Montreal-based Moment Factory has completed an immersive multimedia experience inside the iconic Dôme des Invalides in Paris. The project, titled 'AURA Invalides,' consists of a 50-minute experience combining video mapping, lighting, special effects, orchestral music, and sound design to celebrate the building’s architectural and historical heritage.

Conceived in 2019 by cultural operator Cultival in collaboration with Musée de l’Armée, the project seeks to create a “sensory nighttime exploration” in which visitors wander through the Dôme des Invalides and its six chapels guided by light. The experience is divided into three acts, each portraying a distinct facet of the site: “its construction, the memories it harbors, and its power to inspire one and all.”

To project an experience onto the main dome, which measures 295 feet high and 98 feet at its smallest diameter, the team mapped more than 45 million pixels onto the 37,000-square-foot surface. In addition, a “sound-spatialization technique” was deployed to localize sound within the vast space, whose normal reverberation time is nearly 10 seconds, in order to ensure visitors can clearly perceive where orchestral music is emanating from.

“The team’s artistic preference was to reveal the spirit of the place, comprising its architectural beauty, the memory with which it resonates, and the symbolism it conveys,” the designers explain. “Accordingly, each scene in the experience is based on existing documents. After extensive historical research, the creative team worked closely with chief curators at Musée de l’Armée to ensure that the design was historically accurate.”

“AURA Invalides seeks to reveal and share, rather than to tell,” the designers add. “While the creative team drew its narrative inspiration from the site’s diverse history, it created an immersive world designed to spark visitors’ imagination. By instilling a sense of wonder, the intangible and invisible are revealed.”

The scheme is one of several media art projects to recently feature in our editorial. In July, we reported on a solar-powered media facade in Basel, Switzerland, that “consumes only as much energy as it produces.” In February, we covered Refik Anaol’s AI data sculpture ‘Machine Hallucinations,’ which was repurposed for the 2023 Grammy Awards stage.

Late last year, meanwhile, our ongoing Job Highlights series covered an open role for an Unreal Engine Rendering Artist at the multimedia company PHNTM.

Video courtesy Moment Factory/YouTube