Did IT fail to bring us together?
I went to the first virtual music festival so you didn't have to.
Hosted on a VR gaming platform Sansar, Splendour XR promised a world-first musical experience. The North Byron Parklands site was built in 3D where you could "experience exclusive performances from any device."
But, your $AU50 weekend ticket bought you a very different experience depending on which tech you have. If you have a VR headset and a gaming PC you got to pick your avatar, outfit and roam around the festival site, chatting and dancing with others in VR land.
For the rest of us, we have a choice of fixed cameras and the only interactivity was a chat panel on the side. This was basically crowd-sourced tech support and sometimes people trying to sell drugs (authentic!).
My biggest gripe? Spendour XR was ZERO PERCENT LIVE. Nothing, na-da. Every single performance was pre-recorded, stand-up comedy was taped with small audiences and even Zoom style panels did not appear to have any live features like Q+A.
SO WHAT WORKED WELL?
Tash Sultana - back in the jam room after a full circle round the world.
The Avalanches -beautifully filmed at a full capacity concert at the Enmore.
Tayla Parx - Chorey-laden energetic roving steadicam set was super engaging.
But considering they scored a $AU1.5m government grant, one would have expected them to push the boundaries more in the "live" part of live streaming rather than a VR world which only select few can engage in.
Curious to check it out? $AU20 gets you "Relive" now, which is all the performances streaming for 7 days on demand with none of the VR land involved. Which is the ideal way to go.
Originally posted as an Instagram carousel on my @kaju_creative page.
Sometimes we’re left scratching our heads.