The Lab: Making Sense of Immersion in 2021 is a series of online meetups gathering key professionals from the XR and museum industries for game-changing conversations.

Episode 2: "How to Distribute Immersive Artworks in a Museum?"

For our second session facilitated by Darragh Dandurand, we have the pleasure to welcome three key experts from the field:

Mike Jones, Senior Producer, Marshmallow Laser Feast (United Kingdom)

Myriam Achard, Chief New Media Partnerships & PR, Centre Phi (Canada)

Hannah Bellicha, Digital Project Manager, Institut Français (France)

'The Lab: Making Sense of Immersion in 2021' is a collaboration between We Are Museums, Museum Connections, Pixii Festival, French Immersion and Fabbula.

Read more about our guests:

A driving force in communications, Myriam Achard has more than 20 years of experience in public relations. For the past 12 years, she has worked with Phoebe Greenberg to develop and promote the Canadian and international avant-garde arts scene. She has been a Director of PR and Communications at the Phi Centre since it opened in 2012. Since 2015, Myriam has been researching immersive and interactive works to showcase at the Phi Centre as part of the VR exhibits. She also curates the Phi Centre’s Virtual Reality Garden programming. The installation has been invited to festivals and events such as: Marché du film (Cannes), Mutek.JP (Tokyo), FuturePlay (Edinburgh), IFP (New York), and many more.

Mike Jones has a reputation for driving forward ambitious work in a variety of forms – live events, art installations & digital media. One of the driving forces behind Marshmallow Laser Feast he demonstrates a unique vision for the future of creative experiences. Mike has produced the critically acclaimed work Treehugger (Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award 2017) and other mixed reality works including; Sweet Dreams (Sundance 2019) and MLF’s latest sold out experience We Live in an Ocean of Air (Saatchi Gallery 2019

Particularly attentive to fostering the emergence of original and hybrid forms of creation that combine new technologies with different forms of artistic expression, the Institut français has recently released the catalogue “VR Immersive Experiences” that promotes some forty French original works at the intersection of virtual reality, live entertainment and visual arts. It aims to introduce these new types of performances and exhibitions to cultural venues like museums which want to innovate and bring in new visitors.

Darragh Dandurand is an award-winning creative director, brand strategist, photojournalist, and curator who has worked in media for a decade and now in immersive technology / spatial computing, as well. Recent clients include a number of media outlets and studios, such as Refinery29, VICE, Verizon, the New Museum, Buck Co, Superbright, Sensorium, iHeartMedia and Wallplay. Currently, Darragh is consulting creative tech teams, developing her own experiential projects, publishing articles on mixed-reality, and researching and presenting on the intersection of fashion, e-commerce and wearable tech. She sits on the board of directors for the Femme Futures Grant via The Kaleidoscope Fund.

About the partners:

We Are Museums aims to align museums as places of inclusive growth and sustainable development, where the primary metrics are about social and environmental impact. The forward-thinking platform supports the museum institutions embarked on change cycles that keep it aligned to its ethos, connected and relevant to communities and acknowledging the humans, staff, collaborators, communities and visitors as its central pivot.

Museum Connections: International trade fair, focussing on the business and sustainable challenges of museums, cultural and touristic venues, Museum Connections highlights trends and innovations to imagine the new visitors’ experiences. The fair is held in Paris every year in January.

French Immersion is a program initiated by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and developed to support emerging and innovative French creators, in partnership with UniFrance, the Institut Français, the CNC. The partners have entrusted Kaleidoscope to conduct a research, FR//XR, that aims at analysing major COVID-19 induced changes on the XR market, as well as paving the way towards a new business model for the immersive industry.

Pixii Festival: Conducted in synergy with Sunny Side of the Doc, the international marketplace for documentary and narrative experiences, the festival features an exhibition of the most innovative stories and digital installations created through new convergences of documentary, culture and immersive technologies.

Kaleidoscope is a funding platform for premium VR films, games, and experiences. Kaleidoscope has built a global network of more than 20,000 top VR creators and industry leaders.

Fabbula: Engaged mainly in creation and dissemination, Fabbula is a cultural practice dedicated to the idea of worlding with digital media: virtual reality, open worlds, online streams.