Episode 04: Creative Visionary & Entrepreneur- Nancy Bennett
Nancy Bennett is an innovative storyteller and visionary creative who thrives at the nexus of groundbreaking technologies, cinematic storytelling, and creative design. With 20+ years of experience spanning VR, film, television, music videos, marketing, and startups, she expertly leads cross-functional teams to bring trailblazing ideas to life across physical and digital platforms.Nancy’s creative background, hands-on technical expertise, and futurist vision enable her to shape ultra-modern experiences that drive revenue growth, engage audiences by the millions, and transform the possibilities of tomorrow into the reality of today.
Bennett is one of the five founding members of Two Bit Circus and has served as chief creative officer at the company. Two Bit Circus is an interdisciplinary team of artists, inventors, engineers, educators and entrepreneurs passionate about reimagining all forms of entertainment. Bennett is a recipient of the 2018 Lumiere for Best Music VR and a 2019 Sundance Institute New Frontier Lab Programs Grantee.
Episode Notes:
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Nancy Bennett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/1nancybennett/
Two Bit Circus: https://twobitcircus.com/
Marcie: Hi everyone, welcome to the 2nd level podcast. I'm Marcie Jastrow and I'm Christina Heller, and we are back to talk about the days and lives of immersive media
Christina: . Yes. Today I'm very excited. We have a guest that we're both big fans of.
Marcie: Yes. Nancy Bennett has been someone who I've admired for many years. Not only as a creative, but as a friend, a confidant, someone who I look to for advice whenever I was doing my deep, deep research and location-based. But also so many just amazing ideas and things that Nancy was doing. We talk a lot about Sundance and, how Sundance was very prevalent in both of our journeys and immersive, but one of the things that Nancy and I worked together on, at the very beginning was with a artist named Lynette Wallworth. Where Lynette had a piece in Sundance called Collisions, and Nancy was the person who figured out how to slave a whole bunch of headsets together and show this experience at the same time in a theater. But those were the kinds of things that, that Nancy was doing very early on. And so I'm. Truly excited to have her here.
Christina: Yes. I think in addition to being in a very inspiring entrepreneur and innovator, she's also got one of the kindest hearts of anybody that I've met in immersive, and she's such a cool chick. She's such a cool chick.
Nancy: Okay. It's time for me to leave.
Christina: So, I'll give you a little bit more of a formal introduction though. Our guest today, Nancy Bennett, is a creative visionary and entrepreneur whose career started with directing music videos for artists like Tori Amos. And most recently had a, her opening the modern day immersive arcade Two Bit Circus. One common thread is her penchant for worlds firsts - creative activations that truly push the envelope. So we'll, we'll stop making you uncomfortable with all these compliments. But thank you so much for, for joining us today.
Nancy: I'm thrilled to be here and I'm very, overwhelmed by those very kind words. Thank you both very much. I'm very happy to be here with you.
Marcie: Nancy, I think that you're one of those people that can not only talk on a technical level, but on a creative level.
Christina: I'm curious, looking back at your career, what attracted you to the initiatives that you ended up tackling.
Nancy: I've always been very confident about following my nose into whatever missteps of crazy future forward innovation is there. And I think it comes from a combination of, I guess a Trinity of technology, storytelling and filmmaking with music. And those three things have always, you know, music tech and film. I've always been very . Much a passion there, languages of space and time, you can expand and contract them really well there. They take you into your own imagination beautifully, and they give you memory and forward thinking memory as well as backward thinking memory.
Christina: They say that what really locks in a memory is emotion and music. It’s you know, is what taps into our emotional state.
Nancy: Yeah. No, no doubt. And music was a very early thing in my family and, and beyond. And it's been the through line of everything that I've done. And I think in the sound design and music space in our industry, that's where all the frontiersman ship has been, or frontier women's ship. To creation of software, of technology. I don't think we would've had the, you know, media composer in 1989, without music being compressed and MP3 is coming on board. So, you know, those things are always really interesting. So if you're working in, in those three subjects, you're bound to step into tech.
Christina: Right? I think that music in particular has these, there's something about that industry that lends itself to being on the forefront.
Nancy: People love it and it's really easily consumed. So possibly, but you know, for me personally, I would say it's because I love music. But there's another thing about all those things too that I think has propelled me through this sort of hurdles that I've had career-wise, which is, you know, where can I innovate without being told what to do? So, wherever I could find a place to have a career, to have a job, to, to make a living was usually on the forefront of things because of that exact thing, which is, you know… They're women doing it and no one knew. So you know, you'd bust your foot through a door to make something happen. And that's how you ended up being an innovator and pushing the needle.
Christina: So how did you end up in immersive media?
Nancy: Well, I've always been an immersive media. I, you know, I think back to music again, you know, sitting in an orchestra in the back row as a horn player 140db, right of spring Stravinsky, or you know, a Brahms symphony. There's nothing like that immersion, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. But I think that every art form is immersive. If you really want to boil it down to the simplest answer and it's the proximity of being in it. That gets more and more immersive over time.
And I think that's what we're talking about now, is that technology affords you to be in the middle, right smack dab in the middle in a way that. Only the very few had the chance to do in early iterations of these things. So, yeah, I mean, it's always been a draw. When you watch movies and you're, you know, watching a big screen, like a seven story screen, like IMAX, and you've got surround sound, you feel the peripheral vision around you and you feel as close to replication of life as you can get.
There's nothing more immersive than being in the world. And the nature.
Christina: So maybe by using the word immersive, I was kind of setting myself up for a big, broad answer. But when you met, how did you end up in, in, in what we, I guess maybe what XR cause you cause Nancy also has been around since I would say the beginning of this latest incarnation of VR and AR
Nancy: definitely. Well, it's, for me, it started in Oh five, actually when I know I was playing video games and I was looking at SecondLife and There.com I was at MTV.
Marcie: to second life type world. So it's like a, this, this world that lives in this animated kind of a universe where you can change money and buy things. Have sociology sections on a two D screen. Yeah.
Christina: So what was your avatar in this world?
Nancy: Oh, I played around with a lot of different avatars because it was an experiment in psychology as well. Like how do people interact. I was at MTV, I designed the launch logo, the network, and I was thinking about our 10% of the population and the LGBTQ and what innovative technology and platforms and marketing could happen for that audience. And so this was 2005 and I was like, you know, second life. Yeah, we could build a virtual world.
So I put together a little marketing piece, little teaser. To suggest just that, you know, where we built the world built, you know, built in integrated marketing. And I showed it to Brian Graydon, other people at the network, and they put $13 million into VR and they did lower East side. And, and they gave me 600 K of that 13 million to do logo world. And I said, no, thank you. But that was the beginning of VR for me. Cause I saw this opportunity to walk around in the world and play games and do all that kind of stuff. I also brought a friend of mine named Douglas Gayton who did, Johnny mnemonic at propaganda to MTV and to HBO and a couple of other places because he had captured an episodic series called the Molotov all the in second life. That was a pretty interesting. First of its kind and HBO ended up, acquiring that. So I knew that it was coming. It was a little early. And so when I got to two, but circus and probably a year and a half into Two Bit.
Marcie: What year was that?
Nancy: I started working with Brent and Eric in 2012 and more officially in 2013. But, you know, doing activations and producing things for them, so forth.
Marcie: Let's, let's be clear, at the time to bid was an advertising type agency. Two-bit didn't even exist. What was it before?
Nancy: Well, they had been with, I'm blanking on the name of the company they were with. They were doing amazing activations. It's actually really bespoke, crazy, wild, big things. I, large scale things like dropping a car off of a stack of freight containers on a bungee cord to dip its nose in a kitty pool kind of stuff, like an amazing, so there, there were a lot of fun. So they got a set up, and when I saw that, I was like, Oh, it's time to shoot.
And I got a phone call. It's just how that happens. And I got a phone call to do IndyCar. They said that Verizon had been given a quote of $5 million to make a three D three 60 capture with a motion platform render for experiential at Indy 500 and could I beat that quote? And I was like, sure. And then when I got the job, I spent the next three days lighting my hair on fire. Like, Oh shoot, there's no camera. We're going to have to build that. Oh no stitching. We're going to have to build that and all that kind of stuff. So that's how I got into doing location-based activations in VR, which is what I started with in VR. I wasn't shooting three 60 straight up at all.
Marcie: Yeah, and let's talk about location based a little bit. For somebody who's not particularly familiar with that term, how would what, what is LBE or location based entertainment to you? Well,
Nancy: in the immersive space, LBE is about giving people the opportunity to play together using the technology that affords them that kind of experience, that virtual reality and augmented reality and interactive gaming can provide. And story rooms can be included in that immersive theater can be included in that. Sleep no more is a good example where you go to a location with other people to see something that is the theatrical using technology essentially.
Christina: And what skills from your previous, you know, career endeavors came in the most handy then when you went and moved into immersive.
Nancy: All of them. You know, I think that's the cool thing about life is that they stack up over time and they all are part of your toolkit and your reference.
Certainly being a pretty good filmmaker is helpful to understand the, the physics of the camera and what you're dealing with there editorially. Very important thinking about how you craft a story, but as a marketing person and a creative designing and experience that. We'll reach a consumer and, and let that consumer feel like they're emotionally connecting to whatever that product is or brand.
And all of our stuff was branded at that time because no one else was paying for it. But thank God, you know, so, and a lot of it was sports because sports is that, you know, in sports is the kind of entertainment that, uh. Is, you know right there, right then it doesn't happen any other time. And so capturing it so that you can be in it is a real drive for the audience. So it was a very nice opportunity. I hadn't done any sports work, so it was kind of great
Christina: Yeah, that does seem like a pivot from some of your earlier stuff. Did you ever get a chance to see the Olympic stuff that Nancy shot.
Marcie: Yes, I did actually. Yeah, it was pretty amazing, right?
Christina: Yeah, I would think I saw it the swimmers is the one that pops into my head. And you know what's funny is that because I saw it in a headset, I remember it like a memory. I go back and remember that piece, like I was at the pool with those Olympic swimmers. It's crazy stuff
Nancy: too, and it was so experimental. Then, you know, we'd built cameras that could go from the diving board into the water.
It was, it was really fun.
Marcie: So I want to jump in here a little bit and talk about LBE because, that was when you and I really became very close and, in, in the play to get people more socialized in VR. Cause remember that was my one and only purpose in life. And for a while,
Christina: see episode two down the immersive rabbit hole for how we got to the LBE track
Marcie: So, Nancy and I talked a lot about, two bit and what tube it was going to be. And what I would love for you to do is talk to the audience right now and explain what the vision was. You are the chief creative officer of, the design of what is a micro theme park, which is going to scale worldwide, and is scaling worldwide currently right now in downtown LA. and to watch it unfold was probably one of the most. Interesting, exciting, exhilarating things. So to be in it, I'm sure while you were pulling your hair out at times, but to be a part of that also, what a moment in time. Can you, can you take us through what that was like?
Nancy: Absolutely. It was an incredible moment in time.
I, I do want to say that there were lots of creatives involved. First of all, Brent Bushnell. Is definitely a driving force in the creative vision of the company, as is Eric Gradman, who are the two co-founders of the company. There are five of us original founders, and Hector Alvarez is the creative director.
And, Dan Busby was the mechanical engineering physicist, more of an artistic installation guy there. So, and then, you know. Aaron polka. And I mean, you know, there was an army of incredibly talented people, which was exhilarating in and of itself, not only for the creative coming out of it, but the management challenges.
But you know, like most things that are just starting, that seem to have a resonance of interest across the board they happen really fast. And how do you, you know, we were talking a little bit when we first started warming up in here about. The time it takes to do something well. And, and I think that that is the one thing that we overlook in this time of startups, that you really do want to spend the time to thinking through what you're doing and design it carefully and, you know, do your homework and research and actually live in it, which I've been able to do the last few months, having stepped down as the chief creative officer there.
But I am really happy to have that time back. At the same time, when you're in the middle of it, time expands and you, you do that homework and you do it as a team. And, you know, I think one of the things that I felt really proud of in that context was looking at the space and going, okay, how do you communicate what we're designing to the team that's building it?
Because there were a lot of verticals that weren't necessarily communicating vision to one another. And that's where I think my years of experience, storyboarding and pitching and explaining what a creative is to businesses and so forth was very, very helpful. And so, you know, I basically took the creative team into a room and the floor plans for the building.
And the storyboard artist and started talking about the ideas that we were supposed to be launching within that and how you would place them in that space and coming up with a visualization of that so that people who could go through it. So that was exhilarating, exciting, and happened really quickly. And hopefully I'm answering your question a little bit. So, but it, it was nonstop and everybody worked. Crazy hours
Christina: no model. There was no model for you to follow on. None that you know, you, I, it's interesting because now since you've launched, there's been a number of similar type things that have come out after the fact, but I bet you had trouble kind of even. Explaining to some we just want to do, we're even doing
Nancy: sure. I mean, a micro amusement park is still not something that's easily understood just in its expression alone.
Marcie: And it had a sense of wonderment through a circus feel.
Nancy: Yes.
Marcie: Everybody wanted, at the time, a place that is going to highlight all of these really awesome experiences. Not only do you have to be creative and all the stuff that you want to do, but you have to be creative in how you're managing the public and the creators who want to place their work inside two bit
Nancy: and the venture capital that you have and the calendar that you have and the title 21 California rules around construction. And, Oh, there was, bar and restaurant getting a liquor license was, you know. Another crazy story, which I'm sure Brian can tell you sometimes. So all of it was nuts getting the electrical company to come in and give us our power.
You know, there were lots of delays that were mostly because of construction and you know, but also the, the fabrication team, which is incredible. You know, Chris Weisberg is an incredible talent in a building, everything with this small force team of people. So yeah, it was really an incredible ride. Yeah, and I think the micro amusement park itself is an LBE example of immersive play, first of all, our mission is to bring people together, elbow to elbow to play, which is a really nice, succinct mission and it was great cause we brought in Kim Shaffer who ran great Wolf. She did 19 great Wolf launches, took it public.
She has an episode of undercover boss, in fact, and she's amazing. Yeah. She's a fantastic facility operator and, and also had a lot of corporate experience and we were moving so fast that we couldn't even remember the corporate experience that we probably needed to bring to it. And it was great when she came in.
We. Did some offsites where we tried to get our mission statements tight, you'd think as creative directors and, and, uh, you know, chief creative officers, we already had that locked and loaded. We were so busy chasing other things, you know, I think it was all high and tight there, but like focusing the language was really good. so yeah, that, and then doing, uh, you know, our creative style guide and making sure that we had a brand guide that made sense that everybody could adhere to was sort of the two. Tent pole things that I felt were really critical to our successes. Yeah, know, but you're walking there and it's your half in reality and half in fantasy. And that's the cool part.
Christina: And what’s nice is it's such a large space that you can bring big groups down there and have a good time. You know, I, I had somebody wanted to host an informal meet up recently with maybe 15-20 people, you know, in LA. How, where can you go and bring 15 or 20 people that you know you're not going to be waiting forever and all that. So it's just kind of nice that you can, it really is a place for friends, for groups, and then on top of it, there's a lot of eye candy. Yeah.
Nancy: I have to give it up to Brent, because he was always looking at everything. It in multiple places at a time, going to immersive theater shows, story rooms, etc. And he had a pension for figuring out how to bring everything in to the micro amusement park and figure out the models with all the people and consultants that we had.
Marcie: But ultimately, you decided you wanted to get back into the creative. You weren't really [00:20:00] wanting to be an operator. and, and, and I get it because it's a big undertaking. You know, it's one thing to say, Hey, I'm going to be a startup and I'm going to open up this micro theme park and I'm going to get to be the creative executive around it. But then all of a sudden that you have to scale it. And so I can imagine it was a big choice that, um, to decide that you wanted to go back into a creative world and potentially make more VR. Is that what you wanted to do?
Nancy: I want to do a few different things. Seven years of startup. It's exhausting and you get to a place where, yes, operation is the most important thing when you open up a venue and not everyone on our team had operational experience and I didn't really want to. You know, raise your, sharpen that skill for myself. Sure. How to run an activation. You bet. And how to think through it, sell tickets, market it, all that. I get it. But really my heart is in making content and telling stories with tech and with cinema and with sound. And so yes, I'm back on that gravy train. Very full time.
Marcie: Very excited. So I want to hear, Nancy and I have been talking for the last couple of years about, uh, a project that is very close to her heart and it is based on her brother. And I would like Nancy to talk about that project right now because I think you guys will all be very excited about it as well.
Nancy: Well, awesome I have to say, Marcie, you were really instrumental in kicking me into high gear to go after it, and I am indebted. And as soon as I get our budget's locked, I'll be coming back to you.
So, to try and tell the story in a, in a short and in an inspiring way my brother principal oboist in the San Francisco Symphony for 30 years. Virtuoso player, world-class player, world renowned and respected, but also a major influence on me. Two years older and a wonderful animator, a wonderful storyteller.
Turned me on to every record. Every piece of music I heard growing up gave me my first record. I think it was revolver. And, Just made me laugh all the time. He was a really talented director as well, and I was always trying to persuade him to go into, make a film, but he met all these really great little films with his kids and stuff.
So, he got to perform the Strauss Oboe Concerto, seven years ago with the orchestra, multiple nights and afternoons of those, these performances. And it's a very tough concerto. It's a beautiful piece. And the first three and a half minutes are virtuosic, intense circular breathing, oboe playing beautiful soaring.
And I went and heard him perform it and that concert was just. Absolutely amazing. He nailed it. He was so good. And we went out afterwards and we celebrated and just, he was on cloud nine he was so happy, and he spent the next day hanging out with his sons who were almost 14 and 16 at the time and went back Saturday night with my mom and his wife and the audience, and played the first three and a half minutes and died on stage for my cerebral hemorrhage to complete shock and Awe for everyone, for the 5,000 people in the audience who adored him from his time in San Francisco. And so I'd been thinking about that a lot. Obviously I, in fact I did the Kickstarter film, right as I heard that news. It was for Two Bit Circus and steam carnival. So yeah, it was pretty intense.
But what, and it's still intense. I think about him all the time, cause he's such a huge influence, but in a happy way. And so I wanted to make a piece in XR that. Really celebrates him, but also celebrates the flow state of virtuosic playing and discipline. Because when you spend that kind of time, you get to a certain level where you just saw her and you, I think, you know, meet your maker.
You figure out who you are and how great you are and what you're here for. And when you have that kind of Dharma, that kind of Incredible luck to be doing what you are here to do. It's a breathtaking thing to witness, and I witnessed that with him, and I think other people should witness that in music.
So the piece that I'm working on is called the Performance of your Life, and it's meant to take people through the path of beginning music, then getting a chance to play with an orchestra and then stepping in when somebody can't make it to the performance and doing so volumetrically, room-scale haptic feedback sensors, spatial audio and point cloud craziness.
Marcie: Not ambitious at all.
Nancy: It's super ambitious. It will probably take us another year and a half to do. And, uh, so I've been working on that and, and I'm very excited about it. I think it'll be very strong. The good news is, is that the San Francisco Symphony has a new music director, which is Esa-Pekka Solomon, and he is very bullish on XR.And so conversations are underway with that organization. We'll see how that goes. How are you going to
Christina: How are you going to capture the musicians?
Nancy: Uh, I think we're going
Nancy: Yeah, yeah. No, that's absolutely that. And, but also work with Mach1- Drazen and Jacque with spacial audio and we'll probably capture stems and new sync to play back. This is like the music video thing. It all comes back. Right, right. And it should be really fun.
Christina: Right, right. Wow.
Nancy: And then I want to activate it in every single classical concert hall so that people really understand what they're seeing. That's the hope. We'll see what we can do it. I think we can.
Christina: You definitely can. I mean, your track record would certainly lend one to believe that you can pull it off. I mean. What do you, what do you think the secret is to pulling off these crazy activations, having done so many
Nancy: loving it. Just brazen, go for it. And having a really good team around you. You can't do anything without brilliant people. And you know, I may be a good leader and I may have a track record, but my track record is also intertwined and dependent on some incredible people. You know, Aaron Toman engineer, right side, left side, brain genius, and you know, I'm working with Eric Gradman .
Christina: How do you know, how do you pick your team
Nancy: Instinct. That is the good thing about having time on the planet. I think you have to trust your gut and trust that there's trust in someone else and be willing to free fall into their hands. And, and I think if you make the mistake enough times of picking the wrong people, you'll learn quickly.
How does to assess who is right for you? Yeah,
Christina: I was just talking with someone last night about this. We were talking about smart people that aren't, exactly, kind, people really, really smart, maybe not kind. And I said, I don't care how smart somebody is. Uh, I always go for kind. I would rather yeah, I would, I don't care.
Because for me, the team, as you were saying, is the most important thing. And if someone has. A bit of is a toxic personality, no matter how smart they are, it will sabotage the success of the overall operation because you can't get the team, the team that you .
Marcie: And yeah, I'm going to tell you guys something really interesting. So now Nancy and I are on the peripheral of living in everyday, like a life of immersive, whereas you are still living immersive every single day. And so my hands are in a lot of different things right now. And so part of it is post-production, going back to traditional post-production and also software development. And, The one thing that I have to say that I really do miss about being an immersive day in and day out is I feel like the people were awfully kind and are awfully kind. Whereas when you are in some of these more mature, maybe more competitiveness and competitive nature, people are not so kind. I feel like I have two different personalities. I walk into an immersive and I'm around all these really kind people and it's this nurturing environment where I'm, I'm actually feeling like I'm getting this love and this, this great feedback, and then I go into this other environment and there's a bunch of wolves and they're not so nice people, and I'm like. This is insane. How did that happen? It makes
Nancy: It makes perfect sense to me. When you're doing something that's pioneering, you have to let go and trust and everyone who's letting go and trusting is right there with you. And it's another reason why I'm drawn to those kinds of firsts and those kinds of opportunities.
Yeah.
Christina: Also, you know, in an, in a market and there's really still not a lot of money to be made in, in, in what we would call XR and immersive. And so as a result, the people who are in it are in it for different reasons. Uh, I think that once there is money to be made, that's maybe when the wolves do come in and it starts becoming about.
About bottom line and return on investment and you know, and less about, you know, Oh, how many people saw it and did it
Marcie: yeah. And I don't mean to cut you off, but I don't think people need to be nasty. No. To get an ROI. And that's, I think maybe that was what I was supposed to learn as I was living that world of immersive that.
While I was having such a hard time trying to find the ROI, or I was trying to find where is the money. I was also meeting so many people that were probably people that I may have never been able to get to meet, but they were so interesting and nice.
Nancy: Yeah.
Marcie: And I think that if I'd like to take anything away from it, is that.I think the nicer you are, the, the more successful you will be. And, you don't need to be a Dick to, be successful. And I don't know how we got all all over this thing, but I
Nancy: just put, if you love what you do, the money comes. Exactly. And if you're thinking only about money, chances are you're going to have a tough
Christina: time.And you're not working a day in your life
Nancy: unless money is your creative, you know, strong suit. Some people have that, like, you know. Bezos. Anyway.
Christina: So , when you look at the future of immersive for the next few years, you know, what are your predictions for this, for this industry?
Nancy: I'm not good at doing it. Well, I think, you know, there are a lot of thoughts going through my mind right now. Mostly because I've spent the last. I don't know, four months doing a really deep dive into another project I'm working on and, and what has that has what that is required of me is going back over a lot of career work
Christina: and well, why don't we touch on that for a second?
What's that? What is that?
Nancy: I'm not so sure that I want it to be in the podcast, but I'll tell you what it is. It's, it's called a. Music video, the profit medium. It's a multi episodic series about the art and influence of the music video over the past 60 years. Oh my God.
Christina: It's awesome.
Nancy: It's awesome. And it is. I have to tell you that I feel like it is my Opus that went and my brother's piece, like, because I've spent 30 years. In music videos, essentially from all sides of it, at MTV, at the record company as an independent working propaganda with Adam Bernstein directing my own stuff, producing stuff, directing stuff for big clients, doing commercials that really take their clue from that and and so forth.
And also being a musician. So. You know, the search for the next Pussycat Dolls. I did that show. God help us. yeah. And also creating a TV show at logo called new Nanex, which was an LGBTQ version of 120 minutes, which is the tent pole of that network, even on the network kind of sucks. Now, you know, it's where lady Gaga had her first TV appearance.
I mean, so. You know, it's just been my life and I know the, where all the bodies are buried in it. And, but looking at that and thinking about how the medium has morphed and influenced all of the platforms that we have now, it is the reason why we have social media the way we do it is a fantastic thing to reflect upon because the moment we're in with immersive is going to be a similar look back.
And it really is about the convergence. Haven't heard that buzzword in awhile. The convergence of all of the disciplines that we have. And I think that the, the closer we get to that singularity of disciplines, the closer we get to a really, truly immersive experience. And that's what I think we are on the track to do.
So as a prediction, yes. I think that that could be one, but it is probably, you know, 2035 like Kurzweil says. And I, and I think that all the elements that we're talking about, and one of the reasons why performance of your life is so thick with bells and whistles is because I have to converge all of these things that are part of my toolkit and interest.
But we also look at AI, you know, machine learning, virtual humans, you know, the betterment of our peripheral vision in AR, haptic feedback sensors, you know, eye tracking, all the things that we can do, social sharing, all those things are going to congeal into one clump that is XR. And I think it's going to be very powerful whether we will be tagging one another so that we pop up in the virtual space like we did in second life as avatars that are very much like us.
Well, we'll see. Probably, that is, if we can survive the current administration and Corona virus.
Christina: Well, I was saying it, Corona virus is probably the best thing that ever happened for VR. It's now the safest way to socialize.
Marcie: Well, you can see a concert. And I had said, you don't have to travel anywhere.
Nancy: So say for LBE.
Christina: Correct. I was thinking about that for the upcoming conferences about whether you know, you really feel like you want to put a headset on, given that everyone's being so protective of
Marcie: Not funny. I didn't even think about that.
Nancy: And at the same time that all of those things are percolating spatial audio.
There's also a lot of diagnostic stuff happening in the healthcare industry, which is really cool. And in fact, I actually did a patent with my sister on a VR. Device experience that will help her to diagnose certain forms of pre-birth blindness so her genetic work can continue. Wow. She's, she's a monster.
Marcie: So Nancy, if you didn't know, this has some of the smartest people living in her own family. These people are like geniuses
Nancy:. My sister is . Her name is Jean . She's like the Royal
Christina: Tenenbaums crazy.
Marcie: Like if you actually sat down and heard like what each one does, and your mom and your dad, your dad
Nancy: was a, there was a physicist.
Marcie: Yeah.
Nancy: Physicists. Yeah. Yeah.
Marcie: I have a question for you. Out of all the musical things. That you have seen in XR What are some of the ones that excite you the most and see it going in a direction where you feel like it's, pushing the medium forward.
Nancy: I'll give a total nod to, Beat saber, of course, cause it's great, but I haven't seen what I'm seeing in my mind's eye yet and in my mind's ear. And I think that that's the exciting part. I think music is going to come on strong and I hope to be part of that leadership, that wave for sure. Classical, particularly having had the experience at a very young age of sitting in an orchestra. There is nothing like it people, and there's nothing like being on stage with a huge pop act, which I got to do too. And seeing the wall of 40,000 people in an arena coming at you and understanding the exhilaration of that for stand, people should have those experiences.
Christina: What do you think that, what do you think having experienced it, they could, they could take from it. Do you think it will embolden them maybe to,
Nancy: hopefully it will embolden people to study and focus on the discipline and the research that it takes because the time spent is evident in the work. If you don't spend the time doing that work, it's not going to be a good product and racing through to just do something is a bad idea.
And we all have to learn little patients because the pace of everything has accelerated so, and you feel like, Oh my God, I'm going to miss it, or somebody's going to do it before I do, or whatever. But the excellence is in how you do it. And the difficulty in competing with people is that everybody can have an idea and most, most ideas are happening at the same time around the planet.
So who is going to do it well, and the people who would do it well are the people who are kind, who have a great team that's kind and collaborative, and they take collaboration and advice from people who are smart, but also the people who do the work, It's really important.
Marcie: All right. Well, Nancy, it's always a pleasure.
Nancy: My pleasure.
Marcie: It's been so good and seeing you today.
Nancy: It’s great. See you both and I'm so glad you're doing this podcast because it's, you guys have incredible history and influence on the industry, Marcie. Certainly. I think, you know, the last time we were at SXSW, you put together this army of everyone in the industry and had dinner for the mall.
Typical of you and, and bringing people together. And you introduced me to many, many people, and Christine has always been an incredible force. VR Playhouse did beautiful, beautiful work way ahead of its time, and now you're doing all of the virtual human stuff that everyone is clamoring to your facility to do.
Christina: So sweet. Associated. Well, I'm always, it's always interesting to see where these conversations go and I, I'm really glad we touched on some of the, the important topics about entrepreneurship today and what it takes to succeed, not just. the nuts and bolts.
Nancy: So yeah,
Christina: it was, it was a lot of fun.
Thank you Nancy. thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. Bye