Everyone's a Studio: Media, Culture and the Generation Era

For a century, media meant pointing a camera or a microphone at something, and the cost of doing that decided what got made. That constraint is disappearing. Video, music, voices, 3D worlds and playable scenes can now be generated on demand, and captured reality itself is going volumetric: you can walk around inside a recorded moment.

This is a demo & discussion session: which trends are real, which are tech demos going nowhere, and what any of it does to society and culture. Bring your ideas and opinions.

We'll explore-

• The state of generation – video, image, music and voice: what's production-ready and what's still a party trick.
• From flat to volumetric – 3D, gaussian splats and 4DGS, explained plainly, and why they matter beyond the wow factor.
• Games and generated worlds – when environments, characters and story are made on the fly, what's left of a game as an authored thing?
• Entertainment for an audience of one – personalised media versus shared culture. What happens when nobody watched the same thing last night?
• Education – the infinitely patient tutor and the explainer built for exactly you, and whether anyone actually learns more.
• Who makes things now – production cost collapses. What that does to creative work, and who still gets paid.
• Trust and evidence – when any footage can be made, what counts as proof? Provenance, deepfakes, and the liar's dividend.
• The slop problem – infinite supply, finite attention. Do taste and curation become the scarce thing?

No prior background assumed. If you watch, play, make or teach, you have a stake in this.

Afterwards we usually continue over dinner nearby — a good chance to connect with fellow builders and practitioners.