The almost final part! But be sure to read Pt.1, Pt.2, Pt.3, Pt.4, Pt.5 & Pt.6 first…
Immersive Theatre
I first met James, the then events manager for TOM, and organiser for TOMTech, at a VR / immersive tech and arts event in 2016 (we’ve scratched our brains and neither of us can remember the exact details) and we got on immediately, both having a passion for pushing art and tech in new ways to create exciting, innovative new audience experiences (& beer). Over the next few years, we regularly met up to discuss the latest advances and plan the annual TOMTech vrLAB series of events and showcase that he (we) ran as part of Brighton Digital Festival each year (2016–2019).
We had a lot of fun organising, running and being involved with TOMTech vrLAB and I got to know the building intimately. My most surreal VR headset headshot came from the first year thanks to Marshmallow Laser Feast and the In The Eyes of an Animal experience with customised DK2 “forest” headsets. When it came out on Oculus Go a few years later, I tried to recreate the experience.
Thanks to ongoing support from Oculus we had plenty of Rift headsets and Touch hand controllers, which culminated in giving sets to the teams who partook in the 24-hour Touch hackathon we also held in during the first year. I ended up sleeping overnight in one of the normal theatre dressing rooms which itself had been dressed to resemble a jail cell, since we were showing The Guardian’s 6x9 life in a prison cell 360º video experience there. That was an interesting first few minutes from waking to remembering where I was.
We also had regular support from AMD in the form of VR-ready PC loaner kits, so we could ensure those wanting to show their work had stations setup without the need to bring their own (thanks Kevin Strange, AMD EU Dev Rel!). From our side we had four player Radial-G on the main stage screen the first year and then Loco Dojo but the surprise hit was the McDonald’s Top of the Crop setup, steering wheel and pedals too of course.
COVID put a stop to 2020 plans, along with many other things but a little birdy tells me that the original year and discussion, between the arts and tech industry funding reps during the Storyhack component, is what lead to the creation of the Creative XR annual funding opportunity for immersive experiences.
For which TOMTech and the studio teamed up to submit a proposal for the second cohort and were selected to receive £20,000 plus workshop support, for the chance to build upon the concept of Time Machine and the underlying delivery structure, PerformXR.
Time Machine was of course based upon the H.G.Wells story and we set about volumetrically capturing Nicholas Boulton as the titular character performing the script written by Damien Goodwin, with our one live stage actor (/stage tech) Katy Schutte delivering a little improv on top to keep the story fluid.
It was wildly ambitious at the time with 4 VR “time travellers” on stage in the same space at the same time together but there were no colocation systems available so had to build our own. The 4 AR “guardians” peeked into the virtual world and together, the 8 immersive audience members collaborated to determine their experience outcome, of which there were 8 branching versions depending upon their performance during the “show”.
The studio agreed to match-funding internal development cost/time but still, the timescales and overall budget meant a rudimentary prototype was possible, as long as you didn’t look at the string and elastic bands holding it together.
Unfortunately the concept was too far forward thinking and wasn’t an easily packageable content experience piece, that could be funded to go into an immersive film festival and due to the size needed to demo it, we struggled on the final marketplace days to run enough sessions to garner much interest in further funding.
It’s great to see people like Brendan A Bradley and Alex Coulombe doing so much in the multi-user immersive theatre space three years later, achieving what we tried to set out and do a few years too early, much more effectively.
Physical Reality
When I first joined in 2013 as project manager, we had one artist, one designer and one developer working as a 3D team within a web company. The business was situated in an atypical Brighton office, a converted house into a commercial property and we were likely working out of what was the lounge.
The company moved about a year later to a much larger premises to bring us all together in one space, which was a big upgrade for the company at the time. As the team grew and we repositioned from being a 3D team to our own branded entity away from the web aspect of the company, we took a space in the corner of another company within the same building.
After what felt like squatting for a few months we decided to take the plunge and take a bigger space of our own, to coincide with the funding of Loco Dojo and the growth of the team to make it. New England House was cheap enough and spacious enough but after hot summers and windy winters, we were ready to head back “home” and take over the main office space, this time as our own with the growing team.
Unfortunately the building landlords were hoping another company in the building were going to rapidly upscale so when the lease was due for renewal, they gave us a kindly fuck off price, and so we did, to the delightful ex-government tax office building next door, along with a number of other companies presented with similar lease renewal prices.
Baby blue painted walls and lack of investment made the building feel like a state hospital or school from the 80’s but it was large and spacious, and thankfully cheap as it was a short-term lease, ending in December 2020 when the building was due to be renovated into yet more student flats. However we spent time, money and effort to make our bit of the building ours and feel more modern and appropriate for what we were doing in there.
Then of course March 2020, COVID and lockdowns happened and we switched from a bums-on-seats studio to a fully remote one. Most of what we do and how we do it is hosted online in various clouds anyway, gone were the days of servers and storage in the office, so it was a relatively painless process overseen by the awesome orchestrators facilitating taxis to ferry equipment and whatnot around to peoples homes.
After re-examining what people wanted out of a studio space, like many other companies did, we settled upon setting up a hub space people could visit to work from as necessary, or full time if they wished as some did. I had met U+I, the original developers of what became the Plus X Innovation Hub building, many years earlier at a 5G event and was keen to move us there to take advantage of the coworking, collaboration and crossover between industry and academia offered.
Upon being accepted on the BRITE programme for open innovation, to help the studio understand what productisation looked like, to enable us to start to diversify revenue streams away from purely agency day rates, we signed a 2-year lease for a 12-desk private studio space in Plus X in late 2020.
It’s a fantastic space, designed to meet Californian WELL standards with a great AirSpace rooftop bar area, lots of light, colour and air flowing through the building. I didn’t use it as often as I could but it was always nice to visit for meetings, sorting out hardware bits and sometimes just when I needed a change of scenery from working at home in my spare room, being driven mad by my three cats. But that was two years ago and I can only presume we are re-signing to stay on for a while as we all seem mostly happy with the working options as they are, wfh, flexi or in-studio.
Looking around though and as we’ve searched for new buildings and studio spaces over the years, on average being a company of about 30–40 people, the options in Brighton are generally pretty rubbish, expensive and don’t offer a lot for your money. Plus X might be a bit out of town but it’s well serviced by public transport to get into the centre or out to London etc. Many commercial property landlords could well do with looking at what Plus X has done and take a few leaves out of their book to create workspaces that meet the needs of a modern tech sector.
As my new role is remote, albeit likely with a fair bit of travelling around meeting studios, am currently pondering what to do. I like working from home and I am incredibly fortunate to have a spare room to do so from, no kids, a garden and the glorious South Downs countryside 30-seconds from my doorstep. But having the ability to work from somewhere else, a change of scenery and a clear line between work and home is always good. I think we can all agree those boundaries have blurred somewhat these past two years and strong willpower is needed to enforce ones own work//life balance
