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Chris Milk | |
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![]() Milk in 2015 | |
Born | 1975or1976(age 48–49) |
Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, immersive artist, filmmaker, music video director |
Employer | Within |
Known for | Virtual reality, immersive art, music videos |
Website | Milk.co |
Chris Milk (born 1975or1976) is an American entrepreneur, filmmaker, music video director, and immersive artist. He is co-founder and CEO of Within (Virtual Reality) (formerly Vrse), a virtual reality technology company, and co-founder of Here Be Dragons (formerly Vrse.works), a virtual reality production company. Milk began his career directing music videos and commercials, and in subsequent years became best known for bridging the gap between emerging technologies and new mediums for storytelling.
Chris Milk was born in 1975or1976 [1] in Glen Cove, New York. [2] After attending Friends Academy High School, Milk studied Music and Film at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and then earned a B.F.A. in Film, Photography and Computer Graphics at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California. [3]
Milk began his career directing music videos and commercials for artists and brands including Arcade Fire, U2, Kanye West, Green Day, Johnny Cash, Gnarls Barkley, The Chemical Brothers, John Mellencamp, Courtney Love, Modest Mouse, Nike, O2, Chevy and Nintendo. [4]
Milk's collaboration with Kanye West on the single "All Falls Down" was shot entirely in first person perspective, a technique he utilized again in a commercial for O2's "Can Do" campaign and his short film "The Last Day Dream", [5] signaling his future affinity for virtual reality and subjective storytelling. Milk collaborated again with Kanye West on the video for "Touch The Sky", which was in part an homage to Evel Knievel, a childhood hero of Milk's. [6]
Milk's collaboration with Arcade Fire, Aaron Koblin and Google Creative Lab on "The Wilderness Downtown" in 2010 was one of his first interactive videos that utilized emerging technologies to create new, more personal ways for viewers to connect with digital experiences. [7] [8] The browser based video uses HTML5, satellite imagery and Google Street View to incorporate images from a viewer's childhood home mixed with digital footage and CGI elements. [9] At the end of the video, viewers are encouraged to write a postcard to their younger selves. [10] "The Wilderness Downtown" was named as one of Time 's 30 Best Music Videos of all time, [11] saying, "It's the first video that truly harnesses the digital age — and one of the most personal you'll ever watch." It was also exhibited [12] at MoMA in New York in 2011. [13]
Also in 2010, Milk created "The Johnny Cash Project", a collaboration with Aaron Koblin set to the Johnny Cash song "Ain't No Grave". [14] In the interactive music video, users can submit drawn frames to be curated into an animated short film built upon a myriad of frames submitted by different users. [15] As a result, the video constantly evolves and can be arranged by a set of various criteria. [16] [17] Users can elect to view the highest rated frames, or all frames that are done in a pointillist or abstract style, for example. [14] NPR suggested that the digital experience allowed fans to connect with Cash posthumously. [18]
In 2011, Milk collaborated again with Aaron Koblin and Google Creative Lab on the interactive short film "3 Dreams of Black" based on the track of the same name from the Danger Mouse album Rome , which features Daniele Luppi, Jack White and Norah Jones. [19] Here, Milk used WebGL to turn a user's web browser into a canvas for creating 3D objects within an interactive, CGI setting. [20] When viewing the film, which is also told from first person perspective, users can control the vantage point with the use of their mouse. [21] As the user's mouse hovers over the browser window playing the film, 3D objects appear and proliferate within the world of the film. Users can create additional 3D objects to add to the film within the film's website. [20] [21]
In 2008, Milk directed Second Unit for "A Mother's Promise", the film that introduced Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention. [22]
Milk collaborated with Arcade Fire, ESKI and Moment Factory in 2011 to create an interactive experience called "Summer Into Dust" for concert goers at the closing of the 2011 Coachella Music Festival. During Arcade Fire's final song, "Wake Up", cascades of beach balls were released onto the crowd. Milk and his team had fit LEDs and IR transmitters into each ball to light paint kaleidoscopic patterns across the audience. [23] The balls physically connected the audience with the band and their performance, and the moment has been widely credited as the highlight of the festival. [24] [25] [26]
In 2012, Milk created "The Treachery of Sanctuary", an interactive immersive art installation currently touring the world with The Creators Project. [27] It is a large-scale interactive installation that utilizes the Microsoft Kinect to project and manipulate a participant's shadow onto a triptych. In the first panel, shadows of birds congregate to form the participant's shadow. In the second panel, the participant's shadow is torn apart by the birds. In the third, the participant's shadow sprouts wings, allowing the shadow to fly out of the frame as the participant flaps their arms. The triptych created a cycle that according to Milk interprets the universal human experience of birth, death and transfiguration. [28] "The Treachery of Sanctuary" was exhibited at the Onassis Cultural center in Greece, [29] and was selected to be a part of the Sundance Film Festival's New Frontier exhibition in January 2016. [30]
Also in 2012, Milk collaborated with Aaron Koblin to create "The Exquisite Forest", a collaborative online experience that allows participants to create branching animated narratives. [31] In the piece, a series of trees represent a series of narratives, each beginning with the seed of an initial animation. As participants create new animations to add to the narrative, the animated trees branch out, creating a representation of the multiple narratives spawned by user input. [32] The piece was exhibited at the Tate Modern in London between 2012 and 2013. [33]
Milk's first virtual reality production was a collaboration with musical artist Beck entitled "Sound and Vision". [34] The project was initially released online, giving viewers the choice to watch Beck perform from the vantage point of different 360 degree cameras, and further allowed viewers to use their computer's mouse to change their viewing perspective. [35] Milk invented a binaural audio recording instrument [34] in order to capture sound in a 3D environment to mimic real life human experience. The result allows the audio to shift perspective in accordance with what the viewer is seeing, creating a natural virtual experience for the audience member. In the tradition of his work on "The Wilderness Downtown" and Rome, Milk utilized modern technologies to further expand the viewing experience: viewers could enable their computer's webcam to shift the perspective of the 360 video up, down, left and right with the tilt of their head. [36]
In 2014, Milk and Aaron Koblin founded Within (Virtual Reality) (formerly Vrse [37] ), a virtual reality technology company and sister company Vrse.works. [38] [39] [40] Within is a leading virtual reality company that builds the technology to create and distribute the most innovative human stories in virtual reality. [41] Sister company Here Be Dragons [42] (formerly Vrse.works) has partnered with top talent in film and television and represents a world class roster of directors for virtual reality content creation. [43] The company has already produced award-winning immersive content including Clouds Over Sidra with the United Nations, and work with The New York Times , Vice, NBC, and Nike. [44] Vrse.farm is working in partnership with Megan Ellison's Annapurna Pictures to develop original cinematic work in virtual reality. [45] The Within app is currently available on iOS and Android, works with Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR, and will be available on the Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR and HTC Vive when they are released to the public in 2016. [46]
Through Within [47] and Vrse.works, Milk has explored Virtual Reality as a means to tell documentaries, narratives, and share live experiences. [48] [49]
In December 2014, Milk and Spike Jonze captured the Millions March in New York, which protested police brutality for Vice News. [50] Milk launched the Within app platform at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival in addition to "Evolution of Verse", a photo-realistic CGI-rendered 3-D virtual reality film, and "Clouds Over Sidra", a virtual reality documentary made in partnership with the United Nations which follows a 12-year-old girl's life in a Syrian refugee camp. [51] After the Sundance launch, Vrse.works captured Saturday Night Live's 40th Anniversary special in VR. [52] Milk created "Walking New York" with Zach Richter, a VR experience made in partnership with The New York Times which follows French artist JR and his making of a 150-foot-tall portrait of a recent immigrant to NYC that was wheat pasted across the Flatiron Building Pedestrian Plaza for less than 24 hours. Vrse.works recently partnered again with the United Nations to create the VR experience Waves of Grace. The film transports viewers to West Point, the most populous slum in the capital of Liberia, and follows the experience of Decontee Davis, an Ebola survivor who uses her immunity to help others affected by the disease. [53] Most recently, Milk and his team have released music videos for U2 and Muse in partnership with Apple Music. In the video for U2's "Song for Someone," singers from around the world sing alongside U2 within the virtual environment. [54] In Muse's "Revolt," viewers watch from the point of view of multiple drones as the music spawns a revolution. [55]
Milk presented at TED in 2015 on the power of virtual reality as a medium to advance humanity, and again in 2016 on the birth of virtual reality as a new art form. [56]
Milk's work has been exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Barbican Centre in London, Cent Quatre in Paris, and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.[ citation needed ]
Milk has been honored twice with the Grand Prix Cannes Lions, the D&AD Black Pencil, the Grand Clio, and SXSW's 'Best of Show' alongside multiple Grammy nominations, MTV Moon Men, and the UK MVA Innovation Award.[ citation needed ]
Milk was named one of WIRED's 100 Most Influential People [57] in 2016, one of The Hollywood Reporter's L.A.'s 25 Most Powerful Digital Players [58] in 2016, Adweek 's Creative 100 list in 2015, [59] as one of the 50 Most Creative People by Advertising Age in 2011 and 2015, [60] [61] and one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business" by Fast Company in 2012. [62]
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Of his practice of Transcendental Meditation Milk said in 2016, "There's a really transcendental quality to virtual reality. ... TM is a really great portal into exploring those states within yourself. Virtual reality is basically an authored dream state." [63]
360-degree videos, also known as surround video, or immersive videos or spherical videos, are video recordings where a view in every direction is recorded at the same time, shot using an omnidirectional camera or a collection of cameras. The term 360x180 can be used to indicate 360° of azimuth and 180° from nadir to zenith. During playback on normal flat display the viewer has control of the viewing direction like a panorama. It can also be played on a display or projectors arranged in a sphere or some part of a sphere.
Aaron Koblin is an American digital media artist and entrepreneur best known for his use of data visualization and his work in crowdsourcing, virtual reality, and interactive film. He is co-founder and president of virtual reality company Within, founded with Chris Milk. The company created the popular virtual reality fitness app Supernatural, which was acquired by Meta in 2023. Formerly he created and lead the Data Arts Team at Google in San Francisco, California from 2008 to 2015.
"We Used to Wait" is the first UK single from Arcade Fire's third album The Suburbs, following "Ready to Start", which was the first US single. It was released on August 1, 2010 in the UK.
Navid Khonsari is an Iranian-Canadian video game, virtual/mixed reality, film and graphic novel creator, writer, director and producer.
Lynette Wallworth is an Australian artist and filmmaker, known for her use of emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR), and interactive installations. She is known for her 2016 VR project Collisions, which tells of the "collision" between Aboriginal Australians and western culture in the form of British nuclear testing at Maralinga in the 1950s. She has won two Emmy Awards for her work: one for Collisions and one for Awavena.
Nonny de la Peña is an American journalist, documentary filmmaker, and entrepreneur.
"Song for Someone" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the fourth track from their thirteenth studio album, Songs of Innocence, and was released as its third single on 11 May 2015. It was produced by Ryan Tedder and Flood. Lyrically, "Song for Someone" is a love song dedicated by lead vocalist Bono to his wife Ali.
Oculus Story Studio was an original animated virtual reality film studio that was a division of Oculus VR. The studio was started by Oculus VR to pioneer animated virtual reality filmmaking and educate, inspire, and foster community for filmmakers interested in VR.
Zach Richter is an American director, creative director and designer, best known for his work in virtual reality and interactive media.
Secret Location was a content studio that won a Cannes Lion Award and multiple Emmy awards; spanned across web, mobile, tablet and other platforms such as Virtual and Augmented Reality; and, based in Toronto and LA.
8i is a volumetric video company specializing in the capture, transformation, and streaming of real human holograms, on any device, for the Metaverse.
Way to Go is a 2015 Canada/France interactive film and virtual reality web-based experience created by the Montreal digital studio AATOAA and produced by National Film Board of Canada and France Télévisions. The production lets users take a virtual walk in the woods, through a combination of animation and immersive video.
Within Unlimited, Inc., or commonly Within, is a studio based in Los Angeles developing the VR fitness service Supernatural on the Meta Quest. The company was founded by Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin in 2014 and initially created, acquired, and distributed 360-degree video, AR, and VR experiences across web, mobile, console, and headsets. In February 2023, Meta Platforms Inc. acquired the company.
Cardboard Crash is a 2015 National Film Board of Canada (NFB) mobile app and virtual reality work developed by Vincent McCurley, exploring the ethical issues of autonomous cars.
Henry is a 2015 virtual reality film created by Oculus Story Studio which was premiered on July 28, 2015. It was created in Unreal Engine 4 and narrated by Elijah Wood.
FoxNext, LLC was a virtual reality and theme park unit of 20th Century Fox, now known as 20th Century Studios. It was established in 2017 prior to Disney's acquisition of Fox and operated under the Disney Parks, Experiences and Products unit of The Walt Disney Company. It handled the development and publishing of virtual reality and augmented reality titles, as well as the development of 20th Century Studios's theme and amusement parks. The division's president was Salil Mehta, a former executive from NBCUniversal and The Walt Disney Company, who has been with Fox since 2013 and later returned to Disney after Disney acquired Fox in 2019 until on January 23, 2020, when the company's gaming assets were sold to Scopely.
Gabo Arora is an American filmmaker, creative technologist and Founder/CEO of LIGHTSHED, a studio focusing on emerging technologies. He is a professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he is the Founding Director of the new Immersive Storytelling and Emerging Technology (ISET) program and lab. Formerly, he was a Senior Policy Advisor for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the UN's first Creative Director, with over 15 years of field experience. He has directed, produced and pioneered a series of virtual reality documentaries for the United Nations that have premiered at film festivals, featured at the World Economic Forum in Davos, screened at the White House, and have exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art's inaugural program on immersive storytelling.
Viacom NEXT was Viacom's production studio focused on building immersive experiences, interactive music videos, narrative worlds, and video games. Based in New York, the studio employed developers and specialists with expertise in 3D modeling and animation, storytelling, and experience design.
TheBlu is a digital media franchise that utilizes virtual reality technology to create 3D-rendered, interactive simulations of underwater environments in the world's oceans. Iterations of TheBlu have appeared as applications for the Samsung Gear VR and HTC Vive headsets and on the Steam and Oculus stores. In 2018, the most recent project in the franchise was launched using the Dreamscape Immersive platform, allowing up to six users to engage in a location-based experience. TheBlu was initially released as an interactive web application and screensaver by Wevr in 2011.
We Met in Virtual Reality is a 2022 documentary film that takes place entirely within the video game VRChat. It explores the social relations developed by the users of VRChat during the pandemic, and how their lives were changed by their time on the platform. It was created by Joe Hunting, who was the director and writer of the script.
Milk was born and raised in Glen Cove NY, and lives in Los Angeles)
Many have described it as the best festival moment of their lives.
Chris Milk at TED