Agog: The Immersive Media Institute needs to empower social activism utilizing XR expertise.
Introduced by co-founders Chip Giller and Wendy Schmidt, Agog: The Immersive Media Institute is a brand new philanthropic group that goals to advertise social justice and equality utilizing immersive media. The trouble goals to open “new avenues for empathy, understanding, and activism” whereas selling optimistic social transformation. Advisers to the trouble embody Jared Cheshier, Courtney Cogburn, Nonny de la Peña, Loren Hammonds, Amy Seidenwurm, and John Vechey.
Detailing its key focus areas, the institute seeks to help creating XR content material that “builds empathy and explores methods to deal with social and environmental challenges.” Alongside partnering with researchers to discover how XR can foster empathy, the group additionally goals to arrange workshops, coaching applications and academic outreach initiatives.
We requested concerning the quantity of help creators can anticipate from the group and obtained the next ready assertion over electronic mail:
We intend to empower creators with sources that may assist them take their work to the following degree. Past monetary help, and simply as necessary, we see ourselves as connectors—we need to foster collaborations between creators and nonprofit leaders, supply technical help, and create alternatives for folk to come back collectively and share learnings about the most effective methods to XR for social good.
Amy Seidenwurm was govt producer on the VR For Good program at Meta and, in a ready electronic mail to UploadVR, commented on why the market fails to help tasks like those Agog is making an attempt to champion:
A variety of what we now have seen is disconnection throughout the market. These making impactful XR content material is probably not related to those that are engaged on associated points on a regular basis. There’s no centralized place the place you may go to find immersive media tasks which might be centered on social good, and the distribution programs are few and much between. On the identical time, there’s a burgeoning XR-for-good group that’s devoted to increasing this house, given the chance and the sources. We envision Agog as a hub for collaboration, cultivating partnerships amongst XR creators and nonprofit leaders, and offering sources to show their concepts into actuality. Actually, we need to do our greatest to answer what the varied communities want. The excellent news is that the group is beginning to kind alliances round sharing sources and finest practices. New collaborations are bobbing up every single day, just like the Immersive Expertise Alliance, which brings collectively universities with immersive media applications. To take one other instance: The Royal Shakespeare Firm is becoming a member of forces with an entire bunch of prestigious colleges and performing arts organizations to think about new types of immersion.
There are such a lot of great people which might be devoted to utilizing XR tech to attach and encourage. I’m tremendous impressed by them and may’t wait to see what occurs after we work collectively to construct a greater world.
Whereas as we speak marks the Immersive Media Institute’s first official announcement, this is not the primary time Agog has supported XR tasks. Beforehand, it assisted with Impulse (Preview) – which is at the moment being exhibited at South By Southwest (SXSW), MIT Actuality Hack, the Social Impression BuildFest, Forager, and extra.
You possibly can study extra on Agog’s web site.
