「Honeyboys」は消費主義と欲望を描く熱病の夢、ダークライド型VR作品

The Voices of VR Podcast. dream logic piece where it's a bit of a fever dream where you're going through all these different symbols that are referring to things around consumerism and desire. So in terms of the elemental balance, it's very much like an earth-air, the earth element being that you're in the kind of spatial environment, you're going through, you don't have much agency of locomotion, you're kind of on this dark ride, so the locomotion is like a theme park ride of sorts. And in that, there's lots of different air elements, semiotics of dream logic, meaning that there's all sorts of different symbols that are referring to aspects of both consumerism and

desire. And there are frankly, a lot of stuff that I was just trying to like throughout the course of this interview, like, what did this mean? What did this mean? What do you make of this? And so I got a much better sense of the overall intention of the creator, but it's also one of those pieces that's open-ended enough for you to have your own experience and your own meaning projected onto it, which I think is also kind of the point of these kind of dream logic pieces where you can go through it and walk out of it and have your own sense and vibe of what you're taking away from it. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Tibor happened on Sunday, September 6th, 2026 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. Hello, I'm Tibor de Jong. I'm the director of Honeyboys and I create cinematic VR experiences, journeys more, I think. Awesome. And maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space. Yeah. I started making VR experiences about six years ago, I think.

And before that, I studied fine arts. I made collages with pictures, images, everything I could find. And then I wanted to add 3D models to it as well. So I started making 3D models in the computer, and I thought maybe it would be more practical if you buy a VR headset to create the 3D models in the headset. but then I put on the headset and I found out that the headset is a way better medium than a paper collage could ever be. And from there, I was creating VR experiences. Nice. Well, I had a chance to see Honey Boyz and there's a lot of symbolic, spatial, dream-like, fever dream of sorts going through this experience. And so my audience has more than likely not had a chance to see it yet. So how would you describe Honey Boyz and what the experience is or what story you wanted to tell? Sure. It's a bit like a theme park dark ride between cinema, theme park dark ride about desire, consumerism and the human condition with a lot of nudity.

Nice. So maybe you could talk about the origins of this project. Where did it begin for you? Yeah. It started when I read an article about COVID during COVID. It didn't start during COVID. It started about one half years ago. But then I read the article that in the city in China, the whole economy was shut down. Everything was closed, except for delivery drivers. They could still deliver food and influencers selling products that delivery-wide drivers could deliver. So it was a completely small, closed-off ecosystem of people selling stuff and people delivering that stuff. I found it a nice poetic reflection on the world in a way. I thought maybe, yeah, what would happen if that was the whole world forever? So from there, I slowly started to build the experience. And what was your first encounter with virtual reality or this type of immersive media? In general, I shot zombies once. That was my first encounter with it.

But I think I was already drawn to it. When I first read about it, I was already interested, but I never tried it before because then it was still very obscure and after that it was quite expensive. And I also had the misconception that it was very difficult to work with because of the three dimensions and I'm not from a gaming background or game creation background so it would be very difficult to work in game engine especially the stereoscopy. I thought it would be super difficult that you had to do it yourself so I always thought it more from a distance but it is really quite easy. So, yeah, that's really what got me into it. So when you have a piece like Honey Boy's, it's very much like this dark ride, spatial journey, kind of like a theme park in VR. So where do you begin in terms of trying to either create concept art or sketches, or were you writing a script, or just trying to get a sense of where you began? Yeah, I started writing some sort of script.

I wanted to have a structure for the world, so I don't think about it directly in terms of a narrative. First I think about the world where I want to have a narrative take place. So I started with that and I started with the system of bicycle drivers and I wanted to have like Soylent Green, you know, that they're people, that was the idea that stuck. And from there I wanted to create a closed loop. So I drew it out a bit and from there I started building it in engine. I work in Unreal, very easy, very literally just the story structure, and then move the camera through it, render it out and see what it feels like a bit. And from there I just started expanding, and from there, because it's less of a narrative journey in the classic sense, it's more of a feeling of presence. Through the presence you get the context of the story. That's more what I try to do. You have to feel the story more. so I slowly try to build the world around this feeling try to find a balance and try to find some kind of rhythm or structure

and from there I can put a narrative in and from there you can just start filling it with every small intricate details and the small little mini narratives and the mini stories because that's also what I find important and nice that no one sees exactly the same and you can do it five or six times and you can still find things you haven't seen before and try maybe even come to different conclusions or see the characters as different elements to it or something like that. Yeah, I think it has such a visceral feeling of disgust or kind of a mirror to the society in a way that's trying to create a caricature of it in a way that's amplifying it in a way. So it's like a surreal amplification of these aspects of consumerism and elements of desire. So maybe you could share a little bit about your own relationship to desire and consumerism and what your experience of that is and how you wanted to try to transmute that into this experience. Yeah, that's a double relationship.

And that's also what I wanted to put in the work as well, because, of course, I know that being a consumer is not a good thing to be, but it's also very nice to be a consumer as well. And also, it's very easy to make something that points a finger at the problem and says that the people watching it should change it or that the world is a bad place that we all should be more conscientious of, which is true. But you also have to recognize that the world as it is now is also a place that is in a way designed for people like me. So everyone here on this island is on top of that pile. We get all flown in from everywhere in the world to be on the island and talk about art and experience all beautiful things. But the thing powering all that, those are the people delivering our food, creating our projects, creating your microphone, putting our VR headsets together. And both things exist at the same time. And I don't like that part of it.

But I accept it gladly, you know. So when I make a reflection on the world, I want to reflect that as well. I also want the viewer to, yeah, don't make it too easy for the viewer to say, oh yes, other people are bad. Oh yes, systems are bad. And then, very nice that we agree that this is bad, so now I feel better about myself. Almost like you go into the church, you do a confession, sometimes it feels like you confess, oh yes, we both agree. You say, oh yes, I'm a bad person, and you leave. I want people to more think about it in a broader sense and more, yeah, let people reflect on their own. Yeah, I feel like that VR as a medium provides this opportunity to look at what's out of sight and what's out of mind and see how we can connect the dots between our actions and the world around us and how to become into more relationship to the world around us. And so I feel like there's a bit of taking a journey with somebody on the gig economy as he's doing his work, but also as you're moving through this world, you're coming up with all sorts of other ways of showing the things that usually been out of sight, out of mind, and you're trying to put it into people's faces in some way.

At least that's how I think about what you're doing. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I agree. But it's not that all the elements in the world, they're very intentional, but they're not there to push people in one direction of the story or something. I really want to create the worlds and make them seem as real worlds as possible. That's also why when I start building a world, first they're quite empty, and then you build the first concept, the first idea you have, and from there I keep on working in the same level, so I keep on adding and removing things on the same level, so you build a world on top of each other, almost like an actual city. and you also see in the Netherlands where I'm from and also where I live now some cities they're very new they're just built like suburbs in a way feel like solar spaces sometimes because everything was one idea it's built from one idea and that's it so everything has a function everything has a reason and that doesn't feel real in a way

but the real city that's there sometimes for a thousand years or something things get added and things get removed and sometimes things have to be built around other things which get removed again and then slowly a real space forms. And that's also how I try to work. So maybe if you're looking at something and you think, this is for me the center of the whole piece, maybe it was there already ten iterations ago and it wasn't intended to be there anymore, but it just stays there because that's how the world works. Yeah, as you were saying that, I'm reminded of a scene in Honey Boys where you're kind of flying through all these skyscrapers and then you're kind of on the ground about to enter into this building and you look up and you see like a full moon, but it's being completely occluded by this huge building. So just the idea that the buildings would be so tall as to like eclipse the moon when it's at its highest part of the sky. So yeah, just the structures that we have in cities that are very utilitarian and pragmatic, but not beautiful at all.

We have this really ugly block that's blocking the moon, and I'm pissed off because I want to see the moon. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I agree. So in this piece, you have a lot of symbolic imagery of sort or imagery that is referring to larger concepts. And it also feels very much that you're taking us on, like you said, the dark theme park ride. So as you're constructing this, I'm curious to hear a little bit more around, like, did you go to theme parks for inspiration? Or just curious to hear a little bit more around how you were able to start to bring in those more architectural and spatial design elements That a lot different than a cinema or film where you on a 2D context but you have to really think about the spatial context that you going through and all the different things you're going to see along the way. And so, yeah, just curious to hear if there's any theme park design inspiration. Yes, very much. There's in the Netherlands where I'm from, there's a theme park. It's called the Efteling, and you've got a very old dark ride.

It's called Vata Morgana. The Fatah Morgana is like an Arabian Nights kind of scene. And there's a documentary on YouTube where the people who developed the right talk about how they came up with the concept. And it's very long because the guys are very old and just they're reminiscing about their jobs altogether. So it's a three-hour, pretty, you really go for it. But they really show you the structure of how they structure their story in a way. It's like you have to start small so you don't get overwhelmed directly, but you get slowly pulled into the experience. Now, for this, you get a car, something you can relate to, something you've seen in cinema before, something not too out of there, and then you can slowly pull people in, and then you can build them up, and then you have to drop them down again a little bit, and from there, that's how they did it, and that's also... I also tried to do this, and my previous experiences were quite short, about 24 minutes, and this one's 36. which for VR is, in my opinion, very long.

It's like a feature film length for VR. I think if you go much longer, it becomes even more difficult. So we really had to find a way to keep it from falling apart. So we drew like a diagram on a whiteboard for every minute, and then we had a line going up and down for the immersion scale, we called it. So it's a combination of intensity, the amount of audio, the amount of visual, the amount of explicity or extremeness of the work, and really try to find, okay, where do we want people to go where? So it looks a bit like a roller coaster, and that's also what you try to work in the piece in that way. So you're really trying to create a building of tension and releasing of tension and have more of a cycle of not the same level of intensity, but try to have a rhythmic nature to it. So when you were making that out, how soon did the music come in to help match that level of intensity? The music as you have now at the end.

So I work with my wife. She's the animator and our technical guru. So she has to build a server that keeps running and she does all the animations and a lot of other things. But I'm the director, so the conversation is with me always. Thank you very much. And my father does the music. So we're really a small family team. So for the iterative process, which is very much as you probably understand now, is when you work so close with people you know so well, everything always moves around. So I make a scene, there's some animation, and we think, okay, this is something that will probably stay in the film. And we send it to my father, and he thinks of some musical element. And then we think, okay, this feels now more like this. and then we structure it and afterwards we go over it all over again and some things stay, some things go but the music is for some pieces also leading, for instance there's a scene where

a naked man are hopping around you hear him sort of jumping I cut that scene and my father was very sad about it because that sound was his favorite sound of the whole film but what we had didn't fit structurally anymore So we had to think of a new way to keep incorporating it in. So, yeah, it's a play in that sense. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. And so there is very beginning, you know, you're kind of going through like a back room of a restaurant. And then you kind of go to the front half and you have what looks like to be a little bit of like a strip club with what looked to be somewhat androgynous. Hard to tell the gender exactly. But it's called Honey Boys. And so there's what ends up being these gig workers who are delivering their nude. They're delivering nude. And so the piece that you say you're exploring both desire and consumerism. And so there's the physical materiality of the consumerism with the kind of artifacts of the trash and other signifiers of broader capitalism, consumerism.

But then there's a very specific other branch, which is more of the desires of a sexual nature. And so just curious to hear a bit more around you mashing together different aspects of like the consumerism at large, but also aspects of sexuality and desire. Yeah, I think they are very closely intertwined sexuality and desire more. And it presents itself in my pieces more as sexuality because it's also fun and nice and interesting and very human as well. so yeah I think the whole world that I created is one big spectrum of consumerism in a way so I try to intertwine those things and also make them weave through each other and that's also to you know when you just do the trash and you only do the unpleasant parts the first impression already unpleasant parts of consumerism that's what you see that's what you get you know the trash the box the things but the reasons

we do it's also because we derive a lot of pleasure and desire and those things from it so i found sexuality to be a nice part of that and the delivery boys there for me they're boys they're penisless boys which also found interesting because when you take the penis away from a boy but you still keep him like a boy it becomes very fragile because when you give him his penis he has his ragpins, he has his you know, his pinpoint and desire in a direction, but if you remove it, he becomes much more fragile and that's what I like about those boys, I use them in almost all the things and they're always, that's what they symbolize sort of fragile masculinity and yeah, that's why they're there, and I also like, they're searching for sexuality in a way, in the piece you know, they're delivering it to the flowers they see the women, but that's something that's just not there for them it's not in the cards, it's just there to to deliver and disappear again for other people who do get what they want so yeah

yeah i think it's interesting to watch a piece like honey boys in the context of watching like 20 to 30 hours of other content because it's a type of dream logic piece that i find that i can leave immediately with that kind of feeling and impression and then there's these visceral moments but it feels like walking through a dream where i can understand like maybe the gestalt of what the dream is saying, but beat by beat, I might not be able to like describe what's happening or why it's happening or to even remember what happened because it's sort of blending together in this kind of associative dream logic where it feels like a bit of like waking up from a dream and like having this fragile connection to the dream, a very fleeting ephemeral nature of a dream that sometimes can escape. You have to catch the dream. So maybe for the sake of recounting the dream of sorts, how do you think of the structure of this piece? because it is like a single journey. But are there chapters or are there acts? Maybe you could just kind of describe how you conceive of how this thesis is structured.

For me, there are three clear acts. We work in three clear acts, four almost. You've got the beginning, that's the city part. So exactly like a dark ride, it's also a theme. So you move to something you quite know. You know, it's a clear journey in a way because you start with the car, you enter in a restaurant you move to some sort of other thing and then you journey to the city and then you arrive at the meat of the story in a way so the center of the world of the factory of the machine of humanity of flesh of anything and there you also descend you keep on descending into that world so you find some sort of truth and for me the essence of the whole piece can also be described in the piece after you enter through the flower of the eating and the birth and then putting the boys in the bags and the bags moving forward. From there, the next part, I really wanted to have some kind of a palate cleanser in a way with the moving best and the waltz music.

I wanted to, you know, get a more abstract version of it as well, so more an abstract. The whole thing is more abstract with more an abstract sense of the place and also get a more fun feeling with it. So that's the second act. I wanted to end it on a complete high note That's why you build up through the hard music and everything. You know, you get the boy back. He comes from the elevator and then he dies. He gets slaughtered. That's how that's the one to build up to the maximum amount of consumerism and sex and everything in one moment. And then when you break through the roof, that's where for me the third act really begins. And then you're with the beautiful people and the successful people. Then you're with us. And from there, it's a slow move to the end. And what act or what part was this sex and then birth part of the baby? Was that the beginning of the third act? The middle of the second act. The middle of the second act. Okay. Okay. Yeah, just trying to orient the... So what's the scene? Because I remember it kind of goes into, when you say the beautiful people,

there's like someone playing putt-putt golf, and they spin it down a hole, and you see there's like a weird tunnel, puddle of blood that's there, And it kind of ends driving down this very scenic and beautiful nature. And so it kind of felt like, well, these are where all the rich people are. And so, but yeah, what's the first couple of scenes that transitions into, or what's the scenes that are the last part of the second act and the first part of the third act, just so that it can get a sense of this transition? The last part of the second act is when he jumps into the hole and you accelerate and then you fall through the large human kind of world and then all the boys fall around you. You break through the red disc in a way and from there the music cuts as well. So you get the punk music until you break through the window and when it cuts, that's when the second act ends and from there the third act follows all the way through the end. Okay, so there's a bit of a contrast between the laborers

who are in the mundane world in the first act, and then you kind of go into a little bit of a magical realism. I just remember this very visceral scene that really stuck with me in terms of the imagery where there's a bit of a flower, and they have just walking down a hotel room, hallway, or something, where all these boys have their hand within the flowers, but it looks like a bit of a vagina of sorts, or it's like a dual symbol there of flowers, but also sexual imagery, and then you kind of go up into the elevator and sort of delivering, but it felt like entering into a bit of an eyes wide shut, this is a weird ritual cult secret society type of feeling and vibe that I got at that point. Yeah, that's also there, and it's also the narrative structure is of the delivery boy slowly becoming the food he delivers, so that's where he delivers the eggs, which it feeds to its mother in a sense because the woman you see it also births the ginger boys

so yeah i wanted to have a closed circle a closed loop i found that very important so that's also what that's for yeah sort of the soylent green is people that all these honey boys end up becoming the honey or the thing that they're delivering is that they're sacrificing their bodies to the point where they just being consumed exactly and also that they kept getting driven by desire but that never being fulfilled So they digging their own grave in a way yeah So how do you portray that they aspiring for desire but not able to get it I'm trying to get a sense of how you're, what kind of visual metaphors were you using to show that? For me it was the quite sexual imagery around it, but their inability to reproduce because they don't have penises. Yeah, that was the main thing. Yeah, and also that they just keep getting driven forward by everything. They can't stop. Yeah, maybe you could recap some of the images in the third act because my recollection was that you kind of have these people

that look like they're very comfortable, they're eating, there are people playing putt-putt, but there's also this car that's driving down the mountains and the flowers, and it was such a contrast between the mass consumerism, but it also was like, again, the people who are benefiting from the haves and the have-nots, the people who have accumulated all the wealth and they can enjoy all this stuff, whereas in order for them to make that happen, they have all these things we see in the first two acts that are kind of feeding in there, but at this point, we don't see any more traces of that. And so what were some of the other scenes that you wanted to depict in order to convey this contrast between the people who have this luxury and the people who don't in the first two acts? Yeah, that was the third act too. You have the sculptures of the dead ginger boys where the flowers come from, and then the beautiful people, they live in a beautiful garden where all those flowers are put and where all the flowers are. So the beautiful people are eventually the only people enjoying the fruit of the labor of the ginger boys and they don't have to deal with any of the ugliness of the world

because they don't see it. So in a way I want to also make that beautiful world the ugly one and the ugly one the beautiful one in a way. or at least the one which has more feeling to it. So, this is also what I sometimes hate about my own life, you know, in a way. Sometimes it's difficult because you make these projects and you enjoy making the project and you love it and people like it, but it's also always, it's not a very moralistic job being an artist, I think. You can pretend it is, but you're still always such a big part of, high up the pyramid of exploitation in a sense. It's difficult to find a way to work around it or something. So you feel like you're living in a third act in some way? Yeah, and I think you as well. Yeah, I really think so, yeah. And I think I try to confront myself with it by creating something. I think I'm more in line with those people than the delivery boys.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, and so I think with pieces like this, kind of the dream logic, I feel like there's a real power in the medium of VR to communicate in a way that feels like you're walking through a dream. But also I think the challenge can be you as a creator of the intention, and there can be different things that are clearly communicated or not communicated and very variable amongst who sees it in terms of how much they're able to decode of that semiotic transmission of meaning. And so just curious how you start to navigate that. Because I think in this conversation, I'm able to kind of understand a much more layered depth of the piece and what's happening in it versus for me just seeing it. And so just curious to hear your thoughts on how you navigate this kind of paradox of creating this symbolic dream logic type of pieces. I think that's what VR is the best medium for as well, because the power of the medium is so strong. and the presence in this world is so intense that I don't really care if people get what I want to say with it.

I want people to derive their own meaning from the piece. So I think when you make a painting or you do regular cinema, you're so more restricted by what the audience is willing to put up with. And VR, because it's, I think, the medium of now, because it's the only thing that really overshouts your phone, you can really ask anything of your audience you put them in that world and they have to deal with it so the interaction with your elements with everything you put in there it's already there people are discovering people are willing to find their own meaning in the work so I'm not really worried sometimes people say I liked it I liked what I saw but I didn't understand then I don't care and people say I hated it why is everybody naked I really don't care and sometimes people, they make their own story completely up and say, oh, I really found that Ginger Boyce really reminds me of the manosphere and how the manosphere tries to break down young men.

And there is a sense of that in that, of course, but when people find that that's what it is there for, you know, that's what I created it for. I'm not creating it to tell people how interesting my ideas about everything are. I just try to create a vehicle where people can find their own meaning and put their own meaning in it. That's what I like. When I watch something myself, that's what I want. I don't want to be told what to see or what to think. I want to experience it for myself, and that's also what I want to do for the audience. It's a bit of a blank slate for people to project their own meaning onto the different symbolic and archetypal images that you're showing so that they can have their own kind of interpretation of it all. Yes, absolutely. Of course, I try to, it would be very strange, oh yes, you created something about how everyone should consume more. That would be weird. I think the broad aspect should be there, but the little narrative parts, no, it's up to them. It's really up to them, yeah. Nice, and so what have been some of the reactions that you've received so far here at Venice?

Yeah, people really like it. I think I've found a very specific niche audience as well. There's some kind of films people like. I think they find themselves in this kind of... It's more for people who really are into experimental films or more into art and more into the fine art things and very intuitive arts. People who are into that, they find a lot in this piece as well, which I find very interesting and also what I like. So that's what I found. And I don't... Yeah, people really like it, but I don't think they would say otherwise in my face. So... Yeah, I think there's a certain degree of... So I was looking at this year's program and trying to create these elemental genres of pieces that have different emphases. And for your piece, I put it under Earth-Air. So the spatial design of the theme park design is kind of moving through a space. And then the air, more so than the water. Water would be like you're trying to tell a very explicit story that was clear.

And fire would be more about you creating a game-like experience that you're interacting with. But the air is more of you have abstractions and symbols and meaning that people have to kind of like figure out what the semiotic transmission of the meaning is. They can get a sense of what you intend, but they can also project their own meaning onto the symbols that they're seeing in that way. So there's other pieces that are here that are in that same genre pieces like Yesterday Maybe. That's another kind of dream logic type of piece that's around death and grief, whereas your piece is more around like consumerism and desire and sex. so yeah it feels like that as immersive as continuing to develop i feel like that there will be people that tend to have a preference as to what type of the pieces that they are drawn to so yeah i think you're you're right in the sense that there's still that cultivation of these different types of works that yeah i think the experimental film has probably been more on that abstractions or not getting at things directly but a little bit sideways but can still provide like

really powerful emotions because you're not necessarily always thinking about it as much as like feeling what is coming up from your own experiences based upon the evocative imagery that's there. Exactly. And that's also, yeah, of course, a baker who only makes baguettes says baguettes is the best bread. But I think that's the most powerful part of the headset for me that it really can evoke such visceral reactions to everything. So the play of emotions you can really turn up or down very much more than with regular film or other things because you've got so much more space and so much more things to work with. So you can control it much more. You can push it much more. Have you had a chance to see the Yesterday Maybe yet? Yes, I did, and I loved it very much. Yeah, it was great. And also some of the elements I saw in his work, I also see in mine also the visual elements and also the way he structured it as well. I really, really enjoyed that. I think we're both air. I think you agree. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, earth air, because you're using the spatial design, but then to kind of communicate these abstractions. But yeah, it feels like being sent through a fever dream. Maybe yours is a little bit more fever dream-ish than that. It's a little bit more subdued in that sense, because it's around more death and grief, and it's a little bit less in-your-face intensity, a little bit more of the sorrow and the grief rather than putting the most extreme aspects of desire. So there's a bit of a, I guess, turning up the dial to 11 in terms of, like, exaggerating things. And so I'm just curious to hear what that process was like for you to create these kind of overblown, hyperbolic, exaggerated symbols of, like, desire and consumerism. And they slowly grow, I think. I just like working with them. And it's also, of course, the subject is serious and everything, but it's also the process is very long, very technical, and it takes a long time. So I also want to have a lot of fun when I'm creating it. And I'm just having a lot more fun creating a woman with six breasts who's getting fucked

than creating, I don't know, like a tree. That makes sense. You're keeping yourself entertained, right? Exactly, yeah. And I also want to entertain the audience as well because I think that's what's also important. And that's also what theme parks, theme parks, they only entertain, but if you can use the entertainment value of the VR headset also to tell your story, to bring your narrative, what you want to tell to people, you're also winning more, I think. There's some kind of recurring characters of older men that are there near the end of the second act. What's up with the older men that are there? With the noses. They're the fathers of the boys as well. and they're also, they think for themselves they are part of the upper echelon, but they're not. They're just also part of the machine. They're just like lower management. Like the boys are working the drive-thru and they are managing the boys working at the drive-thru. So that's what they're there for.

And having a birth in the middle of the second act, I would think that birth would sort of like, I don't know, be a portal into, well I guess there's a bit of fadedness as to which class you're born into but I'm just curious what you were thinking about in terms of having the scene of a birth a new life being created within this context of the middle of the second act I thought it was the right place why not in the middle? let's fresh it up no, I just the story just worked itself to that point and also I think it's exactly at the middle so maybe God wanted to tell me something you know, it's possible yeah, no, I think I like the birth I think the birth scene is one of my favorites because it also before the sex thing when you put sex in it you have to always dose it a bit because if you put too much in it people will just only find it funny and there's of course much more into it and that's right after that sex scene you move over the woman and she still moaning So I think most people think the guy with the nose he just giving her oral sex but then you come close and you you see it the birth and it all part of

the same process of course as we all know i think and then suddenly in my what i would try to then suddenly the whole narrative shifts so it's not only a push for more sensation or more more things but also a time to, I don't know, find some more vulnerability and some more beauty in the thing. And for me, that was also the right way to move into the world to slow the audience down a bit. Yeah, and before I went into this piece, I was warned the first 15 or so minutes might be a little intense, but I thought, well, I've done a lot of VR. I can locomote through places. And I don't know if it's because I was told that, But also I think there's a way in which that sometimes when you're moving through the space, there isn't a clear horizon or the buildings are kind of like leaning. It was a bit disorienting for me. And sometimes you're not always moving a straight line. Sometimes you're going slightly up or slightly down. And so I did find it a little bit nauseating. I do see a lot of VR stuff. And so I was a bit surprised.

But by the end, I did feel like a little nauseous. nauseous and so just curious to hear a little bit around navigating this kind of theme park ride where people have different tolerances for to what degree they can handle locomotion through vr and so just curious to hear how you handle that type of trying to design it in a way that is able to preserve that movement but make it as comfortable as you can or if that was a deliberate design decision to make it uncomfortable i try to make it comfortable enough so when i create something i I want people when they put off the headset, they put it off at the end, so not in the middle. But I don't necessarily want them afterwards to think, oh, that was nice, let's do another one. So I think the bodily element of the VR, I really try to work with it and try to play with it. So I really try to stretch it so that people get nauseous a bit, not puking on their shoes, but feeling like they had quite a rough ride. That's what I'm aiming for. And for the 36 minutes, I have to stretch it a bit longer. in my shorter piece that can push it a bit more

but always I try to make the bodily experience also complete at the end but I really try to it's trial and error and the camera you can move it it's straightforward it's not a problem the acceleration is the problem the stopping is the problem and the moving up and down that's the problem and you're always on the clock because moving in VR it's always a bit uncomfortable anyway especially moving forward so when the moment you start that's when the clock starts running for how much people can handle. So you have to really try to fit as much into your time as you can because if you stretch it, you just lose so much. So, yeah, very deliberately. We really try to push where it's possible. So like the fall scene, like you go stretch forward, you've got to hop in guys and then you fall down. That scene we timed, I think we did it 10 times or something because when you slow it too much down, it's just boring or not. Yeah, boring, but you don't get what you want, and if you speed it up, you have to do different moves, it becomes too much.

So you really have to find the exact beat to what most people can handle most of the time. So it's very deliberate, yeah. So you wanted to have a little bit of nausea at the end? For sure, for sure, yeah. Yeah, I really like, I don't like being nauseous, but I don't care that I create something that people get a little bit nauseous. I don't create something to make people as comfortable as possible. I want to make them as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. Yeah, well, there was a bit of it that I was glad it was done just because I had some other experiences that I needed to see, and I have to see a lot of work, but I definitely did feel a little bit of that nauseous. So I guess from your perspective, your design intent was fulfilled in that sense. So rather than making it perfectly comfortable, you want to kind of use that nausea as a design mechanic, which hearing from Christopher Milk, there was a piece that had like this, you're over a river and there's a train that comes and he kind of has you go upward, but he accelerates in a way that he was also trying to use the uncomfortableness as a design mechanic.

We are embodied within VR, and so the piece itself is trying to have us reflect on consumerism and make us a little bit uncomfortable, so why not do a little bit of that to the body as well, right? Exactly, and also when you visit the theme park You also get a bit shaky when you get out of the roller coaster It's not a problem there, so why should it be a problem here? I really don't, yeah, it's part of the fun I think the problem for me is more of what my obligations are afterwards But yeah, I totally understand using it to an extent in that way So what's next for Honey Boys? Different festivals We've got quite a lot in the pipeline, I don't know which ones I can say yet, but I know Kaohsiung I can say. So I'm really looking forward to that one. I've never been to Venice before, but I've been to Kaohsiung twice and it's by far my favorite festival. I like the rest as well, but it's very cool. I really like being there, I like Taiwanese culture and I also think the Taiwanese VR experiences are really, really ahead of most of the other ones.

ones so and also the i also think they embrace the experimental part of it as well so i really feel very at home going there so that's what i'm looking forward to the most for now yeah have you had a chance to see the piece called bodiless here no uh it's previously at venice but it's another one of those by italianese artists that was here like before the pandemic i believe but uh but it's another kind of like you know this kind of moving through his face but But anyway, very similar in this kind of, well, different topics being covered, but similar mechanic. Anyway, as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and this type of immersive storytelling slash dark ride, theme park amusement ride type of experience. What do you think the ultimate potential of all that might be and what it might be able to enable? Yeah, for me, the only thing that's really holding it back is not the headsets themselves. they're okay some are better some are worse

but it works it works for what it does the only thing that's really limiting now is the length of the possible length of the experience so that's maybe also a headset thing or maybe another thing that's the only thing that really has to change and I really hope that more art spaces or more places in cinemas they incorporate the VR headsets that they're always there because there's so much potential and so much power in having it as a side program do things for, especially for more experimental things, you know. Because the medium is so powerful, even people who are not really interested in art or more difficult films or things like that, they really like VR as well. If you pay to shoot zombies in VR, you also pay to watch something like this. And we really found that out already. We also do VR experiences at techno raves. So we just take our experiences, go there and see what people like and if people who are there totally on drugs

really enjoy seeing your experimental film then you're doing something right I think there's just so much potential I think there I think the freedom and the power of the headset provides so much potential for experimental works so that's what I really hope that we really push us that way only experimental from now on No one does anything normal anymore. It's also boring enough. Did you see the piece of Voo Pee here? No, it's good. It's very experimental. I think you would enjoy it. I love it already. So check it out. Yeah, I think you'll enjoy it. Yeah, very abstract and kind of surreal in a way. So, yeah, is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community? Any final thoughts? I like you all very much. and I also this is really for the community because I think people who are not in the community should also join the community I think that's what really helps and also

for this piece I worked together with film producers Smart House and their approach is much more from film and that really helps also for this piece I think bringing producers in who are not directly from immersive already but who are more from regular cinema or experimental cinema it's also really broadens the spectrum in a way. And I think that's also good for the medium as well, to sort of find people who come from different angles and make them see VR in their own way. If they're really, yeah. You may know the answer to this, but is there any hotbed of experimental cinema that's happening now in terms of festivals or places where the community of experimental filmmakers come together? Do you happen to know? Yeah, it's all small. It's all, I think cinema is really moving away from the experimental things at the moment. Maybe it's coming back, but for now, what you see also at film festivals, everything's become much more serious, much more safe in a way, which is, I think, quite sad

because I think you need some strange things in your life sometimes, you know? You need to get confronted with things you maybe didn't want to see or think about something you never thought of before, and that's the power of art in a way as well, and I think if we lose that, we also lose the audience. I think people, especially young people, they want to, they're always on their phones. They want to see something interesting, something with a little bit of meat on the bones, you know, something exciting. So let's make things exciting. Awesome, yeah. I'd seen Vu P here, and I was talking to someone. I was like, oh, well, it's the weirdest thing I've seen so far. And then I saw your piece, and I think that sort of like, I was like, oh, well, I have to like rechange this now because this is definitely the weirdest thing that I've seen here so far. Thank you. Awesome. Well, yeah, I just really appreciate this kind of, like, dark theme park ride and this experimental dream logic of moving through all these different scenes. And, yeah, it has such a visceral kind of feeling

and can be really evocative in these certain moments of serene beauty of all the horrors that we're bearing witness to. And so, yeah, and I'd love the conversation here to kind of unpack it more and just, like, reflect on the story that you're telling and how you're telling it. And, yeah, being in this kind of more privileged positions and what it means to sort of go into these perspectives of these gig workers that are delivering and sacrificing their bodies to be a part of the soylent green that is fueling the whole machine of capitalism. So, yeah, I love the ideas and discussion and also, yeah, the overall experience. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast to help break all that. Thank you very much. Thanks so much for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. and I just want to say that I'm really trying to live into the transformation economy, meaning I want to give away all this information for free, make it public accessible for not only you but the entire community, and if you find value in that, then please do consider supporting me on Patreon. I'm on this journey of trying to reach my 1,000 true fans,

and if I have just $5 a month from that 1,000, I'll be in a much more solid and stable financial position. So I really need your help to be able to get to that point. So if you enjoy what I'm doing here at the Voices of VR podcast, then please do consider supporting me at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. Thanks for listening.