Fritz Heede is a Los Angeles-based music composer/producer and multi-instrumentalist who weaves eastern and western influences and electronica into dramatic and evocative works. He is best known for his music for feature films and television specials like NBC’s Emmy winning Mystery of the Sphinx where he worked with Charlton Heston. This launched his Egyptian period that lead him to go to Giza and record in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid and more recently the SyFy Event Aliens On The Moon.
He is an accomplished guitarist having specialized in electric guitar and flamenco guitar. He is competent with the Indian sitar and the Turkish saz and has skills with exotic hand drum percussion. Though, he works mainly with piano and electronic keyboards, he prefers to incorporate acoustic instruments in his music for their organic articulations.
Fritz performed with the World music ensemble Mystic Journey for five years and has worked with notable artists like Jon Anderson of YES. Most recently he has teamed up with Sangeeta Kaur and is featured on her new album and Mantra Opera Show Niguma.
Michael PerriconeMichael Perricone is a Master Tibetan Singing Bowl Artist and musician. He has performed at the Hammer, MOCA, Fowler Museums, yoga studios, private retreats and festivals, and for several movies and internet sites. He is the recording artist and producer of Savasana Bowls Live, Journey of Seven Bowls, Sacred Bowls and Diana Winstons’ Mindfulness Meditation CD series, and Jahna’s “Into the Mindful Wild” album. He is also former owner and CEO of Lotus Post, the highest rated post facility on the west side (imdb).
Jahna Perricone, CMF, is a Certified Mindfulness Facilitator through UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center and part of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She is also an accomplished singer and voice teacher who has uncovered a resilient ability to focus, create and perform through her personal Mindful Meditation practice. She is Director of Mindfulness Programs at C3, Center for Conscious Creatives; a node for the Millennium Project, and has been leading Mindfulness classes and events through collaborations with MARC at UCLA, Loyola Marymount College, The Fowler Museum, Sonic Sunday events as well as private retreats and multiple private group settings. ‘Spring Into Mindfulness! A Beginners Guide to Mindful Meditation’ is featured on popular online sites and she is releasing her mindful music album, ‘Into The Mindful Wild’ this fall. She is the creator and founder of m2: An Immersion Into Music and Mindfulness.
Vocal Instructor/UCLA Certified Mindfulness Instructor
Director of c3 Mindfulness Programs
https://consciouscreativity.com/about1/mindfulness/
’Spring Into Mindfulness’ http://tinyurl.com/oqg6csh
SoulSong Artist
Lifted Music V: http://tinyurl.com/mfspvc5
www.jahnamusic.com
As a filmmaker, VR content creator, and live visual performer, Tim Hix’s visuals are presented and performed globally. Currently Mr. Hix is on staff at Vortex Immersion Media as VJ, full dome video tech, and Immersive content creator.
He perpetually expands his boundaries in a variety of visual genres. His background includes producing videos for cosmetic surgeons, directing for television (recent feature on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network), as well as touring with bands and VJing stadium raves. In 2013, Mr. Hix was visual designer for Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti North American tour. He has worked and collaborated with musical artists in several genres including: Grammy award winner Taylor Dayne, Oprah superstar Jake Simpson, American Idol Finalist Syesha Mercado, C3 Futuredome Festival 2013, Alexander Hacke (Einstenzende Neubaten), Larry Thrasher (Psychic TV), Television and stage star Megan Hilty, Chuck Dukowski (Black Flag), Wino & The Obsessed, Lynn Johnston, Belinda Carlisle (the Go Go’s), and Deap Valley. EDC NYC (2015), The Cannes International Film Festival (2009), EDC Las Vegas (2015), The New York Independent Film Festival (2008), Sasquatch Music Festival (2013), Bonaroo (2013), Beyond Wonderland (2015), The Hammer Museum, Autumn Lights, IFQ Film and Video Festival (2011), LA Pride Fest (2012), The Whisky, The Roxy, The Colony, Rolling Stone LA, Tipitinas, The Mint, Irving Plaza, Catalina’s jazz club, The Smell, Hard Rock Cafe (Las Vegas), the handbag factory, The Complex, The Echo/Echoplex, and The Vortex Immersion Dome.
Audri PhillipsAudri Phillips is a visualist/3d animator based out of Los Angeles with a wide range of experience that includes over 25 years working in the visual effects/entertainmnet industry in studios such as Sony, Rhythm and Hues, Digital Domain, Disney and Dreamworks feature animation. Starting out as a painter she was quickly drawn to time based art. Always interested in using new tools she has been a pioneer of using computer animation/art in experimental film work including immersive performances. Now she has taken her talents into the creation of VR. Samsung recently curated her work into their new Gear Indie Milk VR channel.
Her latest immersive work/animations includes; Her latest immersive work/animations includes; multi-media animations for “Implosion a Dance Festival” 2015, Full dome Concerts in the Vortex Immersion Dome, “Relentless Universe”, “Alive at the Vortex” with the well known composer/musician Steve Roach. “Migrations” in which she collaborated with composer No’a Winter Lazerus and Blue Apple in which she collaborated with Stefan Wenta, choreographer. She also created animated content for the dome for the TV series, “Constantine” shown at the 2014 Comic-Con convention. Several of her Fulldome pieces, Migrations and Relentless Beauty have been juried into “Currents” The Santa Fe International New Media Festival and Jena Full dome Festival in Germany
Her work has also been shown at such places as; The Young Projects Gallery, The Los Angeles Film Forum at the Egyptian Theater, Imersa Summit,Siggraph Animation Festival, Full Dome Festival, Siggraph Video Review, Not Still Art Film Festival, with the Louise Reichlin Dance company and others. Besides numerous galleries her paintings have been shown in Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” video, The Beastie Boys, “Shadrach”(which she also art directed) and “Whatsupwitu” an Eddie Murphy, Michael Jackson animated video(which she also art directed), and Konchalosky’s “Shy People”.
She writes online content and a blog for Intel. Audri is an Adjunct professor at Woodbury University, a founding member of the Los Angeles Abstract Film Group, founder of the Hybrid Reality Studio(dedicated to creating VR content) a board member of the Iota Center and she is also an exhibiting member of the LA Art Lab. In 2011, Audri became an AIR: Artist in Residence of Vortex Immersion Media and the c3: CreateLAB.
Lazerus is a Grammy-nominated, 12-time multi-gold and platinum award-winning record producer, composer, artist, musician, and mastering/mix engineer. His early work includes the recording of Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly which was nominated for seven Grammy Awards. He has worked with diverse artists such as Micheal Jackson, Martin Scorsese, Pink Floyd and Clint Eastwood. Winter works out of his studio in Beachwood Canyon, Voice of the Silence, and hosts innovative art, consciousness and community events at Besant Lodge. He has worked globally on creative projects from Manhattan to Paris, Iceland to Ireland. His current focus involves work in Virtual Reality, Immersive Domes and Augmented Reality. He has a Master’s degree in Consciousness Studies and is currently completing a novel, a song-cycle, an opera, and a biography about his struggle and success in understanding and resolving a life-long condition called Hashimoto’s Disease.
Bill PullmanActor, Bill Pullman started acting professionally in New York Theater in 1983, and shortly after began his film career that currently spans over seventy features and several television series.
Bill is most recently seen in Independence Day: Resurgence, and Brother Nature (Taran Killam and Bobby Moynihan). Scheduled for release are LBJ (with Woody Harrelson), Battle of the Sexes (with Emma Stone and Steve Carell) and Trouble (with Angelica Houston). Bill has recently shot The Ballad of Lefty Brown (with Tommy Flanagan, Peter Fonda), Walking Out (with Matt Bomer), and a pilot for USA network, The Sinner (with Jessica Biel).
Will Michaelsen doesn’t like being forced to write about himself in the third-person perspective, but is interested in the use of forced perspective in immersive media. He believes that even if sometimes painful, gaining new perspective is the key to understanding, and that understanding is the key to a healthy society.
As an experiential engineer, he experiments with hybridization of physical and virtual realities through a variety of technological means. His hope is that subjecting people to profoundly new experiences can shake up the ingrained thought processes that hold humanity back. To that end, he joined a collective of likeminded artists which became Mapjacks, and eventually led to a LAVA meeting at the Vortex Dome. Soon after, he approached Vortex Immersion Media in 2013, looking to get into the dome space (and out of the pop-music industry). Working part-time as a dome technician he began to learn the basics of the format, while independently exploring other areas of digital media on various projects ranging from heavy-metal band tours to corporate brand activations, and even a “reality” TV competition. After drifting away from the dome for a few years, freelancing under his CutMod moniker, he has returned to join creative forces with Audri Phillips and Winter Lazerus on their brainchild interactive dance piece: Robot Prayers.
www.CutMod.com
Caribay Franke is a Los Angeles based performer and lover of all arts. She began dancing with the Pasadena Civic Ballet School in her youth, studying just about every form of dance she could: ballet, jazz, hip hop, even Russian folk. That training then sparked an interest for all forms of performance from theatre to film to voice over. After receiving her Theatre and Film degrees from the University of Southern California she embarked on her professional career, appearing in short films, music videos, and once even a video game demo (that was a cool one). Additionally she has been choreographing and dancing with Sokamba Performing Arts Company as well as freelance. No matter what the medium, however, she enjoys the collaborative process above all else and is grateful to her friends at Vortex for fostering such an environment.
Charlie KamFounder and CEO of Acme Avatars Inc., a software company that creates interactive, life-like, digital, avatars of humans. He’s on the Advisory Board of the Brink Institute. Charlie is a futurist with a background in biochemistry and music. In 2007 he was the sponsor, organizer, and Master of Ceremonies of the highly successful 3-DAY TRANSVISION 2007 CONFERENCE bringing together over 30 scientists and celebrities from around the world to the Natural History Museum of Chicago to present and discuss technologies that interact with humans for a better future. The event included celebrity icon William Shatner; Director of Engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil; Emmy nominated and award winning actor Ed Begley Jr; Founder of Sirius Satellite Radio and United Pharmaceuticals, Martine Rothblatt; Founder of the X PRIZE Foundation, and Zero-Gravity Corporation, Peter Diamandis; Robotics designer, David Hanson; Chief Science Officer of SENS Research Foundation, Aubrey De Grey; CEO of the Alcor Foundation, Max More; Chairperson of Humanity+, Natasha Vita More; President and CEO of Vortex Immersion Media, Ed Lantz; Director of the Millennium Project, Jerome C. Glenn, and many others. It was at this conference where the idea for the Singularity University was first conceived by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis! It was also where Martine Rothblatt met with David Hanson and went on to create the world’s first interactive sentient robot, BINA48.
Charlie was also one of the executive producers of the film, “Transcendent Man.” In addition, he has composed and sung many futuristic songs including: “I Am the Very Model of a Singularitarian” (Very well-known throughout the Transhumanist community. The music video starring Charlie, is based on Ray Kurzweil’s book, “The Singularity Is Near” . The song was also featured in the movie, “The Singularity Is Near”. The music video can be seen on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hKG5l_TDU8; “Our Cryonic World” (the music video stars Aubrey De Grey, which can be seen on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjTu8AbioiA); “If I Had To Build A Brain” (Based on Ray Kurzweil’s book “How To Build A Mind” can be seen on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdh9Z4zczz0) and many more, including a song forRAADfest, aptly named, “Radical Life Extension!” for which he also made and starred in a music video of: https://youtu.be/G6NHjYxYcCU
He also wrote and performed the song “Bhavishya,” and did a music video for that as well.
Brad Wallace“Paint in the air, fight zombie hordes, live inside a computer game, or stand at the bottom of the sea – I can bring these experiences to you. Provide me with a 10′ x 10′ empty space at your corporate event or in your living room and I’ll put a light saber in your hand so you can deflect laser beams. If guns and lasers are not your thing, I can put you on an 18 hole course playing mini-golf or let you walk like a giant through New York City.”
VR is experienced one person at a time for 3 to 30 minute increments. That lucky person will wear a virtual reality headset that will certainly mess up their hair and makeup but they will be so amazed that none of that will matter.
Brad Wallace has a hard earned degree in dabbling from the Dabologna Institute. He received a degree of far less importance from an astonishingly prominent and expensive school that his parents now regret having paid for. He was a filmmaker for 15 years before quitting in disgust and moving on to dabbling in all things involving the lonesome computer arts. Graphics, photography, web design, virtual reality, effects/animation, apps and dark electronic music are his current freelancements.
Check out his portfolio www.BradWallaceDesign.com
