This weekend marks the launch of a new and unique festival.

This Saturday, Amsterdam will see the first ever virtual reality festival. Named “Zo Niet, Dan Toch” (Dutch for “If not, then anyway”), the festival promises to put “augmented reality and location-based virtual projects on the map.”

“The festival allows visitors a new way of experiencing visual arts, entertainment, film, architecture, theatre, dance and music,” the event says. “The festival explores the virtual stage where nothing is impossible and everyone has access. The ticket is already in your pocket: your mobile phone.”

Visitors can wander around the festival area in the north of Amsterdam and view various VR and AR works with their mobile phone. There are even guided iPad tours for those without a smartphone.

The festival was started by former Layar employee Klasien van de Zandschulp in collaboration with artist Sander Veenhof, whose Layar artwork you may have seen here on the blog before. Many of the festival’s projects have been built using the Layar Creator or Geo Layers.

One of the featured projects is “Pont,” a fun boat docking game developed by Layar developer Blaise Kal. Layar’s R&D lead Ronald van der Lingen will also be at the festival giving tours and demos of Google Glass.

The program for the event has been enhanced with Layar as well, including a special final page which allows for additional content, so the reader can keep reading. In one case, an exhibitor changed the location of her project, so the program was updated with the Layar Creator to show the correct information.

Looking to attend? Here’s everything you need to know…

DATE: September 7th, 2013
TIME: 13:00 to 21:00
SPECIAL EVENING PROGRAM: 18:00 to 21:00
LOCATION: Various locations in Amsterdam Noord - Info desk : Tolhuisweg 5

Make sure your bring your phone, charger and headphones!

We know that you’ve just been itching to sit back and soak up a nice long video about augmented reality, the future and the evolution of technology. Well, your wait is over as we have for you another keynote from Augmented Reality Event 2011 in Santa Clara, California. This time, we’ve got Jaron Lanier who spoke for a good 40 minutes at ARE for the attendees.

Lanier is a computer scientist well-known for ushering in the term “virtual reality.” He helped develop some of the first VR goggles and gloves, and in recent days has worked with Second Life and Xbox Kinnect. He also is a music composer, connoisseur and instrument collector, and he showed off one of his unique instruments at ARE.

At the beginning of his talk, Lanier plays a khene, an ancient Laotian instrument. Lanier says the khene is possibly the first example of digital technology because sounds are created by air flowing through a series of open and shut (on versus off, 1 versus zero) switches. He uses this as a launching point for his discussion of technology, making for a very interesting talk.