New media theatre

So many interesting things are happening in and around the virtual world High Fidelity that I can’t keep up. The company raised $35 million in June and combines virtual worlds, virtual reality and the blockchain. Philip Rosedale, creator of both Second Life and High Fidelity, also manages to invite interesting people for in-world talks, and in the aftermath of the capital increase he had a fascinating talk with Charlie Fink, an expert in VR, AR, new media and a columnist at Forbes. He also is the author of an AR-enabled book, Metaverse.

In this video Rosedale explains a bit more about the future of High Fidelity and he and Fink brainstorm about new theatre and movie formats which would convert the spectators into actors – a bit like roleplaying in virtual worlds. All this, like concepts such as volumetric video, is rather new to me. During the discussion I heard about other experiments in virtual environments where spectators were converted into bubbles who could follow the actor around. It is obvious there will be formidable challenges like managing the huge data flows involved and finding an equilibrium between the freedom of roleplaying and the need for narrative structure.

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