Interview with Advisory Board member Jeroen van Mastrigt: 'To remain relevant and make a societal impact, you have to focus on scale. 'It's the economy, stupid.' I try to amplify that message.'

The Advisory Board of CIIIC consists of more than 24 carefully selected members who provide both solicited and unsolicited advice to our program team on key substantive issues. As representatives of the IX community and ambassadors of IX in the Netherlands, they are crucial for the connection with the industry. But who are these members, what do they do, and – most importantly – how do they view IX?

In part 21 Jeroen van Mastrigt, pioneer/trailblazer for organizations and corporates in the field of new media technology.

Who are you, what do you do?

‘I was born in the future and I enjoy choosing stretches of piste or forest in the early morning where no one has been before. My job is usually titled ‘innovation director’ and my work can best be described as ‘pioneer’: ‘Officers, non-commissioned officers, and troops, who are sent ahead during marches to arrange the quarters, take them over in the sections, and point them out to the main force upon arrival’ (from The Military Dictionary, 1861).

In other words: I pioneer and develop projects for companies, organizations, and governments. In my case, these are large-scale projects where the world of bytes and the world of atoms converge (with the help of media technology). In recent years, I have worked for clients such as VolkerWessels, NS Real Estate, CBRE (Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis, commercial real estate), KLM, Ahold, Mediahuis – on the neighborhood, the museum, the medium, the destination, or the store of the future. Within these projects, I collaborate with leading thinkers, architects, designers (such as the Japanese teamLab). In practice, my work involves conducting research, developing vision, strategy, concepts, roadmaps, bringing partners together, acquiring funds to achieve realization, and finally orchestrating the realization until the child can ride a bike… or we are sure that is not the case, so to speak.

Currently, I am working for ROM Utrecht Region, Mediacampus NL, and the Municipality of Hilversum on a future exploration and roadmap with actions for the Dutch media sector.

Most people know me from my time at HKU, where from 2005 I set up the first programs in the field of game design and conducted research as a professor on applying game design principles in the physical world. During that time, I was also involved in setting up the Dutch Game Garden. Later, at investment company Dasym, I worked on developing a future vision and strategy for media companies. I also spent some time in Japan, graduated on Simcity2000, and, during my studies, co-founded a successful software company with friends that still exists (GX Software, ed.).

A lot of words, chronologically from front to back, mainly intended to explain that thanks to a very broad background, I can help human, social, cultural, technological, economic, and creative perspectives collaborate in projects, a key (or key chain) for success that is sometimes missing.’

Why 'immersive', what is your connection with new content/technology?

‘I have nothing with the term Immersive. It already sounds outdated. ‘Immersive’ is reminiscent of the term ‘interactive’ from the 1990s. As if it would say something about the quality of an experience. Back then, we thought the more interactive, the better. By now, we know (for a long time) that the degree of interaction says nothing about the quality or impact of an experience (or the level of immersion). I prefer to speak of synthetic content that can be multimodally generated based on context data (or can adapt to it).

I find that the current discourse places too much emphasis on immersive interfaces (like glasses and such) and too little on the stack of technological components on which IX runs (raw materials, chips, networks, the cloud, intelligence, applications, interfaces) and especially intelligence. This stack makes scalable synthetic content (interactive or not) possible. That is where the greatest economic and societal opportunities and challenges currently lie. The VR glasses remain a niche product, and I do not see the large-scale adoption of AR glasses occurring during the CIIIC program. On the other hand, there is a dire need for directly applicable knowledge about or models for tooling for the realization of adaptive synthetic content and its scalable distribution: one of the essential drivers behind the adoption of ‘immersive’.’

Why did you want to join the Advisory Board, what specifically appealed to you in/about the program?

‘I found and still find it important to use my knowledge, expertise, and enthusiasm – particularly in relation to one of the (potentially) most important users of synthetic content: the media & entertainment sector. I find that sector underrepresented in the IX discourse. In my opinion, it still focuses too much on developing glasses-based training modules for left-handed vascular surgeons and too little on the transformation of national media, scale, and large audiences. While history shows: the adoption of new technology generally starts in the media & entertainment corner and spreads from there to niche applications.

The Netherlands is seen worldwide as a guiding country in relation to the adoption and production of large-scale media innovation. Dutch people spend almost 5 hours a day and 3.9% of their budget on media & entertainment. The Dutch sector represents 60% of the value creation within the creative industry. That is more than the other disciplines (architects, designers, applicators, arts) combined.

At the same time, the sector is under pressure. The average age of the TV viewer is 51, next year 52. Young target groups are disappearing en masse to foreign Big Tech platforms, which now capture 80% of Dutch advertising revenues and focus on AI and IX in their stack and strategic roadmaps.

These developments are potentially very disruptive for the Netherlands. Not only for the Dutch creative industry but also for the essential cultural and societal role they play in these turbulent hegemonic times. To remain relevant and make a societal impact, you must focus on scale. ‘It’s the economy stupid.’ I try to amplify that message. As an expert, but especially as a concerned father-citizen.’

What is your IX dream/mission?

‘A thriving and socially relevant European media sector that can counterbalance the global, dominant Big Tech pressure and engage young audiences with meaningful and significant content created by a new generation of creators who are not unemployed due to AI, but earn money by being able to play technology like a musical instrument.

‘It’s the content stupid.’’

Which developments in the field do you see that you find important to strengthen and why?

‘Currently, 80% of photo content on Big Tech platforms is generated by or with the help of AI. Recently, a song made by AI entered the Billboard charts. We, of course, saw this coming from miles away, but a new perspective on creation and the creative industry is now irreversible. The focus is shifting from creating a final product to making machines and little machines that communicate with each other to generate final products. This requires very different skills: understanding and modeling creative design processes into tools and engines.

Simply put, there will soon be less demand for violinists and more demand for (synthetic) violin builders. If we want to focus on creating adaptive and context-dependent meaningful immersive experiences, we need to build the machine, or machine components, to create and scale them and not focus too blindly on final products; that will come later. By the way, as an engineering country, we are good at building machines.’

Public values play an important role at CIIIC, what is your view on that? Extra stimulating or a possible obstacle?

‘You don't just secure public values in final products, but especially in the technological stack that underlies them. As technology increasingly takes on editorial tasks and often has a geopolitical dimension, it's important that we start viewing and regulating the tech industry more as a critical media industry. This is something we should particularly address at the European level.

We need to focus more locally on the public aspects of the technology we use and, again, less on those of final products. So, don't focus on immersive experiences about inclusion, but on the use of inclusive algorithms and AI in the production and distribution of those experiences. I want to note that I currently find it more problematic that the entire Dutch government operates on American Big Tech than that we worry about the tools used in experiments.’

Finally, the Advisory Board gives advice—what is your message to the community? And how can people find and ‘engage’ you to possibly share their ideas with the community?

‘Don’t think: the more immersive, the better. Think especially about meaningful, feasible, and scalable integration of adaptive synthetic content generation in existing processes with impact. See your profession as more object-oriented modeling of worlds and less as storytelling. You are Stradivarius, not Janine Janssen. More often ask yourself: ‘Is this true?’ And realize: ‘The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology’ (E.O. Wilson, 2009).

In other words, ‘our brains are no match for our technology. So stay out of the hands of the Dark Side. And make sure you rest well. We ain’t seen nothing yet.’

*Jeroen can be reached like all other Advisory Board members via: adviesraad@ciiic.nl.*

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Composition: Nils Adriaans

Photography: Ben Houdijk