In 2025, Lausanne Cathedral marked its 750th anniversary. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was performed for the occasion in a lighting design by Renato Häusler, with thousands of candles accompanying the orchestra and voices. An evening like this is inherently fleeting. Cybel’Art’s project was to retain a record of it without reducing the architecture, performers and soundscape to a single, frontal viewpoint.
Recording a place and a performance
The capture combined 360-degree immersive video with synchronised audiovisual processing. Its purpose was not to recreate the concert with avatars, but to give a digital form to a real performance within the cathedral’s volume. The approach belongs with Cybel’Art’s work, where immersive technologies are conceived as an extension of existing places, situations and human presence.
The project was developed with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR) around Virtual Hall®, presented as the orchestra’s virtual concert hall. In this production, Virtual Hall® provides a framework for an immersive experience drawn from a recorded event; it should not be conflated with the broader vision of renewed access to heritage and live arts.
Keeping the artists at the centre
The volumetric element uses the icologram® protocol. It is intended to record the artists who were present in three dimensions, so that their presence can be approached in a digital environment rather than having their movements generated from scratch. Production credits name studio effigie for the capture and gracia.ai for processing connected with the icologram® Gaussian 4D protocol.
This approach does not claim to replace the experience of hearing a concert inside the cathedral. It seeks to carry forward aspects of it—the performers’ arrangement, the depth of the setting, light, and the intensity of a shared moment—in another form. That balance between artistic creation and digital tools reflects Cybel’Art’s signature: We Humanize Digital.
A record for living heritage
Renato Häusler’s lighting turned the building into a changing stage, while Beethoven’s score brought together orchestra, choir and audience. Immersive documentation does not freeze that encounter. It creates conditions in which it can be revisited while retaining its spatial context.
Viewing through the Real Illusions app formed part of the project’s stated delivery framework. This describes an intended mode of consultation, not a statement of current availability. Through Virtual Hall®, the OSR and Cybel’Art explore how architectural heritage, performed music and Cybel’Art’s brands and technologies can be brought into dialogue without separating innovation from the human reality that gives it meaning.
Editorial adaptation of the article by Pierluigi Christophe Orunesu, originally published on Substack on 13 July 2026. Read the original article on Substack