Premise

The initial conceit of the Mirror Box Book Tour, lasting from 10 January 2021 to 27 March 2021, came from something I’ve coined ‘End-of-Year Resolutions’ in which I panic at the approaching New Year, take stock of what I’ve accomplished during the current year, and rush towards a goal that I’d put together at the last minute. The 2020 resolution consisted of doing final edits on Mirror Box, a novel I’d completed 12 years ago, and publish it to an aggregator since traditional publishing wanted nothing to do with it. …

Since late 2016 as I was pursuing a master’s degree, I have been working towards research in Social VR with regards to design and sociolinguistics. My study soon enabled me to speak knowledgably on the topic of Social VR in several conferences and venues local to Istanbul. Some of these talks were just introductions, but some were also based in creativity, identity and, on a dark note, harassment. While talking with university alumni and conference attendees, I would sometimes be asked why I have such enthusiasm for Social VR and I answered with examples of the potential for personal connection…

In the domain of hotels and food service, there has been a long practice of regulating their cleanliness and the health and safety implications have become important enough to warrant their own departments such as the FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Services) in the United States. Despite the existence of such government bodies, the majority of our interactions with hospitality services relies on trust and market correction. For example, if a waiter spit-shines the dinnerware or there are bedbugs within the sheets of your Air B&B, you would never consider repeat business to the establishment and would likely take your…

It seems epiphany comes in three shapes and sizes: little, super, and fire. A few months ago, I brought home a $30 mini-NES console imported from China containing 600+ games and, of the Mario franchise, it included the original Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. alongside the unreleased sequels Super Mario Bros. 10 / 12 / 14. As a testament to the universality of good design, even among five-year-old gamers, my daughter showed a preference for the original Super Mario Bros. amongst the hundreds of other titles, and over the weeks that followed — during her brief allotments of sanctioned…

It’s rare for an artist to encounter a major medium that has no real art history yet, no rules, no language. It means you’re helping shape and define these things through your work, which is a great privilege. Both terrifying and exciting.

How were you first drawn to VR? Did it seem more practical for you to work in VR or was there a moment when it just clicked?

There wasn’t really a single defining moment. It was more like an evolution, a natural next step on my journey. I was one of those children who would prefer to spend…

#1) How would you describe your role at Lethbridge College and your activities in XR more broadly? What are you most proud of so far?

I am one of the instructors in the new Virtual and Augmented Reality Certificate program at Lethbridge College. We have a team of three amazing instructors with various backgrounds that are forging the path in XR education. I’m also the President’s Applied Research Chair in Virtual and Augmented Reality. In this research role, my goal is to work with industry to identify opportunities for collaboration and develop XR solutions to improve the safety and bottom…

This current, persistent wave of XR has been life-changing for me personally since it directed a significant amount of my post-graduate education — as I’ve been researching social interactions in VR — and, beginning with VR First, brought me into contact with a diverse set of interesting and motivated people. Those that I’ve encountered have come into the industry with motivations ranging from art to enterprise, and health to education. Likewise, the roles that people find within the field may be highly technical, as with game development, or non-technical, as with research or user-experience driven roles. Since the current exposure…

In March of this year, I attended the Istanbul’s Sonar Festival of music and technology as both a speaker and presenter of my demo. I presented something called The Public Domain VR Cinema which was intended for showing animated shorts (like Felix the Cat) released previous to 1920. From that experience, I learned a few things that might be helpful to those who might also attempt it.

The VR Public Domain Cinema was meant to recreate a period-specific (1919) cinema which had interactive objects, like a piano and Lucky Strike boxes, and it allowed users to teleport openly throughout the…