This video of Dezeen Club's first metaverse meet-up on 7 April features speakers Space Popular, Andrés Reisinger, Amber Jae Slooten and Charlotte Taylor discussing the rise of virtual worlds.
Over 200 attendees represented by avatars joined the meet-up, held at a virtual rooftop bar hosted in spatial video-chat platform Gather.
The event was organised to explore the idea of the metaverse, which is the emerging digital universe where people can experience a parallel life to their real-world existence.
At the event, speakers discussed topics including the rise of cryptocurrencies and NFTs that allow people to trade digital goods, and the impact of the metaverse on the human mind and body.
The Dezeen Club event saw speakers address an audience of over 200 avatars "The virtual world and the real world will integrate," said Slooten, founder of virtual fashion studio The Fabricant. "For me, that is a very interesting part. Where does my physical body end and where does the digital body begin""
"The next step would be to really start to challenge the way that we occupy a body at all," added Hellberg, whose studio Space Popular recently designed a venue for the first-ever architecture conference held in virtual reality.
"In VR if you have a tail, for instance, it takes only a few minutes before your body gets used to having a tail, which means that you'll very soon get ready for having another arm and then all sorts of other body-relate...