#1785: The Landmark Achievements of “Blur” in Fusing Theater, Montage, Mixed Reality, and LBE VR

I interviewed Craig Quintero & Phoebe Greenberg about Blur on Friday, August 29, 2025 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy.

Here is the story synopsis for Blur:

"Blur presents a new myth for the modern age, where science has changed how we think about life and death. With cloning and advances in resurrection biology, we have obscured the boundaries between the living and the dead — the natural and the artificial. This extended reality theatrical production unfolds as a dreamscape, shifting between real and virtual, taking participants on a journey of reflection on grief and eternality."

Here are the contextual domains that are explored:

Some fundamental questions around LIFE [1] and DEATH [8]. Blur born out of a "desire to explore the emotional and ethical terrain where science, loss and imagination collide." Philosophical and ethical implications [9] of the science human cloning [9] as explored through the main story of a mother [4] who's child [5] has died [8]. Explores a speculative and imaginal space of scienced-based possibilities [9] with imagery reflecting these moral and ethical dilemmas [9] around these hybrid entities [Combination of [1] Self with [7] ]. Also the implications of taking extinct animals [8] like the Wooley Mammoth or Dire Wolf, and resurrecting them through science [9], and bringing them back to life [1].

Here is the Elemental Center of Gravity:

1st Center of Gravity of Earth Element / Environmental and Embodied Presence: Blend of Immersive VR, CGI, Cinematic 360 video, 180 video, Mixed Reality. With specific architectural modulations, live performance, and integrations of your embodiment. Some Generative AI around your representations of embodied identity. There's also a LOT of invisible spatial choreography that is happening behind the scenes in order to move a number of human bodies through a physical space without colliding into each other, whilst also creating a seamless virtually-mediate spatial journey that is also A LOT MORE VAST than the constraints of the physical space. So it really feels like being taken on an expansive journey through space and time within this piece.2nd Center of Gravity of Air Element / Mental and Social Presence: Constant perversion of expectations and experience of having the "rug pulled out from underneath you." Symbolic Dream Logic, and Theatre of the Absurd. There's a lot of abstract and semiotic associative linking that Quintero describes as a "Rauschenberg-like collage" blending and blur