Athena Demos's Colleagues at Big Rock Creative (BRCvr)
Athena Demos's Contact Details
N/A
Los Angeles,California,United States
Big Rock Creative (BRCvr)
Athena Demos's Company Details
The team at Big Rock Creative produced BRCvr, an official virtual Burning Man experience, evolved out of the pandemic, when the week-long on-playa event that would have welcomed 80,000 participants in person was cancelled. Driven to keep the global Burner community connected, we launched a groundbreaking virtual reality environment comprising 200 unique worlds and over 1,400 events visited by over 90,000 users in ten days. With support from the AltSpaceVR platform, we expanded our award-winning immersive social VR paradigm into on-going experiences, accessible in seven different languages. We transformed the way people meet, connect and engage around the world, winning several awards including the 2021 Producers Guild of America's Innovation Award, 2021 Aurea Award for Creativity, and No Proscenium's Best VR Experience of 2020. To shape our future, we will transform large-scale community gatherings and entertainment events. We will use the tools of XR to create meaningful and inclusive engagement between remote participants. This will reduce the need for travel, while increasing the ability for all participants to connect and collaborate. Remote accessibility allows global access to activities normally limited to in-person attendees. The ability to use speech translation tools combined with being able to join with a computer or VR headset ensures typical language and physical barriers are removed. Big Rock Creative explores human creativity and connection through technology. It will shape a better future by building and testing ways to merge online communities into events and spaces originally considered for in-person participants.