Interactive and sensory cinema cabin for solo spectators, "Soma" by Guillaume Faure explores the unconscious relationship of the body to the image. An immersive cinematographic experience on the edge of psychotherapy.
[…] Unlike other immersive cinema pieces, Soma is not a playful or even ostentatious device like a 360° film for Oculus Rift. Its general concept is clearly more focused on a sensory awakening principle, with almost therapeutic aims in perspective. […] The whole concept is based on the body and trying to re-establish contact with it, through the audiovisual system. It is a way of reminding us of the power and strength of this 'machine' to make choices that are not those of reason.”
The digital artist Guillaume Faure is nourished by a double experience as a photographer (notably for the film Yves Saint-Laurent by Jalil Lespert) and a cinematographer, which taught him the requirement of light and the sense of the frame. After a video and sound installation Mange-rêve (2010), he develops a strange device: Soma.
I sit down in the small cinema room designed for the occasion. And put three fingers of my right hand on sensors that will detect my heart rate, my body temperature, and my sweat. It is indeed my emotions that will condition the narration and the editing of the projected film. The sounds make the chair vibrate and envelop me. Guillaume Faure willingly speaks of a massage of the subconscious.
Soma, by Guillaume Faure. Two interactive cinema booths. A small booth, a wooden armchair. And, on one of the armrests, three points to put your fingers on. The white screen suddenly becomes black. Little by little, images take shape. The impression of being in front of a kaleidoscope, which comes to life according to the emotions of the spectator. "A machine centered on the body and the perception. A photo booth of the unconscious.
Charles Carcopino, his curator, signs one of his most beautiful successes with this learned, poetic, artistic and playful exploration of new cinematographic practices. Making one's own montage of a film with Thierry Fournier Dépli; orchestrating images according to one's emotions with Guillaume Faure Soma; getting lost in the light beam of Etienne Rey Space Odyssey; ...
More disturbing, "SOMA" by Guillaume Faure, also places the viewer at the center of the installation but deprives him of the choice of interaction. Installed alone in a small capsule, his fingers placed on sensors, he sees scenes, colors and sounds selected by the computer according to his emotional responses. The proposed montages influence in turn the mind of the guinea pig, subject and object merge.
The experiments of "sensitive cinema", as Soma, of Guillaume Faure, which makes scroll images in supposed relationship with the emotional state of the visitor, transform it into guinea pig of fair. Perhaps a way to reconnect with the modest origins of cinema.