Dekker Dreyer
Dekker Dreyer and wife Julia Howe at the 2016 Primetime Emmy Awards
Born
Ryan Dekker Dreyer

(1980-11-16) November 16, 1980
Daytona Beach, Florida, U.S.
Occupation(s)Film and television producer, director, composer, writer.
SpouseJulia Howe

Dekker Dreyer (born November 16, 1980) is an American multi-disciplinary artist working in film, visual art, and music[1] also known as Phantom Astronaut.[2][3] He is a prominent artist in virtual and augmented reality.


Artistry

Dreyer works in a variety of mediums with themes intersecting around the subconscious, folklore, technology, and criticism of social systems. His work can be broadly categorized as surreal and often Fantastique.[4]


Films

Dekker's first film Closed Circuit, was commissioned by Miramax to accompany the feature Naqoyqatsi, was shown at the 2002 Slamdance Film Festival. His first feature-length project The Arcadian, depicts a fascist post-apocalyptic world, starring Lance Henriksen with the music of Perturbator[5][6][7][8] which was released on collector's edition VHS alongside international midnight screenings.[9]

He is also a music video director, his directorial output includes Mystery Skulls official music video for the single Music[10] and Snowblood's "I'm Ready".[11] He collaborated again with Mystery Skulls in 2022 to create holographic visuals for the "Beam Me Up" Tour.

Dreyer has spoken at events such as The Cannes Film Festival and Sundance.[12][13]

Music

Dreyer is known musically as Phantom Astronaut[14][15] and his first EP, Lucid, was released in 2019 as a virtual reality visual album with Good Men Project saying, "The experience evokes a mash-up of Twin Peaks and 2001 with a Sigur Ros soundtrack produced and remixed by Massive Attack".[16]

Phantom Astronaut's Gravity + Time (2020) explores genetic history and his Forbidden Science of the Western States Album (2021) explores atomic-age paranoia through environmental samples.[17][18][19]

Dreyer works with Danish American ambient and Nordic folk musician The Seawolf and appears on his EP Ginnungagap. [20]

Fiction Writing

Dreyer's literary work includes authoring the short story anthologies, Cyberpunk is Dead: Long Live Cyberpunk, Dark Astronomy, Body Horrors, Demonology Lessons, and the novella The Tea Goddess.[21][22] He is credited as having coined the term ecopunk in 2010, being one of the first authors in the genre which is now widely accepted as Solarpunk.[23] In comics, Dekker is a writer and illustrator,[24][25] His work includes Mondo Atomic, which retells the stories of Plan 9 from Outer Space, Robot Monster, and other B movies in a contemporary way.[26]

His comic anthology Seven Deadly Sins critiques the role of technology in modern society.[27]

In 2022 he launched a TikTok account dedicated to short fiction which attracted over ten million views and over one hundred thousand followers in the first month.[28]

Virtual and Augmented Reality

Dreyer has been called a VR pioneer by both Entrepreneur[29] and MovieMaker.[30] He is considered a prominent artist in immersive media.[31][32][33] At the studio he co-founded, Clever Fox, he created and directed two of the first scripted original series in VR, The Depths[34][35] and Broadcast.[36] He has also created XR experiences for musical artists Bootsy Collins, Devo[37] and Disturbed.[38]

His augmented reality live experience The Summoning has been called a "First of its kind" by UploadVR and received wide recognition for its innovative use of technology and creativity.[39][40][41] Subsequent projects include the collaborative storytelling project What We Leave Behind.[42][43]

In 2019 he released Lucid, an immersive visual album, under his Phantom Astronaut persona.[44]

Dreyer created the VR / AR Producing course at Columbia College Chicago and was subject matter expert for immersive media at the University of Maryland[45][46]

Visual, Experimental, and Performance Art

Dreyer's visual art projects range in format and style. In 2009 a series of digital works were showcased as part of media company Gawker's contemporary art registry.[47] In 2011 he contributed to the Make Your Franklin project.[48]His work has been included in numerous pop-culture themed shows in Los Angeles.[49][50][51]

His experiential and performance art projects combine immersive theatricality, and absurdist cultural commentary. These projects include the restaurant Kaiju Sushi which was located in the shark attack capital of the world. Dreyer and his partner Julia Howe proclaimed that any person coming to the pop-up restaurant with proof that they were attacked by sharks would get free sushi resulting in national coverage and raised awareness for ecological conservation.[52][53][54] His second cuisine-based art experience was L'Aldila, a supernatural restaurant in the heart of Spiritualist camp Cassadaga, Florida, where patrons were encouraged to commune with the dead during their meals.[55]

Dreyer's series of A.I. generated works include the series Sacred + Profane presented by as part of the exhibit A Kind of Alchemy by the International Journal for Digital Art History and the Phantom Astronaut Dead Channel on Twitch. The Dead Channel is described as a neural network trained on Dreyer's voice speaking words and phrases written by Dreyer randomly reassembled as a twenty-four hour live feed with stylized found footage.[56][57]

Dreyer's most controversial experimental work is the project Tentacle Grape, produced in partnership with his wife, to bring awareness to a rising tide of misogyny in pop culture in an era predating Gamergate and related right-wing movements. The project, presented as a regular consumer product, created confusion and drew controversy about the brand's packaging and message.[58][59] Although controversial, the product was overwhelmingly popular leading to Cracked naming it #4 on their list of "Horrifying Soft Drinks Around the World".[60] The unexpected popularity of the product lead to a backlog prompting watchdog site The Consumerist to question the existence of the soda.[61] A retraction was subsequently published.[62]

Curation, Producing, and Hosting

In 2007 he and his partners launched the Illusion On-Demand network, a science fiction television channel geared toward supporting independent genre filmmakers. At launch the network boasted a large footprint within the US cable television market.[63] He soon took on the duty of creative director and brought both anime[64] and sci-fi classics like Doctor Who[65] to the network. Dekker produced many of the original programs that appeared on Illusion including Analog presents: The Science of Fiction in partnership with Analog Science Fiction and Fact. He would later expand the channel's holdings by launching the short-lived anthology magazine Transmitter[66]

In 2008 he founded the touring animation festival Anime After Dark[67][68] which kicked off with presenting the official 20th anniversary event for Grave of the Fireflies showcasing a digital conversion which was overseen by Dreyer.[69][70]

From 2012 to 2016 he was part of Participant Media's online video arm at Takepart.com and on the launch team for their cable television network Pivot. Participant Media is widely known to produce content dealing with the subjects of climate change, journalistic ethics, and social justice.

In 2016 he returned to the Slamdance Film Festival as a jury member.[71] That same year he was a major supporter of the organization's DIG (Digital, Interactive, and Gaming) showcase.[72] In 2018 he took on the role of organizer and co-curator of the DIG program.[73][74][75]

Dreyer produced a live event series called Movie Cult in Los Angeles which encourages audience participation around forgotten VHS movies and other pop culture found footage.[76][77]

From 2017 to 2018 Dreyer was the co-host of the podcast The Future is Virtual from Embolden Entertainment (later Zero Gravity). The show was unique in that it was live streamed as a simulcast to AltspaceVR, Twitch, and Facebook 360.[78] In 2015 Dreyer was featured on TV Tokyo's television series Why Did You Come to Japan. He and his wife Julia took the audience on a tour of Tokyo's Golden Gai nightlife.[79]

Non-Fiction Projects

Dreyer is an outspoken essayist writing on the topics of human rights, race, sexual identity, and other social issues from a perspective left of center in U.S. politics.[80][81]

Other non-fiction projects include producing the free-form documentary Three Days in Orlando which showcased the social climate around the yearly Gay Days event in Orlando Florida through a series of intimate vérité vignettes[82]

Personal life

Dreyer was born on November 16, 1980, in Daytona Beach, Florida. His parents briefly performed traveling puppet shows with the family living out of the show's tour van. He spent longer periods living in New York City, California, Massachusetts, and Central Florida. As a teenager he attended Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. Dreyer claims that due to living over a hundred miles outside of the local area his parents maintained a local apartment for him and that he would travel home each weekend.[83]

He Married his spouse, composer and FX engineer, Julia Howe, in 2009[84]

References

  1. ↑ 'Lucid' VR Album Forces You to Question Moral Choices As You Explore: WATCH - The Good Men Project, 2019-10-17, retrieved 2020-01-19
  2. ↑ "Dekker Dreyer". Retrieved 2019-07-27.
  3. ↑ Stories, Local. "Meet Dekker Dreyer - Voyage LA Magazine | LA City Guide". Retrieved 2020-01-19.
  4. ↑ Dreyer, Dekker. "Official Site Biography".
  5. ↑ ZANONE, diLORENZO. "The Arcadian: gli abbandonati dalla fantascienza". Birdmen.
  6. ↑ Featured Fearmaker: Dekker Dreyer, We Are Indie Horror
  7. ↑ Borzuola, Lorenzo. "The Arcadian – Distopia e sete di vendetta nel film di Dekker Dreyer". derzweifel.
  8. ↑ "Echosyntheic Interview with Dekker Dreyer". Archived from the original on 2018-01-03. Retrieved 2018-01-03.
  9. ↑ "Al Ravenna Nightmare Film Festival arriva anche Fabio Testi". RavennaToday. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  10. ↑ "Behind The Lens Radio Show – 09/10/2018". Behind the Lens.
  11. ↑ "Snowblood Plays a Bloodthirsty Vampire in 'I'm Ready'". Paper Magazine.
  12. ↑ "Le Marché du Film". www.marchedufilm.com. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  13. ↑ "The Industry". theindustry.com. Archived from the original on September 2, 2018. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  14. ↑ "Meet Dekker Dreyer: Visual / Recording Artist, Filmmaker, & Virtual Reality Creator". Shout Out LA.
  15. ↑ Casey, Douglas. "Dark Ambient & VR: An Interview with Phantom Astronaut". Casey Douglas.com.
  16. ↑ "'Lucid' VR Album Forces You to Question Moral Choices As You Explore: WATCH". The Good Men Project. 2019-10-17. Retrieved 2021-05-18.
  17. ↑ Media, Mike. "Phantom Astronaut releases latest album 'Forbidden Science of the Western States'". Electric Mode.
  18. ↑ "QAlt Magazine". Samples from old american military and spy recordings become music: a chat with Phantom Astronaut.
  19. ↑ "Phantom Astronaut releases latest album 'Forbidden Science of the Western States'". Hammarica.
  20. ↑ Isen Smelter, retrieved 2021-05-18
  21. ↑ Chambers, Jim. "Review Tea Goddess by Dekker Dreyer". Red Adept. Archived from the original on 14 July 2012. Retrieved 7 April 2011.
  22. ↑ "Tea Goddess Review". Midwest Book Review. Retrieved 10 April 2011.
  23. ↑ Review of Tea Goddess, Misty Baker, Kindel Obsessed
  24. ↑ Johnson, Rich. "Phantom Astronaut Makes a Leveled Landing". Bleeding Cool.
  25. ↑ Abadsidis, Savas (2019-07-26). "The Seven Deadly Sins Re-Imagined for Today". #GAYNRD. Retrieved 2019-10-03.
  26. ↑ Hart, Hugh (6 July 2010). "Mondo Atomic Mashes Plan 9 and Brain That Wouldn't Die". Wired. Retrieved 7 July 2010.
  27. ↑ Abadsidis, Savas (2019-07-26). "The Seven Deadly Sins Re-Imagined for Today". #GAYNRD. Retrieved 2019-07-27.
  28. ↑ "Meet Dekker Dreyer". Voyage LA.
  29. ↑ Carone, Patrick (2018-09-14). "3 Ways a Virtual Reality Pioneer Is Rebranding the Form". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 2018-09-17.
  30. ↑ MovieMaker Magazine
  31. ↑ Cablefax Multiscreen Summit
  32. ↑ Slamdance to Expand DIG Showcase, Screen Daily
  33. ↑ TV Academy Inside VR 2015
  34. ↑ VR Director Dekker Dreyer on Building an Immersive Horror universe, Horror Society
  35. ↑ The Depths Brings Terror in 360 Degrees Dreadcentral
  36. ↑ Broadcast is a Black Mirror Style Anthology Uploadvr.com
  37. ↑ "Clever Fox Enters Facebook AR World With Devo". VRROOM. 2018-09-26. Retrieved 2018-09-28.
  38. ↑ Experience Disturbed's 360 Degree VR Video The Sound of Silence AXS.com
  39. ↑ The Summoning is a First of its Kind AR Horror Experience, Uploadvr.com
  40. ↑ "ScareLA Returns This Summer! And They're Planning A Dark Zone of Epic Proportions!, Blumhouse.com". Archived from the original on 2017-07-31. Retrieved 2017-07-31.
  41. ↑ Horror Goes VR in Dekker Dreyer's The Summoning, Dread Central
  42. ↑ "'What We Leave Behind' Encourages AR Confessions at Slamdance". Animation World Network. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  43. ↑ "Clever Fox's Latest Project Coming To Slamdance Film Festival". VRFocus. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  44. ↑ 'Lucid' VR Album Forces You to Question Moral Choices As You Explore: WATCH - The Good Men Project, 2019-10-17, retrieved 2020-01-19
  45. ↑ "Monday Hustle with Dekker Dreyer, Columbia College Chicago Online". Columbia College Chicago Online. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  46. ↑ GmbH, finanzen.net. "Columbia College Chicago Online Launches Augmented and Virtual Reality, Coding CoursesColumbia among the few higher education institutions in the U.S. to offer distinctive online courses in... | Markets Insider". markets.businessinsider.com. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  47. ↑ "Gawker Artists". Gawker. Archived from the original on 2009-12-01.
  48. ↑ kim, Erika. "make your franklin". Design Boom.
  49. ↑ Experiment 87a, LA Taco
  50. ↑ "Art from the Mr. Show, Show is Fantastic, Weird, Nerdist". Archived from the original on 2015-09-29. Retrieved 2016-12-19.
  51. ↑ THQ Matches Donations Raised by We Heart Japan's Meltdown Comics Event - IGN, retrieved 2019-07-17
  52. ↑ Shark Attack Victims Get Free Sushi in New Smyrna Beach Fl, Huffington Post
  53. ↑ WTF Attacked by a Shark and Get Free Sushi, OC Weekly
  54. ↑ Florida Restaurant to Give Free Sushi to Shark Attack Victims, Food Beast
  55. ↑ Misaktonic Monday, Diesel Punks
  56. ↑ "Meet Dekker Dreyer". Bold Journey.
  57. ↑ "Dekker Dreyer (Phantom Astronaut)". International Journal for Digital Art History. UC Berkeley, arthistoricum.net, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
  58. ↑ Grapevines: Ah, The Delicious Taste of Tentacle Rape. Kotaku
  59. ↑ Alex Zalben.Tentacle Grape Soda, Hilarious or in Poor Taste? Archived 2009-02-16 at the Wayback Machine Nerve.com
  60. ↑ Horrifying Soft Drinks Around the World by Cezary Jan Strusiewicz, Cracked.com
  61. ↑ Mysteries: Is Tentacle Grape Real? Because their shipment dates aren't by Chris Walters, The Consumerist Archived 2009-05-28 at the Wayback Machine
  62. ↑ It's Real: Reader receives his Tentacle Grape by Chris Walters, The Consumerist.com
  63. ↑ Marketwire
  64. ↑ Ain't It Cool News
  65. ↑ AMC's Sci-Fi Scanner Archived 2009-02-15 at the Wayback Machine
  66. ↑ Transmitter Seeks New Readers Sci-Fi wire
  67. ↑ "Anime After Dark launches in Somerville - Cinema Treasures". cinematreasures.org. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  68. ↑ Ryce, Walter. "Anime After Dark Film Festival reveals the depth and versatility of the genre". Monterey County Weekly. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  69. ↑ "CPAC Guest Appearances". web.stevens.edu. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  70. ↑ Carson, René (2008-09-08). "Grave of the Fireflies getting 20th anniversary screening at Anime After Dark fest". Film Fetish | Crush Collectibles. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  71. ↑ Slamdance Jury Reveal, Variety
  72. ↑ "Slamdance to expand DIG showcase". Screen. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  73. ↑ Slamdance (2018-08-31). "The Revolution in Media is Already Here". Slamdance Fearless Filmmaking. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  74. ↑ Gera, Emily (2019-01-28). "After 'Super Columbine Massacre RPG!': The Rebirth of The Slamdance Guerrilla Game Competition (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
  75. ↑ Baxter, Peter. "'How Do I Get Into Slamdance?' Co-Founder Peter Baxter Explains All". MovieMaker.
  76. ↑ Move the Crowd, Huffington Post
  77. ↑ 24 of our Favorite Events in Los Angeles, LAist Archived 2017-11-05 at the Wayback Machine
  78. ↑ "360 Talk Show 'The Future is Virtual' Coming to Facebook Live, AltspaceVR, and iTunes". VRFocus. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  79. ↑ "地獄のデスマッチ DEATHMATCH IN HELL". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  80. ↑ The Evangelicals you Don't Know by Tom Krattenmaker pg. 194
  81. ↑ What World AIDS Days Means to Me, The Advocate
  82. ↑ "Selling Queer". 2005-05-05. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  83. ↑ Dreyer, Dekker. "Facebook". Facebook.
  84. ↑ Simka, Alison. "Bright Idea". Full Frontal Fashion. Sundance Channel. Archived from the original on 2009-12-23.
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