NewImages Hub offers a full-time XR lab in Paris

NewImages Festival de Paris and parent organization Forum des Images recently launched NewImages Hub, a network support offering XR professionals a set of complementary creative and mentoring programs throughout the year. Divided into three hubs, the new lab will help immersive projects through development, production and distribution, offering residencies and networking support at every phase.

Managed by the Forum des Images – non-profit cultural association subsidized by the City of Paris – and Supported by the French CNC, NewImages Hub will oversee international writing residencies in Paris and abroad, while developing complementary workshops with partners in Taiwan, Chile and South Africa. The new lab will also administer existing programs in Rome, Ecuador and Taipei, while making industry analysis accessible to everyone.

"We want to help sooner on distribution issues", says digital manager of Forum des Images (and director of the NewImages festival) Michele Ziegler. “Big installations get so expensive, so how does [an artist] break down his project into different versions? And how can we use our network to help you?"

Looking for transdisciplinary programs run by the Phi Center in Montreal, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Melbourne's ACMI as a source of inspiration and example, Ziegler hopes to offer “a service to industry,” leveraging his institution's not-for-profit status as a beacon that all can join. “We are Switzerland,” she says. “We are neutral and we want to stay in that neutral position while making things happen to make things happen. We need to be more agile."

As with the annual NewImages festival (running April 5-9 this year), Ziegler thinks that the Forum des Images' advantageous position within the busiest center of Paris can give the new effort a youthful vigor. Thus, from September, the Forum des Images will offer spaces where digital artists can test their development projects in public.

"We have teenagers going through the Image Forum [all the time]," says Ziegler . “So let them come and test prototypes. [This way] artists can get feedback from real people while developing their projects."

As this year's NewImages Festival celebrates the art and artistry of the immersive industry Quebecois, Ziegler hopes to eventually go beyond the constraints of a brief snapshot at an annual festival. “The idea is to have lasting ties between communities,” she says. "Rather than an annual focus on a specific country, I want to build lasting relationships with other continents, replacing an annual panorama with a set of more stable partnerships."

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