"Beyond Midnight" is a journey through the real and the virtual, the past and the present.
Crédits photos : Neon Minuit
Neon Minuit artists Léon Denis and Dorian Rigal have created an immersive, interactive installation on the theme of cyberspace. A blend of three media (cinema, video games and virtual reality), Beyond Midnight creates a duality between the real and the virtual. The artwork is part of the Art&VR Gallery’s selection for the next edition of the Recto VRso digital art festival.
A playful immersion in cyberspace
In “Beyond Midnight”, the user has to follow a number of steps in order to fully enjoy the immersive experience. The first stage consists of a video projection on a semi-transparent screen, which the user watches. This is the entrance to the imaginary world created for the experience. Next, the user sits in front of a vintage computer and interacts with an application, much like a video game. This time, the virtual world is more interactive.
In the third and final stage, the user enters the imaginary world using a virtual reality headset. When the participant is inside the experience, the environment is gradually revealed as he observes it. “Thousands of particles are projected from your gaze and settle on the surfaces as they are revealed. These points react to our presence, initially attracted and then stretched in the direction of our movement,” explain the two artists.
So we are faced with two visions of the experience: a digital structure that can be viewed from a distance, and an interactive immersion that can be experienced from the inside. The aim of the Neon Minuit duo is to make explicit the fact that we can perceive the same digital world through different media.
Duality between real and virtual
This installation creates a duality between the real and the virtual, between past and present. On the one hand, ‘ Beyond Midnight ‘ is an immersive experience that takes place in real time. But its content, produced using photogrammetry, contains old images of people and places that the artists have encountered in the course of their projects. There are also volumetric captures of interviews with individuals who share stories about the past, present and future. “It is then composed in a digital landscape, mixing layers of reality and virtuality, with entangled space and time, where user has to explore and apprehend,” say the artists.
In the course of their work, Léon Denis and Dorian Rigal are used to using images or sounds from reality to integrate them into a virtual world. They like to study new ways of perceiving reality, and use video game techniques to create illusions. With “Beyond Midnight”, they explore the concept of cyberspace, but also the theme of traveling through technology and spirituality. Their immersive installation can be seen on April 11-14, 2024 during the 7th edition of the Recto VRso digital art festival.
