『The Pigeon Ring』がヴェネチア・イマーシブ最高賞　個人的な物語と3D/4Dガウシアンスプラットの融合

The Voices of VR Podcast. is at Venice Immersive this year. So this is a really amazing piece that was able to tell a really personal, intimate story using lots of amazing and cutting edge techniques and technologies. And so this is a piece that's earth water. So they're using a lot of spatial capture, volumetric capture, 3D Gaussian splats of spaces, and then 4D Gaussian splats of volumetric capture. And then it's a very heartfelt, intimate, personal story that's also being told. It's a lot of water element dimension of a story-driven immersive world with both the 3d and 4d gaussian splats

so the pigeon ring is a personal story based upon an autobiographical information from the creator yuxi jeng so her grandfather raised pigeons and so she ended up being raised by her grandfather who ended up being very strict but he was constantly connected to these pigeons and so within the context of this piece you have this apartment room and you end up kind of walking through the apartment room and looking through a window or looking through the tv or looking through the door and it ends up projecting kind of in a mirror world in that mirror world you end up seeing a recreation of the past and these memories that are these 40 gaussian splats and performance captures where you get to learn more aspects of the relationship between her and grandfather and also how the pigeons are sort of representing this idea of hope in the future of what might be possible for him with this better life on the other side of it and the experience ends up being very photo real throughout the whole piece, but near the end you get much more elements of magical realism and changing the scale of the pigeon and starting to play with different aspects of this kind

of silhouetted, really beautiful, evocative imagery that is showing this whole journey of the grandfather, having hope, losing hope, and the different ways that these pigeons represent a better life for him of some sorts. But just the way that they do it is just really beautiful and evocative, and it's just one of the most emotionally impactful stories that I saw this year. And also, they're also using like a passive haptic feedback where they kind of recreated the scene of the furniture with these kind of like lightweight tubes, creating enough of a recreation of that space that when you're walking through the actual immersive experience that you don't like walk through a couch or something, but you just get a sense of respecting the spatial layout of that space. So it was a piece that was probably the hottest ticket within all of Venice. There was quite a buzz of word of mouth that was building. And it was actually one of the hardest pieces to see because there weren't that many tickets. So it was very high demand to be able to get in and see it. So very happy that I had a chance to see it and be able to sit down in the craters to be able to unpack it all. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Yuxi and Shenzhen happened on Monday, September 7th, 2026 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy.

So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. So hi, my name is Yu Qijang. I'm the director of the Pigeon Ring. So I'm an independent director in VR, and my specialty is in immersive storytelling. Yeah, hello everyone. So I'm Shixing, and I am director of MediaStorm. I do some videos like introducing the new technology, and I'm very interested in all of the immersive technology. like I have a bachelor in Beijing Film Academy, so I start like digital film technology, and we learn like the 3D, the Panavision, the DOOM, and including like the other immersive technology. Yeah, that's all. Great. Well, I always like to know what kind of different design disciplines people are bringing into the medium, and so I'm wondering if you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with VR and immersive storytelling. So I finished my bachelor's in Communication University of China,

and my course is called Cinematography and Production. So it's my first time I started to learn about VR, like immersive storytelling. But after that, I finished my master's in the UCL, the botlet. It's called Cinematic and Video Game Architecture. It's a more spatial course for my journey. So I think my study will be between the spatial narrative and the cinematic narration because I want to make some mixture of the cinematic and spatial storytelling. So I think that is what I will develop more in the future. So my previous job is more about DIT, the technical support for immersive video. and we have tried some, like we're shooting Apple immersive video. That's not formal enough, I think. That's more like a little bit like a demo or a technical test. And the Pigeon Ring is our first project that we want to try, like full immersive,

and it's a whole story. Nice. So we're going to be talking about the Pigeon Ring here today that is premiering here at Venice Immersive 2026, and most of my audience have likely not been able to see it. Even people here at Venice have been in trouble seeing it. It's a very popular hot ticket here at Venice. And so I'm wondering if you'd just give a brief overview of what is the pigeon ring. Okay. So the pigeon ring basically tells the story between a girl and her grandpa. So basically it's like the little girl who keeps her grandfather's companion, and they get back to the old house, and they are trying to find the grandpa's missing pigeon ring. And while they're going back, the old memories just emerged, and they just realized something they have never seen before. Yes, I think that's a storyline for the pigeon ring. Yes. And you tell the story in a very spatial way. So you're set in a living room that then, as you walk around,

you are sort of looking through the different windows, and you sort of see a mirror world. You mentioned that you're very interested in architecture and spatial storytelling, so I think that the way you're telling the story is very innovative. And so, yeah, I don't know if you want to have anything else to say in terms of how you're telling the story. So, okay, to be honest, we have very limited budget in this project. So you can see our thing is very realistic, but it's not a real old house. Actually, we built a set of this old house. Yeah, so what we want to do is trying to use the structure of the old house and to present a kind of memories before. So we are thinking about how could we achieve this in VR. Yeah, so as we all know, like the windows, it's like a frame that you can look through. And there will always be other kind of things like behind the window or we should say behind the TV. So basically we are trying to make this mirror world as a reflection of the old time of this old house.

Well, my experience of it was that I felt like I was in the present moment. And every time I was looking into the windows, the mirror world, I felt like I was looking back in the memories. It's a really amazing way of projecting myself into the memories because memories are also very closely connected to a space. And so I felt like I'm in the present moment, but I keep going into the past. And so you're able to weave together all these moments from the past in a way that you're able to kind of tell this larger story. Yes, I think I can add something. Another reason we want to make the mirror world like the past time in the window is because the memories is not accessible. Because we stand in the present old house. It is a present, but the old memories we can't get in. Yeah that another reason why we want to make this mirror world Yeah How would you describe the pigeon ring Yeah I would describe it like it just like immersive drama And you can just walk into like a real house, and you can see the character just walk through by you.

And we want to create an experience like, yeah, when you get into the old house, you see there's some reflection on the glasses, right? And you can see like your childhood, you can see some shadow from the past, And there is some story or memory piece in it, yes. So, yeah, that's a very novel and unique piece. And so I'm just curious, where did you begin with the project? Did you begin with writing a script? Did you begin with building out the world and testing out Gauss-Pan's Flats? And so just curious to hear a little bit more around the origins for where the pigeon ring began. Okay, so at that time, we already have the 4D Gaussian technologies. We know that we can capture, like, who's seeing, like, the performance. And we want to tell a story about the space and memories. And we all know, like, the Gaussian splattings, you can see it is very clarity when you get far away from it. But when you take a close look, it's a little bit blur. And we saw that it's very similar with, like, memory, right?

So we want to use a space, use a Gaussian splat to tell a story about the memories. Yeah. So basically we start testing in the beginning because we also made podcasts in China and it's called Immersive 101. Yeah. So after like Shixing, he posted something on the website and there's a technical partner and sent him email and says we want to have more conversation about this. And we met there about the Gaussian slats. Yeah, so we started to do some testing efforts because me and Shixing, we both want to try to create a very realistic story in VR. And once we get to know this technology, we think it might be the language of the future. So we started testing like two years ago. We made a very short demo, like also in our own house. Yeah, so it's like after that, we have more discussion about which kind of story we can tell or what's the limit of this technology. and it's like after two years discussion, we just get that our pigeon ring.

So it sounds like the close-up of the Gaussian slats that are volumetrically capturing the actors are a little bit too blurry to be right next to you, but if you look through a window and a mirror, then it becomes a little bit more clear, so you can have the best resolution by creating this conceit of the mirror world, it sounds like. Yes, because the basic logic of Gaussian slats is made by different transparent dots. And actually, I shouldn't say dots, but just that. So, when you get very close to it, you can see there are some semi-transparent dots floating around. That's the reason why when we watch it, it's not that clear. It's a little bit blur. But it's like if you put them very far away, so this will more like photo-real style. So we can see like it's very clear, far away, but also you cannot reach it. So, yeah, I guess, you know, part of the experience of this piece is that I'm walking through a space. And if I were to just watch this as a film, I wouldn't be moving my body through space.

And so I think there's something very interesting around my body moving through the space to see these different worlds. And I'm just curious to hear a little bit more reflection on the power of the spatial storytelling that includes a body moving through space to be able to witness these stories. Because I felt like I was storing them in my body in a different way. Like I was in the space kind of peering into the past, but I was taking it in as if I was there in that location. So, yeah, just curious to hear you reflect on the power of having your body in this space and observing these memories. Because VR is spatial media, I would say. So it's totally different from the way that films tell stories. Because in film, we are trying to make every conversation perfect. But in VR, it's like we will arrange stories not in a 2D image, but we will put them into the space. That's what I'm thinking about. And I will encourage every audience when they get into our experience, I will really encourage them to walk more closer into all the things they can see.

And also I would recommend them like walk physically in this space. That's what we are doing here. We have an installation like correspond to the virtual world about the furnitures. Yeah, because in my opinion, if you can really walk into the space, it will bring you more immersion. Because we can physically move our bodies so the audience can actually can choose what they can see. So basically we are trying to use caution sets to capture this old house. is because we want to bring this reality to different places, just like here we are in Venice, because we think the Gaussian stuff is a new technology could capture the world and bring it to anywhere else. So for me, it's like when we really get into this virtual world, when we get into the virtual world, we can feel or we can observe the environment from the other side. So I hope we can use this technology also in our project could bring the audience a more, I shouldn't say different feeling, but it's like more

unique or a kind of Eastern understanding of the environment. Do you have any thoughts on why spatial storytelling? Why you want to put people's bodies in the space? So actually there used to be an immersive drama called Sleep No More. That's we all love it. And yeah, I always think after saying that, I always think that can we just possess similar experience like but in VR or in a film way. So that's a good way we want to achieve it. Yeah. So we just want to create like experience that you can actually walk into a space and your body is here. And I think that can enhance the whole experience. We need to be like the experience must be very real and the size must be exactly with the real world, right? so that's what we want to achieve yeah so have you seen sleep no more as well yes of course we like experience it together yeah and was it in beijing is that where you saw it it's in shanghai

but i think now is they are upgrading another version of it right now yeah did you take some inspiration from that to wanting to have some similar feelings of having your body in the space Okay, I think I sleep no more. So I just like, I can be a ghost in there, right? I can choose my position. I can just view the position. I watch the story. I think that is very important for like an immersive experience. Yeah, and I like the darkness of environment and the flesh. And I think that's very real. That's like beyond the ability of like your, what you can see, what you can hear. and I think it seems like you it's you choose where you stand, right? But actually it's our, it's the creator, they design some like some acting and they guide you to here and like the natural way. Yeah, I think that is very important because we also design like very weak guidance in the PGA. We want to like our audience,

they can discover by themselves. Yeah, I don't like to be like forced to move to the next point to say the next thing. I think that is just not good for us. And do you have any background in theater at all? No, we don't have background in theater. Our background is all from film. But it has a lot of theatrical elements, I'd say. It feels like I'm in the middle of a theatrical drama. Yeah, I think so, because the performance for the VR is totally different from film too. Yes and also in our piece Pigeon Ring we have very long shots it will last about maybe three to five minutes Yeah so we will rehearsal like before like have two hours or three hours for the rehearsal and it like after that we don have the shot but we still have the concept of take it will be like um one take two take and we'll capture their performance with the gaussian stats yeah nice you mentioned in your artist statement that

this is based upon your own personal story. It's a little autobiographical. And so I'm wondering if you could elaborate on what it's like to recreate aspects of your childhood and to step into these virtually created memories of your actual memories. Because my family has a habit is my father will always take a DV when I'm a child. So he will take the DV and record everything happening in my life. So it's like maybe after 10 years, there's one day he showed me the old videos like when I'm only three years old. I find our yard is, it looks like the same, but they are slightly different for the decorations. Yes, but I just thought to think about it's like what happens through this years and why it used to be like that. But now it's like why they just remove the fence or something like that. So I think this do drive me to think about what if we represent these films, these videos, what will happen if we bring these old videos into virtual reality will happen?

It's like, can we discover more about the hidden place? Yes, I think it's a very interesting point for me to think about this. And we also like playing games, for example, like the Cyberpunk 2077, and it has a brain dance. I think we got some concept from there. We also get some inspiration from the Black Mirror's newest season. And it also tells a story about, like, seeking memories from the old picture, but you can walk through into that space. Yes, I think we have some similarity in our present for this work, but, yeah. but we want to make this memory come to life. Yeah, and so for most of the pigeon ring, it feels like there's action that's happening. We could just be there watching it, and it's just normal, mundane, but near the end we start to see more magical realism with like a glowing pigeon that's flowing around. We see giant pigeons, and we see the grandfather walk outside,

and we see his silhouette, and we can also just see him. So we see his sense that he's just there, and he's imagining that he's getting, like, attacked by pigeons, and we see the silhouette of that in this, like, it's very muted, dark gray, but that one piece of fabric is, like, blue, and it's very glowing. It was just this really striking, beautiful, poetic moment that was really quite beautiful. I think it was speaking to a larger theme in the story and culminating in a way. And so I'm just curious if you can comment on near the end how you're kind of setting people up for this to be just a normal world, but then you kind of have a twist where it starts to get real surreal and magical near the end. So basically when you can see the white pigeon in our scenes, that means you get into the grandpa's inner world. So basically, I couldn't see the exact meaning of this white pigeon. But when the story begins here, it's more like we are gradually walking to the grandpa's psychological world.

Yeah, because he lost his pigeon. But the pigeon is not just a pet or it's not just a... It's his belief and he's, I think, he spent his whole lifetime, like, put his wish on this pigeon. So once he gets to know his pigeon was killed by mistake, he starts to lose his hope, actually. That's what I want to present. So basically, yeah, there are two different scales for the pigeons. The one is the regular one. Another one we could see is much bigger, almost occupies the whole windows. Actually, in our first concept, we want to use the eyes of pigeon to create some narrations because it's gaze and it's also like look back to yourself or look back to the families. But we just realized the eyes of the pigeon is really horrible. They have a lot of small dots there. So we just like abandoned this idea, but we just create a very large white pigeon

as a kind of gaze in our pigeon ring. And the Gaussian splat is a key part of this piece, and you have 40 Gaussian splats in performance capture, but also the actual environments. And is that something that you were involved with in helping capture the Gaussian splats? So, yeah, we have, like, we think a lot about the, how can we use the advantage of Gaussian splats volume capture, right? So, basically, we think if you want a real immersive experience, you need the space limit, it's narrow, and you can see a lot of, like, the window, the table in front of you. and for the Gaussian slats capture there's more space. You can like put the camera array, you need more light, you need the boomers, something like that. So we did a lot of design for the technique. Like we built the old house but it's also we can remove the wall to let our camera in to capture the whole thing. Yeah, that's very important.

And we also look for like the possibilities of the Gaussian slats. Like you can say the night thing is very dark, right? and it's very light. It's just like a dream. The thing we want to test the possibility of the Gaussian slide, like if there is no light, you can reach a high quality of the reconstruction. So what it will look like. Yeah, and we very like the test and we keep like, so we shoot it at a very low light thing and we keep all the results for our work. So we didn't do any post-production after it. We didn't do any post-production? Nearly. Okay. Yeah, we just did some color grading for that thing. Yeah, a little bit. Okay. And the other thing is that you have an installation that has little pipes with fabric on it. It's basically trying to recreate where the furniture would be in this space. And I noticed you spend a lot of time orienting it before we start to make sure it's aligned. And so maybe just talk about the installation to recreate the sense that you're in this virtual space

by creating some proxy of the furniture that is not the actual furniture, but it's just like a very rough representation that gives you a sense of the layout of the space. So just curious to hear about the installation here. Actually, this installation is inspired by Gaussian slats because just as I mentioned before, the Gaussian slats are made by different transparent slats. Yeah, so we did, I think we did a co-response in our installation to the splats because we used this gold cube, and they are all transparent, and we made each cube individually, but assembled them together into the shape of furniture. So basically it's like we have the Gaussian splats house in the virtual reality, but we also made a physical splats house in here. and so you spend a lot of time having to get the orientation right

I'm just curious to hear about what it takes for you to set up in order to get ready for each experience yeah basically we just need to make sure like before every time we are experiencing that all the furnitures all the structures are in the right place yes that's our point because we are hoping the audience could physically touch the structure we have here right now which are aligned in the very right position with the virtual world Yeah so we have to do this like every time before we invite the audience to experience because we want to give them a most immersive feeling when they get in there And we want to encourage our audience can like explore the home room because when there is like a soft boundary, you're more willing to like hit it or it will not just like hit you and you know there is a boundary. So it's all safe in the virtual world, right? In the past, when you experienced some VR works, the whole room is empty, but you are still, like, you don't want to run it.

But with, like, our installation, you are more willing to, like, work fast, right? And also the physical installation will provide a boundary, actually, for the audience because we all know that in a home we might have the chairs, we might have the sofas, we might have the desks. But if there's nothing like on site, you can physically just walk into that desk. And this is not what we want to happen in our experience. So we set an installation here, which is actually another kind of boundary. Like the one thing is it can prevent the audience walk into the chairs, walk into the table. And from the other side is we also set the route for the experience. yeah i think it it helps to create a boundary and constraint but also i really appreciated the the haptic nature of being able to touch the furniture when usually you wouldn't be able to touch any virtual objects so it was really a low fidelity physical version of a gaussian splat i

guess that's really a nice little metaphor there and so yeah i i very much enjoyed the pigeon ring and I thought it was really evocative and such a really well-told story that was very personal. And, yeah, I think there's been a bit of a buzz here at Venice with a lot of people wanting to see it, but not a lot of tickets to see it. So what's that been like for you to have one of the hottest tickets at Venice this year? Okay. To be honest, it's really a huge surprise for us because for us it's like, just as you said, It's a very personal story, and it's also a very, it's not kind of the main melody story. Yeah. So it's really to our surprise that the audience in Venice are all touched by the story. Yes. Yeah, because before we start to show our project, actually I was really afraid of that people cannot understand the storylines or the way, the habit that Chinese people or Sichuan people will do.

Yeah. And also I do not know if the audience will really get to know like why this grandfather is raising this pigeon. Yeah, so, but I think we really got a lot of feedback when we get here. And like a lot of audience give us very highly comment about they get touched, they get moved. And it even remind them to think about their families. Yes, I think it's, yeah. I think this also makes me feel very moving. Okay, and to my surprise, there's a lot of audience told me that their grandpa also raised pigeons. And our works can remind them of their childhood. So it's just like he said. There are loads of audience tell us their grandpa also raised pigeons. Oh, it's really a huge surprise. and even there some of them share their childhood experience with us

and I think this is really nice and I think this is what the piece or what VR should bring. It's like more connection to different people like overseas and around the world and also make more connection both emotionally and to discuss more about themselves. yeah and i think it's a beautiful piece that you know has this really personal biographical story and so i think it's just uh very well told and has a lot of cutting edge technologies and innovative techniques with the mirror world and i think it just works really well so overall it just has some some beautiful poetry in the end so yeah just really enjoyed it and yeah i guess as we start to wrap up i'd love to hear what each of you think is the ultimate potential of virtual reality and immersive storytelling and what it might be able to enable. Okay. I think like when we have the technology that you can capture the space, the moving space,

that means you can save the memories and you can share it in like more common way, not only in like a storytelling, but like in a show or in some other thing. I hope that we can use a Gaussian setting in different ways, not only like in I'll translate for him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you. Okay, in his opinion, if we create a more reliable virtual world, it will make the storytelling much easier for people who doesn't know this culture. Okay. From my perspective, I think just as Michelle and Liz, they mentioned like in the very beginning of our exhibition, I think the VR will also be a unique media for the next 10 years

and maybe even more because it has a unique ability that could create a virtual world. It could bring the virtual world to different people. And I really think the virtual reality will not only bring the digital world to different people, but it will extend to more formats. Just like we have the XR glasses, we have the augmented reality, we have the mixed reality. I think there are more and more form. Some of them are based on the VR headset. But I think they will be used in different industries. For example, maybe the MR or AR will be used more in the education, or somehow it has to expand all the dialogue about the physical world. Yeah, but I think the virtual reality could bring us more magical feeling about a story. Yeah.

So, yeah, I really, really enjoyed the Pigeon Ring. I think it's a really strong contender this year in this program in terms of highly innovative, really powerful poetic storytelling. And, yeah, I just think you both did a really great job of pushing the technological edge but also having innovative ways of finding new ways to tell spatial stories. And it's also just a really heartfelt personal story that's really well told. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast to help break it all down. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 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.

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