Immersive Photography with Cyn Lagos
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Cyn Lagos: Hi, my name is Cyn Lagos. I am a street photographer and graphic designer based in Miami, Florida. Recently, I've been venturing into the world of immersive technology. In my journey so far, I’ve learned that the world of visual storytelling doesn't have to be confined to a specific medium.
With that in mind, today we'll be talking about immersive and emerging technology with my mentor Sebastien Perez from THE DIGITAL ACID.
Cyn Lagos: I’ve been a part of the Adobe Creative Residency for an entire year now. One of the biggest virtues I was able to gain was having the time to study a new passion. This gave me the opportunity to explore the world of immersive technology. I’ve always been very curious about it, but I didn't know how to step into it. Especially, coming from a space of 2d, right?
Photography and graphic design are very much 2d spaces. We’ve trained our brains to think within that scope.
Cyn Lagos: One of the requirements of the Adobe Residency is finding yourself a mentor. This is where Sebastien Perez stepped in. He is the founder of The Digital Acid which focuses on immersive and emerging technology. You can follow them @thedigitalacid
So far, it's been a beautiful learning curve. I’m learning how to readjust my perspective and ideals that I have on 2d spaces and see how they apply to 3d spaces.
Cyn Lagos: A lot of us feel overwhelmed with the amount of live streams that are going on at the moment. You have to be selective and feed your brain the knowledge that it requires. It's important to tune out as it is important to tune in.
I firmly believe that most of what I've learned, I've learned online. It's an open library of free knowledge and resources. So why not take it?
Cyn Lagos: This moment in time has been interesting because I've been able to step back, slow down and reanalyze what I am doing as an artist and also as a human. My approach to photography and design is exposing my vulnerabilities.
I am seeping my real life into all of my creative outlets. I truly sit there and contemplate, “Why am I even doing this?”. That’s how I decide if it’s even worth it.
Cyn Lagos: Before all of this happened (shelter in place), I’ve always had a dynamic of speaking to professionals over digital mediums.
It's been interesting to see the world shift to working from home. Now every professional is interacting online. Sebastien and I meet every Friday, so we thought why don’t we make everyone a part of it.
What's up Sebastien, hows San Francisco?
Sebastien Perez: San Francisco's good. It's a little gloomy today but you know, we're trying keep the light shining on this side by staying positive. Yeah, it's not quite paradise. It's not quite Miami! (laughs) Luckily for me, I've got this Oculus Quest VR headset to take me anywhere I want!
Cyn Lagos: It’s funny because I've been on a quest for the Quest with Sebastien. Even before the pandemic related shortages, I was really excited to buy an Oculus Quest. I had been recording a lot with my GoPro Max 360 camera and I wanted to truly experience my content. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 situation caused a slow in VR headset production, making it incredibly difficult to find a Quest. When we finally found one, it was such a rush!
Sebastien Perez: Yeah, It had only been up an hour and BOOM she bought it.
Cyn Lagos: It's my birthday gift, and I can’t wait for it to get here, so I can start using it. Sebastien, tell us a little bit about yourself and your company and how it all started.
Sebastien Perez: Definitely. For context, I know Cyn from when I lived in Miami. A few years ago, I took a trip out to Silicon Valley to work for Facebook which opened my eyes to a lot of things.
When I lived in Miami, I didn’t feel like the people around me were as into technology and futurism as I was. When I moved to Silicon Valley, every other person I would meet would be open to talking about Artificial Intelligence. I thought that was really cool.
Later I realized, how DIY and self-taught I was in comparison. Although much respect to those who did, I graduated from the School of Hard Knocks, not Stanford or Harvard. I think street photography is kind of like that and maybe that’s what Me and Cyn have in common.
Sebastien Perez: When I would go back home to Miami or any other town outside of Silicon Valley really, people would look at me like "What? What are you talking about? You’re living in the future." This made me realize, there's a whole bunch of opportunities hidden behind the information.
Historically, information was encoded to keep people out. Unfortunately, in today’s world, industry jargon is blocking people from starting their own companies in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. It stops people from seeing what AR and VR really is.
I realized there's a huge communication barrier. No one is explaining it in a way where everyone can understand. Nobody is making it fun. You either, read WIRED magazine or you don't.
Sebastien Perez: Technology affects us on a cultural level. Look we're using it right now. Instagram is culture, right? You became a photographer because of technology. Every technology has to find the human culture that goes with it.
I called my company The Digital Acid because I noticed every time I spoke to people about Robots, AI, VR or AR, I'd completely blow their mind. So I thought to myself, this is The Digital Acid trip. Let’s blow their minds, every time.
Sebastien Perez: There’s also another reason for the name. Have you heard of Sophia The Robot? She’s been on the cover of Vogue magazine and has even spoken at the United Nations. Ben Goertzel, the AI scientist that developed the artificial intelligence inside of Sophia The Robot made the following analogy.
“What happens if you take the Global Brain (the internet), build an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) self for it…and let the Global Brain experience the equivalent of an Acid trip?” - Ben Goertzel, AI Scientist
Cyn Lagos: That's a good reason to put that name. I didn't know that. It's interesting to get that moment of like, "Oh, I'm so inspired by this. I want to start a project." but what's hard for most creatives is keeping it going. Maintaining consistency, regardless of challenges, lack of motivation or financial. You've got to keep it going. What would you say keeps you going?
Sebastien Perez: I feel a personal responsibility to let people know, outside of people who are not really into technology. I’ve worked regular 9-to-5 jobs that paid minimum wage. I didn't go to a crazy school. I worked my way up into that field. Had I not known that I could participate, I would have never had this whole adventure. I want to inspire that person who's not considering it.
Sebastien Perez: With each of these new tools that come along in technology, you can interpret your vision through it. I see so much incredible opportunity in the magic that emerging technologies bring. If you think about it like a film, we are at the beginning of that timeline. AR is a whole thing. VR is a whole thing. AI is a whole thing. Blockchain is a whole thing. Same with 3d printing...
Sebastien Perez: Using new technologies as a paintbrush. That to me...inspires me. It's so new that people don't even know how to talk about it. There are no rules so you can't break it.
It sounds nuts! "It's the beginning of 3d computers" you're like, "What are you talking about?" And the more you look into and go, "wow, there's billions of dollars put into this thing." but for some reason, my community is not getting reached. Why is that?
What keeps me motivated is those things are a brand new potential on many new types of creative tools, which is, you know, only the way that I hold the brush is different than the way that you hold the brush. So that's amazing.
It's really hard to talk about it. You sound so crazy every time.
Cyn Lagos: Yeah, I like that.
Sebastien Perez: It's really hard to talk about it. You sound so crazy every time.
The fact that I can inspire people like you, to venture into something so new and then see your excitement, that gets me hyped.
Cyn Lagos: Oh my god, yeah. Yeah, and every time I think like we, I mean, going back to what you're saying, like just trying to introduce it to your community, and I don't know how but this is really interesting to me that we built this digital community that eventually turns into true relationships, friendships, collaborations. I mean, you really have to kind of put the energy in to be able to make that happen.
I can vouch for so many friends who are so so close to me today, who have developed so much of their creativity through the online community, because we teach each other things right so I think I agree with that a lot. I I feel the same way about what keeps me motivated and my medium.
It's interesting because St. Lukkman sorry if I pronounced your name wrong, but he was Yeah, he was asking like, what is your favorite medium for documenting street life, I will forever love street photography I think it was the way I bumped into it was so organic.
I studied graphic design in school, which was beautiful. You know, it's interesting when someone gives you their perspective of a creative medium, but the way I run into street photography was absolutely out of sheer curiosity.
You know, walking around downtown and then leaving work around 5 pm. The light was just like stark and so beautiful and the buildings around there just felt like a mini Chicago, a mini New York and I gravitated towards that. So following that intuition, has forever remained with me so that still will forever be one of my favorite mediums.
However, I think the difficult part has been being able to translate the excitement that it is, to be able to photograph strangers in the street or enter a strange alleyway and finding yourself like a beautiful artwork in the middle of Canada, I've never been able to really translate that.
I'm starting to feel so thrilled with the potential and prospects of like immersive technology because that's going to allow me to bring the audience into this space entirely...360 space! So being able to bring someone with me, it's just a whole other level of, of transferring over the emotional, transcendent effect that it is to be a street photographer.
Sebastien Perez: Yeah, actually I can add a little bit to that because, you know, composition is important, right? And the framing of things comes a lot into when you have a rectangle frame, right. Starting back at the computer here, you know, you have this screen that looks like this. And then we followed it. We made sort of like laptops and iPads and phones, and we kept this rectangular format, right?
We grabbed the camera, we made a rectangular format. Of course Instagram came in, they forced us into a square and then vertical, that was interesting. Making photographers change their technique and stuff.
What's interesting about 360 and what's different and VR...we'll have to split up these terms of bit. But for anyone watching out there, 360 at least gives you the context of the entire environment.
You know, when you're standing in the middle of a protest, a frame can capture about that much. But when you're surrounded, and you look around in any direction, and that's the other thing 360 allows the viewer to become the director.
So whatever it is, you find fascinating, you can look at. As a photographer or a visual linguist, I think that's the hardest thing is figuring out how do I frame the world in a creative way when it shows everything?
Cyn Lagos: Oh my god. Yeah. And I think it's interesting that we have gone through these lessons of like having to, you know, I have these questions that come up because I know my workflow within the photography and digital 2d space. And asking the biggest question was composition, how do I even approach 360?
If it's no longer a 180 view of like, what's in front of me. Now we're considering, "What's to the left to in my peripherals? What's behind me? And how do I add value to that, where it's not an afterthought? Do I have to add value to that?
Maybe it's interesting when someone just feels like they're in the space, but the main focus is in front of them?" It's really a vote for like the fact that you will never really know how to do something unless you promise it. This is why I have divided this whole concept of visual language and mindset and practice.
One thing is to you know, get the theory of how things work and how things function but until you're out there and like you're really like sweating it out, and you're shooting every single day and you're making mistakes and you're troubleshooting, you're really not going to know what you can do with it.
Now I'm starting to, like, just get these, like spurts of creativity of like, that would be so neat if it was 360. Or like that spot would look epic because there's a crazy lantern above me. So if somebody was to look up, that's going to look mega cool. Yeah, the composition is a whole new thing that gets me like completely giddy when it comes to this.
Sebastien Perez: Absolutely. And, you know, the thing is, is that just to build on top of that, it's like, you know, for anyone watching out there, you know, again, you know, we're looking at these rectangles, and we're looking at these flat screens, and yet we experience life in three dimensions, right?
When I stand in front of you, I see the depth, I see the room, it's not just this square. So we've sort of framed this whole internet life based off of this technological limitation. And now all of a sudden, just in the last few years it has opened up. And I think that that's the exciting thing is that the rules are not there, the rules are there to be broken, I've broken many of the rules. And the mistakes are in fact innovation. Everything is trailblazing as far as being a part of this.
If you think about, if this was the new camera, then by capturing the world now, you're preserving, you know, it's like when photographs really started in the 1980s 1990s, you know, and you start, you start to see from, from, from sorry, from Polaroid and instant and all these things. Up until a certain point before digital, you had to go and scan everything back in. With 360, there's no scanning back in. We have to start like recording now.
Cyn Lagos: Right, right. Yeah, that's so true. And actually somebody mentioned here that You know, beyond composition, 360 space is just like, the really big beauty of it is that it brings you into this world, right? So it is immersive, which is why it's so hard to even describe it because it's first and foremost an experience. So you have to be able to be in it, or nothing at all. But we can try because we have. We've had to.
Yeah, so for anybody who is just tuning in, I'm here with Sebastien, who is my Adobe mentor, and he is the founder of The Digital Acid, and it's a place where he gets to explore emerging technology. He gets to interview folks who are diving deep into the world of virtual reality, augmented reality, 360 and the types of conversations that we've had has been so inspiring that I have myself decided to try it out.
Try to speak my narrative of street photography and translating the street culture through 360 and virtual reality. So, you know, it's in the works. And hopefully, you know, I'll be able to share so much of that with you, primarily on my website, because I love my little nook on the internet. I really treasure it.
And yeah, so another question I had for you, you know, it's something that we all have, you know, have to address. I'm curious as to how it's been for you. Because of recent events, how have you had to adjust your workflow being able to interview folks? Like, you know, I've seen you interview on your podcast and things like that. How have you been able to adjust that in the current circumstances?
Sure. Well, it's actually quite interesting. So it's like, you know, I spent the last because generally for me conference season when I see all the cutting edge stuff that is like, not even released yet. It happens coming up like in May and a few months after that. So I was ramping up for a conference in Miami also, you know, getting equipment for mobile. I mean you know how hard it is.
Cyn Lagos: You almost made it here.
Sebastien Perez: If you go mobile, you've got to have everything light, you got to have everything small, it's gotta be streamlined.
And so I geared up for that. So I spent, you know, money and all I'm thinking about are "on-site". And then out of nowhere, it radically changed. So I normally get those interviews in person. I usually get to touch the new technology. And now all of a sudden, everything's online. Interestingly enough, conferences like Oculus are going live in VR. So this is also an interesting turning point. Live streaming went up, you know, you know, video content went up. So actually on my side, it's been good to be able to know that I could reach people. I really enjoy the fact that if I can do something fun or entertaining and get people's minds off of this stuff for like, a few minutes then that means a lot to me.
Cyn Lagos: Right, an escape.
Sebastien Perez: If I can inspire them to do something cool, that means a lot to me. And so I think that things have pivoted, I hate to say this, in a positive way. I've had some adjustment. You know, I hate not being close to my friends, we were going to hang out so that you know, my birthday was ruined. You know, there's a bunch of stuff that I could rant about, but I think this is the cross point in which a lot of things have to radically change. We're doing this remote. Companies are realizing everything needs to go remote. Live Streaming becomes huge. Video becomes huge, virtual reality becomes huge and it's just becoming a whole radical change.
Cyn Lagos: Oh my god, yeah. It's really funny because I asked you this question. There's this whole, like, "one world together" historic event. And the question I asked you was like, "I wonder if they're gonna do a 360 experience during the live." and you just laughed at me because you're like, "See the thing is, they're probably are not going to do that." and they didn't. But you told me like, the thing about the fact that you've learned this like concept now is like you can't un-see it.
Now you keep thinking about opportunities where you can explore 360. The way I was thinking it was like, imagine Lady Gaga performing as she has a 360 camera. You're in her room. Yeah. And I'm sure her room is like something to you know, drool over.
Cyn Lagos: That is something that I think will happen a lot faster now. So that was actually that leads into my next question. What do you think? What are the prospects of emerging technology, especially now that so many people are getting so acquainted with speaking to each other and connecting with each other through video, and live streaming?
Sebastien Perez: What's the prospects? Well, I think that just in general, and that's kind of why I'm so excited about all these technologies is the fact that it just started. Everyone in this timeline is so lucky to be able to witness the magic like, VR when you put someone in for the first time. I know everybody thinks it's like a pair of goggles that you're looking at the TV too close or whatever.
When you put the headset on, and nowadays they have hand tracking, so you look out you see your own hands glowing. It's an interesting experience and so it instantly blows your mind and I haven't seen a piece of technology since then and in a long time that has really shocked people this way. Even made people cry.
Then to go beyond that, and to say, you know, this is the new computer, and I think that's what people don't get. So that means that we need new photographers, we need new apps, we need new, you know, social platforms we need literally everything we already did for the past 30 years again. So it means that we need people excited.
Instead of those billionaires being the people with the opportunity of having the information, for once, hopefully, like, you know, David can get in a few rocks against Goliath and maybe own like, you know, the photography apps in VR or the music. Can we own some of the culture or must it always be designed by technologists? Can't creatives use technology? Because remember, the camera is technology, this phone is technology, Internet is technology.
We are the future generation. We got gifted magic, literal magic and all people to do is get past that language barrier, understand that it actually applies to them. And they can blow people's minds too. So there's really no reason, especially when people need to be innovative in 2020.
Cyn Lagos: Right. Yeah, 2020 was supposed to be the year of innovation. And I, I still have them I'm not cynical, but I think that there's because we are met with challenges, the likelihood of innovation now is greater than ever, because we're innovating when we decide to work from home or innovating when we decide to educate students from the comfort of our homes and use the digital mediums for the purposes that they were supposed to be initially, connecting, talking, being intimate and vulnerable through these online mediums.
You know what, that kind of like what you were saying just reminded me of, because what gets me really excited is this idea that it's brand new. That it's starting. We're at the cusp of something really, really new but not enough people know about it because it's difficult to understand at the moment. However, the moment it gets democratized, it'll become like what photography, the phenomenon of photography, right?
Instagram made the photographer, instantaneous. It democratized it and everybody realized and started to learn how to have a better more trained eye and know how to express themselves through the medium of 2d photography. So the moment that arrives in the world of like immersive technology, it's going to be the same momentum. Now people are going to experiment and then they're going to share and other people are going to just get giddy about it and I can't wait for that space.
But it's also important to know that right now, just educating yourself on the idea, is going to put you that much closer to being sort of the pioneers of this medium. When Instagram was starting, nobody cared about Instagram it in the beginning. I remember just like, the few of us that cared to, like play around in it, are now greatly benefiting from it because we were there from the start.
So whenever something isn't quite as saturated, it's almost, great for you to jump on the bandwagon and study about it, and talk to people like you, that have, you know, completely, like, made your life around this, and interviewing the greats to be able to understand it further and see what's going on in the industry.
Sebastien Perez: Yeah, I want to quickly speak on that. First of all, with the democratization. I would say about five, maybe six or seven years ago, if you wanted to shoot a high quality 360 video, I knew people who were stitching together, $8,000 RED cameras, buying five of them, or four of them, creating a custom tripod, shooting in every direction, and then stitching them in RED software, which is actually ridiculous. You don't have to do that anymore.
Now here it is! Here it is guys! GoPro 360, one button, it automatically stitches, does everything.
Sebastien Perez: This thing, it used to be that with VR, you'd have to have cables, and you'd have to know about launching software and doing all this stuff. Now this fits in a backpack, it turns on with one button, you don't need to know anything. It has ESPN and Netflix. It's got everything
So I think that the democratization is happening now.
Sebastien Perez: Again, there's a language barrier. A) on the terms and the marketing and that's what I'm trying to kind of clear up. It's like, "Hey, it's not too complicated. It's also reachable and teachable. You know, it's not something that is, you know, for "nerds only" or something that is like, you got to be some sort of algorithm programmer. No, no, no. This is for everybody, but only once they realize "this is the computer".
Cyn Lagos: The learning curve is not that steep. For those of you, I see someone here asking, you know, "I want to jump into this, how can I do it?" it sounds very nerdy, right, for lack of a better word, that's what we're using. It's not that steep.
Once you really understand the way the experience is or the way people are utilizing it at the moment or just you know, your day-to-day life. That's actually how we walk around. We're aware of the 180 behind us, the periphery beside us. So actually, it's almost like more natural than everything else that we're doing.
So for those who want to understand more and learn more and now have the Curiosity bug, can you refer them to any podcast, sites, or anything that you have in your resource arsenal?
Sebastien Perez: Sure. Yeah. I mean, well, obviously I'm gonna plug my myself first I'm gonna say that TheDigitalAcid.com (like LSD) is the link, and we have YouTube where we do a lot of really interesting interviews, and we try to simplify, make things like a little bit more relaxed than what you might see. And we try to welcome everybody to be educated.
Cyn Lagos: Very relaxed!
Sebastien Perez: I think that that's how people really are. Nobody's all like, "hello, excuse me..." you know, nobody's really like that. And so I feel like for our generation we need something cool that says, "Hey, you know, there's a lot of opportunities here." So another interesting, I guess, resource...man. It's kind of tough because that's it. So let me quickly jump in here. So Cyn and I have been working on a couple of projects. I don't know if we're allowed to talk about it, you know, maybe...
Cyn Lagos: No! (laughs) Just kidding...
Sebastien Perez: Beyond that, I think we've been really a bit about trying to make this easily understood. We've been trying to distill all of this information that's spread across YouTube and all of these different areas.
One of the interesting things about 360 which I should bring up, which is such a simple starting point, but I think what is important, is that if you remember the 360 (camera) is the head of a person. Imagine a mannequin without the head and you stick the 360 on top. (the viewer), they can turn their head in any direction. Human height, a tripod, that's human height is super important.
It's one of the first composition rules, I would say "if you jump into VR, and you feel like your feet are sinking through the floor..." It's really hard to explain that, but..." you want to feel like you're standing right next to them."
The other tip is like, if you think about 360 as an experiential memory, that you can bring people back to, imagine your friend standing two feet away from you, watching you do something, and instead of trying to explain what it was like to be there, you become the person who which is the camera.
Cyn Lagos: Yeah, exactly. You get the "fish-eye bubble".
Sebastien Perez: So I think we're going to create a resource together, (hopefully) that will simplify and become the ultimate dictionary or whatnot of this new medium. First of all, ping us. You know, it's there's a lot to learn.
Cyn Lagos: Yeah, reach out! Okay. Yeah. As far as reaching out, my DMs are always a priority for me and my website. Reach out on my website, if you have any questions or you want any resources, any help with links, I'll try to provide as many as I can in the next few days. But yeah, I actually want to create a library of resources because I have learned so much about composition, the "what not to do", right? This idea of proximity, if you're close to the lens, I get morphed right?
Right. What is the sweet spot of distance so that you feel like this person is right in front of you? Or height? Like he just mentioned, your head cannot be underground. It's not quite like putting your DSLR on the floor and you just get this really cool angle. There is some things that you kind of don't want to do. because it is such a feeling, like your body's underground. So yeah, I love the fact that I've become a student of this space because it allows me to ask the questions like anyone else would, both naive and curious and trying to figure it all out. I think that helps me teach it that much better because I realized that how I ran into these little hiccups, like "Wait, how do you do that?"
Sebastien Perez: I think what's really interesting too, a lot of people try to decipher "What's the future? Is it VR or is it AR? Is it AI or is it blockchain?" You know? The truth is, all of those things cross-pollinate and affect each other. You can have an AI, VR with a 360. I think that a lot of people are starting to understand, by participating in one...
As a designer, you know Adobe is investing heavily into AR and VR, 3d design tools. When you start to think, as I said before "Every app needs to be redesigned. You need a new Illustrator, you need a new Photoshop. How do you do these things in 3d? Even you are experimenting in this design 3d space.
VR and AR are literally that, a design space except its spatial. It means there can be depth. "Is an app person. Is it a place? What is the future of a brand? What does this all mean in a 3d space? Where you're not restricted to "this big" with the switching of tabs back and forth. It lives with you!
Cyn Lagos: Bruno is saying that he uses his Quest to watch Netflix and play awesome games. That's super. First of all, I envy you because my Quest is on its way. But beyond that, I think it's going to be so epic the moment people can experience street photography and have like a real like empathic experience within the virtual reality space or being able to go inside a museum or being able to really dive into "how someone created this photo" which is so hard to, to explain.
It doesn't matter how many BTS (behind the scenes) we do. It's not quite the same. When you have this interaction with someone that you feel like you're actually there. That's been one of my key milestones, being able to use the gear in order to achieve that. It's so important to me for everybody else to know that. I think everyone else is very curious about that process. Right?
Sebastien Perez: Exactly! Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is like, you know, again, these are tools, you know, there's no right way to use it. What are you trying to achieve? You know, journalists or photographers are using it to transport people, literally teleport their consciousness into a scenario in which they cannot escape and they have to sort of engaging in.
It's different when you see a 360 video inside of a homeless person's tent and you and you sit down there, and you realize what this person has to live in and with, rather than reading an article or seeing a frame, you are literally sitting on the ground with them. Maybe they're talking to you dead in the eyes and intensely telling you their story. I think that's something so special. If you think about 360, it's literally teleportation back to a memory. If you understand that concept, it opens up the world to everything.
Cyn Lagos: I love picturing it that way. Yeah, absolutely. I think, if you walk away with something today, I feel like the key thing is to know "What is it that you're trying to express? What memory are you trying to allow someone to enter? What space? I mean, we've talked about my memories in my grandma's backyard. I wish somebody could really enter that space.
The thing is...I think the moral of this story is the tool nothing but cool tech unless we know how to use it in a way where it brings us a little bit closer to humanity, because you know, we can't be bionic. It can't be the other way around.
The technology would just sit there and collect dust if we don't have a way to express ourselves, and if we have nothing to say. So that's where you gotta tap into yourself. Yeah.
Sebastien Perez: Without culture, it's a fancy party trick. It's a technological achievement that's great for a science lab, until humans figure out why it matters to them, and how it matters in the context of their lives.
You see, when you have corporations designing for your life, for your culture or for your interest, you get this sort of misinterpretation of what it's like, or maybe the use-cases. When people are designing for their lives, and using...the spark started the fire and with fire, we were able to create tons of things, from creating food, to travel, to everything...but it's what humans thought of.
You had to use it wrong. You had to use it upside down. You had to pretty much break the platform. I think what's really cool is, for once, we get to start again, at the beginning. If you think about these memories that are lost in this flat format.
Let's say, Cyn and I aren't wrong, and the world goes 3d. Then VR glasses become very thin or become contact lenses. Now, all these memories are viewable. You can bring your kids back to your childhood house, but only if you recorded it in this format.
Cyn Lagos: Yeah. Oh my god.
Sebastien Perez: Now you have the advantage of capturing reality and transporting someone back to a memory, but only if you do it now and only until you do it. So the "democratization", they're already putting depth sensors on the cameras of the back of the phones. There's a reason for that, and don't be surprised when you can start to capture 360 or immersive content directly from your phone and by then everyone will do it.
Cyn Lagos: Can you imagine that?
Sebastien Perez: It's okay. It won't be as much of an entrepreneurial opportunity, but as a human, for your family, for your life memories, for your current age in life...if you have a 360 camera, you can go back, 20 - 30 years from now and go back to this moment. That is different from a picture, different from a video, different from a handwritten note. It is literally like "be there".
Cyn Lagos: Exactly. Okay, so we are running out of time. For those of you who were asking for any resources, about street photography and immersive technology, I will be posting an image on Stories and on IG (Instagram) with the references on my website, cynlagos.com/visuallingo. And Sebastien...
Sebastien Perez: Yep. I'm Sebastien Perez and you can check us out at TheDigitalAcid.com or follow us on YouTube. On any social platform, it's @TheDigitalAcid. I'm really excited to have shared this with everyone and even more excited to release these resources that you've been working on, to the world. I'm gonna...I'm gonna do it. I'm sorry...
[shows Cyn's Visual Language book]
It's coming soon, guys!
Cyn Lagos: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Thanks to everyone for joining us today. Let us know if you have any other questions. I like to brainstorm other ideas as to what topics you would like to hear from us. I'll bring Sebastien on, if he would like to join us again. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us today and stay safe. Stay healthy. Eat well. Take care of your brain, your heart, your body. See you later!
Sebastien Perez: Remember, six feet! Six feet guys!
Cyn Lagos: Bye!