This article reports on the 4th edition of NUMIX LAB, held from December 4 to 8, 2023. After three editions in Europe and Canada, which contributed to federating a solid ecosystem around immersion and fostering the development of numerous international co-productions, over 200 professionals gathered from December 4 to 8, 2023 for the 4th edition of NUMIX LAB. 5 days of meetings, visits and exchanges while roaming between 3 cities (Brussels, Rotterdam and Amsterdam), discovering more than 8 sites and more than 9 networking moments (i.e., 430 organized business meetings). 219 participants from a dozen countries attended the event. 37% of participants came from the immersive creation sector, 34% from cultural venues and 29% were financiers, institutions and solution providers.
In recent years, immersive experiences have proliferated, spurred on by a rich creative ecosystem, the development of public and private funding and significant technological advances. Developments in terms of production, operation and distribution models enable a diversity of experiences to reach a wide audience in a variety of venues: museums, art centers, heritage sites, industrial wastelands, convention centers, shopping malls, public places and spaces…
These different dynamics found a strong resonance with the programming of the 4thth edition of NUMIX LAB. The wealth of feedback received during the week highlighted the ways in which the interweaving of these experiences, these technological formats and these distribution venues are consolidated in hybrid logics. This hybridity is a source of many challenges:
- For venues of all kinds : How can we develop legible, attractive venues to renew in situ experiences and diversify their audiences?
- For the exploitation and dissemination of immersive experiences: How can we make immersive experiences more adaptable to encourage their circulation and better dissemination?
In terms of formats: towards greater hybridity between artistic, narrative and technological formats?
1. How can we develop clear, attractive venues to renew in situ experiences and diversify audiences?
New distribution spaces, new mediation. Immersive experiences can be integrated into a variety of old and new cultural and creative sites, ranging from public spaces and reception areas for cultural purposes (such as museums, heritage sites, performance halls or arts centers) to transient cultural sites (industrial sites, convention halls, shopping malls, etc.).
1.1. Create large-scale events that encourage residents to reclaim public space and raise its profile.
Over the past thirty years or so, art and culture have been gaining in importance within the public sphere, becoming real drivers of urban transformation and development, creating attractive tourist and cultural programs or revitalizing neglected urban areas. In Europe, 2 billion euros are invested each year in the cultural policies of major urban areas, notably to develop festivals of digital arts and video-mapping in public spaces (growing investment in more digital and immersive cultural facilities is also being seen – Source: Global Cultural district networks). The Bentway, a veritable catalyst for cultural experiences located under a Toronto expressway, the Quartier des Spectacles, a particularly emblematic example of the cultural reconversion of a Montreal district, the organization of a festival dedicated to digital arts each year by the Italian innovation platform Videocittà in Rome, and Brussels Major Events (BME) have all contributed their thoughts and feedback to this edition of NUMIX LAB.
BME illustrates the dynamism of the City of Brussels in this area, with its vocation to (re)shape its public space through culture. This association regularly organizes large-scale events to energize the Belgian capital, while reconciling environmental and innovation logics, livability and tourism, practicality of public spaces and interactivity of uses. For example, BME organizes New Year’s Eve festivities, the Plaisirs d’Eté and Plaisirs d’hiver festivals, the BXL Tour, etc. On the strength of these numerous references, BME was an essential partner in organizing this 4th edition of NUMIX LAB.
“Our public spaces are like our imaginations, they only make sense if they’re shared.”
In keeping with the hybridity theme of this year’s NUMIX LAB, Brussels Major Events offered a tour of the festival Plaisirs d’Hiverorganized in conjunction with the Brussels Christmas Market (4 million visitors in November/December 2023). BME offers works and events at the crossroads of art and entertainment. These include the Éloge de l’air ( In Praise of the Air), a luminous swing in tune with the wind, set up for the duration of the festival near the Parc du Cinquantenaire. With such an installation, the public space becomes a place for play and interaction between passers-by. Beyond this participative dimension, the installation is also the fruit of international cooperation, initiated with NUMIX LAB. L’Éloge de l’air was co-produced by BME with the Montreal distribution company Quartier Des Spectacles International, the Constellations festival in Metz and the French creative studio ChevalVert. This collaboration made it possible to share the financial risks, as well as to promote the circulation of the work in Canada and Europe.
While such projects encourage new, more interactive approaches to public space, they can also have a real socio-economic impact on an area. This was underlined by the Quebec public art agency Wireframe in its presentation, highlighting the benefits of an interactive installation set up in the public space:
A similar logic of mutation can also be found in a number of venues offering both temporary and permanent cultural experiences to their visitors. This quest for hybridization enables them to renew their initial vocation, attract new audiences or enrich the experiences to be enjoyed within their walls.
2.2. Revitalize, energize and intensify the uses of a variety of places to hybridize their destination.
To illustrate the dynamics of these transformations, many of the examples presented at this year’s NUMIX LAB highlighted the transformation of places revitalized by the hosting of artistic proposals. Some of these venues have become permanent art centers dedicated to digital and immersive art, which, despite their unique mix of cutting-edge artistic proposals and entertainment, are emerging on a massive scale in Europe and internationally. According to an article by Club Innovation et Culture in September 2023, there are over 90 permanent venues dedicated to digital and immersive art in 58 cities in 20 different countries. These include the MEET Digital Culture Center in Milan,Oasis Immersion and the Société des Arts Technologiques in Montreal,iMAL in Brussels, the Grand Palais Immersif in Paris, Remastered in Rotterdam and the Nxt Museum in Amsterdam, all of which presented their projects or were visited during this 4th edition.
Many of these are industrial or heritage sites offering opportunities in terms of available land and geographical location. Such potential has enabled them to develop ambitious permanent cultural programs, dedicated to monumental installations and immersive experiences. To develop their audiences, but also to maintain their appeal, like other cultural venues, it is now essential for them to diversify their programs. Oasis Immersion, for example, offers a particularly diverse range of events aimed at the general public (with its digital exhibitions), young audiences (with live performances) or professionals (with dinners, parties, conferences or product launches). Hybrid programming to encourage audience diversification and development.
Following the example of these permanent digital arts centers, convention centers, industrial wastelands, heritage sites and even museums are temporarily hosting immersive cultural offerings in addition to their original destinations. Eventually, some of these venues will specialize in immersive cultural offerings, while others will maintain a hybrid and diversified program. Many examples of such venues were shared at NUMIX LAB, including theVöklingen steelworks in Germany, Aura Invalides in the dome of the Invalides (an immersive show produced by Cultival in partnership with Moment Factory and the Musée de l’Armée), and Viparis, operator of 12 business tourism sites in Paris.
Viparis is an emblematic example of this desire to diversify a site’s audiences, intensify its uses and develop virtuous economic models between business tourism and the development of local audiences. The operator has thus opened up its extensive program (over 1,000 events a year, including shows, exhibitions and trade fairs) to exhibitions such as Harry Potter (600,000 visitors in 6 months), immersive experiences such as Jam Capsule at Porte de Versailles or the Cité de l’histoire in the La Défense business district. It’s a fine example of hybridity that aims for synergy between preserving the vocation of places dedicated to business tourism and the ambition to turn them into cultural and leisure destinations for the general public.
The diversity and flexibility of immersive formats means that we can increase the number of broadcasting opportunities by reinventing existing spaces (public spaces, cultural and heritage sites, exhibition centers) or creating new ones (former commercial or industrial spaces, entertainment districts, etc.). This diversification of venues means that we need to meet a number of challenges to promote greater flexibility, adaptability and hybridity in the operating models for these immersive formats.
2. How can we make immersive experiences more adaptable to encourage their circulation and better dissemination?
Promoting the dissemination and circulation of immersive experiences means anticipating the challenges of operating them on site right from the production phase. It is this challenge that has been the focus of a dedicated time at NUMIX LAB, where we have gathered a variety of feedback concerning works dedicated to public spaces (such as those produced by Wireframe) and others intended for institutional or non-institutional cultural venues (such as the collaborations set up by Ubisoft with a number of museums orUnframed Collections, as well as co-productions or projects supported by Fever).
2.1. Adapt immersive experiences thanks to our expertise in a network of venues and our in-depth knowledge of audiences.
For example, Fever supports the dissemination of numerous cultural projects thanks to its network of venues and partners in over 170 major cities worldwide, and its meticulous observation of audience behavior on the Web. Close observation of the data collected by Fever via its ticketing service and its active policy on social networks (over 300 million interactions generated on the Web around the catalog of experiences offered by Fever) thus enables the company to better define the geographical zones to be favored, the types of venues and content to be considered. This was the case, for example, in refining the co-distribution strategy for the exhibition Van Gogh – The Immersive Experience with Exhibition Hub.
2.2. (Re)adapt immersive experiences to intensify and broaden the uses of existing digital productions.
Other approaches involve an active policy of repurposing existing digital content for distribution in other places or in other forms. This is what Ubisoft has been doing for a number of years, adapting the content of some of its video games (Assassin’s Creed, Lapins Crétins, etc.) to produce interactive cultural devices for a variety of cultural venues such as the Grand Palais Immersif, the Aquarium de Paris or the Château de Versailles. This re-adaptation enables Ubisoft to broaden its distribution policy, position itself on cultural or social issues, and reach out to new audiences.
Such adaptability requires not only the mobilization of dedicated skills, but also access to digital formats that can be easily re-used. This is what the German company Ikonospace is doing, for example, by seeking to reduce the weight of 3D models and creating a catalog of these digital models for museums.
Such challenges also require us to facilitate the exploitation of these immersive experiences by providing catalogs, rights management solutions and know-how for venues. This is whatUnframed Collection has set out to develop, by launching a catalog of XR works available on a platform for cultural and heritage venues.
2.3. Adapting immersive experiences to a venue’s audience: the importance of a mediation policy built in close connection with the venue’s strategy.
Last but not least, such experiments need to be thought through in terms of how they can be integrated and hybridized with existing cultural programming. On this subject, feedback from operators and venues was particularly rich. Cultival, producer of the AURA Invalides immersive show, presented the challenges it had taken up with the Musée de l’Armée and Moment Factory to be able to offer visitors to the Dôme des Invalides a night-time experience over a 3-year operating period, in perfect harmony and complementarity with the site and its uses. This need for hybridization was also evoked by the Musée d’Orsay, with the VR experience proposed to complement the visit to the Van Gogh exhibition to be held at the museum in 2023 / 2024. This was also the case at the Cité du VIn, where an immersive tasting workshop(Via Sensoria) was created as part of the visitor experience, and at the Musée des Confluences, where a low-tech device was developed in the Lyon metropolitan area, showcasing the museum’s collections outside the walls via dedicated furniture:Cabanes à histoires.
While digital cultural experiences seem to be more easily disseminated, they still face a series of challenges that are increasingly being met by creators/producers, distributors, exhibitors and venues. This consolidation of the industry also encourages the emergence of new, more hybrid artistic, narrative and technological formats.
3. Towards greater hybridity of artistic, narrative and technological formats?
Beyond a strictly technologist vision, a diversity of immersive formats can be envisaged, drawing as much from approaches linked to live performance as to more digital ones: pop-up experiences, immersive exhibitions, outdoor trails, immersive excursions, immersive theaters, cinemas and evening events, immersive Family Entertainment Centers (FEC) or immersive role-playing and escape games…. These are the findings of a study carried out in 2021 by international strategy consultancy Habo, in collaboration with Xn Québec, and presented at NUMIX LAB.
3.1. Towards a greater fusion of artistic genres?
The fusion and hybridization of genres seem to be increasingly accepted, crossing the narrative codes of the exhibition, theater, cinema, museography and video games to create immersive experiences in keeping with the location and the desire to enhance interactivity with the public. Dark Euphoria has put all the research and experimentation into creating a successful augmented performance experience, combining live art and virtual reality. The result is No reality now, a play augmented by filmed scenes freely accessible to spectators in virtual reality, thanks to the use of opera binoculars. This touring device is already on offer in a number of theaters and dance halls. For venues hosting the equipment, and betting on the complementary nature of virtual reality and live performance, it enables the creation of two simultaneous versions in which spectators are free to move around. Such projects resonate with the pioneering work between live and digital arts by Belgian company Crew Brussels (a virtual reality experiment particularly appreciated by NUMIX LAB participants was offered on the first evening of our event at iMAL).
3.2. Towards greater involvement of audiences and venues?
In addition to these various devices, which enable audiences to enrich their experience with individual equipment, a number of venues are equipping themselves on a permanent basis to offer more hybrid programming. For example, the House of Music Hungary offers a more immersive and contemplative experience in a 100% digital or hybrid sound dome with live sessions, in addition to concerts and educational activities.
3.3. Towards new professional approaches?
Hybridization brings together a wide range of expertise to break down the barriers between science, art and technology. Encouraging the emergence of new creative practices therefore requires experimentation and research. In recent years, the Société des Arts Technologiques in Montreal has developed a training and research program, residencies and workshops to diversify these approaches. This is also what the Tunisian 3D NetInfo school aims to achieve by developing numerous international partnerships and emblematic projects such as the creation of an African Metaverse;
Such projects are also possible thanks to the support of numerous territorial and international hubs, as well as the backing of numerous support and funding programs , such as those developed within the framework of Europe Creative and highlighted at this edition of NUMIX LAB.
In conclusion, the development and diversification of distribution outlets offer opportunities to structure and strengthen the cultural immersive sector. These distribution opportunities encourage both specialization and consolidation among the various players in the industry. However, this consolidation does not lead to a standardization of practices. On the contrary, it seems to favor a hybridity of cultural, artistic and technological approaches, and a greater awareness of the places and audiences for which these immersive experiences are intended. While the need for experimentation guarantees the maintenance of such creativity, working to ensure the sustainability of projects, players and practices now seems to be the challenge for the coming years.
A huge thank you to everyone for these 5 days of shared experience, learning and challenges in an ever-changing environment. See you in 2024 for the 5th edition! In the meantime, you can find the presentations at the end of this article.
Baudouin DUCHANGE / Antoine ROLAND
What is NUMIX LAB?
NUMIX LAB is an annual international event designed to accelerate the networking of players in the field of immersive cultural creation, and to encourage cooperation, co-productions and the circulation of works and expertise within the enlarged European Union.
NUMIX LAB is a technologically agnostic event: XR, mapping, digital installation and more. From the outset of the event, we wanted to focus more on content and the associated narrative, as well as on its potential for distribution: public spaces, cultural venues, arts centers, transitory locations, etc. For us, technology must remain a tool and never become an end in itself. This approach also gives us great agility in the face of technological innovation, which in our sector is very rapid.
Another strength of NUMIX LAB is that it is a native cultural immersive event. By creating a place for exchange, inspiration and feedback, we wanted to create a neutral space where everyone could naturally find their place. NUMIX LAB is by no means an annex to a larger audiovisual event, museum trade show or technology convention. It’s truly a moment made FOR and WITH the immersive culture ecosystem.
The aim is to federate this ecosystem to facilitate collaboration between the cultural, audiovisual and technological sectors. From the outset, NUMIX LAB has been designed to bring together the three pillar communities of the cultural immersive eco-system:
- Creators and producers: studios, artists and audiovisual producers;
- Cultural venues: museums, art centers, general public venues;
- Solution providers: public and private financiers, platforms, distribution networks and operators.
This fourth edition, co-produced by Xn Québec and {CORRESPONDANCES DIGITALESwas realized in partnership with Brussels Major Events and with the financial support of Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC), Europe Creative – Projet Unframed Collection, Ministère de la Culture – France, Canada Media Fund | Fonds des médias du Canada (FMC), Ville de Montréal, SODEC – Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC), Délégation générale du Québec à Bruxelles, French Embassy in Belgium, Institut français, créative NL and hub.brussels.
LINK TO PRESENTATIONS ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2023
LINK TO PRESENTATIONS ON WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2023
LINK TO PRESENTATIONS ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2023
