I interviewed Un Soir Avec Les Impressionnistes, Paris 1874 director Pierre Gable at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here’s their artist’s statement:
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Music: Fatality
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.438] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing my series of looking at different immersive stories that are being featured at Venice Immersive 2024, Today's episode is with a piece called, it's a French title, I'm going to butcher it, I'm sorry, L'Unse pour avec les Impressionnistes, Paris, 1874. So this is a piece that was done by Emissive in collaboration with a museum celebrating like a 150-year anniversary of the Impressionists having some of their first exhibitions. And it kind of takes you back into some of the architecture of the buildings for where these exhibitions were happening, but also setting the context for what else was happening around that time. So it's really like this historical piece that allows you to transport back into these different moments in time, but also there's like 10 or 12 different characters that they have from these different Impressionist painters, and they were able to kind of recreate some of the different social dynamics. In my previous interview with Fabian from Admissive that I published in the previous episode, but actually recorded back in 2023 of all virtual, it's because previously at Venice Immersive 2019, there was Eternal Notre Dame, which was was more the sit-down version of this guided tour through the history and evolution of the building of Notre Dame. I had a chance to, while I was in France last year, actually check out the full version of that piece, and it actually really just blew me away about... how amazing it is to see a piece like this where you're kind of walking through this really vast space. And so they're able to orchestrate over a hundred people at a time, walking through like a thousand by a thousand meters, you know, these really large spaces that you're able to have what they call immersive expedition. So this Impressionists version that they were showing was kind of more of the sit down version. And so I was kind of projecting myself and what I've seen before with Eternal Notre Dame and the difference for what it is to actually walk through it. And so I was probably giving it a little bit more like trying to imagine what the full version would have been like, but Yeah, I feel like it's one of the more compelling things that are happening within virtual reality, especially when it comes to as folks are trying to find business models to really sustain these different types of immersive stories and having a throughput that actually ends up creating not only profitable businesses for emissive and folks that are producing the content, but also the exhibitors who are able to show and take care of all the different logistics for actually showing some of these different virtual expeditions. Yeah. Anyway, get a little bit more context for one of their latest expeditions around the Impressionist painters from 1874 in today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Pierre happened on Friday, August 30th, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:58.571] Pierre Gable: Okay, well I'm Pierre from Xcurio. I joined the team 20 years ago nearly, just at the very beginning when it was named Emissive as a 3D artist and since then the team grew up and we did many many projects for almost 10 years no VR obviously because VR was not a such a big thing but then we started yeah 10 years ago to work more and more and i personally did evolve to uh chef the project lead a project lead and then a director artistic art director and then i'm a director for exterior
[00:03:42.537] Kent Bye: Great. Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background, you know, kind of training you're bringing in, disciplines, and then your kind of journey into VR.
[00:03:52.754] Pierre Gable: Yeah, well, this is a little bit of a funny story. So at first I was a chef until I started to learn how to cook from the age of 16 to the age of 20. And then I toured in Europe and in some restaurant to work as a chef. And I did that for two years. And then I get suddenly a little bit bored. Because I was, I think, expecting more liberty, freedom and process of creativity, I was very, very appealed by the potential of cooking, working with texture, temperatures, colors and flavors, you know, it's incredibly rich way of creation. And I realized that I needed to peel a lot of carrots before I was able and in charge of creating my own plates and dishes. So I asked my very, very nice dad if I could work again at the university in order to proceed to a 3D artist job. He allowed me, so I worked. I did one year in art history. We call it Misanivo. It's kind of an update. Learn how to draw and sketch and art history as well. And then I had graduation, and then for the next two years I went to Valenciennes, in a school named at that time Superfocom, specialized in 3D graphics and animation. And there I learned my very first 3D engine, which was a Virtools, a French old, now French old 3D engine. At the end of the year, I was looking for a stage to validate my studies. And I went to Paris, where I met my two actual bosses, Emmanuel and Fabien, who just did the same school two years before, and they just funded Emissive. So that was the beginning. I started as a trainee, and from there, our very first project was already on the Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, working on a theory from Jean-Pierre Houdin. It was a production for Dassault Systèmes, who later, by the way, bought Virtools, the tools we were using, And that's how it started. I got very, very quickly engaged into historical reconstruction and kind of love it. And I've been lucky enough today to just keep working for 20 years on that kind of projects.
[00:06:17.488] Kent Bye: So, yeah, you had said that you started at a missive. What year did you start at a missive?
[00:06:24.022] Pierre Gable: 2006 or 2007.
[00:06:26.424] Kent Bye: OK. So Emissive has been around for quite a while, kind of predating the modern resurgence of VR, it sounds like. So at what point did virtual reality start to come onto your radar or into what Emissive was interested in?
[00:06:39.736] Pierre Gable: As far as I can remember, well, we were already working with immersive systems for DASO systems. They had a cave, you know, with the ground projection and you had tracked glasses with stereo vision, passive... And that was already the premise of a kind of immersion without that set, but still very interesting. We did some prototype of experiences for them. And then, as far as I can remember, the Oculus DK1 popped in the office around 2015, 2015.
[00:07:14.802] Kent Bye: Yeah, 2014. It came out in 2013, 2014. So yeah, but if it was 2015, it was probably DK2 by 2015, but yeah.
[00:07:20.926] Pierre Gable: Yeah, that was it. And there was the small demo with, I think, some Vikings and the chimney, and the tracking wasn't fixed off. But we already saw the potential of the stuff, yeah.
[00:07:34.659] Kent Bye: OK, so you're working at a place that's already doing 3D graphics, and it seemed like a natural fit to have a DK1. It sounds like the Tuscany demo that you're talking about with the 3DOF rather than 6DOF. And then did you work on any other, did you work on all the VR projects that Emissive has done since that point? And what kind of jobs and roles were you doing on those?
[00:08:00.187] Pierre Gable: At first we were working a lot on, we called it, agency projects. So before VR we were already engaged with great luxury brands. We had the honor to work with Patek Philippe. They are doing very luxury and beautiful Swiss watches. And with the appearance of virtual reality, as we started to master it a little bit, luxury brands were asking. They were in demand of this because it was innovative. It was another way to display the product and also to have this wow effect. Every first VR user had, it was quite powerful. And then we started to work with famous French luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Rolex, Adidas, and also Lacoste, for instance. So we were building experiences from 5 to 10 minutes maybe, at first solo, only a single user, that were displayed in the stores on particular events. For instance, at the jumping at the Grand Palais for Hermès, there is a big event of Equitation with Orsies and Hermès is the sponsor since ever. So we did a nice experience with the Pegasus. You ride on the back of Pegasus and you fly in the verrières of the Grand Palais. So it's quite tonnerique and it was a very nice experience. From there, we started with single experiences and then we switched to multi-user experiences on small surfaces up to four. And then I said, OK, there's a huge potential. And at this stage, we were also working on the steel on the Great Pyramid of Khufu with the scan pyramids. mission of scientific who are working to detect voids using tomography, muon tomography, I'm sorry, so it's like particles going through the pyramid. And they did some major discoveries in the pyramid and Since we were partners regarding the 3D aspect of the mission, we were looking for a way to introduce and present the details of the missions to our partners and also to the members of the team. And we started to develop this collaborative. We did some try with the HoloLens back in times. multi-user HoloLens experiences but we found out that it was way more easy to develop using the Oculus Rift and back in time it was with, let me think, the tracking was by Optitrack so it's quite expensive cameras on the side and with a heavy backpack and that was it and this prototype was actually the very first step on my side to a multi-user VR and location-based experience.
[00:10:57.216] Kent Bye: And I know that Eternal Notre Dame showed here, I believe in 2019, then the pandemic had happened and then it shut down, but then it came back because when I was in France a year or two ago, I was able to see it actually in its full installation. So I saw it in the sit-down mode, which is kind of what you have with this VR experience that we'll be talking about. But I feel like the native format of having lots of people walking through huge spaces was the preferred format for people to have this real visceral embodied experience of Being able to walk through this space and to take a guided tour through history, but to do it in a way that allows you to Actually feel like you're on a walking tour and usually in VR locomotion. You have to use some sort of abstraction of Locomoting but when you're actually moving your body through space, there's just a different experience that I find It's like you believe that you're actually walking through and it's just really really powerful and and So with this system, with Eternal Notre Dame, was that the first project that you had that was developing this kind of like way of managing multi-user instances to take this group tour, making sure they're not running into each other, figuring out all the safety? It's a very technological innovation that allows you to have as much throughput as you can, but there's a lot of, I'm sure, technical challenges that had to be solved. And so I'm just wondering if you kind of elaborate on that development process.
[00:12:18.610] Pierre Gable: I could definitely give you more input about the history of what we are calling now immersive expedition and the platform we developed for this. So to be fair, before the ScanPyramids and Meteor User through roaming, we did a very first project called The Enemy. the enemy, and I needed to do some research about the name of the offer. But we were on the technical side working on this project. The goal was to scan as accurately as possible two opponents in a war, Congo or Israel and Palestine. So basically two people who could never stand in front for more than a few seconds before punching each other. So the journalist, I need to find this name again, I'm sorry, I forgot it. A great journalist went to each side with a team. We did a lot of pictures. So we did a very accurate 3D reconstructions. And he did some interviews and he asked the same question to the opposant. And when you were in the VR experience, they were standing in front and they were answering the question and talking to each other like it would never be possible. in virtual reality and on our side we did all the technical installation allowing to walk freely and to progress in this huge corridor and meeting the characters. So that was the very first project for The Enemy. And then there was Notre Dame de Paris. And then there was the prototype for ScanPyramids. And I was doing myself the guide. We didn't have a guide, a virtual guide. And we had like lots of sessions for the public, very interested. And we realized that we need to hire some people. dozens and to train them and the quality of the experience depended on the feeling or the mood of the dozens sometimes the dozen does not speak english or does not so okay we should maybe try to have a virtual guide there and from there we did develop the prototype for notre dame with a virtual guide And this implied a whole new way of writing the story. Because on this time, this guy has to have a background, he's kind of a character of the story. How does he interact with the other characters? Who are you in the story? Are you only a visitor? Do we have to assign you a role or a story? So it brought many, many questions.
[00:14:55.487] Kent Bye: So did you work on the Eternal Notre Dame and what was your role?
[00:14:59.690] Pierre Gable: I've worked on the prototype which was shown to General Lorgelain. Unfortunately, he was in charge of the reconstruction of the Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, but he died last year in an accident in a mountain. But he went to visit, because Orange, the telecommunication French group, who was looking for partners for creating this kind of experience went to see the Pyramid and the ScanPyramids project and then came and asked us if it was possible to have a prototype based on the same technology. As far as I remember, I went to small medieval towns around France with a camera. I was looking for houses specifically from the time of when there was a street in front of Notre-Dame de Paris. I did some photogrammetry and I quickly arranged a demo of this street in front of a rough draft of 3D model of eternal Notre-Dame de Paris. And that was the prototype for the first scene, the opening scene when you are arriving in front of the Parvis. And then after this prototype, the project was initiated and started with another team while I was starting to prototype the Horizon of Khufu.
[00:16:24.770] Kent Bye: OK, I saw the video that gives a little bit more context for the background for this project that you have here at Venice. And I noticed that there was a shot of a museum that was having a 150-year anniversary of the Impressionists that opened up around March of 2024. And so maybe you could take me back to how did this project come about to celebrate this 150-year anniversary of these Impressionist painters?
[00:16:52.247] Pierre Gable: I will explain you and tell you about this. Just before, I have to mention that we have another director at Emissive. His name is Guillaume Martini, who was in charge of the beautiful Eternal Notre Dame project. Thanks to him and our teams, we managed to publish this very first mainstream immersive expeditions. That was actually the first to tour in France with some tickets sold. It was a huge step for MSC. As for A Soir avec les Impressionnistes, there is a company, Gédéon Experiences. They are specialized in reconstruction and 3D reconstruction of historical events and places. And they did an extensive amount of searches about this event, the very first Impressionist exhibit in Paris. So it was in 1874, in Boulevard des Capucines, in a place that disappeared today, there is nothing left. But we still have a few photos, a few pictures. It was a photography studio of an artist called Nadar, he was very famous back in the time kind of the official photograph for the stars you know like many famous actresses and writers and artists were photographed in the space and so he let the impressionists use his place It was located on two floors and Gedeon worked with Hubert Nodex, a French specialist in this kind of restitution, to find as much information as they could based on the old photographics and in French we call it cadastre, basically very old maps of the situation. And he did manage to recreate something and they went to the Museum d'Orsay asking, look guys, we are doing some We are planning to do something to celebrate this anniversary. Are you interested? Shall we work together? That was three years before the event. And they were okay, so Gédéon and Orsay were willing to innovate and propose something a little bit different than a single user experience. Orsay already had VR solo experiences, but at that time they wanted, I believe, to push it a little further. And this is how they asked Escurion, having already published Eternal Notre Dame and The Horizon of Khufu, and Montes Disparus, which is our third experience. So as they came to the office, it was, I think, maybe 14 months before the release. It's a quite short window of time to produce such an ambitious project. And we started to work here all together because we needed the experience of Hubert and his 3D reconstruction of the Atelier de Nadar. Just to find out how does it look like, what would be back in time a typical visit, pass, and which room, oh this is the first room a visitor would have engaged in today. and how in this first room it would be only portraits and who were the painters so once we knew which rooms and which painters we started to build a story and also to learn more and more and more about the painters by themselves because They all have their feeling, their mood, their story to each other. There was some competition between them. Some were very good friends and we had no idea before we started. So we had to ask a lot of questions to the curators of Orsay. They have great specialists who read the thousands of letters of correspondence between them. And so they knew how they were thinking and acting each other. So with this huge amount of knowledge, we started to write with Emmanuel Piton, who was a co-writer with me on this project. And we also worked on The Horizon of Khufu together. So we started to work, to write the scripts. I think it was in June last year, and it lasted for three months. It's quite short. It's quite not a good period because everybody's on holiday, on vacation. you need to ask to the some validations you know to the curator so it was quite stressful for everybody but finally we managed to wrap it before the first motion capture sessions because that was the point we need to be ready soon enough as it do Ready in time? Ready in time, absolutely, thank you. Because we had appointments for the motion captures and we needed to provide the script to the comedians a little before, of course, so that they can learn it. There was kind of a release date for that script and it was... difficult to make it in time but we managed to do that and ultimately one of the biggest challenge definitely was to have 12 characters that's a lot of different characters to make them be looking as accurately as possible with the help of the curators. We do have some rare photography from back in time, so we do know how Renoir looks 20 years after the exhibit, but not before, there were only paintings. And then for a special scene, like for instance the Basile workshop, when all the painters gather and decide all together to create the very first exhibit, so it's a very important moment. So there is something like 10 characters and the motion capture studio can handle no more than four at a time. So we had to act everything three times with the same actors, speaking to the void, to the roles they were playing before. It was quite difficult, but overall we managed to make it. So yes, I believe the characters, the way they look, the way they act and the way they speak, it was the most challenging part of the project.
[00:23:14.554] Kent Bye: Yeah, and when I watched the video about this, the behind the scenes or just setting a bit of the context for this project, what I was really struck by was just how many different subject domain experts across different disciplines from the museum through the people who are reconstructing it. There's the building of where the exhibition was happening that was destroyed. They had to get the architectural blueprints to reconstruct it and then reading through all the press articles to see what the critics were saying to try to reconstruct what paintings were actually there.
[00:23:44.985] Pierre Gable: I have some small anecdotes. Lots of experts. So for instance, we were looking for train experts for the sequence in the Saint-Lazare railway station because we had to know which exact locomotive trains were used back in times and we found out that That was not the kind of train we were expecting because the impressionists, in order to go to the landscapes in the countryside, they did not use big trains like they used for Normandy, you know, when they were on the border side of Seine River. They were using kind of a... train de banlieue which is a smaller train for suburban trains and they don't look at all so we had to find an expert for this when we did a recreation of the salon which was the official event before the impressionist they tried it was quite difficult for them to manage to get their paintings into the salon because it was quite conventional they have to You paint mythology, or you paint historical events from the Bible, or you paint official portraits, but portraits are not fashion at all. So impressionists didn't manage to expose their paintings there. Instead, there was something like, it was in 1869, we did a recreation of Palais de l'Industrie, which disappeared now. There is the Grand Palais at the same spot. And we knew back in time that there was 3,000 paintings. But we have the names and the information about maybe only 500. And what about the 2,500 more paintings? And how to deal with this with the curators who are very, very strict because of the science, you can't display anything. So we decided to put... near the camera pass, the pass of the visitors, paintings that we knew for sure they were there and we know the dimensions and we even have the pictures so we can put them back in colors. But in the background, when there are thousands of hundreds of paintings, we generated with IA, with the help of one of my colleagues who went to the Ecole du Louvre. So he did generate a lot of paintings and then we asked to the commissaire, to the curators of Orsay, do you think this is acceptable? What did IA do? He said no, no, no, oh maybe, okay. So they did sort the paintings and finally after a lot of works we managed to have a plausible painting for the backgrounds thanks to IA. So this is the use of IA. Because without this, I don't know how we would do it. Probably with blurry figures, but no, this is a nice sequence.
[00:26:45.580] Kent Bye: So, yeah, you have like a number, like it seems like the main narrative line is like this exhibition. And we kind of have a guided tour, a docent who is very well connected to all these people and is introducing us to all these people and meeting in a town square and walking into this place. And so, like you said, we're going into these different rooms. And in those rooms, there's different painters that we get to learn about their lives. And we get taken back to this salon because the salon was... where the make it or break it you have to get in and selected by this jury and then if you do you're in you can sell your art but if you don't then you're outcast and exiled and so all these oppressionist friends were trying to take a different track of where they wanted to pay attention to the the subtle movements or the light and paint landscapes and just go against the trend for what was happening and so then they had to have this whole museum so i think it the way that you're able to tell that story by actually taking us there and to it is an expedition but you're doing this expedition into the contextual dimensions of what was happening in the reality of that time that was leading to what happened with this movement so i feel like it was a really really brilliant way of taking me to these locations and then telling the story and then oh like taking me to this floating cafe and where this painting was happening or you know just different scenes that were reconstructions of these famous paintings so yeah i just i think the whole architecture of how you were able to have the docent introduce us to all these characters and then yeah just also the social dynamics that were happening amongst all the different painters the kind of the personality quirks of their temperament and how they would talk to each other and you know just a yeah I thought it did a really great job it felt like it was being transported into the history and like to get like a guided tour of something that would be like the ultimate guided tour of you know something you could see these paintings in a in a museum which they you know that's a part of museum where they're getting exhibited but they wanted to also give the deeper history of that to give people more even more motivation to want to see the original paintings
[00:28:49.511] Pierre Gable: Yeah, I believe you. I'm happy because you feel what we were trying to do with this experience. I would like to add that we had the honor to be hosted at the Museum d'Orsay while they were also presenting the actual paintings in the room aside. And some visitors, well all the visitors of the Viard, The opportunity at first to discover in a special way the painting with the painters speaking about it and then to see the actual painting a few meters aside. And well, trust me, I did the experience by myself because I've been working for a year on these paintings and I wasn't allowed to see them because they were dispatched all over the world. and the day of the opening I was very very moved by meeting the painting myself after all the researches and stuff and hopefully it helps bring some emotion to the visitors but also I would like to underline the fact that I believe that the virtual reality is a wonderful tool because you know in impressionist the name comes from impression And the way the painter was talking about this was an impression is what I'm not painting a subject. I'm painting what's between me and the subject. I'm painting what I feel. I'm painting with my sensibility. I'm painting my impression. and of course it could be explained to the visitors with words or with a movie but we found out that it's way more powerful to try to install the visitor in a scene like at Le Havre when you're standing on the balcony in front of the sea on the sunset next to Claude Monet who is painting Impression Soleil Levant the very first painting that gave the name to the impressionist movement And so you have the ability to, I hope, to feel what Claude Monet in this mood is feeling and trying to depict. Because if you're looking at the Impression Soleil Le Vent, you can tell it's like he was painting reality, he was painting his feelings.
[00:31:03.703] Kent Bye: Yeah, it feels like it, you know, I love that scene where you're able to see him on the balcony overlooking it because you have, even within the VR, you have to do a lot of stuff with the lighting that you talked about in the video where you're trying to recreate the impressionist's impression within VR. So it's like another layer of the impressionist that's like trying to set the virtual context that he was painting. But, you know, you're also... reflecting the light and giving this whole exchange where you can see how he's translating what would be a little bit more of the physical reality but giving his impression so yeah just to have that multiple perspective of to see the painting but also to be embedded within the larger context of how that painting was made and you do that a number of times in this piece where i feel like that you're able to use the painting as a portal to give the larger context of what's not being painted and And then to transport us there and to give us these little narrative bits to guide us through the way. So yeah, I thought it was really, really quite elegant the way that it was all tied together that way.
[00:31:58.530] Pierre Gable: Thank you. We tried. I must have a few words also for the wonderful team who was working with me. Emmanuel, of course, who wrote the story. And Vincent, Jacques, for the original soundtrack. We did quite a... precise job on some sequences and we have on the side of 6 curio lots of people on the animation section on the developers and the 3d graphics section also the logistics so yeah it's a lot of people who worked on i believe at the end we were nearly 100 working at the same time on the project so you know lots of it's a tough job of a wonderful team and i hope people will like it
[00:32:45.031] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I know that in watching Eternal Notre Dame, I saw the sit-down version that was translated here for Venice Immersive, and then I had a chance to actually see in the more installation where an expedition version where it's a big, giant space that I can walk through, and it was totally, totally different. And so I, again, seeing the more sit down version here of this experience. And so when you had this, I'm assuming you also had it, people were walking around, I saw in the video, but even like in the salon. So when you're going to these scenes, are people able to walk around like they were at the salon exhibit or was it more on a guard rails where they were more bounded to stick on a specific path
[00:33:25.672] Pierre Gable: Yeah, obviously we tried to explain to all our dear visitors here that we are indeed presenting an adaptation which is imperfect because the concept of immersive expedition is that you walk freely with your friends and family for 42 minutes you follow freely and it's very fluid you follow a guide and you just walk like you would in a normal life so here obviously we ask people to stay in a seat And the story is not designed for this. So you might see sometimes when Rose tries to make you avoid to get watered by and try to make you move and say, oh, come here. Only one method this way. People actually do it on the real installation. Here you just stand and then Rose is speaking at another position. You didn't follow her and she's not watching at you. So, yes, I apologize for our visitors here. Actually, if it had to be designed for a standalone, single city experience, the story would have not been the same. We would have. Because moving, engaging our body into the experience gives more stress or more different feelings that if you stay on here, relax for the whole story. So the rhythm of your visit wouldn't have been the same and we definitely would have built something different. Here, it's just a quick adaptation for review, but it's way better if you can just walk freely and follow the guide.
[00:34:57.046] Kent Bye: Yeah, after seeing both versions of the Eternal Notre Dame, I much prefer the one where I'm walking around. It was so much more of a powerful experience. And so, are the lengths around the same? We have about a 45-minute version here. Was it around the same runtime, or is it longer for the full version?
[00:35:11.775] Pierre Gable: Yep, we are working between 36 and 40 minutes usually. It depends on the rhythm of the content. Once again, if you are running after dinosaurs, it could be shorter because it's quite demanding now. But I wanted to add that something that is missing here and which is very important to my eyes is that you're not standing with your friends and family It's like going to a movie with your friends, you're sitting, but you can still speak with a low voice and exchange and hold your hand, work together. And this is something we see a lot on venues. People are holding their hands, friends, and they talk a little, they exchange. Here, this is a solo experiment, you're staying on the same spot. So obviously, it's not the very best experience, but that was my problem.
[00:36:09.411] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think one of the things that all of the immersive industry is struggling with is finding solutions for throughput, getting enough people through the experience in an hour to make it economically viable to continue to sustain the industry. And it sounds like that emissive is really almost like cracked the code and found a solution to that throughput issue of being able to have the technology and preventing people from colliding with each other or to have multiple people going through the same physical space but in different parts. And you're able to have an amazing number of people to see things. Are you able to speak around how many people can see some of these experiences per hour?
[00:36:49.588] Pierre Gable: Yeah, for sure. So again, I'm the director and I'm not on the very technical side of the project. But I can tell you, of course, that what you're seeing there, all the work is only the visible part of the iceberg. There's a lot underwater, which is the job we are doing with our teams, developers and what we are calling the platform. and this component of our technology allows over 100 people at the same time while avoiding as much as we can collisions while also enabling the access to people who are disabled with wheelchairs and lots of different features some are quite complex and as much. Now we have something like I believe 20 venues in the world and this is our fourth experience. We are working on the fifth right now about the city of Carcassonne in the south of France with the help of the CNC. the French government, so they do help us. We have the luck in France to have help, financial help from the government. But also we are happy because, yes, we found a way to have a kind of flow in our experiences and with our partners we have a ticketing system and now, yeah, Orsay is something like 500 square meters and we have from 80 to 100 people at the same time so on the six months of exploitation it was around 80 000 users Wow.
[00:38:35.865] Kent Bye: I think a lot of experiences here at Venice Immersive are in the order of hundreds of people who can see it. But yeah, 80,000 people, that's amazing. And so 100 people at a time with a 30 to 45 minute experience would be somewhere between 120 or 150 people per hour? That's per hour. Between 80 to 100 per hour, yeah.
[00:38:56.912] Pierre Gable: And you know, you always have to deal with... What I want to say is that our solution, the platform is developed to handle a lot of situations that you don't expect while people are working. You have to... What's happening if the kids are running or shouting and, you know, lots of stuff to handle. But yeah, that's a huge part of our job is to improve again and again the solution.
[00:39:24.144] Kent Bye: Yeah, when I was at Laval Virtual, there was another company that was presenting, I think that was next to Missive, or at least in the same area. They were called Orange. Is Orange the technology that you're using?
[00:39:34.170] Pierre Gable: Orange is the main telecommunication operator in France. I have Orange mobile pay stuff. So they were our client for Eternal Notre Dame, but then we are producing ourselves our experiences.
[00:39:52.290] Kent Bye: So is a mobile phone company that requested the return of Notre Dame? Is that what you're saying?
[00:39:57.330] Pierre Gable: Yes, because everybody was very moved when the cathedral burned. And Orange decided to make a move with financing. Lots of people were trying to be nice and company as well. And actually, when you were buying a ticket for Eternal Notre Dame, half of the tickets went to the Fondation Notre Dame to help the reconstruction. So, yes, it's like mécénat, we call it, I think, mécène. It was designed to help reconstruction initially.
[00:40:30.000] Kent Bye: So, yeah, you've said that you've had four experiences. You're working on your fifth. And so before this Impressionist piece that's showing here at Venice Immersive, what happened, you had three previous projects. Do you know if someone from the museum that was doing it, had they seen the previous project? Or how did the decision come about that they would actually kind of green light this or fund it? Or, you know, like what was the mechanics for how, you know, because you mentioned that there was a 3D company that was doing some reconstruction that they had come to you. But, like, how did the overall project begin before that?
[00:41:00.300] Pierre Gable: Most of the people who heard about us actually went to the venues and tried it. We even had Emmanuel Macron at l'Institut du Monde Arabe who tried Horizon of Khufu. It was a great honor. the director of the Museum d'Orsay went to the Horizon of Khufu and I was quite happy with the result and an enthusiast for this voyage chez les impressionnistes. So thanks to him again, they gave us their trust and you know the Museum d'Orsay is a huge institution in France. It was quite an honor and a big challenge.
[00:41:42.777] Kent Bye: Another thing that came to mind when I was watching the video was just reflecting on how many of these different cultural institutions that were already very well funded or at least supported by the public and the government to have the public funds to do this, a lot of this type of innovation. I know that... Atlas 5 and Lucid Realities and Diversion, other distribution. There's a lot of innovation that's happening with immersive media within France. And I think the fact that Emissive is there and have these really big projects and having 80,000 people go through and see it, it seems like that there's a zeitgeist of the French culture is able to really support and have a vision for what the technology can do. in a way that isn't always translated into the other, like in the United States, as an example, there's not as much public support or funding or cultural institutions that are as far along. And also just the fact that it's covering these cultural trends of painting and the history of France and cinema. So yeah, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts of why is France and this type of cultural appreciation, why is there so much support for it and helping to foster a lot of the core of this innovation for immersive storytelling?
[00:42:54.844] Pierre Gable: Well I believe that we are very lucky to live in a beautiful country with a lot of beautiful buildings and museums and we are very incentive, I don't know if it's the word, but to go to the museum and to go visit the monuments and
[00:43:11.531] Kent Bye: You mean like incentivized?
[00:43:13.913] Pierre Gable: Yeah, that was what I was looking for, thank you. And we are also very lucky if you look at the video games industry in France, lots of great stories, great studios also for indie and greater studios. So this attract for technology and arts, there was already something quite strong even 30, 40 years ago. As for now, I believe that what's happening in the VR field in France is very, very enthusiastic. I'm very enthusiastic to see that many talented companies and we are challenging each other. And there are many, many topics around us. Château de Versailles is beautiful, the Tour Eiffel is incredible. And outside of Paris, plenty of beautiful castles and places full of stories like Les Plages du Débarquement. Yeah, it's going to take a lot of time before we do all the topics in France. But I'm also very happy when I have a wonderful project in Egypt, for instance. And we are definitely looking forward to experiencing other fields. We are not only working on French and France on the same spot, you know. So, yeah, but we are lucky to have beautiful people. answer if you question why was are we in france so much pushing forward technology around virtual reality yeah i believe the sum of having gifted people with technology for video and an interest into culture it blends well together and leads to beautiful vr projects and if you add in the cocktail mixture the head of the government, definitely it should be something nice and fancy at the time.
[00:45:08.604] Kent Bye: So what's next for you and either this project, you mentioned that you're working on another project, but I'm curious to hear if there's going to be like a touring version of this piece or what happens next?
[00:45:19.730] Pierre Gable: I'm not allowed to say what I am working now, but I can tell that we are definitely pushing the immersive expeditions forward. I'd love to experience more with interactivity and gamification, but this is just on my side. how using and tracking could enhance the story without distracting too much visitors. So I need to do a lot of tests, but this is something I would like to explore. Yeah, definitely plenty of other subjects are running now.
[00:45:53.344] Kent Bye: Awesome. And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential of immersive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable?
[00:46:02.637] Pierre Gable: I believe that we are at the edge of something very, very important like the creation of the cinema. We are using codes from the theater. The cinema was using code from the theater at the beginning. I believe we are still using code and mechanics from the cinema and still do have to invent our own codes. So we are experimenting, the devices are getting better and better and lighter and better resolution and power. But overall I do believe that I'd love to experiment more on the power of giving emotional feelings to people, you know, to feel something truly beautiful and to be immersed and I believe it's so powerful and I'm looking forward. trying new stuff with moving people is my stuff. I like to work with emotions and this is a beautiful tool.
[00:47:00.552] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community? Any final thoughts you'd like to share to the community?
[00:47:09.604] Pierre Gable: I would like to say a huge hi and hello to all the community and thanks to and say thank you to all the people who are going to the venues, experimenting VR and helping and showing interest into virtual reality and leaving comments and encouraging all the creators. This is very precious and thanks everybody for being so enthusiastic.
[00:47:37.222] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Pierre, I really love this piece. What's the full title? Can you say the French version of the title of this piece?
[00:47:44.548] Pierre Gable: Un Soir avec les Impressionnistes, Paris, 1874.
[00:47:48.249] Kent Bye: Right, so I call it the Impressionist 1874 because I can't say all that stuff.
[00:47:54.170] Pierre Gable: We call it Les Impressionnistes. Okay.
[00:47:57.570] Kent Bye: So, yeah, I very much appreciated this piece. And, you know, like I said, I've seen both the Eternal Notre Dame and Walking Around. And, you know, I know kind of the difference between those two. And so seeing this, I can only imagine how much more immersive and powerful it would be to go through it. But... I think at Emissive, you're doing a really brilliant job of finding a way of telling these stories spatially, so you're able to walk people through space and time in a way that has characters and getting more and more in-depth with allowing us to be immersed into a social dynamic of these matrix of characters that are a part of a movement that I think it would be a little bit more difficult to try to translate all of that into 2D, and I think there's just something much more powerful to the piece. I watched the preview video of this piece, and I got some sense of it. But then I did the immersive version and went back to watch the video and I was like, I could project myself into the experience a lot more because I was actually immersed into a lot of these locations. So I think it's just a really powerful way of reconnecting us to history and just telling these deeper stories in a new way. And so it's just really, really inspiring to see There's a model out there that seems to be working, that's bringing all this technology together. And so, yeah, it's just really a real pleasure to be able to hear a little bit more about that story because I think it's really inspiring to hear what you're doing there at Emissive and looking forward to seeing whatever next project you may have there.
[00:49:18.004] Pierre Gable: Thank you so much. I hope you like the next one as well.
[00:49:22.298] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to these episodes from Venice Immersive 2024. And yeah, I am a crowdfunded independent journalist. And so if you enjoy this coverage and find it valuable, then please do consider joining my Patreon at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
