Ru is a transgender woman who works as a hospice nurse in Ohio, and since 2018 has been involved as an immersive artists, virtual DJ, and event producer holding weekly events in her psychedelic space called Kaleidosky, which is nominated for Best Music Experience for Raindance Immersive 2024. I had a chance to get a tour of her Kaleidosky 3.0 event space where she showed me how the intuitive VJ system works in creating feedback-loop fractal art in a kaleidoscope that’s projected onto a sphere serves as a fully immersive skybox with a floating island in the middle that contains plenty of hang out spots, mini games, and a dancefloor.
Kaleidosky has an indie art spirit with a lot of avant-garde performances, with many of them being within the trance or psychedelic trance (aka psytrance) genre, but performers are not limited to this genre. There ends up being an experimental vibe, and happened to have a lot more intimate conversations happening and deep listening happening rather than intensive dancing. Ru doesn’t even consider Kaleidosky to be a club, but more of an event space for DJs and VJ artists to experiment with their artistic practice. Ru has featured over 300 different performers since opening the first Kaleidosky in December 2022 and holding events on a weekly basis.
I had a chance to catch up with Ru to get a lot more context about her story as being one of the most prolific virtual music event producers in the VRChat scene. Be sure to join the Beat Syndicate group in VRChat and follow her on X (formerly Twitter) for more information on upcoming events. Also be sure to also check out these YouTube documentaries about the clubbing scene in VRChat as well as explorations of gender, and the thriving trans community on VRChat.
- I Went Clubbing in Virtual Reality: Raves of VRChat by Josef Lorenzo on PBS Voices [which features Ru and her Kaleidosky club]
- Why are there SO many Trans people in VRChat? Gender, Identity, and Self Discovery by The Virtual Reality Show
- Identity, Gender, and VRChat (Why is everyone in VR an anime girl?) by Straszfilms
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So in today's episode, I'm going to be diving into the VR dance club called Kaleidosky, which is hosted and curated by Ru, who's a transgender woman hospice nurse from Ohio that every week runs these epic nine-hour psy-trance DJ sets within a psychedelic world that she's helped to create. So throughout the course of June, I've been going to lots of different events for Rain Dance Immersive and Kaleidosky down the rabbit hole was nominated for best music experience. And so they held the opening night party. I didn't get a chance to see it on the opening night, but since Ru is holding these weekly events that run for eight or nine hours at a time. I jumped in and got to check out both the world that she's created, but also a little bit of the vibe. It's very psychedelic. It's got this really interesting world design that is really encouraging people like move around and also just kind of hang out and chat. But also it's got this big giant sky dome that it's like this floating island in a sphere that has these. feedback loop kaleidoscopic you know psychedelic vibe vj visuals that are happening that ends up being a very intuitive embodied way to be able to interact with that and control it so i wanted to sit down with rude just to get a little bit more of her story into vr going all the way back to 2018 starting with wave vr then moving into neos and then eventually coming into vr chat and holding these events where she's featured over 300 djs over the last couple of years So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Oasis of VR podcast. So this interview with Ru happened on Wednesday, June 19th, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:55.902] Ru: My name is Ru. I'm a VR artist, DJ, and event producer within VR.
[00:02:02.647] Kent Bye: Great. Maybe give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into VR.
[00:02:07.287] Ru: Absolutely. I began my journey in VR in 2018 after a surgery to restore my hearing. I initially found the Oculus CD one, the old battle tank that everybody loved and lasted forever. And one of the first programs that I found in there was a music program, WaveXR. It was called WaveVR back then. And that started my initial journey into art and music and In January of 2019, WaveXR hired me on as a resident artist and DJ and I produced over 152 shows there before they closed their VR division down and let us all go. But that's kind of the basis of where I started with music and art, blending shows with art and music with a focus, you know, more towards an inclusive environment for people.
[00:02:51.829] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah. I was just going back through your YouTube channel and I saw that you were live streaming some of the stuff that you were doing both in the wave VR, which became the wave XR, but eventually VR chat came into the mix. And so maybe talk about like, were you already doing DJing or music production or like, or is this something that you only got into because you had access to some tools within the context of VR?
[00:03:14.471] Ru: Absolutely. I was classically trained, learned piano at 6-7. I went through many different instruments, symphony and jazz. In junior high and high school, I did production for years after that in college and other things. I put it down after two catastrophic data losses and said, I never want to do this again. And it wasn't until I came into Wavy Yard that I met a lot of people that were like, oh, you should do this. You should do this. I said, no, I'm not going to. That's not me. I'm a nurse from Ohio. That's not me. No, no, no. They're like... Yeah, but it'd be really fun if you did. And I did. for I thought what was one time but Wave had recently released a new builder system to construct and really the first couple shows that I did blew the minds of the developers like we didn't know you could do that with our tech and that just kind of it's an exciting feeling they're saying you want to come work for us I'm like I'm brand new to all of this you're crazy but I said yes and that's how I jumped all into it the only reason I picked up DJing the only reason I picked up art at all was the inspiration of this and then seeing that I could work in a new medium that actually worked for me. A traditional 2D art and things like that, I felt very discouraged to do anything in. But when I got into VR and to Tilt Brush specifically, rest in peace, I found that being able to paint in 3D space was suddenly enabling to me. And so that just washed off an incredible amount of creativity that I kind of really want to go back to at some point. But, you know, I was painting for 60 hours a week on top of my regular job, you know, working just to make all of these things for a premiere on Saturday night. And it was such a hot time. I really do miss that time, even if it was a smaller time. You know, we could only have 32, for instance, with multiple instances. Now we can have things in VRChat up to 80 people, which is definitely a different thing. But I ended up in VRChat merely because WaveVR was a great program for event-based things where we could go in at particular times and there'd be an event running, be it a larger show like Rez or something like that, or be our smaller individual weekly shows that ran any other time. that was a dead app. There was nobody there because it was all event-based. Whereas VRChat was more of a social app. So usually after we ran the events, we'd grab a few people and say, hey, there's this application VRChat. We could still hang out, but we could just hang out in a little room here and we'll put on little mixes and whatnot. And those small gatherings grew into a wide network of friends and then discovering the club scene in VRChat and then eventually becoming involved in that. And years down the line, making my own experience. As I had done in Wave VR, we moved to Neos after that closed down. And then after we did a lot of brainstorming and development in Neos and learning Unity for myself, what a wonderful program it was to teach me that by brute force. After developing there, I said, okay, let's bring this to VRChat because I met a lot more people from Japan and other places that share the same love of music. And I was like, I want to build a place for them to come play too. And that's really kind of how I ended up where I am now with running my venue, Kaleidosky, in VRChat.
[00:06:25.669] Kent Bye: Okay. And so when you said that you ran over 150 different events with The Wave, does that mean that you were helping to curate DJs and VJs or what was involved with running those events?
[00:06:36.995] Ru: Absolutely. The events initially, we all had our own particular, the way the program worked, you opened your own personal area. They called it a cave or a party room. So we all had our own individual projects as resident artists that we worked on and ran our shows according to a schedule we all collaborated with. So those individual shows were one thing, but we also collaborated with the developers to do larger events for people like Lindsey Stirling, Rez, John Legend. There were some amazing names that came through there. As well as we worked with Retrospect LA, which included Sophie Tucker of Vintage Culture and a lot of other bigger artists that were touring around. We did all their custom VR show for them. and then sent that over to them we did the burning man live experience in 2020 as well in vr we did the empyrean temple burn and i gathered with the help of other people 85 artists from around the world goodness the names are just so far out there and they all contributed a piece to this art event which is on my youtube if you happen to have popped through there and seen it that's what that was some of the most amazing pieces of vr art i've literally ever seen even then or since were graciously donated to that show for a wonderful art event accompanied by music. Any kind of event we were approached by outside groups to do, our team was very much on board to try and put something together for it.
[00:07:54.246] Kent Bye: Yeah, maybe you could go back to the moment where you decided to get into VR because the type of stuff that you're talking about often requires like getting PC VR. Some people get full body tracking to get into the club scene. You know, that's quite a big jump from coming out of nowhere. Did you start with if you already had a gaming PC and just like your entry point into getting to the VR scene?
[00:08:16.112] Ru: Absolutely. I have always kind of been tech adjacent. I grew up with a lot of friends who ended up in IT, so ended up very tech adjacent to that. I was always a gamer, but that kind of decreased a little bit as I got towards overage. And I tended to move more like MMOs and things like that. Any kind of thing with a larger social situation, Second Life, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, anything that allowed me to kind of interact with people. I really gravitated towards that. So I did have at least a setup. But the thing that gravitated me towards initially picking up the CV1 was, like I said, I had had a fast growing tumor in my ear and lost my hearing after they went in on the side and took the tumor out. And in October, they put an implant in my ear to restore my hearing. And they told me, you're off work for eight weeks. You can't even lift five pounds. I had to call people to come change my kitty later. It's amazing with five pounds lifting restrictions. I couldn't work. I thought, what am I going to do with my time? What am I going to do? You know what I mean? I don't want to just sit and sink into an MMO for eight weeks straight. I just started seeing advertisem*nts for the CV1. I knew nobody in the scene doing it at all. None of my tech adjacent friends were into it at all. And I'm like, well, I'm always into trying something out. Maybe this could occupy my time. And if I'm wrong, I'm out 400 bucks. I'll sell it to somebody else or something, maybe. And I got in initially in the CB1, loved the touch controllers. To this day, still the best controllers ever made. No big ones. You could always move your hands so wonderfully and comfortably with them. Light, rechargeable batteries. You could swap. Hello? But that was my initial entry into it. And it was about three months in when I got into VRChat. I found the club scene and I love dancing. I've always been a dancer going out to clubs and other things for years. I said, oh, wait, these people are, like their legs are moving and everything. Wait, I want to do that. I want that. So I took the $300 DLC jump fairly early into things. I found, you know, I went out and bought a Vive Pro and, you know, pull three trackers. And I was just in heaven. I was immediately in this dancing scene. And it wasn't long in there that a lot of the club owners were like, oh, sorry, you weren't. for another VR application as a DJ? Do you want to come play here? Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I work, you know, I do a lot of work over there and I don't have time, you know? And so initially I didn't DJ. VRChat was my social space. It was a place where I went to meet people, meet friends, talk to others, not work. I had work over here. I didn't do work in VRChat, but as that work started to ramp down a little bit, the wave of VR side the amount of time I began to play in VRChat as far as a DJ increased to the point where now it's no longer a social app. It is still a social app for me, but that ability to just pop in anytime and do that has been taken away and divvied to producing events, networking, going to support other people and other smaller artists within the platform. So it's evolved over time into something different, but not something I'm unhappy with.
[00:11:31.536] Kent Bye: Okay. So it sounds like that you mentioned that you're a nurse in Ohio and that you're going into these virtual reality worlds that you're able to really connect to people from around the world. Maybe you could just talk about what your experience has been of being able to really tap into these types of friend networks of people that are located globally, just around the world in the context that maybe something that may not have the same type of access of wherever you might be in Ohio.
[00:11:58.635] Ru: Absolutely. I can speak to that very well. In fact, I'm an older transitioner. I'm transgender. And around here in the very deep red part of the South State that I live in, you know, it's very difficult to meet anybody, even as friends. You know, groups and things like that tend to be therapy groups or other things tend to be much younger people, which offers an opportunity to mentor them. But within your own starting journey, especially, that's not the time to be mentoring others who are growing into it, you know. So I didn't have anybody around here and friends mostly poofed out. VR gave me a connection to people outside of my area, to people who shared the same experience, people who were coming into the same experience, people who liked tech things, who liked VR, who liked music. And that initially started with kind of the smaller North American. But as I moved into VRChat, you know the one thing i love about vr chat is i don't see it as a game it's a communication tool it allows us to talk with people but also to see body language when i met a friend in texas i hadn't talked to for a year and a half in vr chat she always reached back and scratched her neck whenever she was nervous and when i met her in person i see you smiling and i know why because when i met her in person we were talking she went ah and reached back and scratched her neck and i went That's where the connection in my head went. I'm seeing the exact same person, regardless if it's a different avatar, you know, as a real person, I'm seeing red. And that kind of put the connection together. Okay, this is very powerful for connecting people over distances and meeting the genuine person and who they are, finding their little quirks with the opportunity of meeting people I grew to meet Sarah Akai, who's a wonderful gentleman from Japan and has really been integral in the Japanese and American scenes, especially in the music scene, coming together. He's an individual like myself who tries to bridge the gap between the two countries and the language barrier as best they can, because he really helped inspire me to really where I am now and wanting to bring the world together in music. So when I met him and he offered me an opportunity to play for a Japanese club in VRChat, that really expanded my list of friends. I saw a good number of people in front of the DJ deck dancing, and I thought, oh, that's just cute. That's really awesome. They love trance, too. But then after I played, Sarah Kaya-san said, oh, all those people right there and those nine, ten people dancing in front there? I'm like, yeah. Oh, they're all trance and psytrance DJs. And I'm like, excuse me, what? that doesn't exist on the American side. It's just me and one other person. I need to meet these people. And that meeting with those people four years ago has transformed my life in a wonderful way. I immediately started doing East West Trance Fest, which is a two-day festival that features artists from America, Japan, everywhere basically now, the whole world, because I wanted to bring these friends over. I was very fortunate to go to Japan last year, invited by them to play live in Shinjuku, in the middle of what's essentially Times Square, these wonderful video billboards across the way. I'm thinking, how has my life changed to be standing in the middle of a very hot August day in Japan, playing music for these friends that I met? in vr when again as i said when you put it into context i'm a hospice nurse from ohio you know this is where i spent my life but because of vr i've been enabled to do amazing things i talk to amazing people yourself included big fan thanks but other ones like the pbs documentary that joseph and electro wrote and produced i was very fortunate to be part of that I do consider that a bit of an accomplishment and mostly because it took, you know, for years of trying to explain what I did in VR to my more, but I family never understood it, never understood it. But that 12 minute documentary, I showed that to them and they're like, Oh, we get it. Like, what do you mean you get it? Like, no, we, we get it now. I'm like, Oh, I get it. I tried for three years, but Mr. Rogers comes along and explains it to you. And Oh yeah, no, you totally get it. I think that offered a little bit more validation to them, but yeah, That's something that, again, I never would have seen myself part of. And all of this has been enabled by starting that VR journey so many years ago. You know what I mean? And that's why I try and tell people I don't believe in like a great person theory or anything. I'm in health care. We got rid of that years ago. You know what I mean? We have evidence-based pride. But I want to disarm that from people to empower them to realize that I'm just another person. You know what I mean? It's only because of taking that journey initially and learning and building on it that I've been, you know, enabled to do so many things. They can do the same thing. There's no reason they can't.
[00:16:31.312] Kent Bye: Well, I know that there's actually a pretty thriving trans community within the context of VRChat and things like the VR Trans Academy, which I saw that you were affiliated with as a staff member. But it seems that going into VRChat and being able to choose your identity, how you express within the context of VRChat, But also just that, you know, you can be isolated geographically from other trans folks. But when you go into VRChat, you're able to get some support and also try on new identities. Maybe you could just give a bit more context of what your experience as a trans person has been like exploring what's happening in the communities within VRChat.
[00:17:09.867] Ru: Yes, sir, I'd be happy to. Well, I can't speak for the Trans Academy myself. I'm so very lucky to be a part of that staff there. You know, a staff of 70 people running the group itself has 24,000 members in it, which is an amazing number of people. And It's something I'm so proud to be part of because if it wasn't for all the stuff I did in the music scene, it would be something I would have done myself as well. Tizzy and the entire team has worked tirelessly and like a machine to provide a space for people who are questioning, people who are brand new to it, like myself when I initially came in six years ago. If that would have been there, that would have been the first place I went to. And that's where a lot of people go to for their initial finding other people. As far as my personal journey in it, there's a reason why, you know, I knew I'd only be afforded a short amount of time in that PBS documentary. And I was like, I'm not going to talk about myself because that doesn't matter. There'll be a thousand other places to learn about that. If people are going to listen to me for one thing about this, I want it to be about one thing. And that is what VR means to trans and non-binary individuals. because the ability to choose your presentation to others down to the minutest detail and to try out different identities, different dress modes, different anything that normally you couldn't do because of cultural pressures or other safety reasons, even VR allows you to do that in a safe and especially with the Trans Academy, an encouraging environment to not have someone say, What are you doing? But to have someone say, Hey, what you doing? There's a difference in that phrasing. There's a difference in that phrasing. And having a trans academy there to offer those people that support is amazing. Myself, I didn't want to ever do public things because I'm very shy and especially being trans, I don't like having a lot of people look at me, especially a six foot three. But as I've further gotten along and become more popular, much do I hate to admit, I've had to realize that I see other trans girls and pre-trans men and women who look to me and they go, oh, I can do this and have a normal life and people will like me and people will... want to know what i mean it will validate me i guess maybe that's the thing for it they see you know i had my idols when i was first coming out and first transitioning as well i looked at some women who i've seen a trans i'm like they're beautiful they're empowered like i just want to be like that i see the same flip reverse coming so that's kind of why i try and still always be very present and always very in the community and let it be known that i am transgender because i come from a I didn't transition early because our choices back then were one thing only. That was you abandon your family, your friends, your entire life, forever. You cut it off and you start somewhere else new with a new identity just so you can be safe. Now the world has changed in the most positive ways for people who have always existed to be able to come out and say, I don't have to make that choice. I can still be around friends, family, and other things and be safe. And this is what has enabled the vast wave of people to begin transitioning. And I think the big change happened around 2010, 2012. when people start to realize that you could be that. Now with VR, people are, it's exponential, because now people can try on these identities without having to do it in real life. They can find themselves safely over an extended period of time, strictly through VR. You know, I love to make the joke, there's a joke that in pre-transition, they usually call trans people eggs, because they're just waiting to hatch out of that egg and just come bursting out. And I'm gonna tell you, I have seen more eggs cracked in VR chat than a chicken farmer. It's because it's so amazingly empowering to people for any kind of identity exploration.
[00:21:05.885] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's interesting just to see how much in VRChat that there is an anime aesthetic, but also anime girl aesthetic where it's almost like there's men who may not identify as trans wearing anime girl avatars, but yet it seems like there's this process of people experimenting with identity in that way. but also discovering themselves that you've been able to watch that unfold. And just to clarify, because you're doing a lot of stuff with your Kaleidosky, which are the events that you hold with DJs and then the Trans Academy, are there events or what, what do you being on the staff, what does that entail? Like on a week to week or monthly basis, if you're going to events or what does that mean to be more directly affiliated with that group?
[00:21:45.385] Ru: My contribution is through the music portion. I work with Meowsky, who's another tremendous artist, who's also trans. And she and I worked together to produce the events that the Trans Academy puts on for the entire group, for them specifically. We just completed our two-day Pride Festival. Our music portion was only a small part of the many different panels and speakers and other things that they had. And Talent Show was part of the entire event. The amazing thing about the Trans Academy is the staff work like clockwork, a very professional integrated team to where I don't have to wear multiple hats like I have to do in my own beat syndicate or in my own events. Everything is delegated and everything runs like a well-oiled machine to make it the best experience, the safe experience that we want it to be. So anytime we have any kind of larger events and things like that, they usually turn to myself for help with event coordination, especially on the music side or live performer or anything like that just for the network I've built up over time. you know, meet people that understand, okay, this person would be safe to bring into the trans community as a performer because they're going to give positive feedback versus somebody else that may be of an ilk that isn't trans supportive or something like that. You know, so I do use, you know, the knowledge and the network that I've built up over time to bring, you know, the best, but as well as new people, you know, I'm, we've always tried to make sure to feature, um, well-known but also brand new trans artists. They run a weekly event that I assisted with building initially, Moonlight Academy, that is a talent show and artists and vocal performers and DJs and especially new people. So now these people who are newer to the Trans Academy can find something else new for themselves, try it out in front of their friends in a really supportive environment. I mentor DJs for a reason. I've lost count of how many I've taught, given their first beginning journey, because I tell them, it's like Tetris. I can show you the basics on how to get along, but your journey from there is going to be a lifetime of mastery. And once people kind of see that and understand that, they go, I found a new passion. I'm like, I know, me too. It's great.
[00:23:56.414] Kent Bye: Nice. Well, earlier you mentioned the East-West Trance Fest, which when I was looking through both your videos and your timeline of, you know, it seemed like a pretty big turning point because you launched the Kaleidosky public instance back in like December 2nd of 2022, where it seems like that was when you were starting to have some of these events in your own world that you had created, which Kaleidosky is coming from this idea that you can have this kaleidoscopic like half dome or even full dome where you're You have the VJs who are able to move the objects in front of this kaleidoscopic camera that you were giving me a demo of this past weekend. And also you said you've been, you know, over the last number of years since the 2022 that you've held weekly events and featured over 328 artists that you had listed. And so it's like quite an epic experience. weekly effort, but also curating and cultivating and hosting both these DJs and VJs. But maybe you could take me back to that turning point when you decided to build your own world and start to host these types of psytrance and trance events within Kaleidoskyne.
[00:25:05.137] Ru: Absolutely. Absolutely. As I mentioned, I started the East West Trance Fest about two and a half, three years ago. Initially, it was in collaboration with the Resumu Club inside of VRChat, which was featured in the PBS documentary as well. We worked together with the Japanese side, Club Egypt, and SQN-san to usually have it in one world and then another. And they were great worlds, but they weren't necessarily more trance themed or psychedelic or anything like that. At the time, as I said, we were building and doing shows in Neos, which was very difficult to do because that's not a larger scale VR social app. It's a very small scale development focused application where you can get people together to do a quick bit of development inside a small world and learn off each other and experiment and sandbox. And that was where at the time we were, Hedy and myself were building a world over there, which became the genesis of Kaleidosky. That opened up in 2021 or so. And we worked together to put some shows on pretty much on a weekly over in Neos as well, which were small attendance. But for me, I've always said I'll play for five, 50 or 5,000, as long as somebody's happy. You know, I just want to give somebody a good time to forget something. So when, after we started the initial East-West Trance Fest, myself and TOTC, who's also been in beat syndicate as long as I have, we said, well, let's, you know, maybe it's time for us to pivot to VRChat. Because that was a whole 'nother thing to do. Building an engine in Neos and building in a 2D flat screen in Unity is a completely different thing and a whole new process to learn. He took the hard route. and learned it all himself and did it solo. Whereas I took the easy route and worked with collaboration to fill in the gaps of my knowledge and help kind of realize the things that I wanted to do inside of VRChat. I collaborated with Tara and Electro, as well as a few other people to help bring together the pieces and parts of Kaleidoscope into its first iteration. The idea of Kaleidoscope, kind of the design, everything is purposely designed because each I would learn something new about how people behave. If you design it this way, they're going to crowd this dance floor here because they say, oh, that's a wall. I must belong right here. The others will hang back in the little side areas because there's people who like to wallflower a little bit. You have to put these things in your design for creature comfort. But the way Kaleidoscope is designed, as you saw with the pretty much north, south, east, west little zones that all connect to the middle, well, that's intentional because we have activities in each one of those zones and underneath. But to get to any one of those other activities, if you're resting in a jelly bed, I want to go over by the lava lamp for a little bit. Well, you have to pass through the center to do that. And that is to force interactions between people. And those incidental interactions are what get people meeting each other, talking with each other. expanding their own groups and things like that. All that's purposely designed in it for that kind of feeling is camaraderie, poor vibe. As far as the skyboxes themselves, as you mentioned, that was inspired by a gentleman named Circuitry and Neos built a world that had a similar-ish little kaleidoscopic boxes. And you could put a texture on it, kind of look at it on the inside, like, oh, hey, that's really cool. My first thought upon sticking my face into that thing was, wow, I don't want this thing to be small. I want this thing to be the whole damn sky. Like, this would be amazing. And that's kind of where the genesis of Kaliasky's visuals and things came from. And then it was a matter of recreating those, making those available for Unity. And I built an initial thing with it and took it to Terra, and I said, okay, Here's my white box. Here's my idea. You know, I want to be able to switch between these sky boxes. There's six different ones that produce a whole different pattern and a whole different method. I want to switch between these and I want to be able to affect the post-processing. So like when a dramatic part of the music comes in, I want to be able to take the color out of the world and bring the lights down lower a little bit to add a more dramatic effect to the music. And initially we started out with a very basic kaleidoscope guy, the center stage with the kaleidoscope in the sky. And in the process of that, I asked her, I said, you know, could we put a camera to the sky? Like, wouldn't it be fun if, you know, instead of just putting a normal stream and visual to this guy, maybe we could put a camera to this guy. That'd be cool to like pull around the venue. She said, yeah, let's do that. And then she put a little screen in the world to show what the camera was showing, which was just a kind of out of nowhere decision to do. Not inspired by anything, but just before we opened the venue, we noticed when you pointed that camera at the screen, oh, wait, we have a video feedback system in here now. What? And so that was a whole other process to go down the hole and learn, like, what did we just make? What did we just stumble on? We could make things in the sky with regular visuals, or we could just do it with the camera here as well. And that's where that initial screening camera went from being in the middle of the venue to its own separate island for performers, not to keep them isolated, but to keep others from interfering with their work. The way the camera system works is just like a standard video feedback system where the camera sees itself and then it sees itself again and broadcasts that and then sees itself again like an infinity mirror broadcasting all the way down and falling into itself. You can use that combined with the kaleidoscopic sky to create almost an infinite amount of different visuals and effect, you know, appearance. Oh, it's just, it's mind boggling. I've been in there for a thousand plus hours at the minimum by now. And I've never seen repeat visual go through because it's also dynamic and changing. The nature of Kaleidosky was to bring initially, give VJs a playground to play in and DJs a place to come and create an experience for people. Kaleidosky, most people go, you know, I don't really play trance. I'm like, ha, don't worry. Because Kaleidosky isn't about a trance venue. You got to be known for something. I play everything, but I got known for trance. That's what you got to do. You know, that's part of the thing. But they're like, I don't play trance. I'm like, but that's not what it is. The reason why I went with the whole down the rabbit hole thing Alice in Wonderland aesthetic in the place. And the idea was, I don't like building towards real life in VR. I see a lot of places that try and eight VR and that's kind of people's initial thing. Like when they come into VR and they start building, like, okay, I want to build a place I know from real life. And I did the same thing. But as I went along, I started to realize that it's only going to ever be a pale imitation of real life. Regardless of how many shiny surfaces you put on it, your brain's still going to go, ah-ah. So why fight against that uncanny valley feeling? Why not create something that is purposely surreal, where you're not feeding a bunch of information to tell them you're in the middle of a city next to a warehouse that's in the other. They can walk in and go, where am I? Let their head tell them that. No, I must be floating in space somewhere. Yeah, this has got to be in a space station somewhere. This is surreal. But that's the point of surreal. It's not for me to tell them, this is where you are. It's for them to come in and go, this is where I am. And that was kind of the whole surreal nature to why I've always built towards that. So the whole design of the venue itself kind of landed towards that. I said, well, I don't want to make it about trance. I want to make it about a journey. And that's literally the speech I give to every artist, DJ, vocal artists. We have modular and synth music performers, and we have DJs. And I tell each of them the same thing. Kaleidoscope is an open genre. Anything is welcome here. We're not a club. People don't come to drink here and party. The people who come here are listeners, and they're there for an experience. So if you give them that, they're going to appreciate it. And I've heard everything from Polynesian prayer chants, African war drums, ambient noise, literally everything. Because people come in and they experiment, and the ones who are there are there for the experience. And giving artists that freedom to play things they couldn't play other places... is also enabling to them and they come in sometimes they can make the most amazing amazing sets because they're like no i want to craft something because it's one thing to dj in and out pulling out of a crate but it's another to sit back and go i'm going to move some motions purposely and this is going to be the time that this is going to rise to a peak and then come down to a dark area. And then this is going to be the emotional lift at the moment where the tears come. Building that's very fun as an artist. It really is. And when you see the impact it has on somebody after playing that, it's addicting. It really is.
[00:33:37.079] Kent Bye: Yeah. You gave me a little tour of the Fly to Sky 3.0, which was launched this past April 6th, 2024. I don't know if that was ahead of being featured within Rain Dance to do an opening night party. You've had the 2.0 that came out in May of 2023. This is the third iteration that you've been putting out these different worlds. And so I went through the evolution of each of the different worlds just to see how it changed because it was a very unique world design in a sense that I haven't seen a lot of the clubs. They typically take the usual tropes of having like a dance floor and they're very square and kind of like a skeuomorphic underground. Yeah. They're, they're kind of like basing it upon what we think of as a typical dance call, but you really taken the virtual design to the next level of really trying to cultivate these little pockets where people can hang out and just chat, but also the serendipitous collisions and connections that happen as people go through the middle on the outside, people can get in a raft and kind of just float around and, and listen. And then even in the 3.0, you've got like a racetrack for people to kind of play in a race car drive to drive around the world. Yeah.
[00:34:39.497] Ru: Yeah.
[00:34:40.356] Kent Bye: So it's been quite an evolution for each of these three versions. And also just want to mention how the VGA system seems to be something that's designed for really just anybody to come in and learn it quickly to start to modulate and start to play with the visuals. You know, I'm not a trained VGA. There's not a lot of technical learning curve that you'd have to go through. There's a tablet that you were manipulating, which I'm sure that people would need to have some time to play with a little bit. But just from the basics that you were able to put together, it's almost like democratizing the process of becoming the video DJ or VJ, where you can start to play with these kaleidoscopes with the very embodied interactive design that you've created within Kaleidosky.
[00:35:21.260] Ru: Absolutely. And that was intentional in design as well, because there are people who are professional VJs and come in and play in there, but there are people who are beginners. There are people who don't even do it. But the idea is to give them the ability to come play with the visuals. Or if a dancer, and this was something that was originally started by Softly Steph, who participated in Rain Dance recently as well. She was dancing in front of the camera with her avatar and invisible and producing the most beautiful things in the sky. And I'm like, why does it need to be A VJ whose head is buried in Resolute. Why can't it be somebody in the world? Why can't it be a dancer? A dancer can produce visuals. A dancer can produce these kind of things. And they do. And at Ring Dance, Dust Bunny and Willie did the most amazing visuals because now you have a granular control in a different way than buttons, faders, and knobs in front of you and a PC screen. But yeah, it was intentional. The rules are public for a reason. 3.0 is still tweaking a little bit more before public release, but 1.0 and 2.0 are released to the public because, yeah, I wanted to make it where anybody could walk in and they could open the place up, put in a link for their music, and then go to the visuals to produce their own show. Some clubs lock their stuff down, but for me, I'm like, everybody should be allowed to produce this kind of music, run their own event. All of our stuff at Beatson has always been free and accessible. But making it easier for people to do that made it a lot easier as well to open it up to the public because a lot of places are very difficult to figure out. The post-processing can be a little difficult. Tara built a wonderful UI system. It's very clean and very nice. As you saw, it was very intuitive. You could look at it as a beginner and a immediately understand this is here. What is this and what does it do is always very clear. That comes down to the UI design of the creator, Tara, for sure. Because she has a huge input to that world, not just in making the engine run, making the car go, but as well as the UI design and things like that, that enable people to do things easier, enable people to be able to open up the world publicly.
[00:37:34.178] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think the world design and also the invitations that you put out for people to come to join these worlds, along with the music that's playing, did create like a way different vibe that I'm used to seeing in most of the different dance club scenes. I'm wondering if that was in part from your own frustration for what kind of, I guess, more chill out or conversational vibe? that you'd want to create. Because when I went there, at least when I went, there wasn't people that were all kind of raging on the dance floor. It felt like more of like a co*cktail party that people were hanging out and chatting, but also listening to the music. And it just was a different feeling that I felt like the world design was kind of encouraging that type of behavior, but also the invitation in your community that was coming in as well.
[00:38:15.959] Ru: Absolutely. I try, as I say, I do try and encourage people to just come down there. That's why you have a code generated for yourself to come down immediately is because you can tell when people are interested because they're typically kind of looking over at the camera aisle and like, Hey, What's that going on over there? Is it interesting? What's going on? And I do try and grab people and say, hey, come on over. Join us. Here's code. Come join us. Come play with us a little bit. Would you want to build an experience here? You want to latch on to those people that come in as well. Then I find out our vocal DJs or VJs, because they see the playground and they go, I want to play with that. And I'm like, well, that's why I built it. That's why it is a playground in the literal sense of, you really do your research. I tell you what, like nobody I have ever talked with in interviews over time, the evolution of Kaleidosky into the playground was the fact that we were, you know, I was running these events for so long. There's so many people that want to come in and play around with this stuff and perform for others that I was like, gosh, this is like a, we're getting to a seven, eight hour event right now because we start in EU times, go through the North American, but we finish up in the Japanese evening times because that allows their people to come in at a decent time for them as well. I thought, gosh, you know, let me give people something to do besides just like sit and stare at the venue the entire time. So in our second iteration of it, 2.0, you saw the shuttles. And that was to give people something to fly around and have fun in. And Electro designed a little ring system, which immediately set off the speed runners in the group. Go, go, neurodivergence. And they ate it up. It gave people something else to do in the venue. And when the third iteration came along, which was kind of the finalization of the 2.0, we finished that part of it, but Tara had commissions to work on, and those commissions had to come first. When those settled down, we began work again in December on 3.0. I asked her, I said, you know, let's make this downstairs into something. We were going to do something with it, like a ball pit, but that's just not optimized. What can we do? I was like, well... hey i got this uh racetrack from uh it's really colorful and rainbowy from a very sue happy company um they could stick that in there and that's how the arcade ended up in there and the racetrack ended up in there just further becoming a playground for people
[00:40:38.083] Kent Bye: Yeah, I had a nice little stroll walking because when I tried the go-karts that you're driving in, it's a little bit too fast for me, just a little bit more nauseating. So I kind of took a slow walk around it just to, it was a nice, you know, when I go into some of these worlds, sometimes I'd like to be in motion because it just allows me to kind of take it in and see the vastness of the experience. It really reminds me of what the sphere in Las Vegas has created with a big giant screen, but it feels like that you would have to have like a location like that in order to recreate. what you're able to do, you know, really a lot cheaper than how much the sphere costs and the billions of dollars to be able to do that within VRChat. So you're able to kind of recreate this psychedelic kaleidoscopic feedback loop system where you're able to play with the tints and the colors and everything. And so, you know, one of the other things that you just mentioned and also noticed doing these weekly events is that where you start in the evening, it ends up, you know, 5 or 6 a.m. local time for like eight or nine hours that you're doing this in the middle of the night. Is this kind of like your normal time that you're already awake? Or is this just something on the weekends that you do that you decide to pull these all-nighters to host these events regularly?
[00:41:46.343] Ru: Yeah, I'm mostly a night shift nurse. I have been for years. Those hours are always something I kept, even in my youth, you know, when I settled into a night shift role and second shift, second shift now, because it works well for having weekends off. But night shift is when I've always been operating. So it didn't bother me to run those things. And that's typically where I run the event by myself is because I'm the only one stupid enough to be there from 9 p.m. to 6 in the bloody morning. But again... I have not found a weekend 50 weeks out of the year that I have done it, that it wasn't worth it because people take it so seriously and they deliver such a quality performance that I'm tired, but I'm smiling the entire time. You know, it's certainly been worth it. Certainly been worth it.
[00:42:34.454] Kent Bye: Yeah, because you span so many different time zones, it seems like you're able to also pull into these different communities where maybe some time zones are going to sleep and some are maybe just waking up. And so you're able to really have this international feel of curating these over 300 artists that you've done over the last couple of years.
[00:42:50.439] Ru: Yeah, I've been very fortunate to have so many come through. And the time of day does help a lot, especially with the Japanese side. We start at 10 a.m. their time, which is very early. And for the EU people... who can't make it in the late times, like, you know, we're coming in, finishing up around one, two in the afternoon for them. So it's easy to catch some of them as well. That does allow for a lot more artists and people to come through because they have a variances of times instead of going, oh, you're only playing from 11, 12 and 1 a.m. Eastern time. No, sorry, I'm going to be asleep. And like you say, that does help us to catch a lot more different artists and not, you know, just try and get everybody because there's people that want to play and they're like, gosh, I'm just, I don't know if I can be awake at that time. Like, well, I can run a little later. I can open a little earlier. I don't mind whatever it takes to bring a person in to play, you know?
[00:43:44.025] Kent Bye: Yeah, while I was going to different Rain Dance events all throughout the day on this past Saturday, and then your event was happening. And then at the same time, Shelter had opened up. And so then I popped into Shelter because I'd never been to Shelter. And I'd actually just watched the PBS documentary that had featured Shelter a lot within the course, the same one that you're featured in by Yosef. So I was like, Hey, I've never been, I should go check it out at least. But then I got there and the music hadn't even started. And it was like, okay, well, I'm going to like jump back out and I'll go over to the cloud of sky and check that out. Cause I knew that I was going to like meet up with you and get a little bit of a tour. And then there's like a queue system where there was at least one instance that you had that was from the group. And then I was able to. queue in and i got in pretty quickly and then was able to check it out chat with you and then when i try to get back into like shelter there was like queues of like 20 to 30 people and by that point i was like i had already been in vr for six or seven hours going in through a lot of events and i sort of bailed but i know at shelter at least has been starting to take like a multi-instance approach where they had three different instances that I could like jump in. And I only saw one with Kaleidosky. I don't know if it's something in the past that you've had multiple instances, or if you are more of a firm believer of having like a single instance that people just queue up and wait to get into.
[00:44:58.108] Ru: Ah, yeah. See, that is the thing. We did multi-instance. And we'll do that for larger events and things like that in vSyndicate. We had to over in Wave VR, but luckily the software itself spun up new instances automatically for us. So when we had like 4,000 come in for the Burning Man, we didn't have to worry about hosting instances. VRChat's different, where somebody has to manually open the instance. If you're going to be running it, that means you're going to put a staff member in there to make sure that your group's policies are being followed and it's not devolving into some... rec room, we'll just leave it at that. We have to curate and keep our instances safe. I have run multi-instances before, but again, that involves more people. For me, you know, most people spend the time in the other instances trying to get into the main instance. And that's one of those things where Kaleidoscope is also built around the post-processing and the kaleidoscopic visuals the artist is trying to produce and things like that. And there really isn't a way in an optimized way to share those synced settings across. So it's going to be a whole other VJ working the board and the lights inside of the second instance. And I've also kind of, I do kind of like that Kaleidoscope is a one instance, 80 person limit. It's an ephemeral experience. You know, you come in and you catch it and you experience it and then it's gone. It's kind of a sad thing, but then again, there's another one coming. There'll be a new experience coming. But, you know, I like people to come in and be with the artist who's presenting it. to share that experience with them and for the artists, be it VJ, DJ, or whatever it may be, they can see that reaction and they can get that visceral feedback from people. Because I think that's also a lot of part of the process. You know what I mean? There are people who just want to be big. And I've done big. And it's a massive hassle. It's a massive freaking hassle. And I'm 40. I don't need that kind of hassle in my life right now. So I'd rather keep it smaller. It's really the choice of the venue, and how they want to operate it, and how much staff they want to pull on. You know what I mean? There's volunteers. Because none of this is paid. Fewer larger events like Parality. Wonderful time. Paid event. But it's massive. It has a massive team. And it certainly deserves to be a paid event. It's amazing what they produce. For me, this is exactly along the lines of what I can handle with my normal hospice job that I'm not leaving. At a core, I'm still a hospice nurse. I know what I do for a living, and I love it. I could be anywhere else, but I know where I do the best work and the most help. I'm not leaving that. And it does a wonderful foundation for the rest of my passions and other things that I follow. So this is what works perfectly for me within the realm of what I'm able to give to it without burning myself out on a weekly basis. You know, how do I do it nine hours on a Saturday? Well, because I love it. This is literally my passion, bringing this to people, seeing them come in once a week and like, just be happy.
[00:48:03.271] Kent Bye: Well, I know that in speaking with a number of different people in light of the recent VRChat layoffs, we had a group discussion with Table, Unix, Mistabi, and QDOT. And we were talking about how VRChat ultimately needs to have their own creator economy and other ways of monetizing the system. They just, you know, this past Wednesday laid off 30% of their staff. And so one of the things that table said is that it'd be great for people to be able to tip and just add for things that they enjoy, but also like a lot of the existing creator economy systems were really trying to gamify things that weren't necessarily gamified, like having secret VIP rooms or, you know, I'm just, I'm wondering to hear your take on, you know, it seems like a lot of what you're creating is out of passion, but if you see that there's a value to potentially have some options that if people wanted to contribute or to have this be more of a potential career path for you to do this rather than just as a hobby, and also just for the sake of VRChat as a platform, it seems like these types of cultural events, like in order for them to be really sustainable, then They need to move towards thinking about how to actually like extend this, what has essentially been a free ride for a lot of people with the VC investments that they have, but in order to actually make it a proper business. So let me hear some of your thoughts because you seem to be really at the nexus of this kind of creative avant-garde experimental culture creating that you're doing.
[00:49:24.793] Ru: Yes, sir. As far as the VRChat economy goes, the creator economy especially, I'm supportive. I have met a ton of smaller creators, avatar creators, world creators, and people like that. I would love to see another way for them to be enabled to be paid. for the stuff that they do, another way for them to receive money for the work that they do, because most stuff out there is free and public. And artists deserve to be paid for their work. As far as it applying to myself or Kaleidosky, this won't be a career for me. You know what I mean? I could, but again, I'm 40. I'm not chasing a DJ career around doing the circuit and all that crazy tours of that. That's not for me. That's not what I'm interested in. And when it comes to the creator economy, people have said, open a Patreon, open a Patreon. But I have trouble discerning what I could offer as any kind of perks. Because for me, I'm very much one of those who... doesn't like seeing a separation of the haves and the have nots. You know, that's why I've always said all of my shows and all my things will always be offered for free. Cause there's always going to be somebody out there that really needs to have that experience. We need to have that good experience that weekend, but they can't offer up five bucks for it. I'm not going to put that gate on there just for me personally, but I think that everybody should be allowed to do that. I just don't see like having a special crown over your head or something like that. I'm kind of like, I don't see that as a good enough offering for somebody just for handing me money. I don't know. I'm not good at taking money from others. And I never have been. And that does contribute towards that as well. You know what I mean? I do okay. And I'm not a stuff kind of person. I don't desire things or need money. I don't need money for retirement. Heck, I'll take that. But I'm working towards that in my regular job. So the creator economy only doesn't apply to me because of my specific situation. But I'm very much in favor of it. Because anything, and as you say, to get at that VC funding, getting to... You know, VRC is a corporation, you know, building money and profiting in the future. I'm very much in support of that. I have been a VRC Plus supporter since the very beginning. You know, I have the opportunity to meet many of the developers in VRChat. And the one thing I have overwhelmingly noticed about VRChat versus... Anything else I've been in, Wave, Altspace, Rec Room, and Neos, the devs are in there dogfooding their own program. They are in there daily on their social time. They're interacting with people, seeing how it works. They're out among for the most part. You know what I mean? That's something different. They're very invested into it. They're not, this is a nine to five, I'm clocking out at five and I don't even think about this afterwards. So there's a lot of passion in between that and I support that passion. I see how it's enabled people to find art, to find music, to find friends, to find a whole new social circle, to find a new identity. I'm all about supporting that. And if that's the creator economy, then line me up. No problem. I'm happy to pay to help support the platform and the people inside of it. Because I see the good that comes from it. Sure, there's the chaff that's, especially when things get larger, we're going to have, you know, the VR chat public lobbies, that's always going to exist, you know, in any, any social metaverse, you know, you're always going to have the dredges of society, you know, cause and problems are people, but with a greater internet dickwad theory that Penny arcade came up with years ago, one person normal, plus the anonymity of the internet equals a total butthead. It's going to happen. So finding the best ways to mitigate that in your experience is what users have to learn. And I think maybe if there's one thing for VRChat to overcome, it's the perception of maybe the wider XR community as a public lobby full of kids memeing at each other. Because what I would love to tell them is that you didn't even get past the door. Because when you get inside, you'll meet some of the most unbelievably passionate and creative people who work in the industry. There are so many people from the games industry who are in there in their off time, just doing some amazing stuff, building free worlds and experimenting. If you've never seen anything by Artsy Glitch, I would highly recommend going in there. Their worlds are so immersive, so creative with these little lore built into all the details and whatnot. It's amazing to see these artists and people coming in and creating, but to stop at the door and go, Some idiot kid just called me an ass. Well, no, no, no, don't stop there. You need to find your people. You need to find the groups and the group system helps do that. That's why we have Beat Syndicate as a group for people to join. You said you joined off the group. That's intentional because then people don't have to be my friend to join on me. To find that experience new, they can go, Let me join that group and then scroll down their group list and go, oh, hey, look, it's open. Let me go check that out. That group system is amazing. The best thing in the world. And the instance queue, so I don't have to keep joining the world and ended up in a dead one because it was full. VRChat has done many things, and that's because they listen. But I'll give you a perfect example of how they really listen. When EAC was first developed and instituted, which I fully support, that was the end of the script, kiddies. Goodbye. No more Crashers. A lot of people complained because the custom modifications they had used for accessibility or other things were also removed in the process. Now, a bunch of little armchair quarterbacks just come harping in like, ah, it's ableist, this and the other, but you can't help some of the fallout. That's when VRChat developers went into absolute overdrive. We see a little update now and again. From there, we had so many new things implemented and they haven't stopped. One of the first things they did, Heidi, who's also part of the syndicate, came from Neos with us. She is a wonderful creator. She's autistic and really needs to bring down voices because it can be very overstimulating. The nice thing about Neos, it puts a little whisper shield over you. You have a little quiet space, but in VRChat, not so the case. And when the mod to bring voices down was removed, she made a post on Twitter about it and said, you know, this was very effective for people like myself because she and I both have hearing loss and have difficulty picking out voices among a plethora. Like this is what I used to be able to hear people better to keep from being overstimulated. And this was a really integral part of my enjoyment of VRChat. It wasn't about a week later, we had earmuffs go straight into the system and come to find out that was the tweet that they read to inspire them to say, we need to put this in here. So they are listening and they do work with, there's only so much a large company with a big glass roadmap can do to accommodate, but they really do work to make sure that the people who come into their platform are getting the best experience that they can. It's not about pushing the tech or like I inserted this new tech into it like you see over in Neos. That's not built around user comfort at all. Like at all. VRChat goes out of its way to do that, I think. You know what I mean? It's best that it can. Users are self-regulating and so are the groups, but they've certainly provided the tools for us.
[00:56:23.339] Kent Bye: Yeah, I use that earmuff feature all the time. And just learned from Joe Hunting that you can double click on the icon of the, double click on the sound icon to turn on the earmuffs, which is great to know. I use that all the time. So yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:56:43.319] Ru: Absolutely. I can tell you from my own personal perception, and usually when they don't offer this stuff, I'm not one of the armchair quarterbacks, because honestly, again, I'm a nurse from Ohio. I have no perception of this stuff, even been six years into this now. But what would I offer my best educated guests? I would say that this is going to unify the world in a way that we have never seen before. And the reason why I say that is because I have been able to, even in my own infinite wisdom, learn more about other cultures because they are literally able to come right next to me. I've learned more about all kinds of Asian cultures, how things are handled, interactions between people. These are things that you would just like, find as a novelty in a youtube video or something like that and move on from the world is being shrunk in ways so much more than it's ever been shrunk by communication transportation or anything else because it literally brings the world to your doorstep and people average people like yourself from other countries right to your doorstep and with the power of you know translators and other things you know add-ons you can do you can communicate with these people you can learn about them This is going to make the world so much smaller. And really, it really teaches all more about others culturally that I think that's the best thing, I think, because we all run on what we're told by others instead of what we know ourselves. So be able to experience that and experience people and how they view things is only going to broaden our own horizons. And that I'm really looking forward to most of all.
[00:58:12.008] Kent Bye: Awesome. And is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:58:18.249] Ru: I hope that they certainly give VRChat the chance that it deserves to find, because you don't know what community you may find in there or what you may be inspired to do. You may think, I'm just going to go in there and look around. And then you walk out and find out, well, I'm painting in VR now. You don't know how it can change your life. And you don't know how the people you meet can also change your life and affect the direction of it, because it's absolutely changed my life and most of the people who have come through. I would say, come try it out. Get past those publics and come find some good people because your life will change.
[00:58:53.380] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Ru, it was a real pleasure to come by the Kaleidosky this past weekend and get a whole tour of what you've been able to cultivate there with your communities that you've been holding on a weekly basis since 2022. And, you know, going all the way back to 2018 from Wave VR and EOS VR and Yeah, just really at the center of this intersection of music and technology and virtual culture and all of the different communities that you're bringing together as well. You're a real community organizer and helping to facilitate some amazing gatherings there in VR. And yeah, it was a real pleasure to be able to get a little bit more about your story and how it all came about. And yeah, thanks for joining me here today on the podcast to help break it all down.
[00:59:32.911] Ru: Thank you. I'm honored to speak with you, honestly. Thank you very much for your time as well. And amazing research. I am just blown away. Thank you very much. It was very engaging.
[00:59:42.656] Kent Bye: So that was Ru. She's a VR artist, DJ, and event producer who runs the Kaleidosky events each and every week. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, I had a lot of fun going into the Kaleidosky and just listening to the music and getting a little bit of a tour, seeing behind the scenes, seeing how the whole VJ system works where you essentially grab these little objects and put them in front of the camera. You can put your hand in front of the camera. Ru has these psychedelic avatars that you can use to be able to dance in front of the camera or do finger puppetry. So just a really accessible system for VJs to go in there and start to play around with the visuals. And yeah, just these like weekly events that she's been holding for a number of years now where she's featured over 300 different DJs from around the world. She's a hospice nurse from Ohio who originally got into VR from, you know, a tumor that she had that she couldn't work for a couple of weeks. And she got into the way VR and then that led to Neos and then now getting into VR chat to hold these really epic events and events. Yeah, it's just really quite inspiring just to hear more of her story of using virtual reality as a medium to create, starting with the Wave VR, having some of these content creation tools and really pushing them to the edge for what type of more psychedelic, psy, trance type of experiences that she wanted to produce. It's a pretty good musical genre and virtual reality is a medium pushing the edge of this type of visual experience that she was striving for. And then that carrying forth through her experimentations within NeosVR and then now into VRChat with these three different iterations of Kaleidosky. So yeah, just a really impressive technological feat to kind of have this space, but also this community that she has cultivated. You know, you really get this sense of a lot of people that are there just kind of hanging out, talking to each other. It's a little bit different vibe than what I've seen at other dance clubs. She doesn't actually consider herself to have a club. It's more of a place for people to have music and to share their art. It's got a little bit more indie art, avant-garde, experimental vibe to it all. And yeah, just a place for artists to push their edge and maybe do something that they don't usually do with their sets. Yeah. yeah just a really thriving community there and uh it was a real pleasure to be able to go check it out and definitely check out rain dance and see the different events this is nominated for the best music experience and actually was a part of the opening night party where there was like a six or a dozen different artists that were performing there and doing visuals as well I didn't have a chance to attend that party, but I did get a chance to go to another event just to be able to check it out. And it was also just really fascinating to hear a little bit more about Ru's experience of being a transgender woman who lives in Ohio and very conservative red state that she's able to go in and, you know, have this extended network of friends to hang out with and to share music and to build community within the context of VRChat. And Yeah, there's a whole thriving community of transgender folks within VRChat. And highly recommend checking out Strah's films. Did a whole piece called Identity, Gender in VRChat. Why is everyone in VR an anime girl? Really dig into a lot of the playing with gender that's happening within the context of VRChat. And then the virtual reality show with Fia did a whole piece called Why Are There So Many Trans People in VRChat? Gender Identity and Self-Discovery that is doing a whole profile of the Trans Academy. So definitely recommend checking out that as well. And Also, Subcultured, which is a part of PBS Voices, did a whole piece called I Went Clubbing in Virtual Reality, Rabes of VRChat by Yosef Lorenzo, which originally aired back in April 6, 2022. And Ru, as well as a number of other clubs within the VRChat clubbing scene, were featured within that documentary. It's a really great 13-minute documentary that does a really great job of introducing all the different things that are happening in the scene. So, yeah. If you're completely unaware of what's happening, then definitely check that out. Ru has a brief appearance in there as well and has the cloud of sky that's featured. So, yeah. Well, that's all that I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listen-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
