It was quite different in Venice in a line-up that was finally very oriented towards linear works. More refined, ALL UNSAVED PROGRESS WILL BE LOST does not forget to pass a message. This dreamlike universe was created by the French artist Mélanie Courtinat, whom we met in Venice.
Video game and interactive design
Mélanie Courtinat – I have always played video games, it is a real passion since my childhood. It is therefore natural that I became interested in what is similar to consoles or at least game supports, here the VR that I discovered in 2016 with the HTC Vive and Tilt Brush. I was carried away by this experience, and decided to combine my studies in interactive design (at ECAL – Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne) with the exploration of these new media. I was already learning 3D creation tools, so I took the plunge and bought my first headset to realize my final project in VR.
M. C. – So I conceived in my turn an experience in the form of a hanging garden entitled I NEVER PROMISED YOU A GARDEN. Directly after my studies, I was lucky enough to receive proposals for exhibitions and festivals: London, Paris, Lausanne, Arles, but also India, and finally the Tokyo Game Show, clearly a dream come true. It allowed me to confront the project with audiences of different nationalities and demographics, in various contexts, and to learn by observing and interacting with them.
M. C. – Back in Paris, my hometown, I was asked by the brand LVMH, who wanted to show my project in one of their events. I saw at that moment the interest of the world of luxury and fashion for this type of experience. I would say that it opened the way for me professionally, today I regularly collaborate with this type of interlocutors to create immersive projects: VR, AR, 3D or video game. On the other hand, I experiment with new technologies in the context of personal projects.
3D tools for environmental design
M. C. – The 3D creation tools allow today to make a project like ALL UNSAVED PROGRESS WILL BE LOST without being surrounded by a team. From programming to sound design, I was able to develop everything alone. I don’t exclude other more collaborative projects later on! This specific project was born from a personal desire, and from a time I could have. This doesn’t replace the fact that with several people, we can consider more ambitious and longer projects, like the meeting with Diversion cinema, which accompanies me on the distribution. This collaboration led me to the official selection of Venice Immersive, then to DOK Leipzig, BFI LFF Expanded before other festivals.
M. C. – I work with the Unity video game engine, which is still my main creation platform, simply because it’s the one I learned rather than Unreal. I first develop a model of the project, creating the playing field first. Then, in the same way that I might sculpt and paint a model, I’ll come in and place textures on the ground and sky, “paint” the grass, place the set elements, then the light, the fog… At the very end comes the camera. I don’t come directly from a film background. Although I watch a lot of films, I don’t necessarily have the academic codes of framing. I don’t think in “shot” or “frame”, in terms of cutting. I think about space first.
M. C. – The progression in ALL UNSAVED PROGRESS WILL BE LOST takes place in two stages. First, there is an arrival under a bridge, in a rather small space. And then you move on to a much larger setting, opening onto a landscape dotted with larger-than-life buildings. I play a lot on the notion of scale, it marks very well in virtual reality. Besides, in this project it is not the subject that came first; what I want is to distill emotions, to transmit feelings, I am interested in sensations in the first place. Only then did I consolidate my environment with a little more context, words, and put it into a story. But leaving it up to the viewer to interpret as they see fit… While regularly testing ALL UNSAVED PROGRESS WILL BE LOST around me, so that every detail is mastered – especially the speed of movement and the rhythm of the story. I can’t say exactly how long it took me to design it, but in reality the project was done in less than two months.
Designing a VR art experience on your own
M. C. – I listen to a lot of music for the narrative part, especially the musical moodboards I had made. In this project I also drew freely from existing texts, testimonies that I found extremely powerful, and I then worked on how to reconcile space, texts, rhythms, sounds, etc. In virtual reality, it is necessary to embark the spectator, not to make him lose the thread and the sense of his experience, without over stimulating him. In a non-verbal direction, which must be intuitive.
M. C. – This solitary VR creation mode was therefore a vector of enormous freedom in itself. But it is also a certain risk-taking, because nobody was waiting for me or was there to give me deadlines. So it’s very fulfilling for me to share it with an audience, in festivals for now, probably online later. It gives me the opportunity to see how everyone looks at my creations, and to be able to exchange about it, without imposing my own version of the experience. I feel like I’m exploring new game mechanics and immersive worlds, in more free formats. That’s what fascinates me.
