A rare French project in the running at this year’s Venice Gap-Financing Market (alongside international co-production IMPULSE: PLAYING WITH REALITY), THE WHITE SABOTEUR by Barthelemy Antoine-Loeff and Hugo Arcier is an immersive installation dealing with the disappearance of ice… and digital environments. A highly fashionable subject, it features interactivity both inside and outside the headset.
How did it get started, the arrival of collaborators, producers and co-producers etc?
Barthelemy Antoine-Loeff (digital artist) and Pierre-Arthur Goulet (audiovisual producer) have been friends since their first collaboration in 2003 on an artistic project between Paris and Berlin. Several collaborations followed, including an immersive digital installation for Boucheron in 2011 (see link).
Pierre-Arthur discovered XR in 2017 while producing Mathias Chelebourg’s DOCTOR WHO: THE RUNAWAY experience with Passion Pictures for the BBC (selected at Tribeca in 2019, nominated for an Emmy Award in 2020), while Barthélemy is focusing his career as a digital artist on the issues of climate change and the Far North, with exhibitions in France (Le Cube, Biennale Chronique, Biennale Nemo, Gaieté Lyrique…) and around the world (Switzerland, China, USA…).
The Biennale College XR call for projects in September 2022 is an opportunity for Barthélemy and Pierre-Arthur to work on a proposal that crosses their respective fields of interest. Having experimented together with a recent VR work by Hugo Arcier, EDEN (co-directed by Cyril Teste, produced by N°130), and knowing his work as a recognized visual artist (Hugo was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2016), it was an obvious choice to ask him to collaborate on the project. Barthélemy had known Hugo for several years – they had exhibited in the same digital art shows – so he called him up and introduced him to Pierre-Arthur and the THE WHITE SABOTEUR project: the match was instantaneous. Barthelemy then suggested inviting one of his friends, glaciologist Heidi Sevestre (Shackleton Medal winner in 2023 for the protection of the polar regions), to join the project. She accepts: the concept is set, the team is formed.
The project was submitted and selected for the Biennale College XR at the end of 2022, enabling the two artists and their producer to be invited to Venice in January 2023 for a week’s workshop. The experience is an exciting one. Led by Michel Reilhac, supported by experienced tutors, this session is an opportunity to exchange ideas with project leaders from all over the world. THE WHITE SABOTEUR did not win the award, but the team’s motivation was stronger than ever to bring the project to fruition.
The team was later joined by sound artist Olivier Girouard (a Quebec artist working on the Far North), reinforcing an already existing desire to co-produce the project with Canada.

What is the intention of the project?
THE WHITE SABOTEUR is a sensitive experience of the disappearance of an extraordinary environment, that of the ice floe, and the replacement of its physical reality as we know it by a digital reality with which we all now live. The project is the result of a collaboration between two artists who combine their formal and sensitive experiences in a singular work of art. Hugo Arcier’s 3D creations, combining representations of nature and digital formalism, combine with the poetic and political approach of Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff’s plastic works.
THE WHITE SABOTEUR takes place in a white landscape, a world made of ice tinged with a digital presence. Wearing a VR headset, the user has the privilege of entering an autonomous, persistent universe, populated by icebergs and climatic phenomena. The world they discover is more or less in the same state as the previous viewer left it. Through his presence and his gaze, the world the user sees undergoes a degradation visible from the inside by himself, and from the outside by other viewers via data transfer to a screen. Beyond this contaminating human presence, the glacial ecosystem has a digital regenerative power (which produces its effects when the viewer’s back is turned), marked by a subtle shift from the real to the digital and vice-versa.
THE WHITE SABOTEUR experience has no beginning and no end. For the user, the VR experience begins when they put on the VR headset to enter the autonomous universe, and ends when they remove the headset. As a persistent world, the next viewer will discover this world in a state almost exactly identical to the one in which the previous user left it… Through a poetic and sensitive experience of the deterioration of the pack ice, the project aims to raise awareness of the problem of the disappearance of permafrost as a result of global warming. A media relay, notably via social networks, will give concrete expression to these intentions. With this in mind, the participation of glaciologist Heidi Sevestre is essential, as the project must be rooted in scientific reality. Nevertheless, this is a work of art that embraces today’s digital realities, whose aim is more to question the complexity of today’s world than to provide answers or point the way forward.

How did you decide on the technology for this project?
The work falls within the field of artistic installation, designed to be programmed in exhibition spaces. It is presented as a diptych consisting of a VR experience and a large screen linked together. On the one hand, the VR experience is accessible inside a constructed area, thanks to a high-end VR headset connected to a PC. On the other, the screen is accessible to the user before and after the VR experience, and to all visitors during the exhibition. In the headset, the user can sensitively experience the vision of a polar environment and interact with this landscape through their eyes. Simply looking at it removes spherical parts of the ice, reshaping the environment and modifying the landscape.
On the screen, you can see, in real time, a representation of the removed part. This is a highly digital, synthetic view of 3D spheres that appear and grow, depending on what has been removed by the user in the headset. There’s a transfer of matter from VR to screen, from virtual reality to another purely digital layer, and vice versa.
The choice of installation as a means of dissemination was an obvious one, as it fits in with the approach of two visual artists who are accustomed to exhibiting their work in exhibitions. What’s more, the experimental and political dimensions of the project appear to be incompatible with the more commercial orientations of devices such as LBEs or platforms. The question of a world accessible online in the manner of a metaverse (via VRChat or VRoom, for example) was raised, but quickly dismissed for reasons of technological performance, artistic rendering and technical stability.
After careful consideration, it was also decided not to offer a multi-user experience (“visiting the Far North must be an experience of solitude”), or to allow users to access the work remotely, notably for reasons of carbon impact.

A look back at the College Biennale
The project is part of the 2023 Biennale College XR selection at the Venice Film Festival, which enabled us to refine the writing and concept with experienced mentors from the XR world. All this feedback, from people with very different backgrounds, fed the project and also enabled us to confirm our intentions and define how to achieve these objectives in the most optimal way. For example, the decision to present the project as a diptych, and not just as a VR project, was the result of reflection at the January 2023 workshop.
In the context of the Biennale College, the constrained scope initially stimulated us, since we had managed to produce a work of interest to us within the budget (70k€) and timeframe (3.5 months of production). But the many inspiring discussions we had there with each other, with the tutors and with the creators present, convinced us that we needed to take the time to set up the project, to associate partners and co-producers with it, in order to give it maximum scope and visibility.
With this in mind, the privilege we have, through our participation in the Biennale College XR, of seeing our work integrated into the Venice Production Bridge and automatically presented in the prestigious immersive selection of the Venice Mostra when it is produced is a real booster.
Finally, taking part in the Venice Production Bridge will enable us to present a mature project, consolidate it thanks to the feedback we’ll gain, and enrich it through the encounters we’ll have the opportunity to make. We hope that the magnificent first 3D images from Heidi Sevestre’s photoscans, produced by Hugo Arcier for the occasion, will enable us to attract motivated partners to join us in financing and distributing THE WHITE SABOTEUR experience!
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.