This year, the GIFF (Geneva International Film Festival) teamed up for the first time with the contemporary music ensemble Contrechamps to present an ambitious immersive concert experience. The result was three original works created specifically for VR and live performance, that were brought to life during GIFF 2025.
We caught up with Contrechamps artistic director Serge Vuille to hear more about the collaboration, the creative process behind the pieces, and what it means to experiment with live music in virtual space.
Cover: LOCUS SOLUS @ Geneva International Film Festival 2025 📸 Manon Voland
Bringing live music into Virtual Reality
SERGE VUILLE – This is the first time we’re doing a full production in virtual reality since I am the artistic director of Contrechamps. About five years ago we started experimenting with a virtual reality synthesizer called PatchXR and co-created by Melodie Mousset.
She helped develop this software and this whole environment for making music in VR. We decided to give it a try and improvise with it. We had some musicians playing acoustic instruments, and others working inside the VR space. We built some drums and machines, and it was quite promising. But it didn’t go much further at the time.
Then the opportunity to collaborate with GIFF came along – a great chance to explore this direction in a concrete way. So, considering the little bit of familiarity we had with the environment, we decided to commission new pieces and to produce a real concert inside VR.
We wanted to keep the public’s ears open, so no headphones. We do use the small speakers built into the headsets, but the sound exists in the space itself. We have six loudspeakers arranged around the audience to project the electronic sounds and the amplified instruments. And on stage, there’s a live trio performing at every show. That was our way of making it feel live and organic: keeping the acoustic instruments present, while still exploring the full 360 visual environment, which is different for each of these three pieces. So that’s how we approached it and the feedback at GIFF has been very positive. I have the feeling we’ve achieved something interesting.
People reacted differently to each piece – the three works are quite different from each other, after all – but they always had a favorite. Overall, the response has been really encouraging. It’s a powerful experience. It takes a bit of time to fully process, to understand what just happened. Some people said it was a bit overwhelming, with too much to focus on at once. But in general, the reactions have been very, very good.
“This experience is a metaphor for how care can heal society” – Melodie Mousset (EMPATHY CREATURES)
GIFF 2025: Locus Solus
S. V. – The first piece is called Locus Solus, which also gives its name to the whole program, and is composed by Raphaël Raccuia and Nicolas Carrel. It’s quite poetic. The audience is taken on a ride in a sort of transparent elevator floating in space, accompanied by “celibate machines” – little sound-making devices that surround them like a tube of sound.
As the audience ascends within this structure, the music blends whispered or spoken words with immersive soundscapes. It ends with a kind of repetitive song, mimicking the sound of elevators…
There’s a playful, slightly “gamey” feel to the whole environment and it all takes place within the PatchXR platform. We have avatars performing on virtual instruments, and each audience member experiences it individually. It’s not a pre-recorded video, it’s truly a journey inside the environment.
So, the piece is very atmospheric, rich in soundscapes. Some of the instrument sounds are pre-recorded and embedded within the VR space, so at times it’s hard to tell what’s happening inside the headset and what’s happening in the physical room. That ambiguity is part of the experience.
GIFF 2025: Rêverie
S. V. – The second piece is by Sachie Kobayashi, and it’s called Rêverie – Trans-Instrumentalism. She was interested in instruments as a form of technology, but also in the people behind them. So, we have avatars: she created 3D avatars of the musicians, based on their actual appearance, and placed them in the VR space.
It’s more like a room this time. You’re inside it, and there’s a television showing images of the musicians playing on stage. The piece also blends into mixed reality. As it progresses, you transition to seeing the real stage with the musicians performing live, but at the same time, you also see their giant avatars in that same space.
It’s like a concert, but with added scenography and virtual figures all around you. It’s a really beautiful moment in the middle of the program: suddenly you can see through, and reorient yourself in the space. The lighting is well done, so it feels like a different environment from the one you were just in, but still very transparent.
Musically, this one is more rhythmic. It’s also built in PatchXR, though the environment feels more like a video. There’s six-channel sound, electronic audio, that’s synchronized with the experience, layered over the live instruments. So it becomes a very immersive, surrounding sound experience.
GIFF 2025: Vertige
S. V. – The third piece is Vertige by André Décosterd. This is a 3D video, fixed media, really slick. And it’s landscapes. The music was actually written together with the landscapes and the visuals that are coming. Actually, music came first, then the video was created, and after that, composer and musicians worked on the score again to make it fit the images in the most organic way. It’s clear that there’s a concert happening while we watch a video. So that’s another way of relating between music and image. Something I really like.
Embracing complexity
S. V. – The first piece really plays with perception: it’s unclear what’s inside the VR space and what’s outside. The second one lets you clearly see the live concert, while surrounding you with sound. And the third one makes everything very explicit: you can tell what’s concert, what’s electronic, what’s visual, but they’re composed as a single, unified experience. So, in that sense, the program really explores different relationships between these layers. I think we’ve managed to create actual concerts, pieces that are genuinely about the intersection of virtual spaces and music.
As for this adventure in the immersive field… it’s not over yet. We’re still performing at GIFF, and we’ve already received the first proposals to present the pieces at other festivals.
There were obviously also many technical challenges to overcome. We have 16 people in the same room, so everything must be perfectly synchronized across 16 headsets, in three different environments, each piece with its own set of technical hurdles. At one point, I wasn’t exactly worried, but I did think: Let’s not lose sight of the work itself to concentrate on technology. What are we actually trying to say?
And I think the artists really succeeded in answering this challenge. They created pieces that are rich, meaningful, and give us a real opportunity to reflect on the relationship between the virtual and the live, between digital spaces and physical presence. I believe that’s something the audience can truly perceive.
That’s what I take away from this experience: we used the technical challenges to put these questions into perspective, which, I think, was the goal from the beginning: to reflect on our practice – our conceptual practice – and to see how it translates into a virtual environment. And I really believe we achieved that.
A journey just begun
S. V. – I think it would be really interesting to continue exploring VR, provided we find the right partners and the right conditions. Of course, we’d need collaborators from the VR or film world to carry on this kind of production, just as we couldn’t have made this first project without the GIFF team and knowledge. We’re a music ensemble; we could never have all the technical skills or the infrastructure needed for a project like this on our own. But I do think there’s still a lot of room to keep creating. And now that we’ve been through it once, we’re better prepared and we can anticipate a lot more.
One of my initial concerns was the length of the experience: 45 minutes inside a headset. I thought maybe that would be too long. But people have been coming out saying, “Oh, I would’ve gladly stayed longer,” or “I could’ve watched one more.”
I really think these kinds of experiences can be developed further. We could expand these pieces, making them longer, or commission new ones entirely. I’d be very curious to keep exploring this field, because this has been a first for us, absolutely, and also for GIFF. In the VR world, live music isn’t really common: not because it doesn’t make sense, but because it’s technically complicated and demanding for production. We had to perform the show 30 times, for several people at a time.
But I do believe there’s something truly compelling here. Live music gives the VR experience an additional of depth.
So, I’d love to keep going. My impression is that this has been a strong first step and that there’s still a lot to explore and develop. Especially now, with all the skills and experience we’ve gained, I feel confident about starting, continuing, or expanding a project like this.
Also, Contrechamps is a touring ensemble. We do concerts in many places. And this three-pieces project is a very special one, that could really work as a touring production.
Music and VR: an integrated process
S. V. – I don’t know the VR world that well. But for us, the moment I suddenly felt confident we were going to create something truly interesting was when we decided to remove the headphones. At first, we were trying to figure out how to record the sound and bring it into the headset, into the headphones, and it quickly became too complicated. More importantly, we were stepping away from our own strengths. Contrechamps is, at its core, an acoustic ensemble. What we do best is produce live sound in physical space.
That was really the turning point for me: realizing we could do this live, in the room, with open ears. That decision created the solution: we now had three layers of sound. The live instruments, the six loudspeakers placed around the audience, and the tiny built-in speakers near the ears. And that combination really worked.
Also, the composers we commissioned, while all trained as music composers, each have their own relationship with media and multimedia. So, they didn’t just write music; they conceived the entire piece, including the virtual space. Sometimes they collaborated with someone else, but the composition of the music and the creation of the VR environment were developed together, as one integrated process. It wasn’t like scoring a film after the fact. It all came from a single idea that unfolded in two interconnected forms.
On the many roles of music
S. V. – What’s interesting about music is that it can take on many roles, far beyond the default ones we often assign it. People in the arts and cinema often use it effectively, but it’s always worth remembering that music can create different layers of depth, meaning and connection, depending on how intentionally it’s used in a given work.
In these three pieces we’ve presented, for example… in the first one, the music is almost hidden within the overall experience. In the second, it’s completely transparent. And in the third, it’s distinct but organically integrated. So you have three different relationships between sound and image, even though all three works share the same setting.
That’s something I really appreciate about music: its capacity to shift, to adapt, to mean differently in each context.
Another thing I love about music is its capacity to carry not just emotions or feelings—that’s one aspect—but also to create perspective within the arts. It can shape relationships, convey ideas, open up new ways of thinking. When I go to a concert, especially a really good one, my mind often travels to very creative places. Sometimes I listen with full focus, really absorbed in the sound. But other times, when the music truly carries me, it sets my thoughts in motion. It opens up imaginative, reflective spaces in my head. And that, I think, is what I appreciate most: the way music can unlock creativity and offer space for reflection.
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