At artgenève, from 25 to 28 January 2024, Cybel’Art and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR) presented a volumetric experience centred on the orchestra. The original article, published on 17 July 2026, looks back at that 2024 presentation; it is not the date of the capture or the launch date of a product.
Capturing the orchestra
The project draws on the capture of 73 OSR musicians in September 2023. Instrumental gestures, expressions and the ensemble’s interactions were recorded and then processed through the icologram® protocol to form a three-dimensional viewing experience. Project documentation describes this choice as foregrounding performances by real musicians rather than creating artist avatars. That description does not make a claim about every part of the technical workflow or provide a guarantee of authenticity.
The OSR Virtual Hall experience, credited to OSR Virtual Hall and Real Illusions, allowed headset-wearing visitors to shift their viewpoint within the orchestra. Rather than recreating the usual frontal concert format, it invited close observation of the relationship between conductor, sections and instruments.
An installation for discovery
The original account reports that more than 4,000 “holotourists” encountered the installation during the fair. The figure points to interest in a format where the performance space becomes part of the listening experience. Its purpose was not to replace a concert hall, but to offer another way to approach a recorded performance.
The artgenève presentation should also be kept separate from the first public OSR Virtual Hall trials, which took place in January 2025. It is not an announcement of broad availability: the possibility of making this kind of experience accessible in other locations remains a stated direction, dependent on deployment conditions, rights and artistic context.
Keeping an artwork in context
The work raises a practical question for living heritage: how can an interpretation be documented without removing either the artists’ presence or the context of its creation? The approach here combines a captured performance with spatial navigation, without treating the process as absolute proof of permanence or fidelity.
The our work page places this experiment among other Cybel’Art projects. OSR Virtual Hall therefore remains a record of an installation presented in Geneva in 2024, not a promise that the same use will fit every work or audience.
Editorial adaptation of the article by Pierluigi Christophe Orunesu, originally published on Substack on 17 July 2026. Read the original article on Substack