Immersive Storytelling
The problems of today’s Internet are due in large part to a lack of diversity amongst its leading creators. It’s critical that XR makers include everyone. Whose Future? builds digital equity and inclusion through a network of Web3 garages for everyone—spaces to dream, tinker, and create at the forefront of technology, art, and function. The Whose Future? platform, LightSchool, delivers an award-winning curriculum and always-on WebXR learning environment built for students in low-resourced communities.
PARADISE is a two-person AI-powered immersive audio experience for intimate partners in their own homes. Produced by Barry Pousman, PARADISE is part interactive game, part theatrical experience where audience members progress through a world of simulated scenarios that explore why we stay together or fall apart. Created with support and research from Johns Hopkins University using the best evidence and innovative technology to create a shared exploration of intimate relationships to raise awareness, build empathy and inspire action to end intimate partner violence.
Premiered at SXSW 2022
Choose Your Own Resistance is an immersive, multi-perspective film about choosing to challenge racism. Produced and filmed by Barry Pousman, the virtual reality production was a recipient of a research grant expanding on Professor Rob Eschmann’s work on race in the modern age, and leveraging the power, race, oppression, and privilege (PROP) framework to better understand the effects of interventions on racially-based microaggressions.
Human services workers make important decisions every day that have significant impacts on people’s lives. Accenture’s AVEnueS project uses immersive storytelling and interactive voice-based scenarios to completely transform how caseworkers hone their data-gathering and decision-making skills. Produced by Barry Pousman, Tory’s story is a unique opportunity to understand how race bias affects decision-making. Here you spend time with 15-year-old Tory, who is experiencing conflict at home. Visit him and his family at home and decide if it’s safe for Tory to stay there. Would your answer change based on Tory’s race? This experience provides an opportunity to reflect on behaviors that could increase race equity in our day-to-day lives.
Winner of two Anthem Awards
World Wise is a Virtual Reality film series, accompanying curriculum, and interactive game series, that builds global competence designed to foster empathy and raise awareness of diverse cultures and critical global issues.
The Wayfinder is a 360 film sharing the experience of a young Polynesian Wayfinder who is learning the ancient ways of guiding a sailing canoe on the open ocean using only natural signs—the sun, moon, stars, sea birds, and ocean swells.
The Protector: Mexico – How do you protect species that are in danger of extinction? Follow the young Adan in this 360 film as he protects the sea turtles that lay their eggs on the beach near his home in Mexico.
State of Global Peace, an immersive documentary, produced by Barry Pousman, puts you in the shoes of a prime minister who is preparing to deliver a high-profile speech at a virtual U.N. General Assembly in the near future. The political stakes are high. As you are about to begin your remarks, a group of students hijack the security system and take over the screens, asking to have a dialogue with you. Over the course of the next few minutes, you will experience immersive visualizations of income inequality, disproportionate military spending, loss of biodiversity, and rising sea levels. How will you answer the student’s questions?
Premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2022
Mixed Reality Documentary
The process of eviction involves the collision of home life, the law, the market, along with America’s fraught history of racial and economic injustice. Produced by Barry Pousman, These Sleepless Nights enables one to explore in-depth the experiences of those who have intimate experiences with these collisions, be it as memories from childhood or trying to be a mother when you can’t pay the rent. Making use of augmented reality and spatial computing, one is able to navigate their own journey through these stories and conduct their own experience. It brings nuance and a new perspective on a situation we can no longer keep sleeping through.
Premiered at Venice Biennale 2019
Female Prisoner Reentry
A partnership with Emerson College’s Civic Engagement Lab and the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, this project is a story-based, multi-episode, and guided virtual reality experience that helps to train female inmates for the underlying psychological challenges of reentry. The screenplay was co-written with incarcerated women at SMCC and edited by formerly incarcerated women. Filmed and edited by Barry Pousman.
Launched at SMCC 2018
Discovery VR
Barry Pousman was instrumental in launching Webby Award-winning Discovery VR in 2015 with original experiences covering a range of subjects and including content from Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Discovery Digital Networks. One of the most innovative moves across the company at the time, VR fundamentally changed the way that fans connect with the Discovery brand.
Futures Thinking on Coursera
Institute for the Future’s Director of Game Research and Development, Jane McGonigal teaches the Futures Thinking Specialization on Coursera tapping the skills and mindsets of the world’s top futurists. Produced by Barry Pousman, the five courses deliver proven methodologies and tools to direct and navigate the future and connect with the global community of futures-thinkers. Each course features stories about key emerging technologies, including VR, AR, AI, robots, drones, biometrics, genetics, food innovation, and blockchain. Immersing yourself in these topics will provide solid insights and creative inspiration... as well as help you forecast more effectively.
Launched on Coursera 2019
Salary Negotiation Simulator
A virtual reality app created by Barry Pousman and his team at Variable Labs to help train women to negotiate higher salaries—In partnership with the American Association of University Women, the Salary Negotiation Simulator for Women was designed to simulate salary negotiations. The interactive 360 app takes the form of a branching narrative to help women navigate the challenges of getting paid what they’re worth.
Launched at the White House Pay Gap Hackathon 2016
Oculus Education
In the seaside village of Otsuchi, Japan, Itaru Sasaki built the Phone of the Wind as a way to enable contact with those who are no longer with us. In this interactive film directed by Barry Pousman, experience the real-life stories of three phone users grieving for their loved ones, then enter the Phone of the Wind and experience it for yourself.
Experiential Media in Education
The Emerging Media Lab at Institute for the Future researched the future affordances and applications of virtual reality and augmented reality for education and workforce training for a recent report: New Realities of Learning: Experiential Media and the Future of Education. Together, VR and AR provide a wide array of powerful new experiential communication tools that provide learners with deeply immersive experiences that can deepen learning, connect with a wider range of learning styles, improve retention, and extend accessibility for learners and educators through remote collaboration systems. Co-author and video creation by Barry Pousman.
Published on IFTF.org 2019
United Nations Virtual Reality
The United Nations Virtual Reality (UNVR) initiative brings the world’s most pressing challenges home to decision makers and global citizens. The project, co-created and launched by Barry Pousman, seeks to show the human story behind development challenges, allowing people with the power to make a difference have a deeper understanding of their world, and hopefully to act to make a difference.
Premiered at Davos 2015
XPRIZE 360
Access to the deep ocean has been limited by the extraordinary physical challenges of exploring this extreme environment, high costs, limited technological advancements and lack of investment. This VR experience, produced by Barry Pousman, promotes the $7 million Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a global competition challenging teams to advance deep sea technologies for autonomous, fast, high-resolution ocean exploration.
VIRAL IMPACT
Cultural Heritage Broadcast
Discovery Digital Networks
YouTube Ambassadors for Change
My Hidden City is an award-winning film promoting the remarkable heritage of the city of Mrauk-U as it makes its bid for UNESCO world heritage status. Co-Directed by Barry Pousman and Wunna Kyaw, the film explores the splendor and beauty of Mrauk-U above ground and below. The film has been translated into 7 languages and is screening across Europe and Asia on television.
Viral Activism
Directed and Produced Keep the Oil in the Ground, a short documentary set in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The film garnered almost 2 million views and lead to the president of Ecuador apologizing to the affected community of Sarayaku.
Peace Corps Films
Elle Travaille, Elle Vit! is a documentary that explores the role of women in Senegalese society and highlights the importance of girl’s education, directed by Barry Pousman. The film was distributed to schools throughout Senegal along with supplemental materials to facilitate discussions regarding girls education throughout Senegal.
Barry Pousman was the Director of Programming for Discovery Communications’ original digital networks focused on science, education, exploration, and journalism. DDN was made up with 6 distinct networks with original shows including DNews, Seeker, Hard Science, and Shots of Awe.
Mothers Day Campaign
Thank You Mom is a viral Mothers Day video produced by Barry Pousman in New York in 2012.
Web Series
Know Your Meme was a spin-off web series, shot by Barry Pousman, documenting memes, events, news, and viral media that spreads across or had an impact on the internet. The database-style website is largely dependent on crowdsourcing for the documentation of memes as they develop and for the submission of viral media as it spreads.
Barry Pousman initiated and produced a first-of-its-kind partnership between YouTube and the UN, with seven female creators from across the globe named Change Ambassadors to the organization, focused on the fight for gender equality.
Kickstarter Success
Story War is an innovative party game where you battle your friends by telling stories, referencing pop culture, and making stuff up. The Kickstarter campaign raised over $360K in 30 days. Barry Pousman directed the Kickstarter video in 2013.
Internet News & Culture
Rocketboom was a daily vlog in the format of a newscast with a comedic slant, presenting social and political commentary. Barry Pousman headed up post-production, and went on to direct the network of daily web shows from 2008 to 2012 in New York.
PRACTITIONER IN RESIDENCE
Binghamton University: I-GMAP
UC Berkeley: Big Ideas Challenge
Emerson’s Civic Engagement Lab
Big Ideas is an annual contest aimed at providing funding, support, and encouragement to interdisciplinary teams of students who have “big ideas.” Big Ideas inspires innovative and high-impact student-led projects aimed at solving problems that matter to this generation. In 2017, Barry Pousman was a team mentor, and in 2018, a Practitioner in Residence for the program.
The Engagement Lab is an applied research lab at Emerson College focusing on the development and study of games, technology, and new media to enhance civic life. Barry Pousman was brought in as a Practitioner in Residence in 2018 to help consult and advance a graduate project in partnership with the Massachusetts Dept. of Corrections.
Binghamton University’s Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (I-GMAP) informs practice through the application of the latest scholarship in areas such as the quantitative analysis of at-risk communities; how factors such as gender, climate change, political transitions and population flows contribute to risks for genocide and mass atrocities; and the role of governments, civil society actors and international bodies in effective prevention. Barry Pousman was invited to be a Practitioner in Residence in 2018.
LECTURES, TALKS, MENTORSHIPS, AND WORKSHOPS
Oculus Creators Lab
Stanford Media X
Johns Hopkins University
Sundance Film Festival
Global Media Makers
World Economic Forum
TEDxKL
Stanford Leadership Garage
UNICEF Innovation Summit
Social Business Summit
VRX
Vivid Sydney - 360 Vision
“Barry is multi-faceted, incredibly talented and wonderful with people. He is a world leader in developing and implementing new media campaigns and strategies. His work singe-handedly changed UN storytelling. Viral videos, Facebook partnership, a Youtube Ambassador program, and creating and being an integral part in the UN's VR program. Few people match his level of human and raw intelligence. A true asset to anyone he works with.”
- Gabo Arora, Former United Nations Creative Director
Featured In
TechCrunch
Singularity Hub
The Boston Globe
IndieWire
WSJ
Quartz