The first panel focused on the challenges of digital immersion in the visitor experience (cognitive, sensitive and sensory contributions). Dorine Brandeis and Anna Charrière, former students of the Dauphine Master’s in Cultural Management, began by reviewing the history of immersion and its benefits for audiences. 3 professionals from immersive experience production and cultural venues then shared their feedback on a variety of immersive projects (ranging from large-scale exhibitions to collective virtual reality devices).
1. What does immersive experience offer in terms of emotions and cognition? Historical perspectives and experiential issues (Anna Charrière and Dorine Brandeis).
In 2020, Anna Charrière and Dorine Brandeis carried out a study on immersion. As part of this study, they pointed out that expographic approaches resolutely oriented towards the sensitive are strong trends in the museum sector today. Audiences’ emotions and sensibilities are increasingly called upon in the stories and experiences they are offered. However, these approaches are part of a long-term process.
Indeed, from prehistoric cave art to total art in the early 20th century, via the appearance of the first optical inventions linked to entertainment in the 18th century, the question of sensitive mediation has always arisen, with the desire to condition spectators to transcend their relationship to the work and their experience.
These dimensions, both sensitive and transcendental, also require viewers to accept the immersion offered by a work of art, forgetting that what they are seeing is not reality (a concept otherwise known as “the willing suspension of disbelief”).
This sense (or sensation) of immersion can facilitate access to experiential knowledge. An approach that was widely adopted for the Sensory Odyssey exhibition.
2. Feeling and sensing, a look back at the multi-sensory and emotional benefits of immersion (Armelle Pasco, Sensory Odyssey).
Sensory Odyssey is an immersive exhibition about discovering nature through the senses, lasting around an hour. It will be shown for the first time at the Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle from October 2021 to July 2022, and is due to go on tour, with the next edition planned for Singapore.
This experience appeals to visitors’ emotions, both in content and form.
In terms of format, it is offered as a free wandering experience, without labels and with explanations offered at the end of the experience. In terms of content, Sensory Odyssey promises a cognitive experience, with the aim of “marvelling in order to learn”: to make visitors feel and experience the beauty of nature in order to communicate the desire to protect it. To achieve this goal, Sensory Odyssey relies on stimulating the senses of sight, hearing and even smell, with some twenty different scents being diffused.
The entrance fee has been set in line with the Museum’s pricing policy. Relatively low, given the investment required, the distribution of this experience is necessary. Contrary to what one might think, the lifespan of the contents of such exhibitions is rather long, so distribution prospects are quite attractive. Sensory Odyssey will soon be setting up in Singapore.
In terms of reception, the 9-month exhibition at Muséum national d’histoire naturelle welcomed and diversified the Museum’s audiences: 27% of Sensory Odyssey’s visitors were first-time visitors, and this proportion rises to 47% for 18-30 year-olds.
In addition, studies of audience reception show that there is a high degree of emotional receptivity, with people reaching a quasi-meditative state during the experience.
In this way, the immersive and sensory experience is confirmed as a medium for learning. Another dimension that strongly contributes to the appropriation of such an expographic discourse: the convivial and social dimension of such an experience. A shared experience that can also be envisaged via other media that are considered, paradoxically, as excluding, such as virtual reality. Le Bal de Paris offers such a collective experience, at the crossroads between live performance and virtual reality.
3. Immerse yourself or share a collective experience (Frédéric Lecompte, Backlight, co-producer of Bal de Paris).
Le Bal de Paris is an immersive dance performance created in 2020 by choreographer Blanca Li, featuring a collective virtual reality section (around ten people per slot) lasting around 30 minutes.
In terms of distribution, Blanca Li’s show is distributed on the same model as a more conventional dance show (a venue acquires the show for a fixed period and then makes a profit on ticket sales), and has been touring theaters around the world since 2021. Depending on the level of subsidization of the venue, the price charged for the show varies between €20 and €25 or €60 and €90 (for a non-subsidized venue).
According to Frédéric Lecompte, “Le Bal de Paris is one of the projects that has shown that you can do great things with VR”. Here again, the aim is to blur the barriers between the real and the virtual, particularly during the VR game. As Frédéric Lecompte pointed out, this ties in with the notion of adaptive learning, evoked by Anna Charrière and Dorine Brandeis, by making visitors forget for a moment the reality outside the experience.
Such processes have also been used in immersive exhibitions such as Venice Revealed.
4. Producing an immersive exhibition: some challenges and benefits for visitors (Ariane Orsini, Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais / Grand Palais immersif).
Le Grand Palais Immersif is a subsidiary of RMN – Grand Palais, which co-produced with the Venice Museums Foundation and Iconem the exhibition Venice Revealed, currently on show in the modular hall of the Opéra Bastille.
The challenge taken up by Grand Palais Immersif with this type of exhibition is to produce different experiences that touch the public, in this case with the added challenge of defending a “double level of language”: a huge amount of information on the history of Venice is offered, but it is not imposed on any visitor. In this way, each visitor can enjoy the exhibition in his or her own way, either by taking the time to read all the content, or by simply wandering around to enjoy the immersion, without in any way diminishing the quality of the experience.
Initial feedback from the public suggests that the gamble has paid off, with the public both impressed by the experience and astonished by the amount of information on offer. Family audiences seem particularly interested in this type of support (especially children). Older visitors are also attracted by these devices, which renew their experience of an exhibition, something that didn’t seem obvious at first glance.
Ariane Orsini also spoke of the importance of sound in immersion, a composer having worked to “create a score that reflects the digital works”, allowing an emotional climax to be reached in the film projected in the modular room, caused by both the beauty of the monumental images and the music superimposed on them.
In terms of distribution, Grand Palais Immersif envisages two models: the first, in France, through the MUSE project (already in 3 cities), the second, internationally, via private players.
These three approaches to immersive experiences demonstrate the variety of possibilities that can be envisaged to design projects with multiple benefits for visitors. Immersive experiences are sensitive, sensory and user-friendly, and offer many opportunities to enhance more traditional expographic models. These questions were the subject of a second panel on the management of digital and immersive projects.
Maxime BOHN
