The golden age of immersive experiences ?

As the executive in charge of innovation in a leading entertainment company, I have been closely following the fascinating evolution of live and immersive entertainment. One trend that has caught my attention is the rise of immersive art experiences, which seamlessly blend art, technology, and entertainment. Some of these experiences showcase famous artworks, while others utilize digital projectors, holography, and virtual reality. Notable immersive art destinations that I am eager to visit include AREA15 in Las Vegas, Otherworld, and Frameless.

AREA15, an experiential art and entertainment complex in Las Vegas, features permanent galleries, a 360-degree projection mapped room, and an interactive giant skull. Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe is another innovative and imaginative art experience, spanning 20,000 square feet of interactive and immersive art. Omega Mart, Meow Wolf’s second permanent installation, also seems enticing, with its interactive art and themed areas.

Superblue Miami showcases immersive installations from artists such as Es Devlin, teamLab, and James Turrell, which I find intriguing. Seismique in Houston, an experiential art museum, offers over 40 unique 'galaxies' that use artificial intelligence, immersive experiences, and gamification. I have been admiring teamLab, a global group of multidisciplinary artists, and their unforgettable art experiences in Shanghai, Tokyo, and Macao. Culturespaces, a French foundation specializing in immersive art experiences, operates Atelier des Lumières in Paris, as well as additional venues in South Korea, Bordeaux, Dubai, and New York City.

Artechouse in Miami, Wisdome LA in Los Angeles, and Otherworld in Columbus, Ohio, are all innovative digital art spaces that I am excited to explore. Artechouse, which opened in 2018, merges art, science, and technology to stimulate the senses and encourage visitor interaction. Wisdome LA, the world's first fully immersive entertainment art park, covers 35,000 square feet and offers five enormous domes with 360-degree projection mapping. Otherworld, an immersive art installation, features 40 interactive scenes across 32,000 square feet, and I am looking forward to the new location opening in Philadelphia in 2023.

Frameless in London provides immersive interpretations of iconic artworks using different forms of technology, and I'm eager to see their plans to launch in major cities worldwide. Convergence Station in Denver, by Meow Wolf, is a four-story exhibition with over 70 unique installations, rooms, and portals that I find fascinating. Wake the Tiger in Bristol, UK, is an experiential art gallery, interactive theme park, and detailed film set with 27 environments, created by the artistic team behind the Boomtown music festival.

The WNDR Museum in Chicago merges art and technology for a multi-sensory experience, with new immersive art experiences now open in San Diego and Seattle, and another heading to Boston. This museum features installations by cutting-edge artists, collectives, technologists, and designers, including Yayoi Kusama's 'Let's Survive Forever' infinity room, which I am particularly intrigued to see.

At Les 7 Doigts / The 7 Fingers , we have been playing with this immersive format for decades. But since our DNA is clearly influenced by our roots in performing arts, we love to mix human performances with the rich scenography and immersive theater style. That gave birth to a few ground breaking immersives shows such as Queen of the Night which played in NYC for 2 years and Vice and Vertu a show about the history of Montreal that sold out its 40 000 tickets ( expensive ones) for its 30 days run 5 years ago.

Now with our multimedia division we are disrupting the standard of the multimedia interactive experience in science centers and museums and blending those two langages to create a new kind of rich and interactive immersive narrative experience. There is really a beautiful area of exploration at the intersection of human performance, multimedia and interactive tech and non linear story telling. The main issue has always been and continues to be the sustainability of the business model. Even though some creators might find the standard "italian style" theater boring, it has the benefit of standardizing the production format of shows and maximise the seating capacity per show. The main trend that is pushing us to study how to make non-standard locations work is that our audiences are hungry for those. Despite the challenges and my daily fight with a few cells in my business model excel spreasheets, I am already seeing some clever ways to make the numbers work. There is still more optimization needed to see this new genre of experiences become mainstream but I trully think there is a way.

Many of you know that I am a big fan of XR, and after having spent almost two years on our XR flagship project, I think the way forward for cultural experiences in XR will not be through headsets at home. We can get some inspiration from the video game industry to see the path forward. Before we all had those incredible machines at home, the only place where you could get the social feeling and the high quality games were the arcades. I believe Location Based VR or MR experiences will play this role of getting us to the promised land. I will write in details about what I consider the benchmarck and what we are doing at the 7Fingers and the LAB7 on that front, but it is definately an area of interest for me and my team.