The fourth panel focused on the dematerialization of cultural events and visits. 4 speakers took the floor to discuss how virtual reality can foster ex-situ tour experiences (Thomas Tassi, Mira), in-situ group virtual reality projects (Vincent Guttman, Small Creative), event projects at the crossroads of physicality and Web 3 (Maud Clavier, VRroom) and the creation of cultural experiences linked to video games (Olivier Mauco, Game in Society – in visio).
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Develop new visitor experiences outside the physical site (Thomas Tassin, Mira).
Mira creates a virtual world, a series of hyper-realistic experiences of cultural sites in Paris (the Sainte-Chapelle and the Eiffel Tower, for example) and New York (the Guggenheim and Oculus Station, among others), and aims to create a bridge between them by referencing them on a platform accessible in virtual reality.
Nevertheless, Mira’s teams have realized that offering virtual tours like the ones we do in real life is not enough to attract new audiences or reach out to younger ones.
According to Thomas Tassin, one of the challenges of this project is to find the boundary between culture and entertainment, to open up access to culture to all without falling into something too popular, which could drive away the usual audiences of cultural venues. The challenge is to “bring things that are essentially elitist to other audiences, without becoming an amusement park”.
From a technical point of view, Mira is not a Location Based Entertainment (LBE) experience, but will enable users to connect remotely from any location, and meet up with other members, without having to go to a dedicated location.
In contrast to Mira, Small Creative has developed a distribution system and a turnkey operating model for purely rental-based virtual reality experiences for cultural venues.
Developing a new device for exploiting VR experiences (Vincent Guttman, Small Creative).
Small is a studio for the creation and production of immersive experiences, totally agnostic in terms of technology, as Vincent Guttman reminded us, since what counts for them is to succeed in involving users, whether via virtual reality, augmented reality, …
Small has created Small Stories, a format for location-based experiences in VR, with the idea of bringing people back to cultural venues, by offering them something different from what they’re already familiar with.
This extremely simple, ultra-lightweight device can be set up in 1 hour in any space between 40 and 100 m², and can accommodate between 6 and 15 people at the same time in collective VR. For 6 people, it simply includes 6 headsets, a server, a wifi network without internet, and no external tracking system.
The choice of collective VR is motivated by the desire for users to exchange and interact with each other, so that they can have fun and enjoy the experience all the more.
The idea behind creating this simplest possible operating model was to shift the paradigm from having to find a suitable device for each experience to creating an initial device that would then condition the content produced, in order to simplify production, distribution and operation.
The device developed by Small is designed to enable museums to set up VR experiences to accompany their exhibitions as simply as possible, and with a very attractive ratio of visitors per square meter.
What’s more, this lightweight LBE device can easily be set up in a variety of venues. VRrOOM has the same objective of reaching out to audiences, but this time via a virtual environment, and for events in the live performance sector, notably concerts.
Create original events at the crossroads of physical and virtual spaces (Maud Clavier, VRrOOm).
VRrOOm allows you to experience virtual events, as Maud Clavier explains. Historically, the founders of VRrOOm were specialized in live performance, which made them aware of the constraints of real venues: constraints in terms of location and audience size, but also the fact that it’s a model in which spectators have a unique experience almost all the time, and don’t come back afterwards.
So, during the first containment, VRrOOm was a virtual stand-in for real events that couldn’t take place, such as festivals, and also produced Jean-Michel Jarre concerts to break down the walls of containment.
VRrOOm’s primary objective is to break down the usual constraints of live performance via a virtual environment, and also to reform the way artists perform and create shows. Indeed, this model opens up new access to live shows, democratizing them and changing their nature by creating hyper-stylized environments, with increased functionalities both for spectators and for all the trades involved in creating a show: lighting effects, camera work, etc., which are impossible to implement in the real world.
The VRrOOm platform is currently being created for release on January 10, 2023, and its business model will be based on ticket revenue sharing once the artist has reached a certain gauge.
As with VRrOOm, gamification is also at the heart of Game in Society’s work, but this time less as a means of building and retaining community loyalty than as a medium for communication and training.
Making video games a tool for training and communication (Olivier Mauco, Game in society).
Game in society is an agency that creates video games for mediation, culture and training.
What they’re interested in,” says Olivier Mauco, “is building on what already exists, trying to reach people who don’t necessarily have a lot of means via their channels.
For example, with the Centre Pompidou, Game in Society created Prisme7, a multi-platform video game aimed at reaching audiences outside the usual public, and therefore people unfamiliar with contemporary art or video games.
In his speech, Olivier Mauco stressed that game mechanics must always serve the message. Game in society has developed a number of training games, for example, to educate tourism, catering and accommodation professionals around the Louvre Lens about the region’s cultural ecosystem. Indeed, unlike Paris, a visit to the Louvre Lens is part of a global tourist experience, and we need to be able to offer complementary tourist services in the area, which means training the professionals who will be advising visitors.
These four examples are quite revealing of what dematerialization can bring to the dissemination of culture, both in the context of virtual worlds, for remote events, but also in the real world through collective VR location-based experiences or in video games for training and communication purposes.
Maxime Bohn
