What connects everything together? One way to view XR and AerieX is as vehicles for storytelling. Simon telling a story about a homeless hut, Zora assisting with the 3D model, Om coding the experience after taking Unity's Create with VR course, Bodhi making the music, Andrew helping Om, etc.. The homeless hut is a way for us to talk about and highlight a real world issue. Then we actually do something about. We make it real for people in XR. Then they get to experience what it might be like to live there for one night, or simply just walk around in it and learn something new with voice narration (maybe pulling podcasters with sweet voices from Video Broadcasting). This helps satisfy one of our major goals with 🥽The XR Lab: Empathy Generation, Multi-Perspectivalism, and Integral Collaboration. Empathy. Perspective. Collaboration.
This "storytelling"/journalism/observation as I'll call it for now is really what I'm thinking about when I say AerieX. Real world stories that go unnoticed. Facets of reality that go unnoticed (both at Wheeler and abroad). This is one step beyond the more business/scientific approach: Solve a real world problem. In this case, the real world "problem" is that people don't even realize certain problem exists. They need to be educated. They need to be made aware. This will foster a deeper social consciousness, as we teach kids how to become citizens of the 21st century.