During the opening week of Rencontres d’Arles, artists, curators, and researchers will address the thriving intersection between virtual imagery and contemporary photographic creation. Throughout the day, the VR experiences HanaHana: Multi-Bloom (Mélodie Mousset), Beyond The Rubicon (Lauren Moffatt), and Fever (K. Markiewicz and P.Piron) will be freely accessible for viewing in the lobby of the Théâtre d’Arles.

Program: Fabbula

9:30am Introductory keynotes
Welcome by Charlotte Rampling, Sam Stourdzé (Rencontres d’Arles),

and Benoît Baume (Fisheye)

10am Immersive art beyond the Uncanny Valley

With Ersin Han Ersin (Marshmallow Laser Feast),
Christopher Miles (Palais de Tokyo), and
Evgeny Svyatsky / AES+F (Psychosis)
Projection of the video essay by Alan Warburton (Goodbye Uncanny Valley)

With virtual reality, photorealism takes on another dimension. Touch, hearing, smell, and taste complement the sense of vision to provide a potentially intense ecology of perception and a simulation of reality rather than a representation. Paradoxically, for artists, these virtual simulations are their most interesting when freed from the need to convey and represent reality. In their hands, they become a material to augment our perceptual abilities.

11:30am EDF launches a new artistic and immersive initiative for XR creators

With Valérie Bernet (EDF) and Benoît Baume (Fisheye)
For over 70 years, EDF and its plants throughout the world have been telling the great story of electricity. In 2018, EDF opted for virtual reality in order to present to the general public the iconic sites of its heritage in the film entitled La Fabuleuse histoire de l’électricité, produced by Fisheye 360 and presented at the festival. As a new partner of the VR Arles Festival, EDF invites XR creators to take part in a new artistic and immersive project meant to further this great adventure bringing to light its industrial history.

12pm Financing immersive creation, between art and cinema— A roundtable presented by BNP Paribas

With Bertrand Cizeau (BNP Paribas), Elisha Karmitz (mk2),

Céline Tricart (Lucid Dreams Productions), and Perrine Vincent (CNC) Co-founder of the VR Arles Festival and Europe’s great bank of the film-making world, the BNP Paribas Group boasts state-of-the-art financing of virtual reality creation. Three years after the launch of the first Oculus, where do we stand? How have creative projects been financed and with the aim of which production and presentation opportunities? Answers will be provided by the panel, made up of financing and production experts.

2pm Prints from the Virtual

With Thibault Brunet, Gourau & Phong, and Milo Keller (ECAL)

The first afternoon session will explore the rich intersection between virtual image-making and the tradition of printed images. In their hands, tridimensional scan, photogrammetry and 3D rendering become tools to renew forms and expressions of a new “augmented Photography”.

4pm Virtual bodies

With Mélodie Mousset (HanaHana: Multi-Bloom), Karolina Markiewicz & Pascal Piron (Fever) and Lauren Moffatt (Beyond the Rubicon)

For this last session, artists working with VR an experiential language will share work which involves participants, bodies.