The Immersive Wire - 11 April 2021 (Sunday edition)

SUNDAY READ EDITIONCurated VR/AR analysis every Wednesday and Sunday 

// 11 April 2021

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Let's talk about the nature of VR/AR awards. The industry is still (relatively) young, and it doesn't have the broad swathe of titles that usually go with more established areas like marketing. If conducted properly, awards give genuine prestige to the winner. But at worst, they become pay-to-play bits of plastic that help companies fake it until they make it. I've been inspired by the topic because I was awarded a title recently (the organisation will be unnamed). The problem is that I could then dictate the actual title of the award - and after some discussions, I could change the title of it to 'Best VR/AR newsletter - UK'. And having won the award, I could then pay for a digital badge or a physical trophy - for hundreds of pounds (£). This was the first time I came across something like this, so it got me thinking for a couple of days. But in the end, how can an award have any worth if I can literally dictate the title so it makes it look good for me? What is the award, if not a baseless title to boast about with no substance behind it? As such, I declined.So it got me thinking - what makes a good award? There are two parts: the funding model, and the prestige. Funding can take the form of either paying for submission - a chance to be reviewed - or paying for tables at an awards ceremony. Of the two, I would prefer the former. Paying for experts to judge the quality of submissions makes more sense for what the award represents, rather than after the announcement when a company then has to budget expensive tables at a physical (or virtual) venue. Another way is to have sponsors, which help to finance the event itself - something which AIXR has done well 

with the VR Awards. 

Then there is prestige, and that takes time and a huge amount of effort. Good awards are never bought -  they're earned. It takes repeated years of work, high-quality judges, and word of mouth to make certain awards the best they can be. As one good example, the 

will be more respected over the next few years, for example, if it is repeated a few more times. Organisers would argue that awards need to be expensive to correspond to their worth. But really they are expensive because organising them takes a gigantic amount of work and finances, from manpower to venue organisation. It's why we see high prices which can block out worthy smaller contenders, while entrenching the positions of larger companies with the corporate finances to solidify their position. My fear is that awards can be cheapened over time, and that their funding models diminish their status. At the same time, it is incredibly difficult to build prestige among a community. It's a question of time and persistence - as well as avoiding bad awards which mean nothing. 

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Addendum: When I discussed this topic with Albert Millis from Virtual Umbrella, he had the idea of starting the 'virtual libbray awads 2021.' Basically, if you donate £30 to charity, then he will give you an award of your choosing - a parody on pay-to-play awards, but for a good cause. The charity in question is Tanya Laird's GoFundMe Campaign, which will help finance

her fight against cancer

. If you are interested,

sign up here! 

Win an award, and give money to charity. Photo credit: Albert Millis. 

How can you deliver events of value in 2021? With such a major opportunity to re-imagine how events work, we considered how immersive technology can fulfill the seven key criteria for events in 2021: choice, local, human, distinctive, reflective, inclusive, memorable. 

Check out the blog from Igloo Vision

.

Q&A with... an expert blending live performance and theatre

Tupac Martir, Creative Director and Founder at Satore Studio. 

Cosmos Within Us was beautiful; what inspired it?We started exploring what it meant to have loss, we started looking at the experience of loss as a sense of a loved one, innocence, the loss of childhood and the more we kept going with it, we realised that Alzheimer’s disease is actually something that has a direct connection to all of that – the worst part is, that you lose it twice.We used the idea of that loss, to become as I like to call it the vehicle of the whole piece. Yet, we needed a driver and that’s when we started writing the story of Lily and how by understanding our relationship with Lily, we will understand the relationship with the loss we were getting in terms of memories. We always wanted to create something that was physical that had a performance around it, because that is our background and we wanted to make sure that that existed. And from that beginning and that idea we started building the whole cinematic performance world that we came to create.What are some tips you can give about blending VR and live performances? I would have to say time is important – there is a lot of experimentation and patience that comes into it. When we set out to do Cosmos Within Us, we explored so much of it and we spent so much time trying to understand that the story and the techniques we were using and the elements of it made sense. We created a line, and we decided that everything above the line had to be more real and anything below the line had to become surreal. We started making decisions of certain rules we couldn’t break.Using unreality, a lot of things we usually do for a theatrical performance and then restating those spaces within VR. It was really important for all of us to make sure the smells were correct, that there was a cohesiveness to what we were doing on the first tests that we did in the April. We had the trackers on the people, and we realised that because they were playing with the trackers that they were missing elements of the story, so we made a decision to take the trackers out. We also realised that people were standing for 38-40 minutes straight and that’s when we added the chair into one of the moments. And then the smells, because the smell work was 5 months long, we had to look at what was and wasn’t working. A lot of meticulous thoughts had to go into that type of show.Where do you think it will go?  Now that we have been given a roadmap to come out of lockdown, there is the hope now that there is potential for us to start doing shows at some point this year. Obviously, we had to halt our entire tour across Asia, Europe, Latin America and the US. But hopefully we are able to bring the show back and play to the audiences as we had had previously planned.The more I think about it, although we have been alive and living, we haven’t been making the same number of memories that we usually do and unfortunately a lot of us have lost people. So, I think the show will be very poignant when it does return, and I am excited and optimistic for this time.

If you would like to learn more about Cosmos Within Us, check out the trailer.

The actors in action. Photo credit: 

Sophie Margue.

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That's all for this week! Want to have a chat, let me know about a news story, or talk business? Either reply to this email, or contact tom (at) virtualperceptions (dot) com. Have an excellent day!