At Agog, we support the development of immersive media that creates space for reflection, connection, and shared understanding. That’s why we’re proud to support The Music Center in Los Angeles’s Innovation Social series, which brings artists, technologists, and communities together to explore how XR and other emerging technologies can engage with urgent social realities.
At this Friday’s Innovation Social, a new immersive work invites audiences to return to a moment that continues to shape Los Angeles.
One year after the fires that tore through the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the city is still living with their aftermath. In January 2025, wind-driven flames reshaped entire neighborhoods, leaving behind not only physical destruction but a quieter, longer-lasting toll: the daily work of grief, recovery, and resilience. As months passed, public attention shifted elsewhere. But for those most affected, it did not.
For many of us at Agog, this moment feels deeply personal. Many of our staff members live and work in Los Angeles, and last year we saw friends, family members, and collaborators lose homes, neighborhoods, and a sense of stability. Like so many in this city, we’ve watched Los Angeles absorb repeated blows—environmental, social, and economic—and continue to move forward anyway. Supporting work like this is part of our commitment to Los Angeles and to helping build a healthy, connected XR community rooted in the place many of us call home.
OUT OF THE ASHES is an interactive XR experience by immersive artists, producers, and trailblazers in the XR field Nonny de la Peña and Rory Mitchell, both born and bred Angelenos. Agog’s Head of Production Mary Matheson also supported the project through image capture and Gaussian splatting. Created in response to the fires, the project brings audiences into the emotional and physical landscapes left behind—inviting reflection on what was lost, what endures, and what it means to rebuild.
Using volumetric capture, photogrammetry, and spatial storytelling, the experience places participants inside fire-scarred environments documented in the weeks following the disaster. Viewers stand amid remnants of homes and memories: a red front door painted by a grandfather, a child’s favorite toy, a cello once played in a living room now reduced to ash. These fragments of everyday life carry a weight that numbers alone cannot.
Throughout the experience, personal stories from residents are interwoven with perspectives from architects, environmental thinkers, and community members imagining how Los Angeles might rebuild—more sustainably, more thoughtfully, and with an awareness that climate change is no longer abstract. Again and again, a shared refrain emerges: while much of the city has moved on, those living through recovery remain suspended between loss and possibility.
XR is central to how OUT OF THE ASHES holds this complexity. Immersive media offers a way to slow down, inhabit place, and engage with stories through presence rather than distance. Here, XR becomes a vessel—for grief, memory, and collective attention—asking audiences not to look away.
Premiering around the one-year anniversary of the fires, OUT OF THE ASHES does not seek closure. Instead, it offers something quieter and perhaps more necessary: a moment of shared reflection, and an invitation to imagine renewal without forgetting what came before.
OUT OF THE ASHES will be showcased Friday, January 9, 2026, as part of Innovation Social: Reflections on Loss, Hope, and Renewal at The Music Center in Los Angeles. RSVP here!