ポートランドの Full Spectrum XR 展：AR アートを誰もが体験できるものに

The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Ken Pai, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voices of VR. So in today's episode, I'm really happy to have a conversation with the organizing team behind the ARXR art exhibition that's taking place here in Portland, Oregon between November 7th and December 29th, 2026. It's at the Daydream Coffee and Public House. And so basically a lot of artists local to Portland, Oregon put up their art on the walls and you have – there's a lot of AR art. So you end up shooting the QR code, and then you look at the art, and then it sort of brings up either a spatial recontextualization, kind of giving some depth elements to it, or sometimes it'll animate it. Sometimes it'll be a little bit more interactive, and you can have this kind of collaborative social interaction of, like, our future is, and then you fill in the blank.

So really quite cool to see the way that the artists here local to Portland are bringing the public together to be able to have a more accessible exhibition of what's possible with XR art. Typically, things are relegated behind the exclusive walls of film festivals, which are hard to get to. And then once you're there, it's even hard to get in and see stuff. And so they wanted to just create a radically open approach that is using a lot of open web technologies. When you do the QR code, it opens up a browser and sometimes has directly in the browser the augmented reality. But other times it will call an app. But most of the time or not, it's actually using these kind of open web technologies. And so, yeah, just kind of an exciting, celebratory spirit of bringing the public together to be able to exhibit XR art. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with the organizing team behind the Full Spectrum XR Art exhibition happened on Saturday, November 7th, 2026, at the Daydream Coffee and Public House in Portland, Oregon. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. Hi, I'm Rachel Hengchua, and for this event, I'm helping with event organization.

And in the world of VR, I do 360 virtual reality storytelling and planetarium storytelling more increasingly. Nice. Hi, my name is Cammie Karras, formerly Cammie from Torch, and I teach spatial design and extended reality for the School of Visual Arts in New York. and I am currently building a creator tool that is instant share to AR, VR, immersive web, and I'm excited to share this creator tool with everyone. Hi, my name is Heather Dunaway-Smith, and I'm an immersive artist and creative director. I make all sorts of spatial experiences, both fully digital and also physical with digital integration, and yeah, I just like to tell stories and make stuff. Hi, my name is Estela and I am a VRAR creative director and artist and local Portland watercolor artist. And I do all kinds of things and I don't know who I am anymore. And I like to make art and I love my dog, Brian. And that is my intro.

I am Dr. Danny Pimentel. I'm a professor at the University of Oregon and immersive storyteller. My name is Kat Caparello, and I own Daydreamer, where you are all gathered. Awesome. Well, I always like to get a bit of people's journeys into XR because there's all sorts of design disciplines that each of you are bringing in, so I'd love if you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into XR. I got started at the University of Oregon's Multimedia Journalism Program before there was the Strategic Immersive Communications Program, but through Dr. Donna Davis, and she connected me with 360 labs and then I started working there as a 360 video producer and editor but I guess it was probably really the first time was putting on a headset at the office of wild and trying this experience called play things where you're like playing a xylophone of hot dogs and hamburgers and I was like whoa so yeah like the wild like art sorry um I gosh I had a career

identity after art school did a coding boot camp and a teacher asked me um if I was interested in talking to a company in Portland that did uh something 3d and it turned out to be torch AR and I joined their team which was a creator tool that did drag and drop for AR and I had never messed with AR before that. And they took a chance on me and gave me the tool and said, remember what it's like to not know AR and stuff like that. And so then they started having me give tutorials and build example projects. And then like a lot of creator tools, we had to sunset. And then I started to work at another AR company, but as a front end dev. And then I tried to start my, not my own, but a business with my bestie. We were starting Awesome Future, which was AR marketing, like AR marketing for marketing, AR for marketing companies and using AR as marketing. And then I had a burnout, a huge-ass burnout, and I decided to go get my master's at NYU.

And now I came back, and then I started teaching spatial design and extended reality. and now that I've seen all these creator tools continuing to follow this trend, that's why I'm ending up creating one myself. What is it called? Spatial Design Club. Nice. Nice. Like I said, I'm a storyteller, and so I started, I was actually a playwright, and then I started writing songs, and I'm always just kind of drawn to telling stories in different sorts of ways, and then I discovered computers and that there was this new kind of story that you could tell where the audience was actually integrated in like a meaningful way. And that just made so much sense to me. And I thought that there was this opportunity to make like deeply meaningful personal experiences. And so I started to explore that, got into games like so many people in XR. Eventually became like an art director, creative director type. I'm an illustrator, animator, you know, kind of do everything, which turns out is really great for immersive. So then, I think about seven years ago, I discovered that I had tried XR before when it was basically just Unity,

and everything was really difficult, and I felt like I had to have a team of devs to help me do stuff. And there was this massive shift about seven years ago where I was like, oh, wait, I could do some of this myself, actually. And so I started to explore it in earnest, and I just felt really empowered and excited about basically the evolution of storytelling. That's what I've always kind of been drawn to is the edge. And so, yeah, so I've been playing and exploring since. Similar to Heather, I have a storytelling, visual storytelling background. Illustration, storytelling for entertainment is kind of where I come from. I also have a strong background in tech and innovation. And so 2015 is when I started hearing about Tilt Brush, and I ended up just following them around and kind of bugging them a lot and then debugging a lot of the things for a toothbrush. And so I was the artist with Google as well as the Blox team in New York Poly team and then artists in residence with Adobe Aero I did a residence with Cartoon Network to like explore what storytelling is

Lots of artists in residencies, a lot of creative R&D work, which is, like, really, really rad. And where I am right now is, like, okay, what is it like to be an illustrator to add AR components and just sell those to lay people is kind of like where I'm at. I was raised in Miami, so I was lucky enough to go to Disney quite often, and I tried VR there for the first time when I was in the 90s. I was a little kid, tried VR, blew my mind, but then I went on to do mostly graphic design and music production, and then I decided to go to grad school, and my PhD advisor just happened to be investigating and studying virtual reality, so a full circle moment. went from sort of designing stories to studying the effects of those stories. So that was a lot of fun. And then realized very quickly, oh, it costs a lot of money to create these things and pay a developer. So I taught myself how to make stuff. And now I tell AR, VR stories. I'm a specs ambassador. So I'm really interested in wearables, worked at Magic Leap for a bit.

So I'm really interested in telling stories and studying how those stories affect people psychologically. Nice. I'm curious to hear your encounter with XR now that you're hosting this art gallery here tonight. Yeah, for sure. You know, as a 90s kid, I remember talking to my dad and being like, wouldn't it be cool if in video games you could look around and actually, like, see what's going on around you? And I feel like, you know, that's just something that in my brain was a pipe dream, went very far away. And I have created a space where creatives can do cool things. And so somehow, magically, you creatives have found your way into here. And my experience with this show has been like really mind-blowing in the fact that I've become a little bit of a Luddite in these later years. And so being exposed to the fusion of real, tangible art and technology in a dynamic way has helped me to be less afraid.

I'm afraid it's not really the word I want to use, but like more inspired, I think. I've been more inspired about the future of technology and the future of creativity and human storytelling using those mediums. Yeah, I know that Douglas Ruchkoff and others have been talking around how we used to escape from reality by going to the Internet, but I think now we're kind of escaping from the Internet and coming back to reality. So it feels nice that we're actually coming together here in Portland. And so maybe you could just sort of give the origins for what was the kind of origin point of this art gathering that we're having here with all your artists and showing some XR. Estella, yes. Okay. Like, genuinely, I was really high one night, and I was like, I texted the buddies, and I was like, yo, should we be doing something? Like, AI is taking over. We, like, obviously, we use it in different ways as a tool, but we also don't, I think we collectively don't necessarily agree with using generative AI to replace, like, true human art making, right?

And I think all of us have very strong values of what art making is and what this technology is and how we utilize it for the human spirit and human expression. And so we kind of came about it like, well, what do we want to do? What do we want to say? And how do we want to remember that technology doesn't necessarily need to be the enemy, but it can still be the expression of the human spirit and the human life and connectivity as well. So basically, how do we create a show that's open, accessible, and easy and free for anyone to experience? because I think from all of our experiences in XR for the last 10 years, like so much of our technologies and artwork itself is either, one, has been sunsetted, or two, lives behind a really expensive conference or headset that most people will never try. So what is it like for us to make XR accessible? And that's kind of been the experiment of this whole show.

So nice and love to hear other folks jump in and especially with some of the art that you're exhibiting here. So yeah, I mean, I all of this has been human centric. I feel like we're really trying to bring back humanity and also like physical experiences, because I feel like when you get obviously experiencing art can be like a really profound thing. But when you experience it with other people that you love or appreciate in a physical environment and you get the magic of XR on top of that, that's like special sauce. And I really do think that it could be transformational for the medium, for people to try it together in a physical space. So that was part of the impetus. Yeah. Yeah. I don't exactly have, like, art in the show today, but I can speak to when Estella texted us in her, like, high moment, which we didn't know at first that she was high. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes you, like, text people a great idea you have when you're high,

and you may be kind of, like, the next day you're like, I can't believe I said that. Like, they would not be into that. Or maybe sometimes you, like, don't say it because you realize it before you hit send. But Estella did it, and I think I was here at Daydreamer when she texted me, and I was so excited, and I was like, I am on it. I just looked at Kyle and was like, can we do an, like, artist takeover and maybe have an opening reception here? And he was like, yeah, do you want to do it in September, October or November, December? And I was like, November, December. And everyone on this team has been absolutely incredible. Like, Daydreamer, amazing. Like, this is one of the most amazing places. I live here in St. John's, and I come here all the time. And it's one of the most welcoming, amazing places. And Kat's always been really supportive of my XR stuff. Like, she's tried specs. I have photos of her in specs and VR headsets and everything, and she lets me bring my zines here. And Heather did so amazing. She brought together press releases and put together all the details.

And Danny has been doing his organization and printing and Gengu Custom Printing, did all the prints for the work, which I am a creative technologist there. Creative technologist in a print shop, whole other story. Then we brought Rachel in, and she has just been jumping in so much. we were hitting max bandwidth, and she's like, I got this. And she has been communicating with everybody. It's just one of those things where you find your team, and if you find your team, you can do amazing things. Beautiful. And most of the stuff is AR pieces, but they actually got some specs experiences. Maybe you can talk a bit about what you're showing here and sort of your excitement and involvement here, what all the stuff that's happening at University of Oregon and kind of bringing in some of the student work, but also other work that's happening here on the specs. I mean, I'll first say that everyone here on the team inspires me so much, I had never thought of myself as an artist, but it kind of spreads and kind of changes the way you think about your own work and your own capabilities. And so it really cool to see you know Heather art Biophonic here on spectacles and letting people try that out It a very cool interactive experience You get to talk and interact with a plant and it just a very interesting experience

It makes you feel certain things. So it's been cool to see and observe people interact with it. Then you have Ancestral Dance by LaFia, which is also a big hit as well. It also involves the microphone. It's very engaging and spatial. So I think those two pieces really make use of what AR and wearable AR do well, which is transform your perception and experience around your physical environment, which again, we're dealing with tangible physical art. And so it's all about augmenting what's there and not replacing it. And I think all the pieces here that leverage it, leverage it in a very subtle but powerful way. And some of the stuff that we do at the U of O and the OR lab is social impact storytelling. And I know obviously those pieces that I just mentioned also have a social impact angle to them, be it climate change or be it kind of historic preservation and cultural preservation. So some of the stuff at the U of O that we're doing is around indigenous storytelling and how do we take those indigenous stories like the Coquille Indian tribe in southwest Oregon and translate their Sasquatch story into an interactive journey, 20 minutes to find and kill Sasquatch, right?

Takes a while. We'll shorten that up a bit. And then we have another experience, which is all experimental. It's called Let There Be Light. It's just about the cyclical nature of experience and really just a fun way to experiment with light beams. So, yeah. Yeah, I really enjoyed playing through each of those experiences, but also seeing the art. And, yeah, Rachel, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on, you know, kind of bringing all this event together. Yeah, well, Cammie brought me in, and I was very pleased. And I think each one of the curators is a big inspiration to me. Like, we definitely all draw inspiration from each other. And I do remember, like, early days getting into VR. That was around 2016 time frame. I saw Estella on YouTube, like, you know, doing your thing. I didn't tell you that. And I thought that was so cool because you're taking, like, traditional works and opening them up in a VR space and just, like, seeing you paint. I thought that was so cool. And I even, like, tried to learn how to do it. And I love Open Brush. Like, I love that we still have Open Brush, you know?

And, like, it does, it makes me sad to know that each one of you has had some work that's kind of, like, in some ways locked behind something that's no longer accessible. So the ethos behind this of having it be accessible is really important. And I just love the Portland scene. There's so many cool artists here. And Portland is very special. And so it's really nice to see this happen. And I'd love to see it continue, like, maybe another show in the spring or the summer. and the other artists that are in the exhibition like please check out their work like they each have their own interesting entry point into this and if you come to daydreamer like the exhibition will be up on the walls up until the end of december but of course tonight at the opening party we have things that are only here tonight which is special too so yeah i just it's yeah Having been to Venice and taking a boat to the island to go see stuff, it's hard. It's not cheap.

It's not easy time-wise. And I've been to VR film festivals or XR festivals where I couldn't even see everything because there's this limited through rate based on how many people have already signed up. So it's just that excruciating feeling of also on the audience side not being able to get to do these things. So I love being part of this group and just trying to expand people's opportunities to try the work. Nice. I'd love to hear how do you think it's going so far here? Oh, my gosh, it's brilliant. It's so lovely. The party is buzzing out there. It's been really fun to watch people access the art just kind of throughout the day while they're like waiting for their coffee to be made. And I love it. I'm super thrilled. Couldn't be prouder of this team for this coming together. Nice. Well, I know the opening party is going on out there, and I have just a couple more questions to kind of wrap up. Estella, you raised your hand. Do you want to say something? I have a question for Kent. Yes. Yes. What was it like for you to experience this?

No, it was really, I mean, so most of the time I have gone to lots of different film festivals and seen the art, and so when I see AR art, it's a lot about, for me, seeing like a 2D representation of a piece of art, And then I've learned that I have to really kind of take a moment and a beat to kind of look to see what's going on, because I know that the AR is going to change something. It's going to make it more dynamic. It's going to animate it. It's going to add a depth dimension. And so it actually sort of, like, causes me to pay more attention to the art in a way that then it gets recontextualized. So then I get put into the AR experience. And then once that's over, then I can look at that piece of art again to kind of recognize that this was a portal that takes me into this whole immersive experience. And so, yeah, for me, the Wi-Fi was, like, it was a little slow, but then it got better. My phone's old, so I think some of them were loading slowly, but eventually it just got into the rhythm. There were a few bugs that I helped sort of identify and people sort of fixed and get things so that, you know, by the time that was, like, early QA testing.

But after that, you know, I was able to see everything. And, yeah, I feel like it's something that, like, yeah, it was actually Casper Sonnen who had mentioned that from Douglas Rushkoff because the theme last year at the Doc Lab was off the Internet because we're so tired around, like, these billionaire, trillionaire companies that are creating these algorithms that are on our phones that we're addicted and kind of in this sort of zombie, stasis state that we want to stop kind of this doom-scrolling. And I'm so happy to do some hope-scrolling over the last couple of days after the election. And so I feel like we're in this space where it's like rather than the power of the trillionaires controlling everything and sort of doing democratically backsliding into fascism, we're kind of like shifting the tides into having people come together and actually organize and be face-to-face. And this feels like a perfect event to actually represent that kind of celebration of bringing people together to say the power of the people coming together is actually... So that's sort of like the energy and vibe right now. It feels very celebratory to actually come together and see some art and to see like,

hey, we're at the beginning of a new immersive cycle, and this is really optimistic that it's not going to be these kind of trillionaire companies that are creating these deprecated systems that are not actually accessible and that they, on a whim, just destroy it. It's really nice to see something that is like WebXR and also kind of using the browser to, for the most part, all in the browser. There's maybe one or two that have apps. But other than that, it was really great just to be able to kind of very quickly be able to jump into all these experiences. So that was sort of my hot take from seeing the program. And as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what each of you think is sort of the ultimate potential for this XR and this kind of new indie XR immersive distribution, accessible, bringing people together face-to-face. And, yeah, what do you think this type of immersive art might be able to enable? Oh, God, I'm going first. What will it enable? Yeah, sort of the ultimate potential and what it might be able to enable. I mean, I'm a huge fan of, like, nonconventional forms of interactivity,

and so I'm really curious to see, as democratized systems enable communities that otherwise didn have a seat at the table that can now use really accessible dev tools to tell stories enter this space and create more things I'm really interested to see what norms and interaction paradigms they're going to bring to the table that we haven't even conceived of. Because for the most part, we try to avoid it, but what we end up doing is taking the 2D model and trying to apply it to spatial, and it's hard to break that. But we have this new generation of creators that are already starting spatially. They're spatial natives. And so I'm really interested to see as wearables take, you know, sort of become more popular, how their approach to designing systems and interactivity will transform how we think of storytelling. One of the pieces here by Lafia Watson is called The Future Is... So the future is, in my opinion, open source, accessible, easy for anyone to try and experience wonder.

And that is kind of my ethos of where I am with my creativity and art. And so I guess for myself, like, I think of this chapter in this era of, like, bringing AR to the mainstream. As an illustrator, I do a lot of markets and in-person art shows around Portland, et cetera. And so what would it be like to kind of augment my traditional analog pieces? And what would happen if I try to help make that more mainstream as a leader in this field? Yeah, so I don't know. It's all an experiment. Hopefully it all works out. I don't know. You know, it's funny. I know you, and I know you asked this question, but I was not prepared. so yeah I mean fundamentally I feel like art is about connection and that there is this opportunity in embodied experiences and all of the technologies and APIs and data sets and all the things that we

can use to make things to make experiences customized and reactive is just I think the potential for like embodied connection through art is just amplified like greatly. So that's connection to oneself, connection to other people, connection to the planet. Like the connectivity is amplified. Beautiful. One of the goals for this show, at least on my plate, is that I would really like to inspire the community, especially this like local St. John's community who's maybe like never used creative technology before and doesn't even exactly know what that is. I'm hoping to get them to play with it and I'm hoping to see a future where people who didn't think they could use technology or didn't think they were the kind of person to make art, I just hope to see them like get into it, you know. There's so many things that they can do now and I just want to share it with them and I want to see what they make because there's so many people who could be making something interesting and we don't know what's in their heads.

and kind of like the similar thing of like people are like, oh, someone could be curing cancer, but they don't like they're not given the opportunity. There's more things than that. I definitely want that one, but I can't wait to see everyone create. And already like people have been inspired by this show. The art has been up for a week. Speaking of the future is LaFia's piece. There's an open mic like poetry night here on Wednesdays, and one of the poets saw that piece and then was inspired and wrote a poem and then presented that poem, performed that poem and pointed to the art and told everyone LaFia's name and stuff like that. So it's already creating more art, and that's what I was hoping to see, and I can't wait to see more. Beautiful. This is the ultimate question, and I love what everyone already said. I think I like the power of connecting people to other people to learn about their perspectives.

And having experienced lots of different 360 documentaries, I love that kind of thing in an immersive space, like just helping me understand somebody else and what they've gone through or where they live. So I guess I would answer it as like it's potential. it can satisfy your curiosity about anything and it can also help you learn um learn more about other people learn more about yourself and what we're doing here tonight is we're gathering people together to have this experience together and what Heather said about connection I I like that maybe because the tools like you know we need to gather so we can try the spectacles tonight right but that's cool. It gives us a reason to get together and do this together. So instead of being alone in your room at home with a VR headset, you go out and you do it with other people. So the potential to gather us together, to connect, to learn more about each other and ourselves.

You know, I think kind of fusing together what Danny and Heather said, when you can democratize storytelling and make that an immersive experience you really have an opportunity to win hearts and minds and that's how we affect change so i i think it's really beautiful what's happening here and i'm very inspired that there are indie creators who are behind it and not just some sort of like corporate monolith who's figuring out another way to swindle It's like I'm so inspired by this because it's like, okay, here I know that this is actually what's possible and that there is a force that's ignited within that industry to make it happen. Awesome. Well, I know the opening party is ongoing as we speak, and I want to make sure you can go out there and enjoy all your friends and community that's coming out and seeing all this amazing art. But thanks so much for taking the time to tell a little bit about the story and how this all came together. And, yeah, when I looked at LaFia's art piece, I said the future is relational.

So it is being connected to ourselves, connected to each other, connected to the earth. So let's go be in relationships to our communities. So thanks so much for joining us. So thank you. Thank you so much. What's up? What's up? 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 publicly 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.