The Immersive Wire - 9 May 2021 (Sunday edition) (copy 01)

DELAYED SUNDAY READ EDITIONCurated VR/AR analysis every Wednesday and Sunday

// 9 May 2021

Why is this Sunday edition one day late? After having a lovely evening with some friends throughout Saturday - some that I haven't seen since 2020 - the outing went longer than expected. I wanted to ensure the newsletter is of good quality, so I delayed sending it out until it was ready. Hope you all

understand!

Connect with the Igloo Vision team on LinkedIn.

Let's talk about AR artwork in London. The Augmented Gallery, a new interactive art trail in London’s West End, was unveiled last week. This project uses the power of augmented reality (AR) to bring masterpieces out of buildings and onto the streets, accompanied with commentary by curators, educators and also comedian and art lover James Acaster. Outside the National Gallery where the trail starts, Stephen Mangan (actor and presenter of The Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year show) pulled the red curtain to unveil a giant gold frame with a large code in the centre. Using the free ‘Art of London’ app, he revealed a to-scale augmented reality (AR) version of Anthony van Dyck’s ‘Equestrian Portrait of Charles I’. The trail includes 20 works of art, running for a mile through the West End and ending at Fortnum & Mason with ‘Sunflowers’ by Vincent Van Gogh. Created by the Heart of London Business Alliance, several leading arts institutions collaborated to create this public AR gallery. The National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, and Sky Arts shared artworks from their collections, bringing work out of buildings and onto the streets for the general public to enjoy. The pieces displayed include a mixture of classic and contemporary work, featuring portraits of Malala Yousafzai, William Shakespeare, and Sir Ian McKellen, and artworks by Tracey Emin, Titian and Ishbel Myerscough. For more on the story, click

here

.

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Scan monuments around London to learn more about classic works of art. Photo credit: Playlines AR Studios.

It's been a real pleasure for us at Igloo Vision to have sponsored The Immersive Wire for the past few months. If you'd like to keep up to date with what we're up to in the world of shared immersive spaces in future, be sure to

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Laura Helm, Partnerships at Blend Media

Why did Blend launch their marketplace? What's the business need?

Blend launched about five years ago to make immersive content accessible for brands, agencies, and enterprise clients. Primarily we focused on 360 videos, Blend Stock which is the largest premium 360 video stock footage library. However, as the demand and the technology grew, we expanded our services to include 360 productions and other types of immersive content such as AR, VR, and 3D. We launched Blend Market in Oct 2020, the first online marketplace to connect business with immersive professionals. We have built a community of over 1000 professionals, working with over 450 clients and covering 120 different immersive skills.

Our aim is still to make immersive content accessible to everyone and our marketplace makes it easy for businesses to get started on their immersive journey or take their experiences to their next level.

How does Blend benefit?

We offer a self service or managed service option for clients. The self service option is for clients who know exactly what they want and just need to find someone to complete a project or to outsource a freelancer with a specific skill. In this instance we charge a 15% platform fee, and we are always on hand if anyone needs support throughout the process.

Our managed service is for clients who would like more support, whether that is developing an idea, running the briefing process, or hand selecting the right team, we have a team of XR experts who can guide you through the whole process. This is priced depending on each individual requirement.

How have you found it so far?

Exciting! We have seen a range of projects on the platform from AR filters for brands, to VR training projects and everything in between. Feedback from our clients has been great and shown that the demand is there and Blend Market really fills a gap in making it easy to connect with XR professionals which benefits the industry as a whole. The more great projects we can create, the more work will be generated as a consequence.

If you would like to learn more about the Blend Market, click here.

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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!