The Grand Palais Éphémère launches artistic creation in augmented reality
“Genius loci”, screenshot during the discovery of the work of Theo Triantafyllidis at the “Palais Augmenté” festival at the Grand Palais Éphémère.
© Siegfried Forster / RFI
Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow
9 mins
On June 19 and 20, the “Augmented Palace” will take place, the first festival dedicated to creation in augmented reality.
Each work presented is rooted in virtual reality as well as in the real world of the 10,000 square meters of the Grand Palais Éphémère in Paris.
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Did you laugh a few years ago, when people suddenly became weird, their noses stuck to their cellphones, chased Pokemon in the middle of the street?
Well, dear art lovers eager for new creations, you are there too!
The Grand Palais Éphémère does not offer us to catch Pikachu or Bulbasaur.
He invites us to take a walk in the artistic imaginaries entitled
And now, where
?
,
Footprints on the shore
,
Counter-Dive
,
HanaHana
or
Genius loci
.
"Interrogate the looks of visitors"
You have to be there, here and now, to enter the worlds imagined by the artists and follow their creatures: plants, monsters, dreams and apocalyptic moments.
Five works by international artists to be discovered on a playground unlike any other: under the 44 monumental arches and the curved lines of the Nave culminating at 20 meters.
Five works in a gigantic, practically empty space.
"
The void is a potential,"
explains Roei Amit, digital director at the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN) -Grand Palais.
A potential that calls to be filled by the creation, the imagination of the artists who have created works for this space, to question it and to question the gazes of visitors.
"
According to Amit, this is a first in France: “
I don't know of another occasion where such a space of this size was offered to very talented artists to create large-scale augmented reality works.
They provide a global experience for visitors.
"
During a weekend, the Grand Palais Éphémère, designed by architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte and installed on the Champ-de-Mars, is therefore transformed into an “Augmented Palace”, thanks to an augmented reality application of the same name.
So remember to download it and especially to charge your phone battery before going there and immersing yourself in the
Counter-Diving
of the Australian artist, Lauren Moffatt.
Artist Lauren Moffatt at the “Palais Augmenté” festival at the Grand Palais Éphémère.
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Lauren Moffatt's Counter-Dive
“
In
Contre-Plongée
, you discover a field of very large flowers and you are yourself on a very small scale and look at everything from below.
With this work, I wanted to create a non-human perspective.
Like the perspective of an insect or a plant.
It's about making visitors feel like something other than a human for a while.
"
The 39-year-old artist, specializing in immersive media, works between digital and physical, because there are also many paintings or objects that she sculpts herself in her creations inhabited by a decentralized vision. : "
How to create a gaze that forces one to look at the connections between humans and other species?
The goal is that we come out after this experience with a different perspective.
"
The Genius loci of Theo Triantafyllidis
At the "Augmented Palace"
,
no virtual reality headset on your head.
No one is seated in an armchair or cut off from the reality of their environment.
The virtual world created by the artist always merges with our reality, and that in real time.
Theo Triantafyllidis, born in 1988 in Athens, and now based in Los Angeles, defines himself as an “
artist using technologies
”.
With his
Genius Loci
, he plays with the space of the Grand Palais Éphémère and lets the space inspire and direct the artistic process.
In his work, a flying creature guides us in space and sharpens our gaze:
The artist Theo Triantafyllidis at the “Palais Augmenté” festival at the Grand Palais Éphémère.
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“To
create this alternative reality which coexists with the real, I find that very poetic.
The little monster is called Genius loci, inspired by a theory in the field of architecture, it is the spirit of the place that I transformed into a real creature inhabiting this space.
It's a bit like Quasimodo.
Genius loci lives here, but no one sees it.
Thanks to the work, we see it.
He is a very ambiguous being.
We don't really understand if he's a man or a woman, what he's doing here, if he's nice or dangerous… You have to learn to interact with him.
"
Each spectator moves at their own pace.
You have to actually walk to explore the artistic universe while observing the reactions of other visitors and admiring the architectural prowess of the place.
“
It's a kind of choreography for visitors.
For example, I wonder what happens when a lot of people move around the work at the same time.
How can I choreograph their way of looking at the work through smartphones?
For this, the creature Genius Loci moves a lot, to move the visitors.
"
The ghost of our digital traces at Mélanie Courtinat
Mélanie Courtinat was born in 1993 in Paris.
Today an “
interactive artist and designer
” based in Paris and Lausanne, she questions the fingerprints we leave behind us through her new interactive multi-user installation, made possible by 5G.
In
Footprints on the Strike
, our digital traces turn into very enigmatic red lines on the smartphone screen.
It thus shows that a passage into the virtual is not trivial.
At the same time, the artist does not want to speak only of surveillance cameras and traceability either.
The artist Mélanie Courtinat at the “Palais Augmenté” festival at the Grand Palais Éphémère.
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“
There are other things in the virtual, in this idea of footprints, which is interesting.
In particular the notion of ghost in video games.
I am very interested in game mechanics. I like to deconstruct them, to tell things around.
There, this notion of ghost in racing games, so the imprint left by his best time, is something very poetic and that I wanted to take up again.
"
Courtinat is particularly interested in the boundaries between the real and the virtual: “
Me, I'm interested in treating the smartphone screen as a kind of portal to this experience that I offer.
It becomes a surface that makes you travel.
"
► “
Augmented Palace
”, on June 19 and 20, 2021 at the Grand Palais Éphémère
.
Free entry by reservation.
The first festival dedicated to artistic creation in augmented reality is co-produced by Fisheye and the RMN-Grand Palais.
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