IMMERSION FOR WHAT? Feedback on the study day organized to mark the 10th anniversary of the Musée des Confluences

On February 6, 2025, to mark its anniversary, the Musée des Confluences organized a professional study day in collaboration with {CORRESPONDANCES DIGITALES]. This interdisciplinary meeting brought together over 200 professionals from a number of cultural and artistic sectors (museum, dance, theater, video games) to gain a better understanding of immersion and its future developments.

Interactive, immersive, virtual, 3D, 360°… the adjectives used to describe innovative visitor experiences are a reminder that new technologies have taken over museums. So much so that immersion has become a key word. It refers in turn to a space, an atmosphere, a relationship with the work, and mobilizes technology in sometimes contradictory ambitions (sensory, participative, playful, educational, inclusive, etc.). For the past ten years, the Musée des Confluences has championed a way of inviting its visitors to immerse themselves. Over and above the technological approach, this involves a range of skills borrowed as much from live performance as from the museum field, to “condition” visitors in narrative spaces where a rhythm is given to the story.

With this in mind, a number of speakers took the floor on February 6. In this article, {CORRESPONDANCES DIGITALES] highlights a few of the day’s highlights: discussions on how audiences are involved in this desire for immersion, and testimonials on the intentions and processes underpinning these immersive approaches.

What immersion does to audiences

To better anticipate and grasp the effects desired and actually felt by audiences during an immersive experience, an iterative, experimental and also evaluative approach to audience practices, behavior, reception and emotions is required. The contributions to the first round-table discussion on “What immersion does to audiences” returned to these issues.

To begin with, how do you define immersion?

In his introduction, Ludovic Maggioni, Director of the Neuchâtel Museum, reminded us that this desire for immersion pre-existed the highly technological vision we might have today. From the 1960s onwards, the Neuchâtel Museum set out to reconstitute landscapes and ecosystems by creating dioramas presenting the mammal and bird fauna of Switzerland. The use of such scenographic devices in itself requires the scenarization and dramatization of the exhibition space to immerse visitors in reconstituted landscapes.

This desire for reconstitution is not new, and has a long history. Aymeric Peyrroy, Director of Culture and Heritage for the Isère department, gave a fine illustration of this in his contribution to the round table discussion on “Exhibitions, a sensitive space”. He highlighted a number of examples of the recreation of environments and places long used by many museums: from dioramas to panoramas (such as the one on display at the museum of panoramas in The Hague), period rooms (such as those used at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs) and experimental reconstructions. These approaches and procedures have also been deployed in many museums in the Isère département, such as the Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation and the Musée du Dauphinois.

These different processes precede the immersive forms developed more recently with the help of different technologies: virtual reality, mixed reality, augmented reality or video projection. These approaches are rarely self-sufficient, however, and need to be seamlessly integrated with other venues, narratives or cultural programming. Frédérique Lafon, head of research at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, presented a variety of digital projects deployed over the past few years at her institution in a variety of forms: a nocturnal light trail in the Jardin des plantes (following the example of the nocturnal light trail Animals on the path to enlightenment), a permanent space dedicated to VR experiences linked to the collections (such as the Virtual reality cabinet), large-format and multisensory exhibitions (e.g: Sensory Odyssey) or recently hosted virtual reality and wandering experiences (with Missing Worlds). This diversity demonstrates the multiplicity of approaches to integrating these technological devices to help immerse visitors in a site and its cultural programming.

Such an attempt to define immersion also highlights the particularly wide range of processes, both physical and digital, that can help immerse visitors in a scenic, reconstructed or fictional space, in order to create a set of sensations, constituting a sensitive experience, by mobilizing their senses or emotions.

What impact does this have on audiences?

To illustrate these approaches at the crossroads of audiovisual and physical scenarization, and how they benefit the public, Ludovic Maggioni described a museographic device implemented in his establishment. To animate and bring to life a diorama dedicated to Lake Neuchâtel, an interactive floor projection was set up to represent the lake’s seabed and the species present there. As visitors pass through the projection, their attention is drawn to a fictitious game in which their relationship with the museum space is transformed: some avoid the animations on the floor, follow them, or take off their shoes as if they were immersed in the water. The scenography of this space thus plays with visitors, opens up new and unexpected possibilities for postures, and encourages a more sensitive approach to the space.

This interplay between place and visitor can also be found in other projects at the Neuchâtel Museum. For example, as part of the Sauvages exhibition, a device invites visitors to enter a kind of plant (or animal?) mass to listen to animal noises. Upon hearing these noises, most visitors, misled by the sounds and immersed in this vegetated mass, think of exotic, faraway animals. However, these recordings are none other than those of the fauna living in the vicinity of Lake Neuchâtel. This intentional artifice brings the visitor closer to the institution through the effect of surprise, creating an offbeat, comical situation and a sense of complicity. As Ludovic Maggioni put it, this quest for immersion means “getting audiences on board the Titanic rather than leaving them on the quayside”.

This desire to immerse visitors in a story is also what the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle is looking for in its various immersive experiences, such as Mondes disparus. In 2024, this virtual reality experience will be offered in the Jardin des Plantes’ mineralogy gallery. This experience, like the Museum’s other exhibitions, was the subject of an audience study. Among the results, Frédérique Lafon points out that this experience has helped to reinforce the Museum’s reputation and positioning in terms of innovation in the eyes of the public. Although sometimes frustrating in its interactivity, the narrative associated with this experience was considered to be very rich, even, at times, too rich (40 scientists were mobilized to co-design these 45-minute experiments, thus working to make it denser). Even so, Mondes disparus does not necessarily seem to have worked to diversify the public at the Jardin des Plantes – at least during the project’s operational phase in the mineralogy gallery. Nevertheless, this diversification was achieved by exporting the experience to other locations in France and abroad, far from the museum both geographically and culturally (Mondes disparus, for example, was offered in a shopping mall in Lyon, close to the Musée des Confluences).

Generally speaking, the immersive dimension of this type of experience, while recognized to a certain extent by audiences, nevertheless needs to be accompanied or complemented by other media. This is why, for the Odyssée sensorielle exhibition, a mediation area was added to the initial experience to bring the tour to a close.

This feedback highlights the need for regular evaluation of audience practices and usage. In view of the initial intentions behind these devices (scenic, scenographic, sensitive or emotional), new modes of research and evaluation now seem necessary to better apprehend the impact of these approaches on the public’s relationship with these experiences.

Opening up to new modes of research and evaluation

Designing immersive visitor experiences requires new ways of observing and analyzing the origins, practices and perceptions of the users of these experiences.

Frédérique Lafon’s experience feedback for Mondes disparus highlights the fact that the itinerant and portable nature induced by this type of experience opens up prospects for developing an institution’s audiences beyond its walls, thanks to the subjects they address. More in-depth studies are needed to better understand what changes when an immersive device moves from one environment to another. From a museum to a shopping mall, for example, who are the people who come for this experience? What motivates them? What experiences do they have? How does the venue welcome them and maintain (or not) a link with the museum? How does the reception and assessment of these visitors change? There are many questions that could use further analysis today.

In addition, the experience itself can be the subject of a more behavioral, cognitive or emotional analysis of the visitor. Ludovic mentioned the research work carried out on the Sauvages exhibition, filming visitors’ behavior in order to better analyze their attitudes and physical positioning. Such diagnoses can also be corroborated by other approaches, notably from the field of neuroscience. Feedback on this type of project was provided at the last edition of Museum Connections. This was the case for an evaluation project carried out with the Musée National de la Marine and a doctoral student in musicology at the University of Aix-Marseille, to assess the impact of sound immersion on the visitor experience(see our recent article on the subject).

The measurement, evaluation and study of visitors, their practices, behaviors, emotions and ways of acquiring knowledge are all factors to be taken into account when building exhibitions or cultural and artistic experiences that foster a sense of immersion or a more tangible, sensitive visitor experience.

How is immersion created? Sensitive and multi-perspectival approaches

In recent years, museum approaches to exhibitions have been particularly enriched. These developments are the result of long-standing trends spurred on by the New Museology movement (a movement that emerged between the wars, envisaging the museum as a living laboratory of experience, where the visitor’s place in and relationship with the museum are constantly being renegotiated). They are also the fruit of societal changes and aspirations for greater participation and involvement, as well as technological and professional changes. In other cultural fields, other issues are at work, but they are also inspiring more experiential approaches with audiences, whether they be gamers (in the case of video games) or spectators (in the performing arts).

Towards a sensitive museum experience

With 10 years of exhibitions under its belt, the Musée des Confluences has regularly experimented with new approaches to exhibition design. Each exhibition has been the object of experimentation to ensure a subtle balance between spaces, discourse (understood as a story that is constructed, as many intentions to give meaning), spaces and staged objects. The aim of this balance is to give audiences a sense of verisimilitude. To illustrate this point, Nathalie Candito, Head of Visitor Experience, and Christian Sermet, Head of Exhibitions at the Musée des Confluences, practised the retrospective exercise, necessary for this anniversary.

This has been reflected in the way the museum’s permanent collections have been designed, to bring visitors closer to the objects, and even bring them to life. An iconic example from the museum: the Choulans mammoth. Its imposing skeleton obliged the museum to use a highly visible base. This was later modified to make it more discreet: less obvious, the visitor can project more, thus reducing the feeling of simply static works, to give an impression of life. This type of research requires finding a balance between the security of the works and the scenarization of the object, making it more accessible and tangible by combining proximity to the object, the search for natural poses, the transparency of the pedestal and the play of light. Over the years, the distance between visitor and object has steadily diminished, sometimes even allowing visitors to touch the objects themselves.

The Choulans mammoth with the first base and then the present one © Musée des Confluences (Lyon, France)

Over the past 10 years, in addition to the permanent collections, each exhibition created at the museum has also been the subject of a museography calling for a different scenography. These exhibitions have often been analyzed in terms of audience feedback, in order to detect uses, identify gaps and trends, or find new forms of exhibition. Since 2008, the Musée des Confluences has been using the term “immersion” to describe exhibition practices, with a strong influence on the relationship with the object. Each of the museum’s exhibitions has been the subject of experiments in this direction. For example, the exhibition Ni vu ni connu (Neither seen nor known), which ran from November 8, 2005 to July 2, 2006, was an opportunity to play with the public on every floor of the museum, using the art of camouflage.

The Sociétés, le théâtre des Hommes exhibition, integrated into the permanent exhibition, was an opportunity to take the object out of the showcase and bring it closer to the visitor.

The exhibition Art and the Machine exhibition, which ran from October 13, 2015 to January 24, 2016, was an opportunity to play with light to create a framing effect inside the frames of 19th-century paintings, giving the impression that the image is projecting towards the public, causing scenes to emerge.

Beyond the object or the light, plays on scale can also play on dimensions and create distance or proximity. This was the case, for example, in the exhibition Hugo Pratt, Lines of Horizons (April 7, 2018 to March 24, 2019) on comics, where the bubbles were enlarged to give an impression of immersion. Mixing media can also encourage the creation of fantastic scenes with a certain realism.

In the Dreamtime 2024 exhibition, for example, a nightmare was created in the form of a hologram projection emerging from a statue. Last but not least, the staging of an exhibition right from the entrance helps to prepare visitors. This was particularly important for the exhibition Prisons, Beyond the Wallsheld from October 18, 2019 to July 26, 2020, where visiting rooms were recreated with the help of Joris Mathieu, director of the Théâtre Nouvelle génération and playwright.

Such research encourages experimentation and testing, where the relationship to the visitor experience and to visitors needs to be constantly renegotiated. While some of these devices have proven their worth, others may have been seen as disappointing or, on the contrary, as activating an overflow of sentiment that sometimes interferes with the proper understanding of the message.

This quest for balance and proportion is also to be found in numerous exhibitions at the Louvre and the Musée de la Musique. Each of these exhibitions plays with geometry, color, light and height to give shape to the story. At the Philharmonie, the exhibition space is limited in size (500 m2), and given the immaterial nature of the music to be represented, the use of numerous audiovisual resources is encouraged. This was the case for the recent Ravel exhibition and many others in the past. The exhibition Xenakis Revolutionsfrom February 10 to June 26 2022, combining sound and light shows, brought the composer’s works to life for visitors through monumental projections and staged musical works.

These constraints are also assets for fostering the visitor’s sense of immersion. This diversity of approaches is also essential to put into perspective with other cultural and artistic fields, to open up other processes and other ways of apprehending these experiences.

Creating immersion: opening up to other cultural and artistic approaches

To illustrate these different approaches, this study day was also an opportunity to bring together Mourad Merzouki (choreographer), Macha Makeïeff (director who has also designed various exhibitions) and Raphaël Granier de Cassagnac (director of the Sciences and video games chair at École Polytechnique and science fiction author).

These exchanges were an opportunity to highlight other forms of writing and grammar used in dance, theater, exhibitions, literature and video games to help immerse a variety of audiences, whether visitors, spectators or players. This writing is specific to the mode of artistic and cultural expression employed. In literature, this type of writing, although linear, favors introspection and the reader’s ability to immerse himself in fictional narratives between description and suggestion. By contrast, immersive writing in video games is built around moments of interaction, with narrative nodes requiring choices and decisions on the part of the player.

While some video games opt for historical immersion by working scientifically towards historical verisimilitude, they make little use of the written word in terms of mediation. As written content is not read by players, the narrative thread has to favor verisimilitude and the choice of atmosphere, which sometimes takes precedence over historical veracity. Nevertheless, the particularly detailed historical and scientific work carried out by Ubisoft teams in the design of Assassin Creed is used by museums (as in the case of the Musée des Confluences) and educational activities by teachers. A keen observer of these videogame approaches, Raphaël is also working on the design of a metavers platform for the Musée Polytechnique. Another example of writing, a museum metaverse platform is the result of a balance between the codes of museum visits and those of video games (ubiquity, decision-making choices, changes of scale, etc.).

On the other hand, such immersive approaches in the field of dance or theater require, for example, the abolition of the stage and the 4th wall, as well as work on presence. This presence, real or suggested, helps to conjure up images and enrich a lively approach to immersion. These were the testimonials given by Mourad Merzouki and Macha Makeïeff.

By choosing to treat immersion in a global and wide-ranging way, this study day will examine four structuring elements that make up immersion: space, narrative, audience and skills. Through the prism of these roundtables, immersion has long been used by museums as a veritable place of experimentation to test new practices and reinvent themselves. However, this desire for immersion requires a balanced approach. These approaches to immersion call into question and even rethink the institutional place of museums, but it remains a field for debate and study, enabling us to better rethink the relationship between cultural venues, audiences and works of art.

Antoine ROLAND

Many thanks to the Musée des Confluences and its teams for this professional study day. Find all the video replays of this day here.