#1829: 「Out Of The Ashes」— 3D/4Dガウシアンスプラットで描くカリフォルニア山火事の没入型ジャーナリズム

The Voices of VR Podcast. actually a piece that ended up winning the second place prize at Venice Merce this year. So this is a piece by Nani de la Pena and Rory Mitchell, and it's documenting the fires that happened in Los Angeles in January of 2025. And so Nani lives in Los Angeles, and she had gone through her own fire, and she knew the value of doing like a volumetric capture of the aftermath. And so she ended up doing all these different Gaussian splats of the aftermath of these homes, in part to provide documentation to these homeowners to provide to their insurance companies, but also to be able to put together this whole film that is kind of rooted into this space and this spatial context

and the way that they're able to create this new grammar of the close-up and the establishing shot where you have different scales of the volumetric space where you're at the diorama tabletop scale ends up being a bit of an establishing shot. And then you can actually be immersed into the world. That ends up being a little bit more of a close-up. And then, yeah, just other ways you're able to kind of go in between those and be able to move around the space. But they're also doing 4D Gaussian splats within this. And so they're working with 4DV.ai, which is actually the top three pieces this year at Venice Immersive. We're all using this 4D Gaussian splat volumetric capture technique. And so they were able to also do this really high-res capture of a lot of these kind of oral history testimonies and then put the people within the context of their home as you're going from home to home and these different chapters in this kind of self-directed way to be able to get the overall story of what's happening for each individual person, but also this collective story of this tragedy that is tied to this larger story of climate change. And so this is a piece that was also funded by a GOG because they're also interested in telling these larger stories

of climate change. And so, yeah, just a really brilliant use of technology and immersive storytelling. And yeah, this kind of earth water centered gravity, the earth being this kind of volumetric spatial capture the 3d gaussian splats does an amazing job of doing this photorealistic capture but also the the time-based version of that with the 4d gaussian splats with the volumetric capture and this kind of more water element the story-driven aspects of the emotions that you hear based upon listening to this testimony in these stories so just a really impactful really well told piece so we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the voices It's a VR podcast. So this interview with Nani and Rory happened on Monday, September 7th, 2026 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. I'm Nani De La Pena and I'm the co-director of Out of the Ashes and also have an existence outside of my practice as a program director for Arizona State University on narrative and emerging media.

And my name is Rory Mitchell. I am also the co-director of Out of the Ashes and co-writer with Nani. And I'm an XR director and producer, and I am now also a professor of practice at Arizona State University's Narrative and Emerging Media Department. Awesome. And maybe you could each give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with immersive media. Well, so my background is that the first VR piece I were built was in 2007. It was a virtual Guantanamo Bay prison made in Second Life. And after I made that piece, and it was kind of crazy that universities were holding tours and everybody was trying to understand Gitmo through this VR piece, that was when I realized that this kind of spatial content could be used for all kinds of journalism and pioneered the use of something I nicknamed or that I coined immersive journalism. and I ended up having the first VR piece at Sundance, Tribeca, World Economic Forum.

I used to have to 3D print my own headset and travel with an insane amount of gear. I caught the bug in 2014 and started up my first VR company making 360 video with two of my friends from the documentary world and got into it with an eye towards bringing my documentary and theater practice in there. Of course, with documentary, I knew of Nani's work, so it's incredible to get to work with her now after being inspired by her for so many years. Nice. Kind, Sam, kind. That is super kind. Thank you, Roy. Thank you. It's been an amazing collaboration. This guy's a genius. Takes one to know one. So, yeah, maybe out of the ashes, maybe you could briefly describe what is the experience and the story that you wanted to tell. So, out of the ashes, a very deeply personal journey, I think, for both of us. We're both from L.A., our friends, our neighbors.

These are so many people that we are very closely connected to who lost their homes in the January 2025 fires. I had my own fire about a year and a half before this happened, where my electric bicycle battery blew up and literally burned my stuff to the ground, both from my company, Implematic Group, And all my personal letters, photos, et cetera, et cetera, all my memorabilia left me actually with some lasting problems in my esophagus. And I scanned my own remains of my fire, and it ended up being very useful in proving things to the insurance company that existed in the space that they were trying to deny by, you know, little metal frame of a couch, you know, arm or whatever. And so when the fires happened, I immediately knew we had to get out there, both journalistically, but also I wanted my friends to have whatever they needed in their own battles against the insurance company. And, you know, also for the city, the news cycle moves on,

and we wanted to make sure that we had an archive of something that people didn't forget. And so just days after the fire, I called my colleagues, my students, and everybody started going out there to begin to scan the remains of these huge swaths of neighborhoods that were destroyed. And it's really a unique spatial archive of a moment in time that no longer exists. The ashes of Los Angeles have now been cleared. And so what Nani and her team and then later I, when I joined them, have helped to create here is something that future generations are going to be able to look back on and recreate and use not only in spatial 3D experiences, but also for 2D experiences, because the nature of Gaussian splats allow for multiple transmogrifications. Yeah, and so I had a chance to actually go through the experience, and what was really striking was the way in which these scans were sort of set-piece

or a way that sets a context and that you're playing with scale in different ways, but also being able to capture the stories from these people that are representative of the communities. And so as you have the archive and are translating them into these really epic, large-scale maps that are documenting the devastation, just curious how you then take that and then start to pick out individual stories to be able to weave together these little vignettes to tell a much larger story about these fires and what they mean to the community. every story in the piece lends itself to a particular approach so the kind of mainstay vignettes involve interviews with the homeowners with the people who live there as they tell their story of what happened on the day and the few days after the fires and then we were able to rebuild their homes around them using photos and videos that they lent us of their home in order for people to begin to understand the life of this house the life of the family and really what was lost and what was buried in the ashes. So we've tried working in a few different modes,

the 4DGS combined with the 3DGS, and then we have other stories that are kind of centered around objects that people save from the fires, the meaning of those objects. And so I think we've really found some different colors and textures and modes in which to kind of play with this spatial storytelling with dioramas and scale and interactivity around these objects. Yeah, I mean, the cello player in the piece was my son's cello teacher, and I'd been in and out of that house for a decade, and David was a good friend. And so when you start talking about these set pieces, they are so deeply familiar. And when we start to think about where to place the stories and how to place the stories, you know, all the memories become urgent, right? Everything from whatever the photograph is or slight video or, you know, understanding the memory palace that we need to build is something that I've been amazed at Rory's deaf touch.

And being able to sort of talk about a room with Rory like where all David's teachings were. And there's this beautiful scene with his son and his wife and then the back room where all the lessons were. and being able to discuss the value and the importance of that room and making sure that room makes it into the piece is really crucial in the way that we looked at the scans. We still have a lot more to do with mini-scans we've done and other stories, but it gives you an idea that because we were so connected to the city itself and understanding how the house of Los Angeles is very different from an apartment in New York City and the way that we need to have the stories unfold. And really the rooms that were most important to the people that ended up just having more photos and videos for us to pull from. So there was kind of a natural selection that happened that ensured that certain rooms would be included in the story. And there's some interesting moments like when we did the bread piece and the story of Mary and Ted.

And Mary had died about a year or so before the fire. And Mary was one of my dear friends. and I'd actually kissed her goodbye in a room that she died the next day. And that room I scanned it standing on the side of the rubble of what had been her room But when we first pulled in the scan I was like something something this is wrong This is not the way her house was Then we had to flip it and realize that the model was backwards. And that was also sort of this journey of going, something's wrong, something's wrong, and then realizing it was flipped. And then also being able to know where she was in the space. and I have to say that our developer, Milly Christianer, really was so sensitive when he sat with me as we went through the photographs of Mary and put her in the home again. And I was so lucky to have this beautiful, beautiful team to work on this. Like I said, it's been a very highly personal project.

Yeah, the Christmas ornament scenes is the one that really got to me just to see the community coming together in a way that, yeah, I don't know. It was just the sentiment that, you know, when something like this happens, that the community comes together to help each other out. And I think just the act of you doing this project is an act of citizen journalism to bear witness to what's happening. But, you know, the story of the communities that were having the Christmas ornaments, I just find it really touching because it's something that's people letting go of their own personal mementos just to share. It's for other people to have those. It's something that, just a sentiment that we're not alone and that these times that people can come to help. So, yeah, that was a part of the piece that really, like, you know, just even thinking about it just has a lot of emotion coming up. So I can't imagine what it's been like to work on this project because it's like really staring in the face of this burning down the ashes.

I mean, I guess in some ways there's a phoenix that's coming out of the ashes, but at the same time you're still bearing witness to a lot of destruction. So just curious how that was to do this. I mean, I think, Nani, you showed me your pictures and hazmat suits and just what it took to even capture this was no small feat. I mean, you know, I know when the ornaments won, the ornaments story, I think, is just to touch on that for a second. I think that there's something in that that is universal for folks. And there's a part in the story when they're telling the story of John, whose wife had died of cancer and had sent the ornaments that she had made. and Anna you know my friends Anna and Emily Anna says this was a story of people trying to process through their own grief by helping others and that it was just this you know this reflection on them and what they're doing even though she's talking about someone else's story it's really talking about them at the same time and I think that that you know holding space for our friends

in their loss was a very delicate thing that I think took a toll on both of us. I know Nani has really been processing her own fire more through all this. I know there were points in some of the more intense zones where I was just having terrible nightmares about my daughter being on the other side of fires and trying to get to her. It's a whole thing that we just kind of keep passing back and forth, but that we feel better through that somehow. so yeah doing the actual work was very very intensive we had these hazmat suits and big huge like gas mask looking filters and you know you were putting your feet in some incredibly dangerous remains you didn't know for sure the ground was stable and trying to actually see and capture at the same time was no easy feat. You know, you'd have to throw away a hazmat suit so you could just get some lunch

because you were just so covered in muck, and it was really, really hot. I mean, I know this is, thank God, you know, I guess it's a capturing thing. It was January, so it wasn't like the middle of summertime, but to be clambering these sites, the fires weren't even out totally yet, but the place was empty. The birds weren't even back. There was no sound. There was just no sound, not a sound of a single car or laughter or a human voice or, you know, as I say, not even electricity running across the wires. There was dead silence. You know, when Nani mentions that it was January, I think that that is an important point to bear for a few different reasons. One is because we had just gone through a historic drought, and usually by January there has been rain. There should have been rain, and if there had been any rain in the past eight months, it maybe would not have been as bad as it was, which points to the climate change aspects of this.

But then something else, I think, you know, another theme that runs through this is, like, connection to the earth and to the land and to, like, living in it. And, you know, David Lowe talks about surfing his whole life and knowing the way the wind blows and knowing that the fire was going to come at him because of the Santa Anas. And, you know, one thing that is really interesting about all of these captures from January is that the winter's light in Los Angeles is particularly beautiful. that there is like a cleanness and a crispness and a richness to the skies that having lived there our whole lives, you can kind of just recognize. And so there's this, in some of these scans, like the sky is just the most perfect blue you've ever seen. The air is usually the cleanest it ever is in January and February. It's some of the most beautiful months in L.A. at all. And so having these scenes of destruction with what we know and recognize and can feel as this perfect winter's light is something that some of us will recognize that resonates with me.

Yeah, one of the things that I really also appreciated in overall experiential design and trying to visually communicate the loss was to have architectural blueprint outlines of where the house was. And I found that really helpful because sometimes there's some reference photos to be able to see or photos that are happening inside of the home. And you've got also, like, animated splats or individual photogrammetry captures that are placing people in locations of the house that makes it feel like it's lived in and not just, like, empty shell, but something that was previously a home. So, yeah, just all the ways that you're showing and visualizing the loss and helping to contextualize it. And also the shots from up high to see the devastation of, like, a neighborhood. It was, like, really quite astounding to see how vast it was of being able to get that spatial capture of entire neighborhoods. And, yeah, just incredibly impressive, the work involved in order to even, like, capture that.

But, yeah, just the ways that you're using the medium to help use the spatial documentation and the splatting to amplify the story that you're telling. I just thought it worked so well in order to see how just showing the spaces in that way and be able to move around and click on them and change the scale, giving the audience a way to engage and interact with it, but also just the way that it created a spatial context that really grounded the story that you're telling. Thanks. Thanks. That's really, that's beautifully put. I mean, I think, you know, shout out to Natalia Pavlova, our art director, who was an architect before coming to XR who did those wireframes and plotted out the architecture of the house in order to put that together. Yeah, I think that the vast aerial scans of Altadena was one of the earliest inspirations for this with the idea that we would go in depth into one family's story, into one house, and to involve the viewer in the emotional life of that house

and then to zoom out, to pull out and show thousands of houses, to start to begin to give a sense of just the vastness of the psychic pain. So, you know, when you get to a situation where you're trying to recreate memory, and, you know, this is something for both Roy and I, obviously when people tell us a story, you've got to be able to recreate it in some way, right? I was a journalist for Newsweek, so that was a texting. I went on to make doc films. Rory also has had a wonderful career in storytelling. You know, I've been a sensitive filmmaker. But now when you're trying to do this in an embodied way, we are still having to break new ground. Because there just isn't an easy format for us to, you know, emulate or apply. The kind of vernacular and language in this medium is still developing. and we were just so lucky to have such a sensitive team to go with us on this journey

as we were using these new technologies and providing a way for everyone and anyone to understand what had happened, what it was like, what were people's lives like, how beautifully rich they were, but also like how we can come together as a community to create whatever are going to be the stories of our future. And I think that with fires happening everywhere, what we put together for this piece has relevance way beyond just the story of what happened to Los Angeles in January of 2025. Yeah, one of the things that you also have in the installation, you have two projectors where you have animated fly-throughs of the splats that you captured. Sometimes they're mirrored and sometimes there's two different ones. Sometimes they're kind of in different configurations. And so I found it really eye-catching in terms of just walking by and being intrigued. And when I'm here in Venice, I try to see everything anyway. But I just had a lot of anticipation to get in and see what was happening on the inside

because it was like one of the last experiences I had booked to go see. But, yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit more around the process of designing the installation component in order to try to give some sort of visual depiction of this experience for people. because I can imagine this is also, you know, if there is going to be more of a public exhibition of this, I could see how that would be a really good way to capture attention for people to come in and want to come see it. I know that I felt that walking through here at Venice throughout the week. Yes, so this is one of the last pieces that we were able to put together, and I think creatively it was a really interesting one for Rory and I because this is incredibly sensitive material we were having to put a virtual camera fly through these scenes And some of the first scenes were almost playful They were going through car windows They were sort of taking people on kind of wild loops. And they were inappropriate. And I think Rory really flagged that well when he brought that up. And we were really in big debates about what about the mirroring?

What about this way? And until we got the projectors up this week, I don't think we knew for sure what we were going to see because we hadn't had the two walls. And we also realized we did some tests at ASU, but we realized that to convey the magnitude, we had to use the splats that showed the most magnitude. Even though some of the splats, when you look at them in the headset, when your focus is more narrow, it's fine. But once you get up on the wall, it required a different kind of treatment. We were lucky enough that, you know, Arizona State lent us two projectors. They pulled them out of a massive facility in Tempe and let us bring them here. And that was a whole other interesting journey because they got stuck on the tarmac somewhere in JFK. And Rory and his brilliance had put air tags in them, so we knew where they were. But even that was part of the dilemma. Waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning, jet lagged, and checking the air tags and seeing that they had finally moved out of a building in JFK and looked to be, like, near a terminal, possibly hypothetically on a plane,

and then falling asleep and waking up three hours later, and they pinged somewhere over the North Atlantic, was a very nice moment. Of course, then they got trapped in customs, so we couldn't get them out, and then we basically had to take a dawn ride over across the lagoon back to the airport for the third time to finally, like, return triumphantly with these two enormous projectors in a water taxi, skimming across the waves, holding onto them to make sure they don't fly out of the taxi. And amazingly, they worked. But the laws had changed in Europe where you couldn't have anything path like 72 pounds and these weighed more than that in your regular flight luggage. And so they got stuck back in L.A. and Broy had to get on the flight with the Carnet. and then I was fortunately not leaving until the next day or two days later, and so then I was a huge, huge pretzel thing to try to get them onto cargo and get them here. But I think you're right that the projections, all that work of getting the stuff ready for projections,

testing it, and then even the choice of the material, which we went back and forth on really hard, that was one of our most, I think, you know, we've been so aligned, And that one we were just really, really at odds at some point. But we completely agreed once it got up there. I mean, we both loved what ended up being shown. But it was one of our creative, like, disgustos, as I would say. But the ultimate thing of it arriving and being to see it up here, and I feel proud of the work we did. I do feel proud of this work. Also, shout out to former ASU student and our dude, Trey McNair, for making those projectors happen like a champ, and he's now here in Venice helping us out with the team. The ASU graduates have just frigging been amazing. I've been so lucky to have people come through the program who are now just continuing to participate in the growth of immersive, and we're lucky to have Trey here, and boy, did he work hard helping us get. He was at the cargo delta talking them into taking them

when they're like, we're not so sure, and he got them on the plane. Nice. And there's also a whole 29-minute audio documentary that's also on a loop. You know, it sounds like you've been collecting quite an archive, and I'm sure you have lots of other materials that could be recontextualized in all sorts of other formats. And so, yeah, just choose to hear a little bit more around the audio documentary, but also, like, what happens to this broader documentary of all the stuff that you've been gathering, if there's plans to continue this or where it goes here from here. Yeah, you know, I think the hope right now is that this can become a touring exhibit that can move through museums and cultural centers and can eventually help to bring donations or attention back to the rebuilding efforts in L.A. You know, this is part of the soundscape. It's comprised of a lot of interviews that we conducted with other folks whose volumetric interviews we haven't processed yet but that we're still hoping to. And then also one of our community partners, Evolve Altadena,

did this really incredible collective songwriting workshop for not professional musicians who were just kind of together writing songs to process their grief after being affected by the fires. And so there's a lot of that in there. It was led by Maya Jupiter and Quetzal. And they were at the Music Center when we showed this on the first anniversary of the fires. And I think it really adds a real texture and context to it. You know, we also built the soundscape to kind of lean into the more hopeful notes. You know, because like Nani mentioned, like the idea of not just getting into doomerism, but giving people hope for what is possible. And I think a lot of that comes down to community and how we're able to come together, because that's something we found in all of our interviews, which is people went to go check on their neighbors before they fled before the fires. And that's one of the things I take a lot of hope for. Yeah, it was a little bit of a contrast of hearing that hope but also seeing the destruction on the screen, you know, waiting to see it.

But I was happy to hear some of those different gatherings and singing and people connecting to each other. Yeah, I mean, I think the piece overall, I really appreciated being able to navigate my way through it and have a little bit of choice. There's two basic neighborhoods that you have an ability to choose. and I feel like that overall you're able to, before you even get to that choice, set the context, explain why this is happening, give a little bit more of like here's why this happened and then we dive into the neighborhoods and then also we hear from like someone who's speaking around the larger climate change implications of this moment. So I feel like there's a way that this story in particular is very personal in a lot of ways but it's also very collective in a way that I feel like you're able to really weave together both the larger story of what's happening, the largest context, but also in the context of these small communities and these individual stories that are also reflecting the impact of these larger dynamics. So, yeah, I guess I was really struck by it's really hard to tell these big, large, abstract stories,

but I think, unfortunately, they're coming more and more personal, and I think that this is one way that I see at least that the types of immersive climate change projects are changing because there was some famous quote by someone who was saying like, oh, yeah, climate change is like you see a video of the climate change until you're the one who's recording the video of the climate change. And that's kind of the feeling I get with a project like this. We use that quote in one of our decks because I think that that is, yeah, that is part of it. Climate change is something you're watching on social media until you're the one filming it yourself. Like something along those lines. I was joking with somebody here that we need to have a festival class event called XRXR because you have the Extinction Rebellion and the XR community. And I think that we could have a really extraordinary, extraordinary installation that includes lots and lots of these types of projects that are wrestling with climate change and also offering opportunities to have an embodied solutions that could be really effective.

because there is a lot of hopelessness around it and a feeling of like you have no power. But if we came together in this community, I think there's a lot of us who could provide support and solutions, and it could be a huge, huge event. So XRXRs, I'm pitching to you now. Yeah, and I know that it's probably worth mentioning that Agog has come on as supporters, and I know that they've been bringing people through here at Venice, but also it's kind of in alignment with their mission of using these types of very personal, immersive stories to be able to get beyond the abstractions and numbers and charts, but to really make it personal, embodied, situated, and emotional. So, yeah, I'd just love to hear any reflections on the collaboration with Agog and where that might go in the future and the continued support to exhibit it or develop it. Yeah, we've had some extraordinary support from Agog. you know this is one of an interesting one because I was asked to be on their advisory board first and then they began to also want to fund some of the projects that we were working on

they've also really been an incredible supporter of a creator's lab that we host at Arizona State University to try to really make a more inclusive landscape of folks working in these kind of technologies right and so it's been amazing to watch how much agog has come into the space and really trying to support the growth, thinking about ways of how do we have better distribution possibilities, what are the tools that, like the way that they've taken eighth wall and are working with them to make an open source augmented reality solution. That's just the kind of partner this industry really, really needed, and we're very lucky. And, you know, frankly, they're just giving away millions of dollars to support important impact projects. that is a profound shift and it's really been exciting to watch what's been coming out of that effort. I also want to also really thank the MacArthur Foundation. MacArthur has given nearly a million dollars in unrestricted funding

to the Narrative and Emerging Media Program at Arizona State University, which includes supporting the work of the professors, right, professional development. And certainly this project fell into that category. are really the journalists at MacArthur who really see the value in supporting things like this. So they've also been a fantastic partner along this journey. And so what's next for Out of the Ashes? Yeah, as far as for what's next for Out of the Ashes, I think we're just hoping to show this to more people, whether that's at festivals or in museums or cultural centers. We're looking to both build out the documentary experience experience itself as well as you know start to put together this touring exhibit that can go around and help people remember what happened and maybe help us envision what could come next not only in los angeles but everywhere else around the world yeah just a follow-on on different help

it sounds like you also were able to get a lot of your asu students to come out and do some scanning is that right Yeah so again I have to shout out Arizona State University for their support on this project And, you know, my students were willing to learn how to use these new technologies. We had, very early on, we partnered with a guy named Mike Corona, who's based in the U.K., who used to be general manager of visuals for Reuters. and he basically 3D printed the first, what we call now the Corona stick. It was a 3DGS stick that we could put four cameras on. You could put more, but he's the one who really designed a system that we could do sweeping scans of scenes, particularly when we first started, no drones were allowed because planes were flying to still put out hot spots. So before this happened, Mike had come out to help train my students how to use the corona sick and that was not long before the fires and one of the students he trained

became really quite adept at that ashley bushhorn and she was out in the field with us a lot and there were moments because this was so personal where i would just not be able to function and i would have to go sit in the car and ashley would be out there on her own still working scanning away and I have to say that effort was amazing but she was really skilled the work she did was excellent and we've seen that with my other students who've also participated and also the students are coming here and with other projects like Shubim he has this new project on the Amagosa Opera House and my students went out with him to help scan so like they're really on the ground now their footprint can be found in a lot of projects which is super exciting. Yeah I think we've also discovered with this project, you know, these evolutions in this kind of spatial cinematic language that's rooted in photorealism and Gaussians. And I think, you know, we're starting to see a way to begin to create spatial content in a way that is very exciting for producing

content at scale, knowing that you can go out and scan a person, scan a place, scan some objects, come back and we're discovering these tools kind of like nani mentioned earlier you know to kind of lay out this new spatial cinematic language i don't know that's all i can that's just the language i can refer to it because we have a diorama and that's kind of a wide shot and then we go into human scale and that's kind of a close-up and you're walking through it and you're picking things up and you're you know you're fully embodied in a photorealistic scene which i think is It's so important for this art form, this medium, to evolve, to connect us with thousands of years of watching humans tell stories to each other and experience stories with each other. I had another journalist ask me. She's mostly a film, big film reporter who happened to come through. And she asked me, oh, I asked all the, and she mentioned various stars, you know, what's their film that they immediately think of that was seen, that was impressive. and I talk about Carl Theodore Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc

because he really establishes a close-up. Like suddenly you've got this huge face on the screen and that was the first time anybody had done that and I think we're kind of in this same feeling of like what is this spatial language? I've obviously been working for 20 years trying to tell these spatial stories but we're now at the point where it's photoreal, where our characters are photoreal, where the scenes are photoreal and we're playing with the same sort of scale in the way that Dreyer did, that only this medium affords. Yeah, I think the Pigeon Ring makes some key innovations in terms of developing that spatial cinematic language with theatrical twists and doing a lot of really interesting things. And they also had 4D Gaussian slats, and you'd mentioned that you'd done some 3D and 4D Gaussian slats. Are there performance capture, or are they just more of the snapshot clips of people that are kind of animated and moving? Those of the interviews we did were 4D Gaussian Splats. That is actually with the same company, 4DVAI, who moved their rig into ASU when they met Nani.

And so we did all of our interviews with them there. And so the 4D Gaussian Splats, especially when you see David Lowe playing the cello and you're able to move around him and get as close to him as you want, is really quite remarkable and exciting for what the future portends. Yeah, Xiaoming, the head of 4DB, I ran into him at an event that I hosted actually as part of the creator's lab with the God. And he was like, oh, yeah, I'm studying this. He showed me like one of his captures. I said, yeah, I've got a new company. I'm going to open it up here in California. But all my cameras and everything, they're in suitcases in my apartment. I'm like, oh, don't do that. I've got a space. Bring them on in. And so once again, ASU let me, we've built a virtual production stage there now. But at the time it was empty, and I was able to set up the 4DV system, and we immediately started doing our interviews using their capture system. It is absolutely beautiful. We have been working on an open-source version. I think that you're always going to have the high-end film thing,

but I think if you saw the quality of some of our open-source stuff, you'd be very impressed. It is the future of the medium. Awesome. That's awesome to hear. especially this cross point where I'd love to see more and more open source feed the ecosystem. So that's really amazing. That's one of the joys of working at a university, that I can try to help move the needle by making it accessible for folks, right? We need to be able to get the tools in the hands of the creators so that they can actually do the kind of storytelling that they want to do. And it's super exciting, a part of what our team is helping drive forward. Do you want to talk about Arvin and Stephanie at all? Yeah, just a shout out to Arvin Tehrani and Stephanie Fowler. Contrast Media who have been helping spearhead the development of the open source 40GS system at ASU. So we're really, there are a lot of pieces that are starting to fall into place that, you know, not only will allow professionals to create content, but also the students who attend them are going to have a one-of-a-kind opportunity to make content in this photo real

spatial future that we're heading into. Yeah, you know, just seeing Empire at Sea and seeing, And I think the 4D-D AI system as well is really impressive to see what it can do. So, yeah, and I guess finally, what do you think the ultimate potential for virtual reality and this type of immersive storytelling and spatial capture might be and what it might be able to enable? So our world is not flat. I've said that for so many years. And our stories are not going to remain just 2D. The glasses are still, there's still some friction there, but people sometimes forget how long it took really for cinema to develop over how many decades before it became something that people saw regularly in the theater. We are on that same trajectory. The glasses are getting lighter. You know, I'm wearing my, you know, audio glasses, the old Bose ones that do great facial audio, but they also are my trifocal, so I can add my sunglasses, and that's where we're going to go. We're going to go with glasses that will allow you to watch things collaboratively.

You're always going to have a distinct experience where you go to a location, but I think that we are on our way now. I see some of the advances technically here at the Venice Film Festival. I see some of the way the glasses are going, and I'm really excited about how what has been a very big friction point for me is starting to disappear. Yeah, and I think that my hope with this is that this may return stories, not only to the world around us that we live in where stories have always come from, but also there's the idea that the rectangle exaggerates and hyperbolizes and kind of distorts our lived experience in a way that's maybe not good in some way. And that by returning stories into this closer to our lived experience, we may be able to uncover new things not only about ourselves, but also not only how we tell stories, but the stories that we choose to tell. Beautiful. And is there anything else that's left and said that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?

Just thank you, Kent, for sitting here this whole time and making a little immersive installation of your own here in the Lazzaretto with the world of VR swirling around you as you hone in on the creators that we're all honored to be together with here. So thank you for your work and commitment. Has anybody scanned you? I don't think so. Well, I have some scans, but it's been a while. Quick scan it first. Okay. All right, we're going to scan it first. Quick scan it first. This is the immersive, yeah. Well, I feel like there's so many of these immersive creators who have been spending so much time and energy in their lives putting these pieces together, and I just love to bear witness to them and then help tell their stories and share out to the wider community as to what's happening. I have to start from the back of your head when I do the Scaniverse scan, and then I'll come around your face because if I don't do that, you only need to be able to freeze your face shortly. So the way the technology works today, it's better if I come around from the back, do all the back, and then I'll come around just once around your face.

Okay, well, let me just say thank you so much for joining me here on the podcast. I just really enjoyed what you were able to do with Out of the Ashes. I feel like that you're really able to push the limits of this kind of spatial storytelling, and it's really quite compelling as well as a story that's very well suited to be able to use this type of spatial storytelling. And also you're telling an individual and collective story that I think is probably one of the most important stories of our time. So thanks so much for joining me here on the podcast to help break it all down. You know, Kent, that I'm a fan. Thank you so much. Thank you so, so much. Yeah, thank you, Kent. All right, now you can scan me. 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.