VR (or not) in Cultural Spaces: do you really want or need VR?

Sparkling a traditional exhibition or public space with VR/AR/XR is appealing for a vast array of reasons, going from engaging a younger audience to adding innovation grants to a production plan. All too often, hiring XR companies to create “an experience” as part of these physical spaces rarely accounts for the relevance of the technology itself to the nature of the project. This article written a couple of years ago is a compilation of opinions I developed as a consultant for a vast variety of cultural and pedagogical spaces. It aims to help institutions, especially cultural institutions, understanding whether VR will enrich their projects and align with their creative and social vision.?

Why do we want VR?

In the fast evolving field of extended reality technologies, there often is a slight confusion between AR, VR, MR. Other than work pipelines and budgets that are very different from one technology to the next, they do not fill the same function when integrated to public spaces. This section spans some key qualities that are specific to VR.

VR to “be somewhere else”

Arguably, the strongest potential of VR is to create a feeling of presence in a completely different space. When working with an exceptional “realspace”, it makes little sense to spend a lot of resources in taking the visitors away from it, for the sole interest of reconstitution. An important question when commissioning a VR project is: what do you want your visitors to experience? …and, does it look like that:

VR to defy the impossible

The most popular VR title is without a doubt Beat Saber, which is about mastering laser sabres and slicing giant blocs following the rhythm of a music. This would be nearly impossible to recreate in real life, but it is incredibly intuitive and “normal” to experience digitally. Should a cultural venue/museum want to put the participants in the skin of someone who has a specific skill or a cognitive particularity (archery, flying, synaesthesia, dementia), then VR can become engaging and relevant, both on-site and remotely. However, developing a high-quality interactive experience requires a much bigger team and longer production than creating a “window to the past” using static 3D models, and depending on graphic ambitions, it might require to buy, install and maintain powerful computers in a suitable area.?

VR to connect with others

Finally, VR can be a connected embodied experience, and allow people from all over the world to feel like they are interacting with the same space and going through the same life experience. It is great to create relations and feelings of intimacy, in a rather controlled and safe space. Social VR platforms like VRChat, are also amongst the most popular apps in the VR sphere, and there are more and more VR immersive theatre experiments and roleplays.

However, it is worth considering that human interaction is potentially even more technically demanding than the game mechanics described in the previous point, as it relies on a solid network technology and avatars, which are a challenge of their own on the conceptual, ethical and technical sides alike. Not to mention the questions of safety (psychological, emotional) and of ethics that immediately arise when working with Social VR.

Identifying what is relevant to your project/institution/space

VR might very well be what would fit your needs the most, but there might be better alternatives. Identifying your main intention will help you picking the best solution, should it be for reconstituting the past, telling a story or engaging visitors in the space.

Reconstituting the past

If the main reason to consider VR is the desire to reconstitute a past space and educate the visitors, then, there might be better (cheaper, less disruptive) alternatives to VR, such as:

*Exhibiting 3D objects on screens (the screens can be tactile to get more information or rotate) as part of your scenography.

*Developing an AR (Augmented Reality) app for phone or tablets, that allow to superimpose the vision of a different timeline to the current state of the space.

*Having a screen-based “virtual reality” room, as opposed to using a headset.

If, however, you do want to integrate some interactivity or to connect it to other places in the world, then, VR headsets can indeed be a better option.

Telling a story

VR can be a great ally if you find that you have a story to share and want it to resonate beyond the visitors. A VR film will allow to give a taste of “being there” and of “reconstituting the past” also to those who cannot physically come (a wider national/international audience or people with limited mobility). However, the ability for a VR film to reach a wider audience depends widely on its artistic quality, and diverse selection to festivals. In other terms, it requires an artistically and technically capable team, on top of a good story. The VR film Meeting Rembrandt offers a sneak peak into the artist’s workshop and displays original post-production techniques, which made it a staple of cultural VR films.

Engaging the participants in the space

When “sites of exception” want to work with VR or AR, it is often with the idea of engaging the participants in the space; make them feel like they can truly travel to the past through an exciting experience. To create an interactive, immersive and spatialised digital experience is a huge project, and I believe there is a very important alternative to new technologies to consider: live action roleplay (larp). If you're interested in understanding better larp, I recommend starting with watching this short video.

Used in arts and education, larp is a field dedicated to creating immersive stories in which participants are characters. They discover their context through the agenda of their characters and learn (about the socio-historical context and about themselves) through roleplaying with one another. It is all physical, the costs being those of designers, facilitators and eventually props and costumes. For instance, the larp Inside Hamlet by Participation | Design | Agency was ran several years in a row at Helsingor castle in Denmark and attracted players from all over the world. The larp itself was not commissioned by the castle, meaning the story and style were very free, but it is possible to tailor larp to specific educational or experiential visions. Similarly, the UN created a World Climate Debate simulation in order to spread awareness about the political implications of negotiating climate change policies, which could be reanacted physically.

In short

To this date, VR is the most advanced of extended reality technologies. It allows for the most "immersion" and the most "interactivity". However, its production and logistic constraints might make it either too underdeveloped to fit your vision or too disruptive to be symbiotic with your space. When considering commissioning VR projects, make sure you are basing yourself on the strengths of that technology and if your ambitions are more physically situated or if your budget does not allow to implement a lot of technical functions, consider some of the alternatives listed above.