PXR2023
Presenters

Stephen Butchko received his Bachelor of Arts degree in theater from Western Washington University. After moving to Los Angeles, he began producing and performing in independent theatrical and motion picture productions with his wife Deirdre V. Lyons. Since making the transition to producing and performing in Virtual Reality, Stephen’s credits include: PARA, Krampusnacht, and the award-winning The Severance Theory: Welcome to Respite and Gumball Dreams. He is a founding member of Ferryman Collective.

Marco creates and scales experiences based on spatial technologies. After writing his first scientific article on the topic of virtual worlds in 2009, he has been following this passion ever since.
With half a decade of experience creating and scaling VR and AR experiences and a masters focused on XR production, he started and grew Kreis Immersive [www.kre.is], a boutique XR production company. With its own social VR stack and MR production team, they service clients and brands in the arts and culture industry.

He now consults and builds on XR projects with his colleagues at Grapple [www.grapple.consulting].

Innovative Digital Artist & VR World Creator Harnessing the fusion of creativity and cutting-edge technology, Mada is a digital artist specializing in the creation of immersive 3D models for digital experiences and interactive virtual worlds. With over a decade of expertise acquired at Daz3D, she excels in producing top-tier 3D models, a skill that is very valuable in designing and optimizing captivating VR environments and interactive experiences. In addition to artistic talents, she possesses a wealth of experience in project management and art direction within the publishing industry, allowing her to effectively oversee and guide creative endeavors. www.pixeldustvr.com Portfolio at www.daz3d.com/mada

Carey is a board member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. He is a multidisciplinary artist and creative technologist focusing on sonic arts, interactivity, installations, and performance. He studied Electroacoustics at Concordia University and received a Masters at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast. He has collaborated with hundreds of artists mostly in Vancouver but also Montreal, Toronto, USA, UK & Ireland and has worked with Boca del Lupo for over 10 years. Carey integrates the technology for Boca del Lupo’s Live Performance 360 project.

Headshot Image Description: A white man wearing a black t-shirt and purple scarf sits smiling into the camera. He is facing away from a desk filled with a computer and other pieces of technology.

The Artistic Producer of Boca del Lupo since 2001, Jay Dodge was also part of the founding collective in 1996. During his tenure, the company has won the peer-assessed Alcan Performing Arts Award, and several Jesse Richardson Awards including seven nominations for the Critic’s Choice for Innovation and the Patrick O’Neill Award for best anthology with Plays2Perform@Home. Jay is a passionate set and video designer with Jessie Richardson Awards in both of those categories as well as a published playwright including a contribution to Boca del Lupo’s Red Phone project. Headshot Image Description: A white man stands, smirking into the camera, wearing a brown hoodie, jeans, and a watch. They are in front of a wall with disks of various shades of grey.

Actor, dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, Lee attained her MA (Distinction) from Staffordshire University’s Film and Media Studies program and is an academic mentor for Raindance’s post grad program. Possessing a solid background in theater and film, Lee is focused on merging her love of both the visual and performing arts by exploring and creating short format content with VR and 360 media. Lee advocates for the inclusion of diverse collaborators from the arts as crucial to the humanistic and equitable development of immersive technology. She is also one half of Van Rooi Productions which creates cinematic content that seeks to tell visual stories that illuminate the concept of identity in our postcolonial culture. Lee is currently developing a narrative dance series in cinematic VR that centers around reconnecting with the earth as a pathway to healing, and landscape as a metaphor in the stages of self-realization.

Whitton Frank is a voice, film, television and theater actor from Los Angeles. Her work in VR includes the award winning immersive VR worlds of The Under Presents and The Tempest, as well as the Ferryman Collective productions PARA, and the award winning Welcome to Respite and Gumball Dreams. A Ferryman team member since 2012, she is excited to be directing her first show with them. She is a graduate of two prestigious acting universities, Carnegie Mellon University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and is a recent recipient of CMU’s Tartans on the Rise award, Recently she was selected to speak about live performance in VR at Siggraph Asia 2022 as part of their Real Time Live! talks.

James Hyett is a British-Canadian actor, linguist, stage manager, editor, producer, translator, and Doctor Who fan! He is regularly the Guest Services and UX Director of the Performance and XR Conference, Associate Producer for the Kick & Push Festival, stage manager for Gay for Pay with Blake and Clay, and a co-founder and actor for First Ditch Collective, an audio drama collective making fantastical stories for young audiences.

Raven John, artist, involuntary comedian and two-spirit activist, is of Coast Salish and Stolo Nation descent. This Two-spirit Trickster is a BFA graduate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, with a major in visual art and minor in social practice and community engagement, as well as a graduate of the North West Coast Jewelry Arts program at the Native Education College and IM4Labs Virtual Production microcredential. Raven is a visual artist, cultural consultant, mediator, storyteller, photographer and sculptor. A jack-of-all-trades (and master of a few), their practice covers a wide array of mediums from provocation and humor, puppet making, ceramics, dressmaking, interactive electronics VR and indigenous technologies. Should you wish to participate in direct action regarding Truth and Reconciliation and/or the ongoing colonization/genocide of the indigenous peoples of Canada, feel free to visit their following website to directly wire them money for coffee, comic books and/or art supplies. 

www.ravenjohn.com

Christopher Lane Davis, aka Screaming Color, considers himself first and foremost a musician, and is also passionate about writing, performing, photography, filmmaking, 3D design, and rainbows. Two of his most notable film achievements include winning “Best Picture” and “Best Concept in Los Angeles” at Campus MovieFest, two separate years. In addition to producing his own music, he has also written the soundtracks for 3 video games produced by Team Dogpit, most notably Slam Fighter II. His theatrical achievements include writing and performing a short one-man show about the life of Salvador Dali and a full-length autobiographical “electronic-dance-musical” called The Road to Dawn, which he first performed in 2017. In 2020, he created his VRChat worlds Club Gumball and Gumball Lounge, which caught the attention of Ferryman Collective and led to him joining their team and creating the special effects, animations, and soundtrack for their award-winning VR show Welcome to Respite, and co-creator of the award-winning Gumball Dreams.

A visionary designer working at the intersection of art, storytelling and experience design, Juliana Loh has been painting in Google Tiltbrush VR on various platforms since 2019. Her work reflects her love of design and music and her celebration of various cultures enables her to promote diversity and inclusion from a rich and imaginative point of view. With experiences in branding, education and games, Juliana continuously explores her passion in XR innovation while building narratives or worlds on various immersive social-VR themed platforms. Juliana consults on story-based and experience design projects, juries festivals and facilitates VR empathy building workshops. She is drawn to the many opportunities within the AI/XR universe and is happy to have had her work featured in XR Festivals. www.julianaloh.ca

Deirdre V. Lyons is a Los Angeles producer, director, and performer, she is a co-founder of Ferryman Collective, creating live theatre in VR, starting with PARA, Krampusnacht, the award-winning Welcome to Respite, the director and co-creator of Gumball Dreams, named Best Experience of 2022 and Creator of the Year by XR Must. She was a 2023 SXSW mentor, included in the 2021 list of Top 100 Original Voices in XR, honored with the 2023 Innovation Award from XR Women and included in Volume 2 of the Global Top 100 Women of the Future in Emerging Tech, produced by Women of the Future. She is a sought-after speaker and was recently accepted into the Producers Guild of America.

Chris Madsen comes from a 20 year career in behavioral health administration and programming. Experiencing social presence via VR in 2013 changed his professional trajectory when he recognized the disruptive implications that teleporting our consciousness to shared digital spaces would have on the way humans work, learn, socialize, and play. Chris maintains a strong pulse on the evolving intersections of social, educational, artistic, and entertainment developments within the XR space. Throughout his career, Chris has collaborated with a myriad of creators, crafting XR experiences that captivate audiences with sensations of awe, wonder, and delight. Currently, as the Senior Sales Engineer at ENGAGE XR, Chris is at the forefront of delivering innovative virtual solutions spanning collaboration, communication, training, education, and events.

“Quick, Draw!” is an immersive Pictionary game where players are tasked with drawing and guessing words within VR.

Gabriel Menotti is an independent curator and filmmaker. He works as Associate Professor at Queen’s University, Ontario. He has presented projects all over the world and written extensively on various themes related to image and technology. His most recent books are Practices of Projection: Histories and Technologies (OUP, 2020, co-edited with Virginia Crisp) and Movie Circuits: Curatorial Approaches to Cinema Technology (AUP, 2019). Menotti is also one of the coordinators of the Besides the Screen festival and research network.

Ostinyo has created many popular VR games and experiences within VRChat. He focuses on designing games for social VR that are best experienced with friends, old or new. Headshot Image Description: A white man with light brown hair closes his eyes and relaxes while enjoying a warm summer breeze on a grassy hillside.

Rodney Ramsey has appeared on Kevin Hart’s LOL channel and BBC’s Summer Comedy event. Rodney has also starred in the movie Race, appeared in the Mile Enders, and “Absofreakinglutley” on CBC. Rodney Ramsey is CEO of Unknown Productions and creator of The Unknown Comedy Club Canada’s first virtual comedy club, and Unknown Theater which produces the most popular community events in Horizon Worlds.

Kirsten Rasmussen is an award winning comedian, actor and director. Her acting can be seen in Schitt’s Creek (CBC), The Beaverton(Comedy), TallBoyz (CBC), Odd Squad (PBSkids), Dino Dana (PBSkids), Bit Playas (CBC Gem), Band Ladies (Highball TV), and she is the star of the digital series Slo Pitch (IFC). Kirsten won the Canadian Comedy Award (CCA) for Best Improviser in 2015 and was also nominated for the same award in 2014. She won the 2019 CCA for Best Ensemble with Second City Toronto’s hit show She The People, and the 2019 CCA for Best Production for Extravaganza Eleganza, an all queer sketch comedy revue which Kirsten directed. Kirsten is an alumna of Second City Toronto mainstage company where she wrote and starred in three reviews. Her writing credits include The Snoopy Show (Apple Plus) and This Hour Has 22 Minutes (CBC), Because News (CBC), The Irrelevant Show (CBC), Healing From Heartbreak (YOUTUBE). Kirsten has taught improv and sketch for over 15 yrs all over Canada.

Braden Roy is a narrative designer, writer, producer, director, performer and co-founder of Ferryman
Collective. He has a background in film production, illustration, marketing, web development, audio production,
game design and development as well as over a decade of experience in information technology. He
previously served as the writer, a producer, co-director and performer for the live immersive VR productions
PARA and Krampusnacht. His most recent productions include The Severance Theory: Welcome to Respite
and En Route, the former of which he serves as a producer, performer and is responsible for VR adaptation,
the latter the creative director, producer and lead of mechanical design.

Mana Saei is an Iranian-Canadian New Media and XR Artist. She studied New Media and Sound Arts at ECUAD and XR Development at UBC. Her current practice focuses on immersive audio-visual installations, exploring mindfulness practices and presence through art in virtual and physical spaces. She has also established a global community for New Media and 3D artists through an inclusive VR gallery space. Her award-winning project, “The Lockdown,” created in 2021, is an interactive audiovisual installation in a 3D virtual space reflecting on the COVID-19 experience in Iran and Canada.

Ån (Dr. Andrew Sempere), is a designer, researcher and artist who grew up in text-based virtual worlds on the early internet. Ån holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts from SAIC Chicago, A Masters in Epistemology and Learning from the MIT Media Lab and a PhD in Architecture from EPFL, Switzerland. Ån has taught internationally on art and technology, digital humanities, digital scenography and new technologies for stage performance. An was previously a Design Researcher for IBM’s Collaborative User Experience group and is currently UX lead for immersive social platform VRChat.

Tamara Shevon is a Toronto-based comic who started her comedic story-telling through wine-coloured glasses in Bejing, China. Since then, she has been blazing through the Toronto scene with her characteristic wit and her lovable ability to flirt with the boundaries of the socially acceptable.

Kris Siddiqi is a comedian, actor and writer from the great city of Toronto! Recipient of the 2015 Canadian Comedy Award for Best Male Improviser and the 2014 “Best Of” Now Magazine Awards. Trained in sketch and improvisation since a young age, Kris studied with the world renowned Second City, joined the Mainstage cast in 2009 and wrote 3 revues with them. From there he went to voice work, becoming the Network Voice of Country Music Television, principal roles on cartoons like My Little Pony, Gary & His Demons and more. Kris is also a series regular on the CBC Comedy Panel Show Because News.Kris’ recent film & tv credits include Family Channel/Netflix’s new show I WOKE UP A VAMPIRE, HBOMax’s TITANS, Aaron Sorkin’s MOLLY’S GAME, Amazon’s THE BOYS, AppleTV’s THE CHANGELING and a recurring face on IFC/CBC’s BARONESS VON SKETCH SHOW. His most recent creation was the multi-award winning miniseries BIT PLAYAS. Conceived and originated by Kris, the show would go on to win 2 Canadian Screen Awards for Best Writing and Best Series, Best Representation of Communities Of Color from the Minnesota WebFest 2020, Best Actor in the Toronto WebFest awards, as well as multiple other awards from festivals all over the world.

Ari Tarr is an immersive actor/director/designer who has starred off broadway and toured internationally as artistic director of his own theatre company. He has worked as an immersive designer for brands that include Google, Facebook, Twitter and Disney. Ari is a co-founder of a startup creating tools for live XR production, and has worked as an XR content producer for several media studios, and also in MedTech for live VR therapy. Ari is currently a virtual performance consultant and host for several XR companies focused on live event production with spatial technologies, and his XR theater projects have been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, NBC and Vice. He has been a guest lecturer in VR live performance at NYU Tisch, Brooklyn college, Chapman University, and York University. He is the winner of the “Best Performance” award at the FIVARS international festival.

Brian is a founder of Ferryman Collective, producer, director, and world-builder of their first two projects, PARA
and Krampusnacht and a producer and builder on their most recent production, Welcome to Respite with a
focus on modeling, lighting, and interior set design. He has worked in immersive theater since 2016, first as a
member of the press before becoming involved as a creator and has had a passion for virtual reality since the
earliest days of the Oculus hardware. He is currently acting as a script and design consultant for Gumball
Dreams.

Thomas is the co-founder and CEO of EarthMMO, the world’s first augmented reality MMORPG.

Toronto-based, Daniel Woodrow has performed stand up across the country numerous times. Has appeared on Just For Laughs, stared in Season 1-3 of Roast Battle Canada where he earn a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Performance in a Variety or Sketch Comedy Program or Series. His acting credits include appearances in Kids In The Hall, Star Trek: Discovery, and Pretty Hard Cases.