Both focused and stressed, the singer Hervé looks at the floor of the corridors of La Cigale while the epic instrumental of impulses starts. Twenty seconds later, the male revelation of Victories 2021 raises the microphone to his lips, energetically articulates the first words of his title and runs to join his audience. This scene of artistic intimacy, almost no one has seen it. But thanks to the new virtual reality device set up by France Télévisions, it is now available.
Indeed, on the occasion of the Fête de la Musique, the audiovisual group will offer its viewers an unprecedented metaverse experience. This is related to the show Carte Blanche to Hervé, broadcast at the beginning of the evening on the Culturebox channel (channel 14 of TNT). And if we are to believe Fabien Henrion, producer of the Culturebox show, this new experience is a “return to childhood but for very sensitive and artistic content”.
“Offer exclusive content to the public”
Immersed at night in the imaginary city Culturebox, the public, welcomed by the avatars of Daphné Bürki and Raphäl Yem, will be able to move towards activities related to the music of the artist of Breton origins. The orange color of the visuals of the album is found in the lights of the only street of this fake universe, where one can deplore the lack of visual details. The discovery of this world is built around a small adventure, in which the collection of boxes gives access to four activities with unequal interests.
The first immerses players in a cube where the mural wallpaper represents the artist’s teenage room. A visual already present inside the vinyl cover. In the center of the room, a button is just waiting to be pressed to bring down the walls and allow you to dissect one of Hervé’s sounds with a sampler. But it’s room three that pushes the immersion to the maximum. Since after having lived the moments preceding the entrance on stage, the spectator is projected behind the singer in order to relive the performance in 360 degrees. We can then take advantage, for a few minutes, of the energetic performance of Hervé at La Cigale in front of a room full to bursting.
“Decline this with other artists”
The idea of this project goes further than a single collaboration with Hervé. Indeed, for two months the teams of the Real Time Graphics unit of France Télévisions built the first bricks of a world that is just waiting to grow. “The goal is to decline this with other artists and to offer exclusive content to the public”, explains Cynthia Gravet, co-manager of the project. Before his colleague Lucas Bastian adds: “Hervé was very involved in the project. He proposed many ideas like the sampler and let us film his concert at La Cigale! »
It will now be a question of whether this experience will meet its audience. This could be complicated because the event is only available to owners of the Oculus Meta Quest headset. In any case Hervé is the first fan of this multiverse, since once back from his unreal journey, where he saw himself gesticulate on stage, he hastened to shake Lucas Bastian’s hand by declaring: “Thank you man , it is enormous ! “.