Bicontinental Bavarian living in Santa Barbara. Classical music and nature enthusiast. Immersive technology company founder.

I feel lucky to have spent more than a decade of my professional career each in classical music and in XR, gaining a dual perspective on what immersive technologies can and can’t do for the classical music world.

My company WorldViz provides unparalleled immersive and collaborative virtual reality technology solutions for professional applications including academic research, social interaction research, vision science, spatial cognition research, safety training, interactive education, sales & marketing, design review, and product visualization.

Over two decades, our team has been delivering multi-user immersive virtual reality lab solutions to top universities and organizations all over the world, including Stanford University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, University of British Columbia, National Institutes of Health NIH, Massachusetts General Hospital MGH and Harvard Medical School, Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, University of Oxford, Max Planck Society, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, ETH Zurich, and many more.

As a music journalist, I published in print and online media including Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, and Neue Musikzeitung, providing reviews of classical music, and interviewing classical musicians such as Hélène Grimaud, Leif Ove Andsnes, Nikolai Lugansky, Arcadi Volodos, Olli Mustonen, and many more. My work also included writing reviews of newly released recordings, and providing live performance reviews from Munich's main concert halls, the Philharmonie am Gasteig, Herkulessaal, and Prinzregententheater.

Extended reality (XR) - just as classical music - is a powerful immersive medium. Today we see the beginnings of XR being used to telling stories that bring people closer to experiencing what it feels like to be a musician and to perform on stage.

Immersive technology projects by the Berlin Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Sydney Opera, and the ever pioneering Björk show how XR can be applied toward breaking down cultural barriers that have kept classical music insulated from too many societal groups.

What makes immersive technology so powerful is 'presence' - the experience of being enveloped by a compellingly realistic 3D world. XR’s power to evoke 'presence' is why I call it the ultimate human-machine interface.

The opportunities for leading classical music organizations to leverage immersive technology across live events, brand management, and education will be enormous as consumer XR devices reach critical mass. Classical music organizations will reach broader subscription audiences by streaming immersive concerts into living rooms via 360° video and spatialized sound technologies; concert goers will teleport themselves directly to front-row-seats and even onstage. In visual arts, museums will enrich physical exhibition spaces with augmented reality information; visitors will curate their own personalized virtual exhibit tours in limitless spaces; and composers as well as visual artists will conquer immersive technology as its own art form.

Today I’m part of this journey providing immersive technology arts consulting to the pioneering organizations paving the way.