The second panel addressed the challenges of designing, producing, operating and distributing immersive digital cultural experiences. Three points of view were discussed: those of museums (presented by Stéphanie Targui of Muséum national d’histoire naturelle and Célia Chettab of Cité de l’Economie), producers (with contributions from Thibault Jorge of Femme Fatale Studio and Chloé Jarry, founder of Lucid Realities) and distributors (Camille Lopato of Diversion Cinema).
1. Designing and operating immersive virtual reality experiences (Stéphanie Targui, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle).
Since 2015, the Natural History Museum has been presenting VR experiences in its Virtual Reality Cabinet, which accommodates 6 visitors per session.
Since the creation of this dedicated space, the Museum has evolved over time in the way it collaborates with VR content creators. Initially, Journey to the Heart of Evolution was designed as a service thanks to sponsorship from the Orange Foundation. For other collaborations, rights were purchased (like Lady Sapiens). Finally, the collaborations were also carried out on a co-production basis. Examples include The Starry Sand Beach with Lucid Realities, and REVIVRE with SAOLA Studio, an augmented reality experience in the Grande Galerie de l’Evolution.
In addition, the Museum is currently co-producing a wandering VR experience with Emissive(L’Horizon de Khéops, Éternelle Notre-Dame), on the History of Life and Evolution, due to open in September 2023.
While Muséum national d’histoire naturelle has chosen to develop dedicated VR spaces, it has also set up pathways within the Galerie de l’Evolution in superimposed reality with ReVivre. The Cité de l’Economie also made this choice, taking up a series of issues and challenges specific to this approach.
2. Implementing a mixed reality visit to a heritage site (Célia Chettab, Cité de l’Économie).
Inaugurated in May 2019 in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, the Cité de l’économie has “an approach with the visitor that really involves playfulness, whether through devices or mediation”.
To enhance the value of the site (Hôtel Gaillard) that houses its collections, the Cité wanted to find a solution that would enable visitors to discover the heritage represented by this 19th-century townhouse, built in a neo-Renaissance and neo-Gothic style.
For example, Citéco has teamed up with Realcast to develop an augmented mixed-reality tour experience that takes visitors on a 30-minute treasure hunt in the townhouse, using Hololens 2 headsets, for €4 in addition to the entrance fee.
In terms of collaboration model, the Cité de l’économie put out a call for tenders, which was won by Realcast. The Cité contributed its scientific expertise to the collaboration (which took just 4 months to design), and helped to script the itinerary, in constant dialogue with Realcast, which was responsible for developing and implementing the project within the walls of the Hôtel Gaillard.
Feedback from visitors has been very positive, and they seem to be increasingly in favor of mixed reality as a means of mediation.
Following the example of the close collaboration between Realcast and the Cité de l’économie, Femme Fatale Studio presented the range of collaborative models implemented in recent years.
3. Producing an immersive experience (Thibault Jorge, Femme Fatale Studio).
Femme Fatale Studio collaborates with cultural players and brands to produce interactive and immersive works.
For cultural institutions, Femme Fatale Studio is able to produce not only interactive mediation devices, but also original works that allow us “to have a different model to present to our cultural contacts: to come up with a content proposition that can be deployed in innovative ways”.
For the Mona Lisa Immersive digital exhibition, co-produced by the Grand Palais Immersif and the Louvre, Thibault Jorge highlighted 3 assets:
- This immersive proposal is a fully-fledged visitor experience, totally different from and complementary to the museum experience;
- It allows us to reach out to a public other than the Louvre’s usual audience;
- It allows us to combine very different forms of mediation: sound, touch, interactivity… and, consequently, to approach a work of art “that everyone knows about, but that few people actually approach” from different angles.
These immersive approaches thus encourage a multiplicity of mediation approaches, but they can also be the object of artistic approaches in their own right. This is what Lucid Realities proposes.
4. From museum production to distribution (Chloé Jarry, CEO of Lucid Realities).
To discuss distribution methods, Chloé Jarry used the example of The Enemy, one of Lucid Realities’s first virtual reality experiences. Originally, this work was presented at XR festivals, but this generated high travel and installation costs for a highly confidential contact with the general public (such an economic model was therefore unviable).
Thanks to a programming opportunity, The Enemy was presented at the Institut du Monde Arabe. The reception of this physical experience made it clear that there was a public willing to pay a ticket for this type of experience. At the time, however, the museum was the sole beneficiary of ticket sales.
Following this first experience, Lucid Realities approached museums to become new distributors of immersive works, and also co-producers for certain works.
So, as Chloé Jarry explained, in order to circulate works more easily and facilitate co-productions with museums, it was necessary to go in the opposite direction to a traditional service relationship in response to a commission. In her speech, Chloé Jarry emphasized the importance of defending the author’s vision in her approach, in which the aim is to arrive with an already well-developed project to present to a museum that is interested in it because of the link with its collections. The producer’s role is then to defend the author’s vision and negotiate the adjustments made to the work, trying to obtain concessions from both cultural venues and authors.
With this in mind, Lucid Realities is currently presenting a VR experience on Champollion at the Louvre Lens, linked to the current exhibition Champollion, la voie des hiéroglyphes, and co-produced by Lucid Realities, Tournez s’il vous plaît, the Louvre Lens and the Musée du Louvre.
This project will also soon be presented at the Louvre, where it will be fully integrated into the museum, with a guided tour of the Egyptology rooms followed by the virtual reality experience. This opens up new prospects for the distribution of immersive experiences, even more closely linked to the collections and programming of the cultural establishments that host them.
In parallel with this project, Lucid Realities is working on the development of a distribution platform: Unframed Collection (a beta version is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2023). This platform will provide cultural venues with a catalog of works, while producers will be able to reference their projects and find an economic model.
In addition to the Lucid Realities strategy, Diversion Cinema offers other distribution models.
5. Propose new distribution formats for immersive works (Camille Lopato, Diversion Cinema).
Diversion Cinema positions itself as a distributor, and therefore does not intervene in the creation of works.
Launched in 2016, the distributor began by providing services for film festivals to present VR works (mainly 360° films).
Today, Diversion Cinema’s catalog includes some thirty works: not only 360° films, but also interactive VR works, as well as immersive experiences in the broadest sense (which don’t necessarily involve XR technologies). As a result, their work now mainly involves supporting festivals and institutions in presenting works from their catalog to their audiences.
In terms of business model, Camille Lopato believes that the challenge is already to make these installations work properly, and if possible with maximum autonomy, while we’re still at a stage of the market where mediation is essential to reassure and accompany the spectator in his or her experience. Thus, one of the main challenges is to “reduce the technological difficulties, so that the mediator has a real role as a mediator, i.e. talking about the work” and not just being attached to the technology.
In terms of the distribution of immersive cultural works, the bottleneck lies in the public display, and it’s here that we need to achieve cooperation between the various players involved in the production of the works, in order to give the public the best possible experience.
The challenges of design, operation and distribution are many and varied. Design requires the management of multidisciplinary skills and talents. The technical and legal framework to be considered may vary from project to project (services, rights purchases, co-productions). The exploitation and distribution phases, necessary to smooth out the design costs of immersive projects, require major efforts in terms of technical adaptations of devices, human mediation and the ability to find audiences. Faced with these various challenges, the sector is currently undergoing a number of transformations to make such projects more fluid and easier to handle, both for cultural venues and their audiences.
Maxime Bohn
