Lucid Realities: XR Networking Space

The Enemy/ Claude Monet – The Water Lily obsession/7 Grams/The Starry Sand Beach/Lady Sapiens. These are just a few of the beloved and awarded XR experiences produced by Lucid Realities. Founded in 20018, Lucid Realities is an immersive and interactive production and distribution company based in Paris, co-founded by Chloé Jarry and François Bertrand.

Having the experience of releasing XR experiences especially in Location Based Entertainment, and working with museums and cultural venues, Lucid Realities is launching soon a new business-line.
Unframed Collection is made with the idea to connect the producers of VR cultural experiences and cultural venues who are interested in hosting VR experiences. The new-baby project was presented at the NewImages Festival by Chloé Jarry, and Alexandre Roux – Head of distribution at Lucid Realities

Chloé Jarry shared her reflections about the ups and downs from the world of XR productions, that led them to the develop the idea to develop Unframed Collection.
One of the first VR experiences produced was The Enemy – for 20 people. And at that time, she realized that as a producer you have to think at distribution as early as possible, from day One.

The Enemy was a huge co-production, funds had to be raised from 3 different countries, as the VR was about war, it was also dangerous to go into conflict areas. And after it was produced, it was hard to find places to be displayed.

The Enemy needed an empty space of 300 sqm – which is hard to find in Paris. Moreover, she realized that the experience needed facilitators to put the headset on, to explain how you can move, how it will all work. Facilitators are crucial in distribution in LBE. And museums do not always have these facilitators. The Enemy went to 5 different countries.

Another experience was CLAUDE MONET – The Water Lily Obsession, created in collaboration with Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie.
The experience was made to be watched seated and without controllers. The museum agreed to create the first VR booths in the middle of their galleries. More than 12.000 visitors saw the experience… visitors were very wide from 12-95 years old.

Lucid Realities also produce artworks that are shown in galleries. But, during all these years, Lucid Realities worked closely with other producers, too, that needed advice to reach out to cultural venues.
But, this work is time-consuming: hundreds of emails and phone calls to set-up an exhibition, hours spent on preparing the facilitators. And to solve all these issues, the idea of a platform was born – to make work more efficient for all sides involved.

Unframed Collection – the platform that connects XR cultural actors and venues

Alexandre Roux mentioned that the first idea was not to develop a distribution platform, but a content management system and sell to museums distribution rights depending on the number of headsets and the length of the exhibition. But there are venues that need a return on investment very quickly – and they only work on revenue sharing and this is hard to control.

What will the product look like?
The product was made to gather a premium catalog of immersive experiences, but also to provide additional services such as content management system and digital rights management protection.
The platform also wishes to provide training programe and customer service because the most risky event that can happen in LBE (location-based entertainment) distribution is to have technical problems on site – this needs to be fixed very quickly. In addition, as for museums or art galleries, it is quite difficult to get a clear vision about what is coming next, the platform promises to have a section of industry news and strategic watch on the website.

How will it work?
Content creators, including producers, studios, artists will need to submit a project to the platform.
The platform is curated, as such the team from Lucid Reality will make a first selection, as not all XR experience would be fit for LBE. The platform will have data about cultural venues and screening times, as well. As such a bridge is made between both sides of the market: cultural actors and institutions.

Barriers and threads from the markets it will solve:
Facilitating events in different cultural venues are not without hassle – they need documentation, training, and technical issues needs to be solved quickly. We wanted to create also a friendly interface at steam VR for the facilitators – a simple to use management system to be used by cultural venues.
In the XR market, there is no pricing standard – there are different calculation, distribution methods at distribution companies
The hardware is changing every month, new headsets are released. The plan would be to facilitate the rent for some technical materials to the venues and keep them updated with technology

Pricing Model
There will be a yearly or monthly subscription that will give access to the VR catalog and editorial content. In addition, venues will need to buy screening rights.

The bigger vision
It is not just a platform. But the real aim is to create a community, because the network is the key.
Unframed Collection can be a place for producers, distributors, creators, museums and cultural venues, but also for creators, but also festivals, financing institutions, associations, think tanks, universities.

When will it be launched?
The platform will be in beta version starting from September till February, and will be released to the public in Q1 in 2023.

When can creators submit?
Be prepared Now! 🙂 Or as soon as the website will be online.