DOK Industry Podcast · DOK Leipzig – International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film

Next Gen XR Rising

·56 min·3 clips

Prodromos Tsiavos says young audiences judge XR against Assassin’s Creed, not against classroom software.

1. DOK Industry Podcast episode Next Gen XR Rising focuses on how young audiences are shaping XR, media literacy, and ethical design. 2. Host Weronika Lewandowska speaks with Dana Melaver, curator of the Neuland exhibition, and Prodromos Tsiavos, head of digital development and innovation at the Onassis Foundation and a senior research fellow at University College London. 3. The episode asks what the industry needs to catch up on when children and teenagers already treat XR as part of their media world. 4. Oliver Scotts of Mercurial Dance describes EmbodyXR, a VR anxiety-management game built to support young people’s mental and physical health. 5. Fanny Fazakosh of RoomXR says the studio co-creates with Gen Z and learned on Missing 10 Hours that young users do not care if it is VR unless it is good. 6. Anna Veres says children respond out loud to her XR and documentary work, and she designs moments that reward looking around or changing their minds. 7. Dana Melaver says Dok Neuland is a free public exhibition with no age restriction, but with content warnings and curator-led mediation. 8. She describes a school preview for 12- to 13-year-olds, a workshop by Leipzig artist Sandra Barth on animation and augmented reality, and a split-format visit that mixed exhibition viewing with making. 9. Melaver says high schoolers are already encountering topics like refugees and domestic workers, so the curatorial issue is not censorship but context. 10. She notes that about a third of the teenagers she asked had a VR headset at home, and she says most of that use is for video games. 11. Prodromos Tsiavos argues that XR now sits inside a continuous mediascape, not a separate device category, and says 2025-2026 immersion is very different from the headset model of a decade ago. 12. He points to oral and audio interfaces, saying they let children engage with media from a very young age. 13. He says innovation in creative and educational settings is based on tinkering, playing, and breaking things, not simply reaching market-ready products. 14. Tsiavos says Onassis works with both shipping and investment operations on artificial intelligence and also supports 12 public schools. 15. He says teachers need media literacy before children do, otherwise there is an acoustic separation between the two. 16. Melaver says immersive works need contextual writing, volunteer mediators, artist talks, and sometimes a non-immersive preface to give audiences something to latch on to. 17. Tsiavos says headset-based XR requires attention to face size, orientation, dizziness, and whether a person can physically handle the experience. 18. Melaver and Tsiavos both argue that narrative, not just technology spending, determines whether XR feels engaging, respectful, and educational. 19. The tone is conversational and analytical, with repeated back-and-forths between curation, pedagogy, ethics, and production practice. 20. Listeners interested in XR curation, media literacy, and youth education will get the most from it, while people wanting a purely technical demo may skip it.

As heard by us

A reflective XR conversation about young audiences, institutions, and what immersion now means.

The episode opens with community voices, then moves into a conversation with Weronika Lewandowska, Dana Melawer, curator of the Neulands exhibition, and Prodromos Tsiavos, head of digital development and innovation at the Onassis Foundation.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a conference-room XR conversation about young audiences, schools, gaming, and the institutions shaping what they experience.

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