What’s happening in virtual worlds now that consumer VR is available? How is spatialized audio part of the new immersive virtual worlds? Just returned from speaking at GDC (and recent visits to High Fidelity), Lori Landay will give an overview of the past, present, and possible futures of virtual worlds and shared VR. Topics will include: social interaction, avatars, first- and third-person perspectives, environment, interacting with objects, quests, games, and “scripting hijinks”—when people goof around with the affordances of the virtual world. We’ll take a spoiler-free glimpse at Ernest Cline’s book Ready Player One and the about-to-be-released movie based on it. Are you ready for the metaverse??

Dr. Lori Landay is Professor of Visual Culture + New Media Studies, an interdisciplinary teacher, scholar, and artist whose creative and critical work explores themes of transformation in audiovisual cultural forms, technology, and perception. Over the past two decades, Lori's artistry has led her to create award winning interactive installations, virtual art, animation, creative documentaries, digital video, and music videos which have travelled the globe. Lori's recent focus is on XR, an umbrella term for extending reality through emerging technologies including virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, motion capture, AI, automation, and in her model of the “new realities,” social mediations of reality. She is a leader in BerkleeXR, the curricular, pedagogical, and programming initiative at Berklee, the Faculty Adviser for the student organization BerkleeXR, and a founding member of Women in the Next Realities, a Meetup group in the greater Boston area. Lori is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Brookline Interactive Group and the Public VR Lab. Her current project, The Immersive Tools Project for Autism and Music Education, is funded through grant from the Berklee College of Music, and is conducted in collaboration with Rhoda Bernard, Ed.D., Managing Director of the Berklee Institute for Arts Education and Special Needs. https://www.lorilanday.com @loirl