Happy Thursday, EXP fam! 2021 is off, and here’s some good stuff to know…
Epic Games fulfills 80s teen fantasy of buying a mall.
Fortnite creator Epic Games is building its new headquarters in the entirety of Cary Town Center — a mall located in Cary, North Carolina. Expected to be ready in 2024, the HQ will be a mix of office spaces and “recreational areas.” Is a major internet company taking over a retail space the most 2021 real estate move ever conceived...?
I think it’s building on Experiential Retail that has emerged due to Retail Apocalypse, which has been going for several years. It’s the perfect opportunity for Epic Games to create a hybrid model and cash in on teenagers starving for IRL experiences due to COVID-19. My prediction here is a partnership between Meow Wolf and Epic Games.
Read More → Engadget
Experiences made Gucci the “Luxury Marketer of the Year.”
Luxury Daily has named Gucci the “2020 Luxury Marketer of the Year.” It wasn’t just what Gucci marketed, but how they did it that really stuck out: Gucci embraced experiences in every technology they could while still maintaining its identity.
Year of the Gucci; here’s why Gucci earned its accolade:
It conquered live streaming. Gucci’s July “Epilogue” live stream was a 12-hour event that showed the makings of a fashion ad.
It became a festival. It created a film festival called #GucciFest, a “visual narrative feature” around its summer fashion show, and financed nine debut short films centered around the brand.
It embraced augmented reality. Gucci updated its app with AR shopping capabilities and also partnered with Snapchat to virtually try on products.
It experimented with collabs. They partnered with video games like Pokemon Go and The Sims. Gucci seemed to always think outside the box.
For other luxury brands to survive the new digital world, they may need to take a page out of Gucci’s playbook and realize that timeless luxury is all about being experiential.
Read More → Luxury Daily
Sony is going to start selling its Mandalorian-like virtual set displays
We’re going to start seeing the quality of virtual spaces improve substantially. One benefit to building your backdrop out of displays is that the light they emit makes it easier to convince the audience that your actors are actually there. With traditional green-screen sets, the background is a flat, solid color, and you have to light your actors as if the background actually exists. When you’re using screens, however, the background is already there and providing light.
Yes, these tools are expensive, but we can expect those prices to drop over the next few years. I can see smaller startups like NWR and Infinite Reality, setting up shared spaces to create epic content on their platforms. Well played, Sony.
Read More → The Verge
And one more thing, ‘Immersive Reality’ concert experience with Madison Beer
At CES this past Monday, Sony showed off musician Madison Beer’s digital makeover.
The clip showed a life-like digital avatar of Beer performing “Boyshit” on a virtual recreation of the CES stage.
But it wasn’t typical animation — it was recorded using a motion capture suit.
The full concert, in which Beer will play songs from her debut album, Life Support, will be available on the PlayStation VR and Oculus VR. It’s dubbed the Madison Beer Immersive Reality Concert Experience.
Yeah! If you thought virtual is a stint as a result of the pandemic, think again! The tech puts reality front and center, which may make fans long for artists to play in digital recreations of their favorite local venues — an idea that could both act as a virtual escape to the immersion of the concert experience and create more demand for live-music’s inevitable return. The technology is out of the box, the behaviors are forming into the culture.
Read More → Sony
The tech trends that will define 2021… according to NYT
Retail stays online and goes interactive. Progressing AI will make chatbots feel human via text and voice, and augmented reality will revolutionize everything from trying on clothes to testing makeup.
Your entire home becomes WiFi connected. With everyone at home, average internet speeds slowed. But the new WiFi 6 network will make it easier to stream, game, and talk to voice-activated hardware simultaneously.
You’ll never touch a thing. Sixty-seven percent of retailers already use touchless payments, but a new radio tech called Ultra-Wide Band could allow cashiers with a tablet to accept payments from shoppers by just standing in front of them.
Work-from-home brings the office to you. 2020 was the year of Zoom, but 2021 could bring the office home through VR, such as Microsoft’s AltspaceVR, or video games like Teamflow.
Personally, I feel they’re missing one last point, that is, the tech that keeps us social, virtually, but I already covered that in the last round-up.
Read More → NYT
Experiential communities we’re eyeballing…
Design Science Studio
Design Science Studio is an educational incubator for art that explores Buckminster Fuller’s principles of Design Science to propel us into a regenerative future. Creators in the studio apply their whole systems knowledge to create (r)Evolutionary art, experiences, and messages for a regenerative future that works for 100% of life.
Every week, the 144 cohorts of this community are working towards culminating in a series of digital showcases on March 30th, and until then, they are hosting talks, panels, fireside chats, etc to share knowledge and ideas about Fuller’s principles and Design Science.
Get into it, attend an event → Design Science Studio
Nowhere
I’ve been following the crew at Nowhere from their inception as a spatial tool for virtual experiences. They’ve spent years crafting experiences IRL, and realized that current online social connection options felt sooo ... flatlands. And I couldn’t agree more.
Nowhere is an online hangout that’s as exciting and quirky as the people we know. Built by a group of experiential designers, Hollywood VFX artists, and industry-leading engineers in response to our locked down reality, they are crafting a more humane, fun, and natural online social space.
Join the club → Nowhere
Jobs
The crew over at NWR, a spatial experience platform, is looking to hire an Event Curator. Get it!
Got a tip? Please send it my way to damian@withpresence.co
Thanks, Damian.
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