According to Jean Davallon, mediation “aims to provide access to artworks for an audience, and its action consists of building an interface between these two foreign universes (that of the public and that of the cultural object) with the precise purpose of allowing the latter to be appropriated by the former.” Just like with physical collections, the appropriation of virtual reality works by cultural venue audiences requires guidance. A set of material, technical, and human resources can be used to welcome visitors and support them in discovering this experience: facilitating access conditions, mobilizing mediators to assist the public, arranging physical spaces, etc. This article will also address the potential of virtual reality works to be genuine mediation objects in themselves. Indeed, their ability to engage sight and hearing, set a visitor’s body in motion, and immerse them in a narrative would seem to make this medium an ideal means of mediation.
3 conditions for mediating an immersive experience
To optimally incorporate a virtual reality experience into a physical cultural venue, 3 conditions need to be defined beforehand to ensure optimal mediation:
- How do participants access the VR experience?
- How can they be welcomed (On Boarding) and assisted?
- How should the physical spaces be arranged?
Condition 1: How do participants access a VR experience? Should it be paid or offered for free? Should access be unrestricted or subject to a reservation slot?
Different cases can be considered:
Case 1: Open-access VR experience: Depending on visitor capacity, the VR experience can be offered free of charge and with free access. This is the option chosen by the Verdun Memorial for Paysages de paix, paysage de guerre, where the virtual reality experience is conceived as complementary to the visit. As such, the experience is included in the museum admission ticket. Four freely-accessible stations are available to visitors.
Case 2: Reservation-based VR experience on the day of the visit: If visitor numbers in the venue are relatively manageable, advance online or on-site reservation for specific time slots can be considered. This reservation may come with a separate ticketing system. For instance, the experience offered by Château de Chambord: Chambord 360°, un fabuleux voyage is a paid experience (€8) available daily during specific time slots (10:00 am to 12:00 pm and 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm), with sessions every 30 minutes. This is also the approach taken by the Paleosite of Saint-Césaire to discover the VR experience Lady Sapiens. At Saint-Césaire, reservations can be made online or at the reception desk on-site. With five headsets for a 20-minute experience, approximately 70 people can be accommodated per day. To manage the flow throughout the day, a digital calendar shared with VR experience facilitators is essential to keep track of online registrations and on-site bookings.
Case 3: Reservation-only VR experience with time-stamped ticket. In certain locations, where visitor numbers are particularly high, it may be possible to book online only and at a specific time. The virtual reality cabinet at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle is accessible this way. When it was launched in 2017, it was intended as a stand-alone offer, but is now offered in conjunction with a visit to the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution.
Once a reservation has been made, reception and guidance are essential components in the mediation of a virtual experience.
Condition 2: How to welcome (On Boarding) and assist visitors?
Reception and assistance conditions are integral to the experience. Beyond logistics and technical maintenance (turning on computers and/or VR headsets, handling or simultaneous launch of headsets, equipment cleaning and providing replacement foam in compliance with health regulations, equipment rotation, etc.), the role of the mediator is crucial in helping users fully experience the immersive experience, both from a technical standpoint and in terms of preparing participants.
From a technical perspective, the level of support for getting started will vary depending on:
- The type of VR experience: linear, interactive, 360° film;
- The user’s position: stationary, in VR cinema, in room-scale, seated/standing;
- The collective or individual dimension of the experience;
- The human resources that can be made available based on the desired economic model (and potential return on investment to absorb these mediation costs).
Based on these criteria, different levels of human mediation support can be considered:
Case 1: If the VR experience is a non-interactive 360° film, getting started is straightforward.
This type of setup can be accessed in individual spaces in a stationary, standing, or seated position. For example, the virtual tour experience of Notre-Dame de Paris offered by Ubisoft near the Cathedral, in the archaeological crypt of Île de la Cité, falls into this category. Accessible to those aged 7 and above, this experience, created from images of the video game Assassin’s Creed: Unity, lasts only five minutes. Three headsets are simultaneously managed by a mediator at the beginning of the tour.
Case 2: If the VR experience involves interaction (using controllers, for example), getting started will depend on the users’ comfort level and familiarity with the offered features.
This is the case with The Dawn of Art, a VR experience that offers a poetic and interactive immersion into the Chauvet Cave.
Case 3: If the VR experience is collective and involves free roaming, the equipment will potentially be more substantial (backpack containing a PC + VR headset), and assistance in getting to grips with it will require reminders of various rules and functionalities. This is the case for the Le Bal de Paris, where the combination of live performance and virtual experience (1h15 of live performance, including 35 minutes of virtual reality) means that we need to remind people of a number of pre-requisites for an optimal experience: duration of the experience, possible role-playing. The collective dimension of the experience (10 spectators per session) requires the mobilization of game masters (2 professional dancers) to ensure the smooth running of the experience, guide the visitors/spectators and, above all, contribute to the experience they are living. Over 30,000 spectators took part in the Le Bal de Paris (with an average ticket price of between €25 and €30).
These different levels of human mediation are therefore clearly correlated with the VR experience in question. The same applies to the layout of exhibition spaces.
Condition 3: How should physical spaces be designed?
Space arrangement in terms of signage, scenography, or furnishing can be defined before launching this experience. If the experience does not require roaming, a space can be arranged and delineated to accommodate users, similar to the virtual reality cabinet at the National Museum of Natural History. To enhance the sense of immersion in such an experience, the space can be more scenographic, as it was, for example, in La bibliothèque, la nuit. Finally, in the case of roaming, technical space arrangements may need to be considered to establish points of interaction in the spaces (similar to the path defined for Eternelle Notre-Dame under the parvis of La Défense Arch).
More than the levels of support for a VR experience, whatever they may be (in terms of access, human support or spatial arrangements), VR experiences themselves can become a genuine mediation medium for the cultural venues that host and co-construct them.
What a virtual reality experience can contribute in terms of mediation
In 1994, in her book Transferts intermodaux et intégration intermodale, Yvette Hatwell, a psychology professor and researcher at CNRS, demonstrated that our brain perceives 83% of information through sight and 11% through hearing. Regarding information retention, it memorizes only 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we see and hear, and 90% of what we say while doing. Virtual reality devices have the virtue of combining sight, hearing, and gesture. Therefore, they can be considered full-fledged mediation tools that facilitate the experience and appropriation by the public through a variety of narrative models and narrative environments.
A variety of possible narrative models.
Different types of narration are possible, depending on the desired experience:
1st model – Linear narrative without physical displacement: the story can be presented in the form of a linear narrative to tell a story, or offer a new experience. Examples include Modigliani VR – The Ochre Atelier at the Tate Modern, Alienarium at the Serpentine Gallery and Ayahuasca Kosmik Journey.
2nd model – Linear narrative with physical displacement: the narrative can be guided to follow a specific storyline more easily, or to encourage physical wandering. The immersive expedition, L’Horizon de Kheops, presented at the Institut du Monde Arabe from June to October 2022, recreates the conditions of a group visit by following a virtual guide to discover the famous pyramid. Produced by Emissive, this expedition uses the same codes as Éternelle Notre-Dame, previously mentioned in another article.
3rd model – the interactive, multisensory experience: the story can be told through a physical walk-through and a virtual reality experience with interactive elements, while at the same time mobilizing other senses (hearing, smell, sight or touch). In this respect, the We live in an ocean of air experience is particularly interesting. Presented since May 2022 at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore (previously at the Phi Centre in Montreal), this installation allows participants to travel through a forest and interact with its ecosystem. The virtual reality experience is complemented by surround sound, a fragrance diffusion system and special effects to create the impression of being in a real forest.
4th model – The hybrid physical/virtual narrative: the narrative can mix a physical and virtual experience. Fugue VR is a 12-minute example of this mixed approach between live performance – which can bring together up to 12 people – and virtual reality to discover a recreation of the emblematic work Fugue / Trampoline by Yoann Bourgeois.
This variety of narrative models – all of which have one thing in common: the use of the VR medium – are all ways of looking at the mediation of cultural sites in a different way.
A multiplicity of narrative environments in which to tell this story.
Another point that can help refine the mediation needs of a virtual reality experience is the sound and video environment in which the story is presented.
The sound environment makes an essential contribution to the sense of immersion. Sound effects and other sounds contribute to the ambience of the experience, while voice-over contributes to the narrative. Like the narrative, sound is used in a variety of ways in these experiences: linear, spatialized (with the use of 3D binaural sound) or interactive. TheBlu, an underwater VR exploration, illustrates this use of sound in these different dimensions. Created by WeVR in 2014 and exhibited at the Museum of Los Angeles, this VR work uses the background to recreate a maritime environment: permanent dull background sound, metallic and aquatic sound effects. These different sound compositions help to bring this very specific atmosphere to life, but also to split episodes within the experience, or to engage the user’s gaze, guiding it to other points of interest. The monk by the sea, a VR experience based on the work of Caspar David Friedrich, also demonstrates a particularly illustrative approach to sound immersion.
The visual environment can be interactive or non-interactive. Depending on the format, the possibilities for interactivity in this environment will be either greater or lesser. In the case of 360° video, immersion will be minimally interactive, with the user in the role of spectator (this is the case with Modigliani VR or Alienarium, for example); in other cases, the user will be able to move around and interact with the rendered environment, with objects or with (virtual) people encountered (this is the case with Kheops Horizon or We Live in an ocean of air).
As with other artworks or devices, virtual reality experiences are mediated to facilitate access, discovery and appropriation by the public. The variety of models and narrative environments that can be created are all assets for highlighting other views and experiences of collections and works of art. In this way, they are also an excellent complement to other forms of mediation already available in cultural venues.
Antoine Roland and Baudouin Duchange