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In-depth discussions and explorations into the whole new world of web3 and the metaverse with leading thinkers and industry experts. Presented by the NYU Metaverse Collaborative.
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Pierre: Kimberly Cooper, thank you very much to be on the whole Metaverse podcast, the NYU podcast about the Metaverse, our host, Dr. Elizabeth Haas, professor at NYU and myself, PI. We're delighted to have you here. Kimberly, you are an entrepreneur and award-winning artist and an early adapter of the Metaverse and Web three blockchain technologies.
I would like to ask you a first question about the role of content in the Metaverse. I see a lot of conversations about, oh, but there's nobody in the Metaverse when we go. There are so few people, and I think one of the reason is the lack of interesting content. If you go in a metaverse, you want to see interesting things, you want to be excited by new things.
What are your thoughts about the role of content in the metaverse?
Kimerbly: Well, yes, I think you know, we're, right now everybody is building, right? Building different metaverses and different platforms, and I think. Even, you know, when I do virtual reality experiences, people will say the same thing. You know, I go in there and nobody's there. And I think there needs to be some type of event or some type of reason why people are going there for, some type of community event or, you know, an art event or, learning about something together, a school event.
and so a lot of my metaverse experiences, are kind of. More scheduled events. Like either they're teaching someone a medical device or they're teaching someone in a metaverse space, you know, at the school with usc. Or it's more of like a retail experience where you're learning about products. and so those are just more of like, I know I'm gonna go there at this time to do this thing.
but eventually, You know, when the metaverse thriving and we're all in there, you know, throughout the day it won't feel so like you're, no one else is there. And I think there just needs to be, to experience, product content.
Pierre: Can you tell us about your professional transition from, somebody who works in the film and motion picture to somebody who works in the metaverse? How was it difficult? How was it easy?
Kimerbly: Yeah. You know what's interesting is I started out as a graphic designer and worked in the film industry, started a company with my husband, Kyle Cooper, working on title designs and visual effects. That's prologue. And prologue is still running this day doing title designs and. I hired an intern from Up, actually, and that was in 2014 when the Oculus headset came out and he was so excited about it.
he did a master's project on virtual reality and he said, Kimberly, you have to try virtual reality. You have to try it. And You know, one, one day the DK one headsets came in and I, you know, tried out the experience. It was a rollercoaster experience. It wasn't anything ex, you know, exciting.
It was just a red rollercoaster. But I understood the power of, the metaverse and these immersive experiences. and I just felt like, wow. If I could learn and understand information in a more dimensional way, I think that would just help me retain the information, create these experiences and memories.
And so I was like, okay, we're doing it. We're gonna, we're gonna figure this out. I don't know how to do it. I don't know. You know, but we're gonna figure out and our first experience was an actual education experience. It was called Einstein's Theory of Relativity. And we did it all with illustrations, you know, in virtual reality for Oculus.
But that's kind of how I transitioned. And I was really inspired by the technology becoming this digital form in this digital space. It's kinda like jumping in your computer. You know, like Willy Wonka, going inside the tv. And so I just thought, wow, this is a powerful tool to help me learn and understand information better.
So that's why I was really excited about, learning and diving into this space and taking kind of that magic that we do in film and entertainment, which is make believe, right? It's all beautiful. It's visual effects, it's film. You know, one of the projects we worked on was Iron Man. And the team created these amazing, you know, hologram right data and information, and Tony Stark is trying to solve a problem and he's interacting with all the data.
And I thought, wow, I would love to have that solve a problem, understand information better. And so that was my goal. It was my goal to take what we did and film and entertainment and bring it to life in virtual reality.
Elizabeth: lemme just pick up on that for a second. I mean, a couple of the things you said about, you know, the experience creates me, And that was my goal. Where are you against that goal and what are the barriers right now?
Kimerbly: The barrier of the headsets, it's just getting those headsets out to students. You know, students all have phones and laptops, and I think if a headset was part of the requirement, just like you buy, you know, a set of books, I think that teachers, will have the ability to transport students to different places.
They can't do in colleges, right. Schools in, in the, campus. And so I think it's, going to be something that, is needed so they can expand. And have these immersive experiences understand what is a metaverse space? What does it look like? H what's a space that makes you feel comfortable that you wanna hang out in for a long time?
You know, what are the great creative ideas I can do in there? Working with usc, we created this. master's class for improv for engineers, and we worked with a professor in the architecture school who designed one of our spaces. We worked with professors in the School of Theatrical Arts who created the improvisations in the class, in the virtual, experience.
And then, you know, I worked with Professor Weiss Elizabeth Weiss to create kind of this whole masterclass experience, for, you know, usc And I think. the only thing holding us back really is, you know, obviously, more funding, but like the headsets or you know, if the students all bought a headset, it would be a lot easier to, for them to jump in.
Elizabeth: are the quality of headsets today good enough for that? If we all had. Quest two s.
Kimerbly: Quest twos are good enough and they're not tethered to a computer. The resolution high quality. and it's, you know, the prices have gone down considerably. So I think it's worth it. And I think, there's just this new frontier, this new territory that, needs to be explored.
You know, we need people to think about what these spaces look like and we need to have people think about, can we create these, experiences in these spaces, that are kind of like these virtual field trips. You know, it's really difficult sometimes and very expensive to get students or people to places.
And you know, that was one of the things with Medtronic is, You know, in lockdown and covid it's very difficult to go to hospitals now, right? With Covid. And so they needed, a way to get medical professionals together virtually and to still continue that, education of learning how to set up a heart and lung machine, right?
That helps save lives and, helps the healing process. And so we created an experience for them, which is a virtual theater, and people, from all over the world can jump in. And, you know, continue the education, continue, understanding their products. So
Elizabeth: is that still operational?
Kimerbly: very much so. So it's great. So they have this virtual metaverse space and they have, a heart and lung machine, in there.
And we've created an animation, we've. Taken all the parts and labeled them. And I couldn't believe the way medical students or professionals learn how to put this machine together. There's all these parts and wires and a rat's nest. I just can't believe it. And they u they learn by a YouTube video on a phone, you know, if they can't get in the hospital, and no way I could understand what wire goes where.
And when we broke it down for them, you know, it was more. Immersive experience. It was more like as if they were there together, but it was all virtual. So they really got a very, dimensional, you know, learning experience.
Elizabeth: are a couple other things you've said that I wanna just play off of. One was that, you know, people will wanna go back and hang out if the experience is right. What makes the experience right? What? What are the key success factors for a place besides an event?
Kimerbly: Yeah, I think you have to think about it like, you know, just like, boutiques and stores, you have to, update the showroom. you have to update, you know, the products or you have to update. I you need to have at least, you know, once a month you need to update. Either it's a new environment or a new experience, and I think there needs to.
Some type of, update so that people can continue to go back. I mean, you know, Instagram people are always feeding it new content. and I think destinations in the metaverse, you're gonna have to, you know, feed it new content new things to come to withdraw people in. Just like malls do that all the time.
Elizabeth: Right? Do events
if I can just replay what you're saying is the dyna, there's a new dynamic to space and it's a dynamic like Instagram was to photography, the metaverse is to space
for that dynamic. Okay. That's important.
Kimerbly: yes.
Elizabeth: my second question is, depending on where I am, you're either running two or three companies.
and maybe you can kind of. My understanding is there's prologue, which is education based, and there's spatial lands, which is commercial. Is that right? And why are they separate? And are, and where are you spending your time now?
Kimerbly: so, I started a company called Spatial N in 2016, and in 2018 it was acquired by Walmart. And so I. Four years after 2018, we were building immersive retail experiences. for Walmart during covid and lockdown. our team closed down. And from that, I took a few people from the team of spatial land and one of 'em was a project manager, Emily who works with me now at Prologue and she's helping us do titles and visual effects and kind of running that Shep and have.
Work with, some developers who are my partners with Inverse and Inverses is kind of like the next chapter of Spatial Land. Iteration, but more of the metaverse. So now we're dealing with Web 3.0 and a p, and these, you know, more, Metaverse experiences that are not just on the headset, but also can be, experienced through a browser.
And so that's the difference now. And so I have with Inter running and I have, the team at Prologue that is running those, titles. and then I have, another team, that we work on NFTs for, Building content, which would, obviously, what I wanna do is bring that into the metaverse. So I'm kind of working in three areas, but they all are tied together because we need the creative team from prologue to help us with some of these immersive and metaverse experiences and inverse.
I'm hoping that the things that, Prolog Immersive does with NFTs and our, metas. That will inspire more experiences in the Metaverse also. And so that would tie into inverse also. So it, they're all kind of doing focus on certain areas, but we help each other basically.
Elizabeth: Are they also market focused or just capability focused? Is prologue more education
Kimerbly: so Prolo works for like Marvel Studios and you know, they're working on American horror story titles and film titles and so that is more just definitely entertainment and Film companies, streaming companies, Netflix, Amazon they worked on the Lord of the Ring titles. so definitely more entertainment.
And then, you know, inverse is definitely, I've seen just a lot of people come to me to help them, you know, create their metaverse destination, which is really exciting. and so as we are building these metaverse destinations creating a platform. And my goal is that it can be used not only for companies and universities, but also individuals, you know, like ourselves who have a website, but maybe want a digital virtual space to put our digital goods or our digital assets in there, and then have friends come over virtually and share that.
So, what I'm really excited about.
Elizabeth: I also thought I read that you were, you commented that, I mean we're at a point in time where funding is like non-existent and that some people, and some people will go under, and I was just wondering how that was impacting you.
Kimerbly: Yes. Well, right now I think it's just best to be smart and strategic about your time. And luckily, We have really great clients, luckily with prologue that are always coming in and, you know, with, introverts we just wrapped up the USC project. but you know, there are lots of potential other clients out there that wanna work with us.
So, those kinds of projects take a little bit longer to develop, I have to say metaverse experiences, but I do see the need for, New thinking in there, you know, new ways of creating a space, new ways of interacting with information. And I think it's not something that, we should ignore, but be a needed resource for people to have that way of thinking and understanding, spatially, how to experience. In these virtual worlds, what do they look like? What do they feel like, what do they sound like? What do the avatars look like? What are the digital products that are gonna be in there?
I think those are things that are, they're important. Important. So,
Elizabeth: what's your sense of timeframe to get there?
Kimerbly: well, you know, what's exciting is that, this year was really a tough year for, NFTs were starting really strong and then it kind of crashed and then crypto kind of crashed and, but the metaverses are still, needed because you don't necessarily have to use crypto to have a metaverse, you don't have to have an N F T in the Metaverse.
It's just this virtual world. And so I, I think. the more people understand that, they can create these virtual metaverse destinations, on their own, like with, you know, a team like us, I think more and more people more and more brands, more and more companies will do that.
And there's just, there's lots of opportunities. There's lots of platforms to have, you know, your own, virtual space. Central land, you can buy a little plot of land. Roblox, you can have these experiences in there and buy digital goods. my son is very has friends and they have this like one hour social session on Fortnite or, Minecraft.
But that's their time. They get together virtually. So, and they're building these worlds themselves and having friends over. So I think. He's an artist too, and what I'd love to see is him put his digital art and Space building that he's created in a virtual world that he can share with his friends.
It's kind of like that next level website, you know, the next way of expressing yourself in a way. so I think we're gonna get there, especially this new year. and you see a lot of brands investing in Metaverses and I think they're trying to figure out, you know, that question you asked about why would people wanna come back?
And it's a commitment. So, I think it's gonna happen. You know, I'm really excited about, ready Player, me and that's the company we use for our avatars, their technology. I'm really excited about that and excited to see their collaborations with different brands. I think there's a way to express yourself, you know, in the metaverse and we haven't, you know, fully tapped into it.
So it, it's gonna be really exciting. And I also. That they're content creation, opportunities. You know, when we were creating all these experiences, like with USC and Medtronic, we created tools that, and, you know, Oculus has tools also where you can record just like we're recording this podcast, but, you know, you can record these, virtual experiences.
And those virtual experiences could be anything. They could be a lesson, they could be, an improvisation, they could be content creation, you know. Characters that, students or creators are making up. There could be digital music in this, the virtual metaverse space. So I think that is really exciting.
Also, you know, what are the stories that are gonna come up? what are these metaverse universes that are gonna be created, right? these new destinations that haven't been created but are, being thought of and, it's just exciting, really exciting time.
I love those kinds of times. I'm always drawn to innovation and jumping into, a new world.
Elizabeth: Are there some areas we need to be careful of that worry you in terms of privacy or, and how do you deal with those issues?
Kimerbly: Yes. Well, When you go into these open world platforms and, you know, you're bumping into strangers sometimes it's uncomfortable. So I think we need to be careful about, you know, our experiences And you know, a lot of the things that I do are more like an invite a class or they're more like, for members. And so when it's open-ended and there's just a lot of strangers, there are things that can come up And make people feel very uncomfortable. And
Elizabeth: Do you think there are some benchmark players? Is there somebody you particularly admire in this space that you're looking at?
Kimerbly: yeah, absolutely. So a company that was started when I started Spatial Line was called Spatial. And Spatial is a great company. They create these virtual spaces and you know, you can have a gallery in there and you can have an event. you can have N F T Gallery and I think I really am excited about what they're doing.
You know, you can do it virtually, but, they started out as a virtual reality. Kind of like a zoom where you can work together. But then they pivoted, and started creating these virtual destinations for NFTs and so I really like what they're doing. I think that's really exciting stuff.