Beyond Matter
Virtual recreation of the exhibition "Les Immatériaux" [Immaterial] (1985)
Présentation
« Beyond Matter » est un projet financé par la Commission européenne, via son agence pour l’Éducation, l’audiovisuel et la culture (EACEA). Il est porté par le Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (Zkm) de Karlsruhe en Allemagne, et rassemble des institutions artistiques européennes aux profils divers : le Centre Pompidou à Paris, le Ludwig Muzeum de Budapest en Hongrie, le centre d’art Sihtasutus Kunstihoone de Tallinn en Estonie, le Tirana Art Lab en Albanie et l’école d’art Aalto Korkeakoulusaation d’Helsinki en Finlande. Il se déroule sur 3 ans et demi, d’octobre 2019 à mai 2023.
« Beyond Matter » vise à développer des outils technologiques et théoriques pour la reconstitution virtuelle d’expositions passées et la documentation d’expositions en cours. Dans l’espace du web et celui du musée, avec ou sans lunettes de réalité virtuelle, il s’agira de créer des rendus 3D interactifs nourris par différentes strates d’informations, elles-mêmes issues de réflexions à la croisée des disciplines : commissariat d’exposition, scénographie, muséologie, médiation, conservation, numérisation, documentation…
Centre Pompidou's project
© Centre Pompidou. Conception graphique : Grafibus
The Centre Pompidou will focus on the recreation of one of its pioneering exhibitions, "Les Immatériaux", which took place in 1985 in the Grande Galerie (level 5 of the Centre Pompidou). Philosopher Jean-François Lyotard was general curator of the exhibition, in association with Thierry Chaput, from the Industrial Creation Centre and Bernard Blistène from the Musée National d’Art Moderne.
"Les Immatériaux" was an essay on philosophical foundations, adopting the exhibition as a medium or interface. By creating a dialogue between works of art, technology and scientific documents, the curators explored the human condition, through various aspects of physical and mental life, in the age of new technology. The particularly innovative exhibition design triggered disorientation, stimulation of all the senses and interactivity. Visitors, whose pathway was not guided, but ‘induced’ by hanging screens of varying opacity, were provided with a headset playing a soundtrack which varied as they moved through the twenty-six areas of the exhibition
All the archives related to "Immatériaux" are held in the institutional archives of the Centre Pompidou and have already been the subject of in-depth studies. The researcher Andreas Broeckmann, in particular, has devoted his research to these archives for more than 5 years. Notwithstanding the fact that the documentation lacks certain elements, the aim of the Beyond Matter project is not necessarily to produce an integral and highly accurate virtual recreation of the artefacts and the exhibition spaces. The virtual reality will be designed as a new medium through which the philosophical and emotional intentions evoked in Immatériaux will be presented as a translation and not a reproduction, through the very particular construction of interactions between artefacts, spaces, technology and visitors. The issue of conserving an exhibition, or "manifestation", to quote Jean-François Lyotard, which mirrors the specific concerns of museums, will also be a focal point.
The virtual recreation of "Immatériaux" will be developed by alternating between practice, (the manipulation of technology and immersion in the archives) and theory. One of the first "test" steps will consist in the virtual recreation of a well-documented area of the exhibition, entitled "Labyrinth of Language".
