Description

Hello, my name is Lionel and thank you very much again for having me as part of the summit. Please allow me to share more about what I'm going to present today.I’m currently running iMMERSiVELY, an XR development company based in Singapore.

This year, we have very exciting news to share. We were acquired by TOFFS Technologies. We’re here to develop custom bespoke applications across many businesses and verticals from marketing, arts culture, training and so forth. And we develop these applications across different platforms and technologies like AR, VR, MR 360 content.

Having been acquired by TOFFS Technologies, we now have offices and presence in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand. But of course, my sharing today really comes from my background in various portfolios and profiles that I have undertaken over the years.And I’d like to share with you some of these observations and also, my presentation based on these different backgrounds and experiences.

In Singapore, specifically tech in art and culture is actually everywhere. And especially with the pandemic, we can see that it's gone a lot digital and online. And that hasn't really stopped the development of arts and culture with XR, in terms of where the pandemic is. So, you saw a lot of VR galleries we saw a lot of VR works.

We saw a lot of gamification and digital works as we open up. Particularly, for examples such as the National Heritage Board, they have gone ahead over this period of 18 months to actually commission and also appoint more and more creators to explore creations in AR, VR and even games, as well. So, we, ourselves, saw the benefits of this. So, we actually got commission over the past 18 months, and even as early as 2018, in terms of VR installation and also AR works, as well.

In 2019, we had the opportunity and chance to actually be appointed by the Arts Council here in Singapore to stage a 10-day event at the location based in Singapore, where we saw the new artists try to create new works in XR for the very first time.This was actually on-site where they were able to come and try out the AR/VR itself.

During that event itself, a lot of people were able to come and experience physical explorations of different works in XR, as you can see.The whole experience was very tactile and personal, was very different than what we experience now. But of course, with Covid-19, not everything has been reduced to nothing. Actually, a lot more digital and online explorations in XR has emerged.And this was something that I also shared last year as well, as I tried to speak to more creators to look into how they can digitize their works.We can see some of these actually taking place in Singapore, and more and more also from different government bodies and also different technologies as well, such as AI, and with our National Arts Council actually opening up a tech and arts lab to talk about and innovate, with regards to art and technology. Another cultural institution known as the National Gallery of Singapore also organized online sessions as well, and introduced over a hundred attendees to talk about where XR is, what is the state of XR, and how they can actually explore the different arts and culture ideas in XR.

So, by and large, we see a lot of these still taking place and happening, as well. But I think, more importantly, I want to share with you some of these updates from such an article or report that I’ve extracted. A few things that we can take note of is, moving forward, we can see a lot of events are now going into hybrid, where we have a small group of physical audience.Also, the event or the installation is online for those who are online to experience. We also started to see a lot of the galleries starting to let the creators know that their works need to be publicized online via social media for people to come to know about that works, as well.

You also see that we have more works, for example, in this article by Singapore Art Week, SAW, that actually saw art works that’s been taken out from the gallery into bus stops, car parks and really outdoor venues. More importantly, more creators are starting to explore and continue to push forward to explore art in AR/VR.Another observation that I’ve noticed is the fact that this is not just an occurrence that’s happening in Singapore, but we also see this everywhere around the world, like in Cannes, and in online museums and even game engines, like Steam.

Most recently, we’re talking about games and the metaverse being different explorations of what creators can do, as well. So, we should need to keep an eye out for this because the world is really becoming smaller, where we can access a lot of these new worlds online. So, to the end of the quick presentation here, just to mention, a lot more arts and tech and culture explorations have now emerged with new forms of art that’s coming up.Not just in XR. Game art, virtual worlds, virtual beings, even crypto as well as NFT, as you might be aware of, and how creators are no longer afraid of combining different tech,such as AI and IoT, into their works. So, in a good way, the world is now your stage.What we used to think about in terms of exploring the world, in the sense of coming to a physical space, is no longer the case. What creators need to think about is how to actually expand your works so they can be seen by the world.Yep, that's my short presentation.I hope you've benefited much from it.

Bio

Lionel Chok is a Creative Technologist with over 20 years of experience in creative, media and marketing - before he achieved distinction with his postgraduate Masters (MSc) in Creative Technology at Middlesex University in London in 2015. Since  then,  he  founded iMMERSiVELY which  specialises  in Immersive Technologies such Augmenting Reality and Virtual Reality; and is both excited and looking forwards to bringing these emerging technologies to the forefront in various industries.