IMERSA Montréal is in the history books and what a meeting it was!

Espace pour la vie and the Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT) in Montréal, Canada, joined forces with IMERSA from October 15 to 19, 2022, to present the international event at two premier immersive venues.

A diverse group of 230 attendees took part in 120 presentations, fulldome screenings, and panel discussions. The talk topics ranged from discussions of immersive visualization and science communication to creating entertainment pieces and teleimmersion, spatial audio, art explorations and much more. 

Return to the Summit

This summit, coming as it did after the pandemic shutdowns, provided a perfect place for people in the immersive community to re-connect with each other. The IMERSA planning committee members felt extremely privileged to work with partners in Montréal to make it happen. The idea was to bring together members of the international immersive community and build bridges between different immersive cultures and disciplines. 

Historically, our board has largely programmed the educational sessions for the summits. For this event, we had the good fortune of receiving enough submissions to fill the schedule many times over. We ultimately selected experiences from many talented producers, researchers, and vendors who make up our membership. This included 30 hours of fulldome screenings and performances, plus spatial audio performances and papers, making it one of the most complicated events we’ve ever produced.

Presenters from 14 countries were represented including the University of Applied Sciences Lübeck, NSC Creative, 4Pi Productions, Livecinema.org, York University, California Academy of Sciences, the Brno Fulldome Festival, DomeFest West, Museum of Science Boston, and the Giant Screen Cinema Association along with the National Film Board of Canada, the PHI Centre, Felix & Paul Studios, SAT, and the Planétarium Rio Tinto Alcan. 

The Summit planning committee had the incredible honor of working with two dedicated groups of local organizers who understood our goals and wanted to share their ideas with attendees. To make it all happen, we are most grateful for the superb technical support teams at both venues. The event could not have happened without the extraordinary efforts of this event planning team whose members worked together for more than three years to make IMERSA Montrẻéal a success. Thanks to: Julieta Aguilera, Monica  Bolles, Ruth Coalson, Michael Daut, Paule Maineville, Claire Martin, Dan Neafus, Dominic Paquin, Loïc Quesnel, Dominic Paquin, and Karen Roney.

The resulting five days were an amazing experience for the attendees, co-organizers, presenters and producers who shared their work. We are especially indebted to our sponsors and the Ville de Montréal and the province of Quebec for their support. 

IMERSA Montréal Highlights

Excitement for the Summit began well before we all arrived. According to Olivier Hernandez, Director of the Planétarium Rio Tinto Alcan, the Summit confirmed Montréal’s status as a centre of the immersive digital experience industry. “The entire Planétarium Rio Tinto Alcan team is very excited to provide one of the venues for this event and to play a major role in bringing together experts from all over the world,” he said. 

With those words in mind, we began the festivities first at the SAT immersive venues in downtown Montréal. Opening events there included a welcome message from the director of SAT, Jenny Thibault. For the SAT staff, theSummit allowed them to share their groundbreaking and exploratory work with a larger community. “The team was already excited about hosting this international event," she said in her remarks. "Montreal is a really great place to be for digital creativity industry," she said, "and I hope that you will be very inspired by all the interesting and innovative content presented." 

The welcoming ceremonies continued with remarks from Dan Neafus, outlining the theme of the Summit: Fulldome for Good. “Is it good for the planet itself? Is what we are doing in the dome good for society, community?,” he asked. “And what is our individual role in the activities that we present in the dome and the films that we are producing?”

Dan also emphasized the inclusivity that IMERSA has embodied since its beginning. “I've opened these discussions for, now the 12th year that we have put these events together,” he said. “One of the things I enjoy saying at the beginning is that we are here as community, we are here speaking a common language, and we are here working at the same professional level. That is many of you are presenters, many of you are new, many of you have been here for a long time, but at this event everybody is on the same playing field, everybody is having the same discussions, and we are all here to share and learn. This to me is the most wonderful part about the IMERSA event. People are often surprised by our openness and welcome, but it is something that we insist on. “ 

This was followed by greetings from IMERSA board members Julieta Aguilera, Michael Daut, Carolyn Collins Petersen, and Ryan Wyatt. After that, Carolyn presented an overview of immersive storytelling called “IMERSA and Immersive: It all Began in a Cave,” tracing history from the Lascaux cave paintings through to modern immersive CAVE facilities and free-standing events such as Meow Wolf (in Denver) and the currently popular Immersive Van Gogh experiences. 

Michael Daut followed up with an inspired talk, “Returning to Humanity Through Shared Immersion,” focused on how we can use our culture’s current fascination with immersive experiences as an opportunity to rebuild community in this post-pandemic world and restore our shared sense of humanity., 

Each day of IMERSA Montréal featured ground-breaking, cutting-edge content, including premieres of several fulldome and immersive shows, including Moonbase: The Next Step from Moonraker VFX and a special presentation of Spacewalkers, featuring never-before-seen fulldome video and VR scenes shot outside the International Space Station in 8K by Canadian producers Felix & Paul. Also shown were the award-winning documentaries Worlds of Ice, Lands of the Americas, and the One Sky project. 

There were also amazing live performances, including Sounds of the Ocean by American performer Joshua Sam Miller (embodiedsounds.com), “Entangled Structures” by Austrian artist MONOCOLOR, and a stunning work in progress “Cloud Bodies” from artists in residence Allison Moore and Arthur Desmarteaux. Attendees were also treated to the breakthrough hit Bébé Symphonique, a mesmerizing fulldome experience for babies and their adult companions.Loïc Quesnel later described the show more fully in a “how to” talk which covered tips about changing tables in the dome and soft lighting.

Spatial audio was well-represented in listening sessions and talks encompassing everything from audio software and microphone solutions to performances of specially created audio experiences such as live navigation across the stage of a concert hall allowing people to hear individual instruments during a symphony orchestra recording of Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”), a piece performed by the Montréal Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Symphony New Brunswick Music Director Mélanie Léonard. Patrick Pomerleau from Nest Immersion gave an engaging demonstration of “Dome VJ for Dummies” highlighting interactive performance using NestDrop.

We had talks about educational storytelling, using immersive content to communicate ocean science research and engage the broader public, the creation of immersive exhibitions, developing new levels of engagement and collaboration via immersive multiplayer games for the dome, up to a couple hundred people or more simultaneously—presented by Kinetarium’s Michael Scholz—and the challenges of domecasting and working on show production with indigenous communities and specialized groups.