# Mona VR - recreating an experience

Maëlys Jusseaux, Piers Bishop, Chu-Yin Chen

► To cite this version:

Maëlys Jusseaux, Piers Bishop, Chu-Yin Chen. Mona VR - recreating an experience. ConVRgence (VRIC) Virtual Reality International Conference, International journal of virtual reality, pp.137-143, 2020, 10.20870/IJVR.2020.3316. hal-04376205

HAL Id: hal-04376205

https://univ-paris8.hal.science/hal-04376205v1

Submitted on 9 Jan 2024

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# Mona VR - recreating an experience

An artistic and expressive queueing simulator

Jusseaux Maëlys<fnref n="1" />, Bishop Piers<fnref n="1" />, Chen Chu-Yin<fnref n="2" />

**Keywords:** Virtual reality – digital art – cultural heritage – authenticity – virtual museum

## Abstract

Since October 2019, the extraordinary fame of *Mona Lisa* has pushed the Musée du Louvre to try and implement additional safety measures. Now, visitors have to queue through barriers to see the painting. The museum also presents an official virtual reality experience which allows the visitor to meet face to face with Lisa Gherardini herself, thus removing the crowd and the difficulty of access to the painting. Although the initiative is laudable and the experience remarkable, we can wonder: what if the current conditions of visit of *Mona Lisa*, however unpleasant they are, were actually part of the authentic *Mona Lisa* experience in the 21st century? In this article, we present a virtual reality experience which deliberately chooses to replicate the exact conditions of visiting *Mona Lisa* today, as a humourous, playful and imaginative way of reflecting about core concepts of cultural heritage: originality and authenticity.

## 1. Introduction

Visiting Leonardo da Vinci's most famous painting today is a peculiar experience. Since October 2019, visitors are asked to queue through barriers of the same kind we find in most popular attraction parks, such as Disneyland. The idea of using the power of virtual reality to be alone with the painting, to meet its character face to face, has already been explored, notably by the Musée du Louvre itself, as we will see further in this article.

Yet we can wonder: by removing the crowd, don't these experiences remove what could be considered part of the authentic *Mona Lisa* experience in the 21st century? In this article, we will start by describing our virtual reality experience and queueing simulator *Mona VR*, before presenting how we tried to provide an answer to that question.

It is very important to specify, though, that this experience and article are *not* a criticism of the Musée du Louvre, whose *Mona Lisa* situation is as complicated for professionals as it is for the visitors, and who does try to provide solutions, most notably through virtual reality. Our work merely aims at being a playful, humorous and imaginative way of reflecting upon the notion of authenticity and originality, which, as Bruno Latour and Adam Lowe write [3], are a true obsession of the 21st century.

## 2. *Mona Lisa* : digital experiences and authenticity

### 2.1. *Mona Lisa* and VR

Da Vinci's most famous painting has already been the subject of VR experiences. In 2015, Luis Tejeda recreated the entire *Salle des Etats* under Unreal Engine. The goal was to "get [the user] a private access to view the most famous painting in history."[6] In 2019, Emissive studio created a VR experience entitled *Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass* for the Musée du Louvre. Officially presented by the museum from October 24, 2019 to February 24, 2020 in the Napoléon Hall, "this experience is an integral component of the museum's landmark Leonardo da Vinci exhibition, which commemorates the 500th anniversary of da Vinci's death in France."[5] The experience is also available on Viveport and other VR platforms. In *Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass*, the visitor is invited inside the painting, where they can meet Lisa Gherardini in person, best known under the name of "Gioconda". It is a beautiful and poetic experience, which creates a remarkable balance between artistic reinterpretation and scientific information about the painting. Both these experiences have the same goal, to enable a direct encounter with *Mona Lisa*, without what is today considered as a major problem: a massive crowd in a ill-adapted space. Jason Farago, in the New York Times, writes that "30 000 people pass through the gallery where Leonardo's painting hangs, each day, according to the director of the museum [1]. As the popularity of the painting never ceases to grow, the

<footnote n="1">¹PhD. Student, INREV Dept. (Images Numériques et Réalité Virtuelle), Université Paris 8, maelys.jusseaux@gmail.com, bishop.piers@gmail.com</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²Professor, INREV Dept. (Images Numériques et Réalité Virtuelle), Université Paris 8, chu-yin.chen@univ-paris8.fr</footnote>
situation becomes logistically very difficult to handle, for the visitors themselves as well as the museum's staff. Since October 2019, when the *Salle des Etats* was reopened after renovation, visitors must line up in a "snake of retractable barriers that ends about 12 feet from [the painting]."[1] From there, you have less than a minute to try and get a proper look at the painting, and take a selfie, before being ushered out by museum staff. As Jason Farago says, the situation becomes dangerous, and very disappointing for the visitors themselves, which are in for a very unpleasant moment, as well as the museum staff. That is why the journalist pleads for a specific, massive building to be built especially for her, a building that would be well adapted to handle such crowds. Indeed, according to Jason Farago, "the Louvre does not have an overcrowding problem per se. It has a *Mona Lisa* problem"[1].

## 2.2. The question of authenticity of an experience

We can, however, muse over one question: why couldn't we consider the current experience of visiting *Mona Lisa* an actual, authentic experience? What guarantees the authenticity of the experience of seeing *Mona Lisa*? Is it to watch it alone in intimacy, or to be surrounded by a crowd of people attracted by its celebrity? We can refer here to Bruno Latour and Adam Lowe's notion of "trajectory" of a work of art, or its "career" [3]. Indeed, the two authors write that what characterizes a work of art is its history of reception. That reception is permanently renewed along the centuries and people who "receive" the work of art. We can find the same idea in Yves Jeanneret's work, when he writes that cultural heritage is a "cultural being". According to him, "objects and representations do not remain shut upon themselves, they circulate and pass through the hands and minds of people" [4]. In this regard, "nothing is transmitted from a man to the other, from a group to the other, without being elaborated, without being transfigured and without giving birth to something new."[4] As a result, we can say that the way *Mona Lisa* is "experienced" in 2020 is as authentic as the way it was experienced in the 16th century, when it was hung in François Ier's bathroom. Indeed, it says something of the painting, of the role it has in the eyes and minds of millions of people throughout the world, and ultimately of 21st century society.

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 1 – *Salle des Etats*</figcaption></figure>

Picture taken in the perspective of creating the experience. *Salle des Etats*, Musée du Louvre, October 30th 2019, in the morning. This panoramic view clearly shows the dynamic of the visitors in the room, massing towards *Mona Lisa*, whereas Veronese's painting attracts only a few of them.

That is why, unlike the previous VR experiences that were created around *Mona Lisa*, we chose to play around and embrace this particular configuration in the painting's career. To do so, we went to the museum to see it, and to grasp all the elements that we thought were crucial to restore the true atmosphere and experience of "living" *Mona Lisa* today. The permanent noise and massive crowd through which we are invited to queue, of course, but also the fact that nobody looks at the other paintings. We chose to stress this particular fact by the blurring of the paintings, and replacing them by images that had nothing to do with the original artworks. In doing so, we wanted to convey the idea that these paintings are not seen or noticed at all, whatever they might be representing. Their identity is crushed by *Mona Lisa*'s presence. We made an exception exception for the *Nozze di Cana*. Because it is massive, it is almost impossible to miss, and yet we can distinctly see that it only retains the attention of very few people (figure 1). In this regard, we designed a specific visual effect that unveils only whatever part of the painting the user is consciously looking at. Another crucial aspect we wanted to capture was, of course, the practice of making photographs and selfies, which is considered by some researchers as the "photographic practice most representative of contemporary visual expression" [2]. In the selfie feature, we replaced the user's head and hand by emojis to remind of the ubiquity of social media in the 21st century, and the essential practice of sharing one's experience with a larger community. We also added camera sounds throughout the room in order to encourage the user to take pictures of their own, but also to convey that feeling of a collective experience. Which is absolutely what
visiting *Mona Lisa* means today: being immersed in a collectivity of people receiving the painting at the same time as we do.

# 3. Recreating an experience digitally

## 3.1. Recreating the setting

Before adding any interactivity to the simulator, it was important to make sure the setting itself was properly recreated. The *Salle des Etats*, the room where the *Mona Lisa*, or *Gioconda*, is exhibited, was recreated to a 1:1 scale, including its October 2019 Prussian blue coat of paint. As such, it is currently one of the only VR experiences representing the *Salle des Etats* in its present state (figure 2). The *Grande Galerie* and the *Salle Denon*, visible from the room, have also been included (figure 3).

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 2 - Virtual recreation of the *Salle des Etats*.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 3 - Floor plan of the *Salle des Etats*.</figcaption></figure>

As we have explained earlier, all of the other paintings have been blurred. This allowed us to take liberties with the represented paintings, as some are historical, while others are taken from various sources : namely movie stills, video game screenshots, or contemporary artworks (figure 4).
<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 4 - Selection of blurred paintings in the virtual recreation of the *Salle des Etats*, along with the original image for each of them.**</figcaption></figure>

Besides the *Mona Lisa*, one other painting in the room is authentic, though: the *Nozze di Cana*, by Veronese. It was our decision that the painting be blurred too, but appear normally in an area around the user's gaze (figure 5). A specific shader was developed to achieve this effect, and a simple physics raycast was used in order to establish the central point of the headset's view.

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 5 - *Nozze di Cana*, with its specific not-quite-blurred effect.**</figcaption></figure>

As one would most likely enter the *Salle des Etats* from the *Grande Galerie*, we chose to set the starting point of the experience at the back of the room, next to the *Nozze di Cana*, so that the main body of the crowd was between the user and the *Mona Lisa*.
## 3.2. Recreating the experience

As it has been stated, it was crucial to us that the experience including a crowd, queueing, and taking pictures and selfies with a smartphone. There are two signs in the starting area that indicate these functions to the user (figure 4).

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 6 - Application's features explained as signs.</figcaption></figure>

The VR controllers are used for this. In their right hand, the user is holding a virtual smartphone, with the camera activated. The left hand is displayed as a regular hand. The camera can be used to take pictures, but can also be flipped into selfie mode. When taking selfies, the user's head is displayed as a “Joy” emoji, and left hand as a “victory hand” emoji (figure 7). The pictures are then saved onto the hard drive, next to the application's files, for potential future uses.

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 7 - Virtual smartphone and pictures.</figcaption></figure>

The crowd itself is generated on-the-go each time the application is launched. Random characters are selected and scattered around the room, with a predetermined density per area. Audio recordings of the actual *Salle des Etats* are played at several locations in the virtual room, for an accurate recreation of the auditory atmosphere. In addition, camera sounds are played at random intervals throughout the room, adding to the general feel of the room, but also enticing the user to use his or her own camera.

The final addition to this project was the queue. In the real *Salle des Etats*, there is a queueing system that allows people to get up close to the *Mona Lisa* in order to take a few pictures. Because this VR experience wasn't set in a physical room with a size comparable to the *Salle des Etats* (and likely never will), we had to figure out an alternative to walking around in order to emulate the queuing experience.

We chose to opt for an automatic-queueing teleporting system. It can be activated by hovering the user's left hand above the appropriate sign. So as not to start queueing by accident, a loading wheel has to be
maintained when doing so. It launches the user in a series of teleportations (each with a fade to black and
audio fading) that moves them progressively through the queue. With the user having nothing to do, not even
move around, the time spent queueing feels longer than it really is (figure 8). The user is then teleported back
to the starting area, where he or she can choose to start queueing again.

<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 8 - Using the queueing system in *Mona VR*.</figcaption></figure>

While the real queueing experience lasts about 10 to 15 minutes, and leaves the audience about 40 seconds of
"picture-time", our version of the experience reduces both of these times to about 2 minutes of waiting, and
10 seconds of picture-taking. With the user having nothing to do, not even move around, the time spent
queueing feels longer than it really is.

**4. Conclusion**

As said in the introduction of this article, we wanted to make *Mona VR* a humorous way of musing over the question of authenticity and originality of a work of art and its reception through time. In the light of concepts provided by researchers such as Bruno Latour, Adam Lowe or Yves Jeanneret, we proposed a reflection upon what makes authentic the experience of visiting *Mona Lisa* today. In this regard, we can consider *Mona VR* as a testimony of a specific situation in the history of the painting. It could also provide a solution for people who cannot have access to the Musée du Louvre, or maybe even people who just don't want to have to deal with a real crowd. In a way, *Mona VR* is also representative of the power of virtual reality to provide access to cultural heritage when the latter is not easily, or no longer, accessible.

The idea of reproducing a specific moment of the painting's history also creates an interesting situation in regard to time, between past and present. Indeed, we can say that Luis Tejeda's capture of the former state of the *Salle des Etats* in 2015 is now a patrimonial experience, in that sense that it is a restitution of a past moment in *Mona Lisa*'s career. In the same idea, we can think that someday, if *Mona Lisa* comes to be moved to another building as Jason Farago hopes, our experience will, too, be a restitution of a past moment in the painting's career, when it was set in a Prussian blue setting, and when people needed to queue through barriers to see it.

Furthermore, in regard to what has already been achieved technically, there is always room for improvement. The crowd was generated using easily accessible free assets, and therefore lacks in variety. In addition to using more character models, *Mona VR* would also benefit from having more variety of animations, and even simple crowd behaviours. It would also be interesting to use the pictures that are taken with the virtual smartphone for something. Creating a twitter bot, designed to automatically share the pictures taken within the experience (along with various predetermined hashtags and a generated message), would be a relevant improvement. It would allow a complete *mise en abyme* of the real experience, joining the real process and the virtual one in this common final representation of both experiences : a twitter post.

**5. References**

[1] FARAGO Jason. *It's Time to Take Down the Mona Lisa* [online], *The New York Times*, available at <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/arts/design/mona-lisa-louvre-overcrowding.html>, (last consulted January 14th 2020).

[2] GUNTHERT André. *The Consecration of the Selfie: A Cultural History* [online], 2018, available at <https://imagesociale.fr/1413>, (last consulted January 14th 2020).

[3] LATOUR Bruno, LOWE Adam. *The Migration of the Aura Exploring the Original Through Its Fac similes* [online], in *Switching Codes Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts*,
University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 275-297, available at <https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02057253>,
(last consulted January, 14th 2020).

[4] JEANNERET Yves. *Penser la trivialité. La vie triviale des êtres culturels*, Paris, Hermès-Lavoisier, 2008.

[5] *Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass*[online], available at <https://arts.vive.com/us/articles/projects/art-photography/mona_lisa_beyond_the_glass/>, (last consulted January 14th 2020).

[6] TEJEDA, Luis. *Mona Lisa Room Virtual Reality - Unreal Engine Demo & Oculus Rift - YouTube* [online], available at <https://youtu.be/ZZXQpBfNgV4>, (last consulted January, 14th 2020).