SXSW Spanning Realities With Music (Panel: Amy LaMeyer, Tony Parisi, Rebecca Barkin, Eric Wagliardo)

The Panelists

Amy LaMeyer is the managing partner of WXR Fund, where she invests in early stage spatial computing and artificial intelligence companies with female leadership. She’s a lover of music, and the author of the “Sound and AR” chapter in the book Convergence: How the World Will Be Painted With Data. She’s also an advisor for immersive music-focused startups: TribeXR, Stage, and Melodrive.

Eric Wagliardo is an internationally recognized artist and creative who resides in Brooklyn, NY and Dallas, TX. Eric has been working in XR for 4 years and recently collaborated with Childish Gambino to create an augmented reality musical experience. Eric is the founder and creative director of &Pull.

Rebecca Barkin is the VP of Immersive Experiences at Magic Leap, where she served as Executive Producer of Tónandi—a visceral, interactive audio-visual experience made in partnership with the band Sigur Rós. More recently, she teamed up with HBO and Framestore for Game of Thrones "Dead Must Die," a mixed reality experience brought to AT&T retail and Tribeca Film Festival. In 2020, opportunity informed a new focus on delivering services and solutions that bridge the physical and digital divide, ultimately expanding the reach of premium XR installations beyond any singular venue. She began her career at EMI Music.

Tony Parisi is a pioneer of virtual reality, a serial entrepreneur and an angel investor. He is the co-creator of 3D graphics standards, including VRML, X3D and gl-TF. He’s also the author of several books from O’Reilly Media covering Virtual Reality, Programming 3D Apps, and WebGL. Tony has become one of the leading spokespeople for the immersive industry, and he was recently named to Next Reality’s 30 People to Watch in Augmented Reality. Tony is currently Head of AR/VR Ad Innovation at Unity Technologies.

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The Conversation

Today’s conversation is a recreation of a South-by-Southwest Panel that didn’t happen this year because the conference was canceled. My guests are so passionate about their topic, we got the panel together to share with you here. This conversation was recorded the same week that SXSW was scheduled to happen in March. Here’s a bit from the show guide:

From Childish Gambino’s augmented reality dancing to Marshmello’s Fortnite concert in virtual reality to the mixed reality experience of Tonandi, immersive and spatial computing is closing the gap between the real and the virtual when it comes to music and art. Listeners can experience music in new and more profound ways. Musicians can take advantage of this shift to reach and connect more deeply with broader audiences. Artists can create a lasting emotional connection by letting their fans be in the center of the experience. 

In the conversation, we explore new methods for listeners and artists to span realities with music. We talk about which experiences are getting traction, as well as where the technology shines, and where it still falls short.

We expanded the topics a bit to incorporate a discussion about survival advice for startups.

Jason McDowallconsumer, content creation, entertainment