AR Show with Jason McDowall

Christina Heller is the CEO of Metastage, an XR studio that brings live performances into digital worlds through volumetric capture and complementary tools.

The resulting 3D content can be experienced in augmented reality using mobile phones or high-end AR headsets, or using 3D displays. Metastage uses the Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture system and is located in Los Angeles.

Prior to leading Metastage, Christina was the CEO of VR Playhouse, an immersive content company based in Los Angeles. She is a recipient of the Advanced Imaging Society's Distinguished Leadership in Technology Award, and was named in the Huffington Post as one of 5 women changing the virtual reality scene. She has a long history in immersive media, having contributed to over 120 immersive projects. Christina comes from the world of journalism, radio, and television.

In this conversation, we dig into volumetric capture in general, and Metastage in particular. We explore a couple of the projects she and her team have done, along with some of the challenges and highlights along the way.

We discuss how people get to experience the end result, and the impact of the underlying capture technology. Christina also shares a new initiative to make it easier for creators to leverage volumetric content.

Christina share’s some of the lessons she’s learned from being an entrepreneur, including a lesson she picked up when she was young. She discovered the importance of envisioning the end state, and using that vision as a key motivator, while also recognizing the end result may look very different.

We go on to talk more broadly about trends in immersive content.

It’s worth noting this conversation was recorded in mid April, 2020, a few weeks after California issued its first “shelter-in-place” order in response to COVID-19. Some of the conversation reflects the newness of the crisis at the time.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Steve Sinclair is the SVP of product at Mojo Vision, a company enabling invisible computing with their AR contact lenses.

Steve has an amazing background in the product development and product marketing of personal computing technologies throughout the smartphone revolution. He worked at Handspring, Palm, Apple’s iPhone team, which he joined in 2007, as well as at HP and the Motorola division at Google, which was then sold to Lenovo.

He brings 20 plus years of insight to Mojo Vision, which imagines a world where information is there when you need it, and then technology fades away when you don’t so you can connect with others without distraction.

In this conversation, we dig into the details of Mojo Vision’s technology-infused contact lenses, including the underlying technology and how it works.

He talks about Mojo’s initial use case around helping the visually impaired, as well as other types of experiences that make sense in the early days of wearable displays.

We go on to dip into Steve’s history to extract some of the lessons he’s learned at the dawn of the smartphone era and discuss how they might apply to spatial computing.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

David Gull is the Founder and CEO of Outer Realm, a company within the Real Estate industry leading the shift from 2D screens to immersive Virtual and Augmented Reality for better decision making. The tool helps people visualize properties undergoing transformation.

David has both an architectural design and technology background, and he believes that creating experiences that engage both gut-level intuition as well as concrete factual presentation are key to gaining trust, and ultimately stakeholder buy-in, for real estate developments.

Prior to Outer Realm, David was a VP at Floored, a virtual technology startup acquired by real estate giant, CBRE. He also has 6 years of experience practicing architecture at the renowned firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. David graduated first in his class from Cornell University’s #1 Ranked Bachelor of Architecture Program.

In this conversation, we get into his perspective as an architect and what he sees as an opportunity, an imperative really, for the industry to incorporate better visualizations to help customers make better decisions, and ultimately for architects and real estate developers to create better homes.

He likens the traditional real estate shopping experience to buying a car after seeing only the frame. Just as it is very hard to imagine the feel of the seats and the rush of acceleration without being able to experience a car, it is hard to commit to a new home without seeing it as you would live in it.

We go on to explore his path as an entrepreneur, including his decision, and the consequences, of foregoing venture capital and bootstrapping the business.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Dominic Collins is the co-founder and CEO of Darabase, a platform to manage and monetize AR permissions on the physical world.

Prior to Darabase, Dominic was the general manager of international for Jaunt, which was a content capture technology company and studio focused on VR and later AR. He has also been the CEO or Director of Digital across a number of telecom companies, including Sky, Orange Digital, and T-Mobile, as well as the Chief Marketing Officer of financial services company, Legal & General.

In this conversation, we talk about the perspective that led Dominic to work with major property owners to help them control how digital content appears on their physical buildings.

He shares the strategy at Darabase for taking the best of traditional Out-of-Home advertising, and applying it to the complex arena of property rights within augmented reality.

He goes on to describe his entrepreneurial perspective on creating an augmented reality technology company, including some insight into his approach to building a business that is viable both today and for years to come.

Dominic also shares some lessons learned from his time at Jaunt, an early immersive content company for VR & AR.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Today’s conversation is a recreation of a South-by-Southwest Panel that didn’t happen this year because the conference was canceled. My guests are so passionate about their topic, we got the panel together to share with you here. This conversation was recorded the same week that SXSW was scheduled to happen in March. Here’s a bit from the show guide:

From Childish Gambino’s augmented reality dancing to Marshmello’s Fortnite concert in virtual reality to the mixed reality experience of Tonandi, immersive and spatial computing is closing the gap between the real and the virtual when it comes to music and art. Listeners can experience music in new and more profound ways. Musicians can take advantage of this shift to reach and connect more deeply with broader audiences. Artists can create a lasting emotional connection by letting their fans be in the center of the experience.

In the conversation, we explore new methods for listeners and artists to span realities with music. We talk about which experiences are getting traction, as well as where the technology shines, and where it still falls short.

We expanded the topics a bit to incorporate a discussion about survival advice for startups.

The four panelists include:

Amy LaMeyer is the managing partner of WXR Fund, where she invests in early stage spatial computing and artificial intelligence companies with female leadership. She’s a lover of music, and the author of the “Sound and AR” chapter in the book Convergence: How the World Will Be Painted With Data. She’s also an advisor for immersive music-focused startups: TribeXR, Stage, and Melodrive.

Eric Wagliardo is an internationally recognized artist and creative who resides in Brooklyn, NY and Dallas, TX. Eric has been working in XR for 4 years and recently collaborated with Childish Gambino to create an augmented reality musical experience. Eric is the founder and creative director of &Pull.

Rebecca Barkin is the VP of Immersive Experiences at Magic Leap, where she served as Executive Producer of Tónandi—a visceral, interactive audio-visual experience made in partnership with the band Sigur Rós. More recently, she teamed up with HBO and Framestore for Game of Thrones "Dead Must Die," a mixed reality experience brought to AT&T retail and Tribeca Film Festival. In 2020, opportunity informed a new focus on delivering services and solutions that bridge the physical and digital divide, ultimately expanding the reach of premium XR installations beyond any singular venue. She began her career at EMI Music.

Tony Parisi is a pioneer of virtual reality, a serial entrepreneur and an angel investor. He is the co-creator of 3D graphics standards, including VRML, X3D and gl-TF. He’s also the author of several books from O’Reilly Media covering Virtual Reality, Programming 3D Apps, and WebGL. Tony has become one of the leading spokespeople for the immersive industry, and he was recently named to Next Reality’s 30 People to Watch in Augmented Reality. Tony is currently Head of AR/VR Ad Innovation at Unity Technologies.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.