "1968" with Massimiliano Borghesi

#1762: Fusing Experimental Immersive Animation with Cutting-Edge Orchestral Spatial Audio Mix in "1968"

#1763: Blending Theater and 360 Video in "Re-Launching-Luigi-Broglio"

#1764: Mixing Hand-Drawn Animation with 360 Video in "The Time Before"

#1765: Immersive Action Thriller "Mulan 2125" Pushes the Edge of Graphical Fidelity

#1766: Formula 1 LBE Experience "Black Cats & Chequered Flags" is an Immersive Biopic of Alberto Anscari

#1767: Immersive Journey through Special Effects Pioneer Carlo Rambaldi's Paintings in "Alien Perspective"

#1768: Symbolic Journey through Lithuania's Artist Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis' Paintings in "Creation of the World"

#1769: Mixed Reality Musical on Avatars and Identity in "First Virtual Suit"

#1770: Eastern Philosophy-Inspired Fusion of Theater and XR with "Mnemosyne"

#1771: Environmental Storytelling in "The Great Orator" VR Diorama with Generative AI Experiments

#1772: Climate Change Spatial Montage "Out of Nowhere" Aspires to Move Towards Rewilding Prevention

#1773: "Collective Body" Assigns Elemental Avatars Based Upon Archetypal Dance Movements

#1774: Combining Live Dance and Music in Immersive LBE Performance "L'ombre (The Shadow)"

#1775: The Continuous Spatial One-Shot of Backlight's "La Magie Opera" LBE

#1776: The Spatial Grammar Innovations of Dialectical Contrasts and Abstraction within "The Big Cube"

#1777: Active Imagination, Associative Dream Logic, & Embodied Interactions in "Sense of Nowhere"

#1778: Collaborative Social Game and Story of "Happy Shadow"

#1779: "Heartbeat" Immersive, 1-on-1 Biometric Synchronization and Involuntary Collective Agency

#1780: Recap of VRChat Worlds Gallery at Venice Immersive 2025 with Mike Salmon

#1781: Winner of Venice Immersive 2025 "The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up" Innovates on Gaussian Splats & Spatial Storytelling

#1782: "A Long Goodbye" Wins 3rd Place Prize at Venice Immersive with Emotionally-Moving Story on Dementia and Spatial Grammar Innovations

#1783: "Less Than 5gr of Saffron" Wins 2nd Place Prize at Venice Immersive with Spatial Poem Quill Animation

#1784: The Incredible Spatial Transitions of "Dark Rooms" with Radical Consent Innovations

#1785: The Landmark Achievements of "Blur" in Fusing Theater, Montage, Mixed Reality, and LBE VR

#1786: Collective Reading Experience of "Constantinopoliad" Provokes Discussion on Defining "Immersive"

#1787: Blending the Elements of Experiential Design & Process-Relational Foundations of the Elements

Here's an Venice Immersive Program Cheat Sheet by Voices of VR podcast (PDF), which has an overview of the four categories of immersive experiences ordered by longest booking times to shortest (amount of time required for scheduling purposes) as well as the actual runtime, the number of people who can see it per slot, and then the number of people who can see it per day. This should hopefully help for your scheduling process.

I typically book experiences to roughly corresponding to hours. The Biennale scheduling website will open up on Thursday, August 21st, and it will not let you double book yourself. So I personally find it easier to book the longer experiences first, and then fill out my schedule with shorter experiences, and then experiences that generally have higher capacity. Note that Ancestors (capacity of 48 people), and L'Ombre (capacity of 50 people), and each of the VRChat sessions only have one booking time per day, and so these are also worth prioritizing if you want to see them and they should have lots of capacity throughout the week. The One the Other Earth may be one of the more logistically difficult experiences to see as you'll need to make a trek up to the main Venice island. I'd recommend trying to keep your schedule clear for at least an hour before and afterwards.

Here's a Venice Immersive Schedule Helper that I put together to help navigate the schedule.

Here's a placeholder for my other coverage of Venice Immersive 2025 to be updated after the festival.

Venice Airport to Lido Island

The best way to get to Lido from the Venice airport is either via the Red or Blue Line of the Alilaguna Public Transport water taxi, which you can get tickets either after you come out of customs or you can go to the water taxi dock at the Venice airport, and there's a booth there. 

Picking up badge at Palazzo del Casinò

I usually pick up my badge at the bottom of the Palazzo del Casinò, which is at Lungomare Guglielmo Marconi, 1861, 30126 Lido VE, Italy

Venezia 2000 to the VR Island (Lazzaretto Vecchio)

The best way to get to the VR Island of Lazzaretto Vecchio from the docks is the bus. The buses leave every 15-20 minutes, and it's a 3 minute ride, and another 5 minute walk to the island. Here is a link to the bus route and the addresses. I believe it is either the A, N, or C or CE routes. I believe the bus stop names are S.Maria Elisabetta and then I get off at the Gallo Sant'Antonio stop.

The address of the VR island is Isola del Lazzaretto Vecchio, Lazzaretto Vecchio, 30100 Venezia VE, Italy

There is a water taxi that you can find the pick-up spot by looking at the google map and get directions there. It takes 1 minute of a ride, but there is only one taxi that can be a 10-15 minute wait depending on how busy it is.

Also be sure to check out XR Must's interview with Liz and Michel, which I found a lot of helpful info in.

Some of the artist statement videos are starting to get posted onto the BiennaleChannel YouTube page.

Here's a list Best of Experiences and Best of Worlds from VRChat that are already available if you'd like to get a head start on this year's program.

Already Released - BEST OF EXPERIENCES

The Midnight Walk

Ghost Town

One True Path, Part 1

Wall Town Wonders

D-Day: The Camera Soldier - Apple Vision Pro

Submerged - Apple Vision Pro

Adventure: Ice Dive - Apple Vision Pro

Already Released - BEST OF WORLDS - VRChat links included

vent. by Premium²

What is Virtual Art – Volume 1 by Jessien

FLASHING WARNING by xlxxl

Flat Earth by Niko Lang

Neuron by Juice…

Powdergame by Pema Malling

[NOT REPLAYABLE YET] FZMZ Pointzero by ReeeznD [VR_SMEJ]

よるとうげ -Yorutouge- by mikkabouzu / Kikuo [VR_SMEJ]

Ritual （v․1․3) by DrMorro

The Reality of Hope by Joe Hunting

[NOT PUBLISHED YET] -- Mirage by TOKYO WAIYOZ

Natura’s Queendom by Anders Fray, Starheart

[NOT PUBLISHED YET] -- Uncanny Lounge by Christopher Lane Davis, Rick Treweek

the colony - flat 804 by Glory Nya

Scale Journey by S_ASAGIRI

exhibition ⁄ back seeing by haruki_haru

東雲風船 - SHINONOME BALLOON - by sakanaplus

CyberLove ｜ A7 サイバーラブ by Artsy Glitch

Experience by NOOTAU

Dracula’s Castle by Tanner White

NeoWorlds by Widget365

Light Aquarium by phi16

Break 15˸ Arcanum by PK / rekluma

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I spoke with TrainingFangs & TehArbitter about Raindance Immersive Closing Night music and VR performance (now available as a replayable event in the Moon Pool VRChat World) as a part of my Raindance Immersive 2025 coverage. (Photo by Kaerun). See more context in the rough transcript below.

Here's a recap of my Raindance Immersive 2025 & VRChat coverage:

#1566: Raindance Immersive Curators on the 2025 Selection of Immersive Art on Social VR Platforms

[VRChat Story] - #1634: User Claims Potential Gaps in VRChat's Moderation of NSFW Avatars

[VRChat Story] - #1635: VRChat's Avatar Marketplace is Targeting Demographic of New Users

[VRChat Story] - #1636: Planned Improvements of VRChat's Trust & Safety from New Lead Jun Young Ro

#1637: VRChat Doc "The Architect Across Realities" Features MR Design Innovations in Japan

#1638: Virtual Photographer Kaerun's Japanese Friendships Featured in Documentary at Raindance

#1639: Playing Live Jazz in VRChat with EMN Records enabled by Yamaha SYNCROOM in Japan

#1640: "Tonevok" features Real-Time Audioreactive MIDI Visualizations in VRChat

#1641: "Siholette of Memories" Cinematic VR Concert Experience Features Live Choreography

#1642: "Cathedral of Witches" Performance Explores Trans & Queer Spirituality in VRChat

#1643: Studio Penrose's "Our Precious Autumn" Short Film Shot in VRChat Wins Raindance Award

#1644: Julianna Loh on Creating Immersive Art in VR and AR

#1645: "Hommage" Adventure Inspired by Moebius' Art Collaboratively Built in Resonite

#1646: "The Continuous Present" Combines Poetry, Music, & Giant Immersive Sculptures to Win Raindance Immersive's Best Art Experience

#1647: Virtual Art Exhibition Innovations in Jessien's "What is Virtual Art?" VRChat World

#1648: Vast Hand-Painted "Natura's Queendom" Wins Raindance Immersive's Best Art World

#1649: Fangs & Arbi Close Out Raindance with a Breathtaking Music and VJ Show at the Moon Pool

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I spoke with Anders Fray (aka Ders) & Starheart about Natura's Queendom as a part of my Raindance Immersive 2025 coverage. See more context in the rough transcript below.

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

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