Immersive filmmaker Joséphine Derobe presented BEAR MY SOUL, her project inspired by the dream world of the animist peoples of the Far North, at the Kaohsiung Film Festival 2024 in Taiwan. She also unveiled the prototype of her new project PIETRA, winner of the Villa Formose “prototype” 2024 residency, an immersive experience co-written with Côme Jalibert and inspired by the work of Italian sculptor Pinuccio Sciola.
How did the idea for PIETRA come about, and what were the main motivations behind it?
Joséphine Derobe – I’ve known Côme Jalibert for a long time, having worked together on the animated film MINUSCULE. I love his sound universe and his sensitivity. For this new, resolutely sonic and musical project, I naturally asked him to co-write with me. Côme had already worked on my previous projects, notably MEET MORTAZA, an immersive documentary about an Afghan refugee’s journey from Kabul to Paris. And for BEAR MY SOUL (produced by Small Creative) we were looking for very specific sounds that could come from the Living. Claire Allante, co-author of BEAR MY SOUL, and I did some fascinating research, and Côme introduced us to Pinuccio Sciola’s sound stones. With this Sardinian sculptor, stones are alive and vibrant. He has carved them in such a way that the stones reveal their song to us on contact with our hand. From a simple caress to more complex gestures, the vibration and music created between us and the rock is indescribable and moving, a timeless connection that Pinuccio believes is our way of reconnecting with the memory of the universe.
J. D. – Pinuccio Sciola’s philosophy and intentions behind his singing sculptures is fascinating, especially about our connection to the Living and how we can better live in our environment through art, music and Nature in our cities.
J. D. – He was deeply committed to making public space accessible to everyone, and encouraged people to intervene in inhabited space. A fervent advocate of art for all, he conveyed to the public the idea that we can interact for better living together.
J. D. – I drew inspiration from this very powerful idea for PIETRA, proposing an experience where people go back in time to discover mineral environments, such as an underground cave and then a miniature sunken city, before bringing PIETRA to life, an ideal city where spectators actively participate in its creation and transformation through musical vibrations.
J. D. – Last September, we went to Sardinia. We spent a lot of time in Pinuccio Sciola’s sound garden, an open-air museum of over 700 carved stones. In his garden, in his studio and in his books, everywhere he has gathered sculptures to make cities. Mineral cities reminiscent of today’s skylines and others that echo prehistoric cities or cities of a lost civilization. His work immediately reminded me of Italo Calvino and his fabulous book Invisible Cities. Inspired by Sciola and this book, I gave the experiment the title PIETRA.
J. D. – PIETRA will invite people to participate in creating this ideal city together, where they will interact to transform it and make it alive and vibrant like a musical instrument. For us, it’s important that the experience allows us to rethink our relationship with both our natural and urban environments, and to take a fresh look at the architecture of our cities.
How do you translate participants’ interaction with objects or other users into the immersive experience?
J. D. – We’re still in the writing process on the narrative and interactive part of the project. With this first prototype, we’re testing out a number of interaction possibilities, including different variations on touch, such as putting your hand down, caressing a stone, using an accessory like a small stone or a bow, and other more complex two-handed gestures.
J. D. – Through interactions based on touch and listening, we propose a relationship with one’s environment, even an urban one – as opposed to the common “thinking” that stones are inanimate – by generating vibratory as well as musical responses when participants interact with the stones or mineral elements around them.
J. D. – We are currently working with Marine Le Borgne and Tim Marnat on the gamification of the individual and collective experience. The idea is to offer an experience that doesn’t require “call-to-action” to make the interactive scenario evolve, but rather a commitment from participants to act on the stones to make the environment around them evolve, first with simple gestures and then to make interactions more complex by integrating collective interactions.
J. D. – The design of the participants’ avatar bodies is also an important issue. This was already a very important component in BEAR MY SOUL, because with their avatar, people accept the proposed space in which they can walk around with a virtual body that is their own – even if it looks very different from that of a human being. The avatar’s appearance, which differs from our natural appearance, releases something of our inhibitions. The fact of being in a group, when we don’t necessarily know the people who are with us in the experience, with a virtual body that we make our own, allows us to let go of our shyness, our relationships of comparison with others, etc… I’m looking for this liberating pleasure in these two projects, to encourage total commitment from the participants.
What is the relationship between stones and architecture?
J. D. – For us, it’s important that the experience allows us to rethink our relationship with our environment, whether natural or urban, and to take a fresh look at the architecture of our cities.
J. D. – The city of PIETRA doesn’t really exist, but is an ideal inspired by the cities described in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities , and conceived as a city of sound and music by Pinuccio Sciola.
J. D. – For its design, we’re looking for an aesthetic that echoes universally, whatever the territory where the project will be presented.
J. D. – We’re inspired by some of Sciola’s cities and large skylines, which can evoke our megacities or the future, as well as Taiwanese architecture, notably that of Kaohsiung where we were in residence during Villa Formose, to create the first stage of the prototype. We’re interested in starting with urban architecture that people recognize, and then transforming it into an abstract architecture with vibrant lines that evolves thanks to the musical vibrations created by the participants.
What are the strong points of the Villa Formose residence and the difficulties encountered?
J. D. – The Villa Formose residency grant enabled us to build a first prototype stage to test certain concepts and interaction elements, over several weeks in September and October 2024. The residency was very intense, as we had to create a prototype in three weeks if we wanted to have it tested during the upcoming Kaohsiung Film Festival. Fortunately, we were supported by the Kaohsiung Film Archive organization.
J. D. – With Côme and I in Kaohsiung, and the Lucid Realities team in France, we built the prototype during the Villa Formose residency, taking into account the difficulties of working remotely and across several time zones. At the end of the stay, I had the chance to have the prototype tested by some forty Taiwanese and international professionals at the Kaohsiung Film Festival 2024. It’s a wonderful opportunity to observe and gather feedback from an audience in a multitude of territories, both Asian and European, because I want the project to be universal. Making it accessible to everyone is therefore very important, and this initial test phase is extremely valuable.
J. D. – Back in France, we’re starting the development phase of the project with this same prototype, which we’ll be evolving over the coming months, in particular by developing the artistic direction and visual connections between the miniature sunken city and the large vibrant city. The next step will be to transform this “solo” prototype into the multi-participant mode we’ll have in the final experience.
J. D. – The next step is to test the prototype on the French public on December 6 and 7 at the Open Factory at 104 Paris, Villa Formose’s French partner.
How can we imagine the universal aspect that will touch multicultural audiences?
J. D. – These two immersive works have a poetic and sonic dimension that can touch audiences and connect them to each other beyond their cultural roots.
J. D. – PIETRA is a project linked to sensations, our feelings, vibrations and the variation of sounds and music according to our interactions. One challenge is to use as few texts or voice-overs as possible, which will advance the narrative and underline the important elements of the proposal. Whether with BEAR MY SOUL or PIETRA, I seek to enhance non-verbal language, notably through body gestures and vibratory, visual and sonic responses, to leave as much space as possible for freedom and voluntary interaction that participants pass on to each other. In both proposals, there’s a strong anchoring with the real or the existing – like our connection to living beings and our capacity for collective metamorphosis for BEAR MY SOUL. And our connection to our environment and our ability to transform it through vibrations with PIETRA, to transpose it into an unreal, joyful, poetic and engaging universe that can reveal a little of the invisible that surrounds us.
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