The idea is surprising. Installing a space entirely dedicated to nature in the heart of a huge shopping center is the bet of Wild Immersion, present for a semester at the Toison d’Or in Dijon. This is a first for this company specializing in the production of virtual reality films and the creation of experiences to promote the preservation of nature and biodiversity. Did the Dijon public catch on? Interview with the president of Wild Immersion, Grégoire Moisson.
– Wild Immersion
It’s been six months now since you opened the Wild Immersion space at the Toison d’Or, what can you do there?
It is a place in which we will find different activities that are dedicated mainly to the family. The star of them is a virtual reality session that will last between ten and fifteen minutes and will allow you to teleport yourself to the heart of wildlife and in 360°. And then there are other activities that will allow you to educate yourself, connect and understand a little better the issues of biodiversity and conservation today. And then you will have reading, films to see. In short, a lot of things around multimedia, but not only!
Do these first six months of presence at the Toison d’Or correspond to your expectations in terms of attendance?
We want to be a place of biodiversity in a temple of consumption, so obviously that requires adjustments. So yes, it meets our expectations because it is not easy. We knew it and we expected it, we have it. Now, we have very high hopes, very good returns and then an increase in attendance and partnerships that are forged as we go. So, I would say yes, that doesn’t mean we’ve done everything and we’ve won everything. But it means that we are on a path that we expected to follow and that we are confident.
On the economic model, where do your revenues come from?
A whole part is free. We enter the shop for free and then afterwards, to access activities such as virtual reality, or what we call here “animal druines”, that is to say the drawing of an animal that we will find animated on a screen, and in other activities, we pay a pack of attractions to be able to benefit from these additional activities. We have urbanized our lives a lot. The pace has become fairly brisk for everyone, including the children. The idea here is to allow people to take a step back. Being in a shopping mall is a good example of what you want to do, that is to say take a step back, disconnect from your everyday life to reconnect with nature, to understand what it is and what it represents for our present and for our future.
We talk more and more about the metaverse and virtual reality, do you think that this technology will take more place in our daily lives tomorrow?
Yes, without a doubt. There are a lot of questions around the metaverse. How are we going to live there? What will be offered? This is a subject to which we will approach cautiously because we recommend reconnecting with nature. It’s not totally contradictory, but we’ll have to be careful. In any case, yes, it is clearly a subject that interests us and a subject on which we position ourselves to always bring a little more connection to nature, including in the worlds of tomorrow.
– Wild Immersion
A new movie every six weeks
VR movies change every six weeks. After Alba, Around the World, Terra, The Cutest Film, The Great Apes and Treasures of Central America, a new film has been available since Monday June 13 and can be seen until the beginning of August. Aqua allows you to immerse yourself in the sublime universe of the ocean.
“It’s time, it’s a little hot. We will obviously find a lot of very colorful fish, an octopus, sharks and a certain number of animals which remind us that all this is very very beautiful and which makes us want to “Go there too. In ten minutes, we will do what a diver could take several years to successfully capture since we have a concentrate of the most beautiful things that the oceans offer us.” summarizes the president of Wild Immersion.