68 GENIUS INTERVIEW Gaël Seydoux
FEED: Can you start by telling us about your background? GAËL SEYDOUX: I’ve been in the business for nearly 30 years. I started as a computer graphic artist, building images, then managing people building images, then producing games, then as a research director, building the technology. I’ve always been in the middle of technology, art and design. It’s the sweet spot. I’m more on the technology side now. My team is responsible for developing immersive media technologies and innovations at InterDigital. We were part of Technicolor R&I until the unit was acquired by InterDigital last year. FEED: Your lab has been building realistic human avatars that can be used for visual effects, but also “digital selves” for direct human communication. How do you see these technologies being used in the future? GAËL SEYDOUX: I believe we’re no longer only a physical entity. We now have virtual selves. That’s the reason we developed this idea of creating a digital double, a 3D scan of yourself, which will be your digital avatar. I think the whole environment we’ve created, all these technologies that sustain these user experiences, have built up to allow the human being to think differently. We can imagine in the future you will have your real entity – yourself – and then a virtual you evolving in the virtual space, which you need to be connected to. FEED: Does this raise many legal and ethical questions about identify and ownership of data? GAËL SEYDOUX: Yes, any virtual representation of yourself that you build needs to be owned by someone. Do you own it? Does the company that builds it for you own it? That’s the first part, the legal aspect of it. Then the second part is, you want that representation of yourself to be truly you and not controlled, derived or used differently by someone else. So you need to have a secure way to say that your representation is really you and not someone else taking control of it. It’s the same as your Facebook account – you don’t want someone to hack it. FEED: What is it going to be like living more and more in a virtual world? GAËL SEYDOUX: I’m a climber, so it’s very important to me that when I climb I’m
not in the virtual world and that I’m really climbing on those cliffs. I started climbing in Fontainebleau, south of Paris – it’s famous for its bouldering. I started at the age of five or six and have been climbing for nearly 50 years now. When you climb, you have to be very focused on what you’re doing. You have to feel the rock, you have to be aware of what’s happening and the track you choose. So I’m very grounded in the real world. But at the same time, I’ve been helping build virtual worlds for nearly 30 years. And I think it’s time to bridge the worlds together. FEED: And how will that affect storytelling and content creation? GAËL SEYDOUX: I’m very interested in mixed reality. I believe you no longer think in terms of stories. You think in terms of worlds.
IT’S VERY IMPORTANT TO ME THAT WHEN I CLIMB, I’MNOT IN THE VIRTUALWORLD
GOGGLEBOX Goggles have to be updated, made more user-friendly and less expensive before virtual reality can be mass-marketed
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