In this episode of the Arts Management and Technology Podcast: Tech in the Arts, Hales Wilson speaks with Arthur Earnest about immersive storytelling, community-centered filmmaking, and the evolving role of technology in creative practice. Drawing on his experience producing 360-degree documentaries and educational media at North Carolina State University, Arthur reflects on how immersive tools such as VR and 360 video can preserve spaces, deepen audience engagement, and amplify everyday stories. He also discusses the importance of accessibility in the arts, the realities of independent creative work, and his perspective on AI as a tool that should support — rather than replace — human creativity and storytelling.
Show Notes
Transcript
Arthur Earnest
Use the tools that are available to you if you have a story to tell. If you wanna create something, you will find a way to create it. And it might not be exactly how you want it to be, but I think that's also part of being an artist. If you're a painter, you'll find a way to paint. Maybe you're not getting the most expensive paint in there. Maybe you're just getting like, oh, I found this can of paint at some work site. You'll find a way to do it.
Hales Wilson
Welcome to another episode of Tech in the Arts, the podcast series from the Arts Management and Technology Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. My name is Hales Wilson, the lead researcher here at AMT Lab.
Today, I'm excited to be joined by a storyteller, immersive media creator and filmmaker Arthur Earnest, as part of the SONA Immersive Storytelling Festival. SONA is an annual festival at Carnegie Mellon that brings together filmmakers, artists, researchers, and industry professionals to explore the future of storytelling through immersive media like VR, AR, and interactive experiences.
Before we begin, I'd love to share a little bit of background for our listeners. Arthur is the senior producer for the Digital Education Learning Technology Applications Delta at North Carolina State University. He's also an alum from NC State with a degree in sociology and a minor in film studies.
Outside of the class, he enjoys making his own videos. He has made short films, documentaries that have been shown in local and national film festivals. Arthur is also a video producer who works with 360 technology to showcase unusual spaces in the local Raleigh area. Thank you so much for being here today!
I'm really looking forward to hearing about your journey, how technology is changing the way we experience narrative and the future of immersive storytelling. First, could you just give a little bit about your professional or personal journey that helped inform your artistic identity as a filmmaker?
Arthur Earnest
Yeah, it's kind of, I like you growing up in the South. I always wanted to be an artist. I actually grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina. I was at camp le Junes military, I'm not gonna lie, wasn't the hotbed of culture, you know? Uh, so I had to go digging deep for anything like artists, you know, just to read about artists and just to find art.
A lot of what was easy, somewhat easily accessible was movies, you know, I could always go to the movie theater, could always watch HBO or something like that. You know, a lot of my background in filmmaking is kind of self-taught. I was always one of these people who, whether I got into a filmmaker or a band or an artist's painter or whatnot, photographer, I would always kind of dig deeper into their influences.
So it would just kind of lead me further back, even though I wasn't in some big city where there were a lot of museums, there were new museums there, but I could still go to the library and find books on these inspirations for these artists that I was finding. So, like I said, it would just kind of lead me back into history.
Just things like that where you can still find things a lot of times. People around me were in the same boat. We would talk to people and like, “Hey, have you heard this band so and so”? And then I would just go, “Oh, this band's awesome” And I'd read interviews with them and see who they liked and find that band and stuff like that. Filmmakers are the same way. And so when I went to college, I went to NC State. Like you said, I graduated at some point, took a while, but I got there. I eventually majored in sociology and my joke was like, Hey, I am gonna make films about people. It was just, which was actually kinda true. I think everyone has a story.
You and I and you just told yours to me and to your listeners. Like I said, I'm a male of a certain age, which means I grew up reading Kerouac at some point and just the whole like, “Hey, the world is out there, go out and do things and then meet people”. And then when you, if you do that, you find out that everyone has a story and there's these things to tell.
And that's kind of been a drive-in mentality of the stories that I tell. I do have two kinds of different routes where it's just like, 'cause. Eventually came back to work at State as a film producer, Delta, where I work, we work a lot with instructors and there's a whole team. I'm senior producer of the media team of videos and podcasts and whatnot too.
Doesn't mean I'm a tech person either, more on the creative side, but I end up working a lot with instructors and it's more like making little documentaries. I'll go out into the field and we'll talk to the subject matter experts and it's pretty awesome on that front. Right now I'm working on a project where we're dealing with sustainability and industrial designers, so it's a project that allows me to make these little, basically little documentaries or profiles on furniture designers.
But I also get to go to talk to manufacturers out in High Point, North Carolina, which is a big furniture place. Also get to go to the landfill and talk to people there, and raw material. Get to go to a forest management and talk to these people. What that means is for this project, a lot of it is immersive, you know, like if you wanna place somebody into the raw material of this forest, what better way to do that than 360 than immersive? You want to show somebody as a designer, like, Hey, your job is to keep your stuff out of this landfill as long as possible. What better way to show that than put them in the landfill in like an immersive environment, you know, things like that.
So even before the immersive aspect of my storytelling revealed itself, and we could talk about that later, I still wanted to tell stories and it kind of, it was just like you, once I graduated from Jacksonville and came up to Raleigh in North Carolina, it's capital of North Carolina, small southern city, much, actually, my mom actually lives like 10 minutes away from really long, long ago, and also have ties in Georgia.
We can talk about that later. I came out to Raleigh, coming from Jacksonville, this small town I came from like in 91. And I remember I was on I 40 and I looked over and I saw like a skyline with like three buildings and I was just like, it's the big city, you know? I was just like, oh man, I'm so excited.
But I got there and it was, I got to meet all these people from other places. It, I've been there long enough where, yeah, I just met a bunch of cool people that were doing cool stuff and. Yeah, they had stories to tell. Well, at least when I was younger, it was just like, “Hey, you gotta go to New York, you gotta go to LA to become an artist”.
You don't, you're surrounded by artists, or even if they don't call themselves artists, you're surrounded by people doing cool things. And like I said before, they have stories to tell. And so even before I got into the 360 stuff, I was still kind of like, “Hey, let me do like just some profiles on people around me doing cool stuff.”
Eventually later on when I got to the immersive stuff, it was. A project or an artist friend of mine, he was a painter and his paintings were kind of very like collage. And uh, his studio, I went to go visit him in his studio and his studio basically was like a 3D version of one of his paintings because he had been there in that studio location for a long time.
And basically I gave, the room itself had become like an artistic collage, you know, so it was almost like a representative of his paintings. And I was thinking about doing a profile on him, but I was just like, man, I could do it in the traditional, you know, flat 2D video, but it didn't seem right, like it didn't seem like it would express how his work actually is.
And at the same time, fortuitously a buddy of mine who's another filmmaker named Tim Kernan, I ran into him. I will say this because you're from the South, hopefully it makes sense. Like I ran into him at Bojangles park.
Arthur Earnest
We were having some chicken and biscuits and I ran into him in the parking lot and like I said, he's another talented filmmaker and he was just like, man, you gotta see this. And he, I came over and he had basically a Google Cardboard, which literally is a cardboard thing. You fold up and you put your phone in the front of it and you just put it up to your face. So it literally becomes like, it's this very, very low-fi version of a headset. So you put your phone in there and you can look at it, and it was 360 and it just blew my mind, right? Oh. He had introduced debt to me and stayed with me. Then Mike Ko Wallaces, he's actually my boss at NC State, he's here at Sona with me. He was kind of bringing 360 and immersive technology to NC State. And so he was like, “Hey, why don't you, we can film it this way. Let's do it.” And at that point, it was like an old school, and this is part of my talk.
I said it, SONA was just kind of like a journey from the beginning of 360 filmmaking to where we all are now. And uh, yeah. So Mike had. Basically a GoPro array had like six GoPros that were bundled together. It worked a lot, but every once in while I'd be like, oh, what are the cameras that can go? But luckily it didn't happen too much.
So we were able to film this with Luke Buchanan, who was the artist, and we were to film it. I had to figure out how to kind of film it at that time. So we were asking how technology kind of drove a style in a certain way. I was trying to figure out what I could and what I couldn't do in this format, this 360 format. So I come more from a documentary. I've done short films, but documentaries and profiles are always there because you can just go talk to somebody, record their story, and I was like, you know what? I can't really do that in 360, or at least at that time. And I was like, I'm just gonna record his interview audio.
I've known this guy for years at this point. And so we just had a conversation and I cut that conversation down. So I had this story there, an audio form, and Luke happened to be like, eh, what do you call it? He basically, he had to make a painting for somebody. But anyway, he was always painting, but he had to do a painting for somebody and he was like, just, you know, you wanna follow me along for that?
And so basically that's what the film became, was kind of like him doing this painting. And we just kind of followed along. And the whole notion of 360 was, like I said, his studio was like a real life version of one of his paintings. But he goes out and takes photos of, he does a lot of. Paintings are like buildings and architecture landscape type stuff and, and so yeah, we just kind of followed along, but the majority of it takes place in his studio.
'cause that was the whole purpose for the 360 aspect of it, was just like, “Hey, these locations are important.” Like his studio is a part of him. So that location was kind of like, Hey, how does that location tie to him? It's like, how do you see this, you know? How do you picture these artists and into places that inform them, whether it's a studio or a kitchen, or a recording studio or whatever.
Hales Wilson
Thank you for that. There was a bunch of things that you said that I felt touched me personally as a person and as an artist. One, I'm always a community center, like I wanna do stuff for the greater good for people. What that looks like, creating a program or. Yada yada, but also this aspect that creativity is truly everywhere.
I feel like, especially me right now, we're about to finish the program and I'm trying to figure out do I wanna stay in Pittsburgh? Do I wanna go to the big cities that is New York? Do I wanna go back to the south and. I think we get told that the goal is New York, the goal is la. But in the same sense, I feel like that then puts us in a box one financially. Now all the people are going here, but we have all these other places, the vast country or the world that's missing out on these creative opportunities, but also making sure artists get paid properly. But before I get into like my very tech specific questions, sure enough, and even some more on the educational side, really appreciate your aspect of like, a lot of this stuff started as just.
Everyday conversations with people that you've been friends with or colleagues for many years. And in my research I saw that you noted that you spent time working in a newsstand movie, theater, or print shop, and even you were English teacher in Japan. And so I was wondering how have some of these like non-traditional academic experience informed your work ethic or like how you see the world and what you wanna capture with your art or just in general?
Arthur Earnest
It's kind of a weird thing. I like to think on some level. I'm gonna use like certain words and I don't, they're kind of loaded and I don't want to use 'em like, you know, elitist or something like that. I didn't come from money. Most of the world does not come from money. And there's a certain aspect of I don't have privilege and all this, and I'm not saying that, you know. I wanna live in a van down by the river. I don't really need to care to do that. And I hope nobody finds themselves in kind of position. Unless you're traveling the United States or something, then Yeah. But point being, what I mean is like most of those jobs are kinda like everyday people. People that kind of sometimes have this struggle for what they do.
I think on some level it's been implanted in my brain. I'm not saying I'm like some saint I am not. But that aspect of like, people in everyday life is always in the back of my head and how people live it. Some people live it better than others because they're able to, some people struggle and I think like a lot of those, like when I went to Japan, that was actually kind of, I mean was that a privilege thing?
Probably, yeah. It was also like going back to the care whacking event of like, I had been in Raleigh for a little while and I just wanted to get away for a bit and like I said, this actually sounds kind of privileged, but it's just kind of like, I didn't have a lot of money, I had a, I had a bit to get me there, you know, my mom was still here and she was able to help me out.
But once I got there, I had this job and was able to survive for a year and came back to the States and I didn't come back with a lot of money. I actually came back to no job. You know, I worked in a news stand for a long time, and then I moved outta Raleigh, moved back down to where I grew up, or close to where I grew up for a little bit and I worked in some warehouse.
Yeah, it was like manual labor basically. I was like loading stuff up every day and stuff like that, and was not getting paid as much as I was for working in a newsstand in Raleigh. But it's kind of like a humbling thing and you get reminded of a lot of stuff like that. Warehouse, I remember this was decades ago.
It was just like, I remember somehow they were like, well, you're not gonna get this raise, and it was like a raise of like 5 cents. I was kinda like, whatever, you know? 'cause I was that young, but I was surrounded by these other people that, that, that was their life. And it kind of was humbling because I was like, you know, that nickel was important to these other people, you know?
So it's kind of, I don't know. These are jobs. I mean, yeah, I'm not working on an oil thing, so I mean, not saying I'm like some big tough guy, but it's just this thing. I'm just. Reminding that you're surrounded by these people. And like I said, they all have the story and they're all interesting in some way, you know, and it's just kind of like this notion that not everyone lives the same, I guess is what I'm trying to put out there.
Sometimes life affords you a lot of stuff, you know, like I said, you know how many people get to go jump on a plane and work in Japan and it was literally just like, eh, I'm gonna do that. And I was able to do it. Not a lot of people have that ability. I don't even think I have that ability now. Yeah, it was just, I got lucky once.
I think it's just kind of, it goes into like a view of, not everyone lives the same way. It's just a reminder of that. And you know, like I said, those are stories that are worth telling on some level.
Hales Wilson
I appreciate you being open about answering that question. I put it in there because I think a lot of times, even though most of our little students are college educated and beyond, I feel like a lot of the times people tie experience or even worth.
To being properly educated and having like, oh, I've been a part of this crazy festival or whatever, and I'd have all these accolades, yada, yada, yada. And I think even times like being in such a prestigious institution such as Carnegie Mellon, a lot of people kind of get wrapped up into that, but I think they forget that, hey, you know, as you said, everyone has a story.
There's like a creative aspect in that, you know, or just having that conversation with that person that creates an experience. Even if you're not capturing that story, now you have another part that you can unlock within yourself, you know,
Arthur Earnest
To add on, how do you define privilege? Does it mean a lot of money or does it mean like, for me, I will say that, yeah, I am not rich at all.
But I will say that I have been privileged enough and lucky enough that I've been surrounded by people that are awesome and are willing to help me, and I help them and we offer each other experiences, and I think that's kind of, in a way, like the more important thing. You know, growing up I was just lucky that I was surrounded by people and hanging out with people that were willing to do stuff, and I'm still lucky enough to be surrounded by people who offer that experience, and that has been a big thing. So it's also, like I said, define privilege and define like what's around you.
Hales Wilson
Okay. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the rally spaces. Could you tell us technically how it went? I would also appreciate it if you can get into some of the managerial aspects. How was this funded? How did you market it or get collaboration to do this? And was there a community role in some of these projects?
Arthur Earnest
Rally spaces was very kind of lo-fi. It was also, it's hard to answer a lot of that 'cause there wasn't a lot of, it was basically just like homegrown. It was basically like four videos over a long period of time. So we made three videos at the very beginning. So it was almost nice 'cause it was almost like a little trilogy. Like I said, Luke's who I mentioned before, the painter, there's a second one about Lincoln Hancock, about an installation.
He's also an artist, awesome guy, musician, painter, tech guru. But he was doing an installation and so that's what the second one was about. And it was a storefront, an empty storefront in downtown Raleigh. And he was doing this installation. This empty storefront about, I think his name's Gilbert Baker and he's the, the guy that created the, the original pride flag.
And so originally, the installation was for people to engage from outside. Like they wouldn't be able into the space itself. And so that's kind of the angle that we kind of did it from was like, oh yeah, so it's behind the scenes of him creating this, you know, 'cause no one's gonna be able to actually get into this room.
And so that was the creation part of that. And, you know. I can't really say there's some sort of management thing to these things 'cause it's just me sometimes, you know? Mike helped out a lot on some of these. He's basically co-creative for all these faces also. So it was just me and him and just like basically the people and artists that we knew and they were willing to be interviewed.
The second one about that installation. And then later on, another friend of mine, her name is Missy, Missy, who is an awesome musician and she records at this studio called the Del Auditorium, but it's like an hour and a half outside Holly, outside Greensboro. Anyway, she was the third one that we did.
Like I said, she's awesome and her kind of tying in the 360 was the studio itself. It's a very historic studio. Been there for a long time and like I said, she's a very talented person and she was like, yeah, come in. I'm gonna interview her. I'd known her for years, and it was just, like I said, luckily all three of these people I'd known for years and were just doing and running stuff that needed to be documented.
And I was lucky enough to do it. And so Missy, she was recording a band called the Pieface Girls, who were also awesome like this, you know, kick ass punk band, you know? And so to hang up with all of them for a weekend as we recorded it, I was just kind of lucky enough that. You know, like I said, a lot of times it's me and then Mike may help with filming 'cause he's actually more the tech side of a lot of things.
So I wouldn't say there's a lot of managerial unless you're just like, you know, as a producer, like scheduling stuff and you know, I mean, it's funny 'cause you say like managerial things, I'm thinking contracts and stuff like that. But for me it's all that, all that stuff. A lot of these were just people that were nice enough to let me follow them for a time and they were nice enough for me to talk to them and record it.
Like I said, my goal is never to make anyone look bad. It's just that I think you're doing awesome work and I just want to talk about it. And lucky enough, I actually had a fourth one lined up at that time. This spans a number of years. It was pre-pandemic at this point, so it was like 2017, 18, and I'd had another one lined up by a dancer friend of mine and just kind of fell through at that point.
So unfortunately, it was more on my end that if you talk about managerial, like managing time, you know, me putting the project together, I just kind of. Let it fall. And I would feel bad every time I ran into her, like that's being an artist. Sometimes that's how collaborations are, you know, they happen and then sometimes they don't.
It was one of those things, it was the first time like something like that had happened to me and I felt really bad about it. And anyway, it was just kind of, A lot of times you wanna talk about management as managing time. 'cause I was doing all these little documentaries at state for education purposes and then I would go home and try to do these things after work in the evening.
I just kind of went through a little period of burnout of like, I don't even wanna look at a video. And then the pandemic happened and the world shut down part of it, like it was you were talking about before. So we were doing this kind of VR at that point. This is like 10 years ago, this early VR film making at this point.
It's been around for years, but the way we were dealing with it, it wasn't really a good way to share it, unfortunately. And I would tell Luke to Missy, I'd be like, I'm gonna make this. And I still say this, actually, if I do something with somebody, I'm just like, I'm gonna make this thing. It's possible nobody will see it, you know?
But it's there. We work at NC State University College of Design, and that's a big kind of recognized college of design school. And we would kind of piggyback on our friends there to show 'em. So we were doing like little popups, you know? But there really wasn't a great way, which is kind of the way they used to do it back in like the fifties and sixties and seventies.
Like old, independent filmmakers would bring films around, which is kind of was like, oh, that's kind of cool. We can do that, but you can only get so far. So the tech at the time was awesome, but we had to find ways to share it in the way that you want it to be shared. Like if you make a 360 video, most likely you want it to be shown in the headset at that time.
And I could show it to people on the phone, but wouldn't have the same impact. So anyway, pandemic happened and everyone, you know, the world stopped. You know, it was at home like most people. I was probably looking at Instagram. I kept seeing these photos of this guy that, you know, that this guy was taking places in, there's a road in Raleigh, like, it's like main, one of the main roads is called Capitol Boulevard.
And Capitol Boulevard is not a pretty street, you know, it's rundown. Lots of, you know, stores are opening, closing, you know, and strip malls and traffic. You know, it's just loud, noisy, you know, not really a place you wanna hang out. And I kept seeing these photos that were awesome and they were just really beautiful to look at and they were taken on this street and followed him.
And eventually I reached out to this guy and his name was Ben Harris and that's what my documentary is about, that showing here at SONA. And he wasn't someone I knew beforehand. And a friendship that's kind of built up. We've met and we still hang out and we've met some other people and we go out and do like photo walks and stuff like that.
He was an awesome guy and lucky enough that we got along and were able to kind of build this friendship and. So I made this video about him and, and the 360 aspect of that, the technological aspect was like 10 years later we weren't dealing with these cameras that were kind of limiting at the time. And now headsets are kind of, they're out there like people own them instead of like before where it still isn't limiting the have a, here, look at this headset, yes, but it's probably more likely, oh, you got a headset here, watch this video. The 360 aspect was just like, these awesome photos are coming from this quote unquote, this ugly street and these finding beauty there. And that's why I wanted the show is like these awesome photos and then show where he's taking them.
And that's where I wanted to place the viewer was like, all right, we'll follow him as he takes these photos and you see like he's in a strip mall, like he's on the side of the. Rush hour on this busy road, but he is making these awesome photos, and that's what I wanted to show with it. If we're gonna talk about technology, I have to point out, like at State we have this room in our library, DH Hill, there is a room called the Some Room and Visualization Gallery, and it's basically a 360 room.
So you kinda walk in the door and then the door closes behind you and there's like eight projectors or so that just project everything around you. So it's like taking the 360 image out of the headset and putting it into a room. And what I love about it, and I was working with that room because of one of the projects at State and they were kind of little simple videos of like, you know, hey, here's a meditative clip of being in the forest, you know, or of being lakeside or something like that.
But it was offering, the project for the course for state was offering me, was teaching me how to use this room. I was learning about this room. I love that room because like I said, it takes you, it takes the viewer out of the headset. You're not isolated by yourself in a headset. I could bring 10 or 12 people into this room and we can watch a film at one time and talk about it. And so when I decided to do this video with Ben, with Ben Harris, I was like, I'm gonna shoot for this room. That's actually where I wanna show it. And that's how I shot it.
It's like, so I shot it for this room. And it's funny 'cause the headset version, which is showing a Sona right now, is, I almost didn't do it because I was so focused on this room, but I was just kinda like, oh well, I mean, it's there. It's only a couple clicks away, you know, why wouldn't I do it? Because it's not showing 24 hours a day in this room. Once again, you show it and then it's kind of not there anymore. But headset, it still exists. I can go show it to other people like we are now where I can have another popup, you know?
And so, but it offered a whole new set of questions to, you know, with the technology of like, you know, how I may format something for a headset, how I formatted something for that room, even though it's the same video. But it's a different experience being in that room. It's tweaked a little bit more for that room where something is tweaked a little bit more. For the headset, I had people talk about how they were seeing things in the headset versus how they were seeing things in a room and it offered, I was like, ah, I never thought about this thing. So these are my questions that I have to think about next time, like next time I'm shooting something for that room or wanna show something in a room. Yeah. I'm sure there are some bits of that question I did not answer.
Hales Wilson
That was like perfect. No, thank you. Just from the aspect of like who you're like covering in this, like within this project, but also I do appreciate the aspects on the managerial side. 'cause sometimes that is like with in the arts, you, you, especially if you don't have funding, if you don't have the team, y ou're doing it by yourself.
Arthur Earnest
Like I said, it's important because that was always a tough question 'cause I would respond to, if I was putting things in or submitting to film festivals and it'd be like budget. I'm like, well, I guess I could put the camera like 500 bucks for the camera, but these productions are so small at this point.
It's just me or whoever's helping me record it and then the person, and so it's just our time and then it's the time to edit it, the time leading up to it for the scale that I'm operating with on these, it's mainly about time. These are things that I would, even when I was doing short films, like more script driven stuff, I'd write the script and I'd have to get actors and we'd do these things.
I'm not rich, I don't come for money. And I would say that I used to do that with short films. I'd be like, look, this is all labor of love for all of us. We're going to make it, I'll give us some pizzas, but we're gonna spend this weekend doing a short film or whatever. And it was be like, anything I get from this, you get from it, you know? And you hope at that time it was like IMDB, we can always put something in there or, but you know, maybe it gets shown in the festival, you know, get older. Like I said, I don't know how to describe this Barbie, and it's when I was younger, you know, when I was your age or a little bit, you know, just a tad older and I was doing these things, these short films or stuff like that, I would do that.
But now as I've gotten older, I'm kind of less timid to do that because I want to make sure everyone's getting something from it, that managerial side of it. And so now I'd probably be a little less confident to do that. And like I said, I don't know if that's an age thing or just the point of view is slightly changed, you know?
I think it might be just a point of view is slightly changed. I'm lucky enough to know people that there are other filmmakers that are more successful than I am in this front, you know, a buddy of mine is, you know, stuff shot, stuff like feature length films he's made in the festivals. He's got some like little stuff, you know, small scale, nothing big that's made into cans or anything.
I'm still amazed his name is Evan and he's an awesome filmmaker. He also works at State now too, but he still is, you know, Hey, I'm gonna make a feature film over here, like outside of work. I'm old enough now and he's younger than me. So when I first met him, that was my thing. I kind of met him in that burnout period. Like I was “don't become like me.” But yeah, I mean, but like I said at the beginning, there's a, if you're able. That side is still needed. You know, because the galleries, there's people that have you surrounded that maybe they can help you get your work out there.
You know, like I said, that doesn't happen. If you don't, it would just be harder unless you have the people that are willing to put their cell on the line or to get your stuff out there. Whether or not that's just like talking about it, you know, if how you define a manager, you know, if they're just like pitching your stuff to people and then it gets out there, you know, and maybe it goes to a gallery or maybe it goes somewhere else.
I'm trying to work on his project now with a buddy of mine who's a sculptor. It's funny to hear him sometimes talk about managers and like he has a manager, but then he'll talk about galleries.
Hales Wilson
I think you said the two things that I thought were very profound, especially a lot of stuff you said you were doing in your earlier career, but it is like a labor of love, honestly. Like sometimes you're juggling many hats at once. You're probably not getting sleep, not eating right, 'cause you're trying to create this project or whatever, or just bring these people together to capture this artist's story. But I think, and I don't know if this is to your point earlier, maybe now that if you're in more of a leadership position where you're bringing in the next generation or just helping out other folks, it can be a little scary 'cause you're like, you don't want them to have to go out without eating. You don't want them to have to go without sleeping. So it's a situation where you're kind of having to pivot a little bit to take care of like, this like family and this community that you're almost cultivating. One of the things that's a little bit like kind of scary, right?
Seeing a lot of like nationally with our arts institutions, but also just locally, you know, people are having to change the names of programs or their values because they need to get this funding. Yeah. In order to stay alive, they have to say no to an artist because that artist said something on social media that they can't just get apart with, and it's a little sad 'cause at the end of the day we just want to create, we wanna put on a platform for other people to create and do their thing. Or just, you know, we find this really cool person and they're, even if they're not, like I have to, you know, put my art out there. We want to share them.
Arthur Earnest
It’s a scary time. And yeah, they're cutting all the arts funding and stuff like that and that's very scary. But I also think that if you're an artist and you have things to say. You're gonna find a way to say it. Hopefully. If I love art history, like if I found an artist, I'd usually go back and think about Banksy or I'm blanking out on names, but this thought out there. But it was like graffiti artists in the seventies. Nobody was stopping them. They weren't funded. They were getting out there until they maybe got a little famous later. But I think it's the same thing. It is like no matter what your art is, you're still gonna hopefully. Not stop doing it.
Hales Wilson
Yeah.
Arthur Earnest
You know? it may not be on the scale that you want it to be, but it can also like especially political art.
Hales Wilson
But I did want to, especially your point on your last, talking about how you intended this film about the artist who's taking the pictures of the for this room that you have at NC State and then kind of later transferring over to VR. That to me, that was super cool. 'cause I originally just thought all VR could only be in the headset. So I was even like, how do you plan for what you're gonna see? Where do you see immersive storytelling, whether it's the VR or the 360 technology, where do you see it going within the next five, ten years, even if there's technological barriers to where it might not get that far, financial barriers.
Arthur Earnest
Yeah. I think the stories are always there to tell no matter what medium you choose. I think about how coming from traditional, I sometimes will look at one of these 360 films that I've made and I was just like, man, it would be a completely different film if I had done it in this other format.
I think technologically wise, the cameras are better now, and of course, cameras always get better, but I think we're at a point where it's just like, I don't know how much better they can get. And they're also kind of affordable. Well, I shot this one on an instant, 360 X4, maybe like a $500 camera, which is a lot of money.
But in the long run, it's a tool that if you're gonna use a lot, it's not a high price. There's also Black magic, like it's a VR 180 that's like $30,000. I think the technology just gets better, but I also think that you shouldn't be hiding behind the technology. I don't want that to be a barrier for me or anyone else.
I also do photography and all this stuff, you know, right? And it's funny, like I will, my buddy and me were sitting, we had done a photo walk early in the morning and we were just kinda chilling out at a coffee shop. And this guy comes up and he saw that camera and he was just like, Hey, I'm just getting started in photography, what camera should I get? And it was just like I took out my phone. You know, it's just like if you have a phone, you wanna take a photo, just take a photo, because actually I do have a nice like, professional camera for photography and video, but like 99% of what I like posts and stuff are from my phone.
I edit it in a certain way to make it look like it's film and stuff. People seem to like them. Sometimes people are like, Hey, what film, what camera are you using? But anyway, for 360, like I said, the technology's gonna change over time. It's just a tool that you can use. It depends on what story you're trying to tell.
And that could be an image, that could be a sculpture, that could be a mural. It could be a video. It just depends on how you're trying to tell it. And you know the story, I think for 360 headsets are there. The headsets will always be there. Well, now, and they're changing formats now because they're getting smaller, like, you know, like ray bands and stuff like that.
Mm-hmm. It's funny, I made a joke about like not really liking headsets yesterday. I actually do like headsets because if you watch a 360 video, it's kind of cool you're surrounded because that is the isolation part of it because you put the headset on and the world around you kind of disappears as you're surrounded by this whole other space in that headset.
And like I said, now focusing on like smaller pieces of wearables like Ray Band and I've watched like 360 films on those and they're not as immersive because you can still have, the world is still there, so I like headsets for that, but. Like I said before, I fell in love with a visualization gallery because it took it outta the headset and you can watch it with, you know, like you and I could be in that room and watch it together and we could just like talk about it as it's going on.
And that's why I love those rooms and I love the ability to take it outta the headset and to share it that way. Just the fact that that room exists and it has a sister, the Sam Rubin Visualization Gallery on NC State's campus is at DH Hill. That's one of the libraries. But on the other campus of NC State is a hunt library? It's kind of, it has a sister room over there. It's called the teaching invis room, where it's not a complete 360, it's more like 200, 215 degrees. So it's like shoulder to shoulder, which is also awesome. And I'm actually the next thing, and I'm shooting, trying to do one about a sculptor friend of mine, but also wanna show it in that room, because I'm trying to shoot it in VR 180, so not a complete 360.
Trying to shoot it in that format, you know? 'cause I just wanna experiment with it and I think it like kind of can picture what his work in that, in my mind. That's why I'm kinda like, ah, I think that would be a good way to film it. And we're just finding time to do it, managing time and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean, technology is gonna be there. I still think it's just like the story of if you want to create something. Hopefully you can find a way to create it.
Hales Wilson
I think that's super cool, especially because me like growing up, like first generation college students, I'm doing all this myself on scholarship and whatnot. So when they first started kind of releasing like the VR things, I was like, oh, I'm never gonna be able to get one of those until I came here. We actually had a class that encouraged us to, it was like, Ovation. Yeah. It's like practice, like public speaking. So we actually had to do that.
And I remember it was so crazy. I'm in my room and I'm gonna be honest, it was a little nauseating, like the first couple of times getting used to it, but to me it was just, I was like, wow, my university just has 30 of these. That's crazy. And then even the, I discovered the, what's called the sandbox.
VR, those, that was completely trippy to me. Like you just go into a place and it's just an open room, you know? And they hook you up with all this stuff they give you. A plastic gun, but for some reason when you're in the thing, it's a real, I, I think for me personally, a lot of this stuff, like, I don't know if it just kind of came out marketing wise, this entertainment thing, but like coming here and being able to have conversations like this, it's, it really is, wow, this is a new immersive art form.
It's cool how it connects people. Like how you were saying earlier, people who've never seen the beach or never seen the Amazon or something, they can now. See these things, and I know that another researcher for AMT Lab , she did a story one time about some type of immersive technology that allows you to go to these caves in China that you're no longer able to go to 'cause whatever.
But it's this cool, this aspect of something that some people who have never seen before couldn't, or now you can't go there. It's now lives forever in this immersive world, which is awesome.
Arthur Earnest
I got two things there, all right. First, I'll get this outta the way real quick. There is this for immersive media. There is this like preservation aspect to it. Like the projects that I mentioned before, like Luke in his studio, he's no longer in that studio. He has a new studio. So that was the whole reason I shot in 360 was just like, man, your studio is like a representation of one of your paintings. So that studio is preserved now.
Link, that installation was a one time installation. It's put up again. And like I said, as an audience member walking by the street, they were never gonna be allowed to go into that room itself because it was like motion detection and stuff like that outside. So it was meant to be experienced outside, but the installation was one time it's there. Missy in the studio, like recently, within the last month, they announced to Mitch Easter who owns the studio. He announced that he was gonna sell it. So it was like, well. We've got it and it's in 360, so you put a headset on or you watch it in that room and it looks like you're in that space. So like you were just talking about the caves, like for Ben and Capitol Boulevard, it's, you know, like one of the aspects he does with his photos are just like, you know, hey, this street is constantly changing.
So this photo, that's how it was at this second and the 360 that he and I made is the same way. It's like we could probably put the headset on and look at it, and then I could probably go to that exact space or that exact location where I go home to Raleigh and be like, well, completely different now. So there is that aspect, and that is the cool thing about 360 is just like if one of the ideas of it is just the kind of place you are in a location you've never been there, doesn't exist anymore.
But even for a photo, it's just kind of like, you know, that's why people love photos. It's just like you see a photo and it's just like, oh, this photo was like 30 years ago and this place isn't here anymore and it may not be a 360. You're just looking at something in that frame. This is one of the cool things about working in education for Delta.
Like I said, working for Mike who was introducing 360, I've been lucky enough to join him on that journey where it's just kind of like, man, we have brought so much like 360 stuff to NC State and people see it and they want it to be part of their courses. Like you said, we brought these caves in China. We did a project with one of the parks and rec and tourism instructors.
His name's Nathan Williams and I remember I said I was experimenting with that room for one of the projects. The project was basically like he wanted his students to learn how to. Take one of the cheaper cameras that I filmed on. He bought a bunch of those and then he has an assignment with his students to get one of those cameras and over spring break or whenever the assignment is, they go to a place that's important to them or they go to a place where they think it's cool.
They could park some rec courses and tourism courses. And basically they film 360 and they kind of talk about that area. And for that reason, he wanted to use VR and have his students use VR to encourage people to get outside. So he wanted to encourage to use this technology to share a location, whether it's a library, whether it's a park, whatever it is.
You could see this in 360 like you were there and hopefully that would be enough, like, you know, ah yeah, I never knew this place existed, you know. And then maybe someone goes there and it's only because they saw it in 360. The Ovation thing is also funny 'cause we recently just finished up a project.
The instructor's name is Sarah Egan Lauren and for this one course is teaching public. Public speaking is a big part of it, and that's what we did. And she didn't like those like programs because it was just like uncanny valley, or sometimes it was like icons, you know, like a Lego person looking back at you or something like that.
And it wasn't realistic and it was a simple idea. Her and Mike did a pilot like a couple years ago. I'm gonna film in the class where they're doing their speeches, their public speaking presentations. So we filmed in those classes. Sometimes we have 20 minutes to film, like in between classes there is a whole class of students, and we would film that.
We filmed that in 360, and then you put in a headset and it's like we filmed it at the podium in the classroom with the class, and then they put on a headset and there's real people in front of them that are staring at them, staring at the camera, staring at the viewer like they're in the audience. And so you get to practice your speech.
Oh, or your presentation or whatever. And we also, Delta itself actually has a lot of, I only do media, but there's programmers and developers and instructional designers, and we all work together for these projects. For this one, for the public speaking one, you put the exit on, you see this class, and it's like you're standing.
Even if you look behind you, you'll see the whiteboard and stuff like that. You can see your slides and you can talk to the audience and look up, you got your notes there, one of the slides. So I think that's a big part. Like if I hadn't been at Delta, at NC State. And hadn't worked with Mike and hadn't been introduced to this technology, would I be here today?
No, because that's, like I said, it's another thing of being lucky to surround yourself with the people that can offer you stuff, but I don't mean it that way. It's just like you're lucky enough that people do things around you and you can be part of that. And that's a, you know, good thing about Delta. It showed me like, oh, creatively.
I was like, oh man, this technology is pretty cool and I can do stuff with it, and I get to do stuff with it at work. It allows me, because like I said, when I first entered, like for the PRT course, it was just kinda like, you know, here I'll put you in the forest and you can show it in that room during an exam.
Some people can kind of like relax, but I wanna tell a story of this stuff and it's lucky enough that I was able to do it outside of work. And then I bring that back into work. And I was talking about that industrial design project earlier. And that's what I'm doing with that is like I could get to make like some documentaries or you know, profiles of people and I get to do it in 360 or I get to do it in 180 or I get to do it traditionally whether or not you're able to tell a story.
Hales Wilson
Now, I'm thinking of, oh, there's all this cool stuff that, like my friends who've only ever lived in a big city or the big international like population that come here and I'm like, y'all need to go down south. I feel like we have to ask this question of everyone being at CMU. AI, your thoughts. Are there, does AI play a role in any of your work or just any day life?
Arthur Earnest
AI, honestly, as a creator, I kind of see it as a tool. I don't think it's going away. Do we need to use it for everything? No, but I still think as artists that I think we're the, as an artist, we're the ones that in a certain way can use it correctly.
Like I said, it's in my mind, it's a tool that's there. It's a tool to be used. It's not something I wanna give my life away to it. Are we gonna see video? Yes. Actually, Tim Perman, who I mentioned earlier, he's found ways to use it in his productions, whether it is image generation or it's more a producer role, but he's used it to like, oh yeah, I need a schedule, like a shooting schedule.
These are the times that everyone's available and it gets him. So he's found ways to use it. Like production, you know, pre-production. Actual production. Have I used it at work? Yes, but I don't ever, it is a tool, like I keep saying, I'm never gonna, I've never used it. I've never taken it at face value. As a human.
You still have to look at it. And is that true? You still have to judge whether or not it's worthy of what you're trying to do. I worked for a university. I work with instructors, I create media, the video, whatever. I've done projects for thermodynamics.
I'm not an engineer, but I think I've used it once on this other project where I was just kinda like I, I can see the video I wanna make, but I don't know all the information because I'm not an engineer.
I know every law of thermodynamics. I kind of put that information into AI and I got like, seven or eight scripts and basically for this video, I was like, this is what I'm trying to do. And it was more kind of experimenting too on my part. What it did was give me, it gave me a bunch of ideas and then I put those as a human, took those ideas and made a script from it, you know. It was just, I was just using these as kind of idea generators. They were just like, that's kind of cool. But it wasn't like copying and pasting everything, 6, 7, 8 scripts into one. I took these ideas and I rewrote them myself, and I think. Like I said, it's just, I used it as a tool. Is it gonna take people's jobs?
There will be some jobs that probably will be, we can just do easier for that. Does it suck? Yes. But I think, you know, I can also say like the internet, I'm old enough to where when I started college in like 91, I still had to go to a computer lab. You know, nobody really had their personal computers like they did today.
And people have those same arguments. They're like, they're gonna cheat on the internet, you know? So they're gonna look it up. Guess what happens? Now you look it up.
Hales Wilson
Yeah.
Arthur Earnest
You know, it's part of everyday life. And I'm not saying that, you know, give me the AI over it, Lord. I could do without, but it's as a tool, it's gonna make certain things easier. And that will be on the creation side. Also, on the artistic side.
Hales Wilson
I appreciate that. I agree. I think it's a tool. I think it's definitely like a tool, depending on how you can use it. You can like, make your workload easier, maybe enhance the way that you, I don't know, think about things process wise, but I've heard also people call it a collaborator, and that's where I'm like, okay, you're crossing the line a little bit.
Yeah, because I have the opinion. This might be controversial. This is my personal opinion. I don't think AI is going as far as the arts is not going to replace good art. Yeah. Like we know that AI has been around forever. It's just how generative AI is, how accessible it is now where it's in Google and ChatGPT and Facebook has so much of it embedded in their little games. So now it's just accessible. So I now think people are like, oh, AI is coming, blah, blah, blah. I think if we were just a little bit more transparent about some of the tough questions, but I think that's like us as like a country period.
It's like we don't like to have the tough questions or the tough conversations, so things get pushed under the rug or we're like, oh, we'll worry about it and the future is here. So I think if we were a little bit more transparent, like, Hey, this is how AI works. Uses up a lot of water and a lot of energy, so maybe we should be more transparent about taking up fresh water and stuff like that, but also teaching people how to use it.
I was working on a paper about AI in schools, and I don't know if you've heard about Alpha Schools. They're private schools that are popping up in different places. I think mostly like Boston, but I think there's a couple in like Texas. They're private schools, but essentially they. Remove teachers and like they do about two hours of AI learning.
They still have like human guides, like people who make sure they're on the right track, but they do like their two hours of learning and then the rest of the day is spent arts and crafts, some of these other things. And I thought it was a really interesting concept. One, because as I said, it's a private school, so you know, only a certain people are gonna be able to access that.
But also this aspect of how education in our country period has always been. Like inequitable and just so many aspects as you know, as like a southerner. But if we are embracing AI, if we are using it, we just need to be more transparent about how it's used.
Arthur Earnest
Yeah. I'm a big proponent of public education as somebody who comes out of public education. What it afforded me, it goes back to like the people that were surrounding me, like I said, yeah. We are from the south. Like I grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina. It's a military town. It's Camp La June, and my dad was a white guy from Georgia. My mom was from the Philippines. In Jacksonville, mostly everyone around me was military. You know, had people from Japan, had people, you name a place there. There were black people, white people. It was one of those things where we were surrounded by one another and we all hung out and that's what a public school forwarded me on some level. It's just like that base, like everyone should have that base level of education though I'm always that public education is so important.
And we get these other schools. Yeah, I didn't know about Alpha schools. I guess if you can afford certain things, I guess, why not? But it's like a lot of these schools, you're kind of, especially if an AI, I don't even know what to think about that, but it's like, well, who's feeding the AI? What information is it getting?
And then the other one is just like, who's making the money off it? Do I want AI teaching kids? That's the last thing I would do, you know, as a tool to clean up some audio. Sure. This, I'm all for it, but no, I'm not handing it. I wouldn't, I also think about what are you losing in that part? Yeah. I made a joke about audio.
Like as a tech, as a filmmaker, I admitted earlier it's like audio is not my forte. If I can hand it off to somebody else, I will do it. But yeah, if I have a tool that cleans up audio, I would take that. But I also think about, like I said, once again, I'm old enough. Like I lived at a time when we didn't have personal computers, we didn't have cell phones.
And I think about now where there's certain things, which as a kid growing up, like I, how many phone numbers I used to know at that point, you know? And now I know my phone number. I don't know anyone else's phone number. And that's one thing that got lost and was kinda like, oh, there are certain things like technology helps with, it makes it easier, but then it may take away something else. AI will be the same. And those kids growing up in those schools, who knows.
Hales Wilson
Okay. Do you have any advice for current students or anyone who would want to get more into immersive art of filmmaking or storytelling overall? What would you say to them?
Arthur Earnest
I would just say, just do it. I was talking about privilege earlier, and that's kind of a privileged answer, but a lot of these tools, hopefully that they're out there and they're able, if you find them, or lucky enough to come across 'em, especially if you're at a university, your library probably has, our library at State I know has like, oh, I can get a 360 camera or I can get a headset. So if the tools, if they're available to you, grab 'em. Just try it.
And also like that's going back, I mean, the camera I shot this video on, or this, the documentary that's showing here. It was on a. Consumer Camera 360 X4, X5 is out. Now they're a small consumer camera, like a GoPro. You could find one, but that goes back to my thing. Use the tools that are available to you if you have a story to tell.
If you wanna create something, you will find a way to create it. And it might not be exactly how you want it to be, but I think that's also part of being an artist. If you wanna be a photographer, I have a camera on my phone. It's always with me. I'm always taking photographs. Does that make me any less?
Then someone went with a $4,000 camera. I'm sure somebody would say so, but I'm still taking photos. I'm still putting 'em out there. People like them, and that's how art is. If you're a painter, you'll find a way to paint. Maybe you're not getting the most expensive paint in there. Maybe you're just getting like, oh, I found this can of paint at some work site.
You'll find a way to do it for 360 stuff. If you wanna do 360 stuff. I think there's a way to do it. You can borrow a camera and you do it and just play around with it. I think basically what I'm doing is like the documentary that's showing here, the ones I've made, I think they're fairly, technically, they're not complicated.
I'm not having like swooshing graphics or anything because I don't know how to do a lot of those things. I don't really care to do a lot of those things. I record the interview and on these days you could probably do that on your phone Also, I'm able to edit it. And then I have that, the story there that they're telling me.
And then however I make the images that come along with it, whether it's traditionally or traditional film or 360 or 180, you use it. It's kind of hard if you wanna be a storyteller to tell the stories. You know, there was a thing like long time ago, the nineties, I think about the 1990s, everyone wanted to be a filmmaker, but this one filmmaker was basically just like, Hey, you wanna be a filmmaker? Call yourself a filmmaker and then do it. There's a lot of people making stuff you may not see. It doesn't mean that it's not there.
Hales Wilson
I think, yes. One of the things I got from that was the art wall. We survive at the end of the day, whether you have money, whether you have the supplies, whether we're in a difficult time in our history. People are still always gonna wanna create because there's always gonna be stories that need to be told.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Arthur, or joining me I should say. It's been a pleasure to hear about your journey as a storyteller and your insights on how immersive technology is reshaping the way we think about narrative and the audience experience.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Thank you for listening to this episode of Tech in the Arts. If you found this episode to be informative, educational, or inspirational, be sure to check out our other episodes and send this to another arts or technology aficionado in your life. If you want to know more about arts management and technology, check out our website at amt-lab.org, or you can email us at info@amt-lab.org. You can follow us on Instagram at techinthearts, or on Facebook and LinkedIn at our full name Arts Management and Technology Lab.
Our season runs from September through May, so feel free to follow us on your preferred podcast app, be it iTunes, Spotify, or YouTube.