While the idea of metaverses is growing, experts are taking part in a day of debates on the subject on Monday, November 14.
The metaverse is still today a concept as vague as it is interesting. Many events and conferences are organized on the subject, whether it is about technologies, culture, economy or ethics. Among them: At Metaverse, a day organized by BNP Paribas and the magazine Fisheyean opportunity to explore many issues through round tables and immersive artistic demonstrations.
The metaverse offers a new universe of possibilities for artists interested in digital. However, as we can see in the current metaverse tests, especially in Horizon Worlds, it is still difficult to get away from simply copying the real thing. This was also a problem in the early days of virtual reality and the Internet, but over time the metaverse may also find its own language and formats.
Artists Cyril Laurier and Maya Mouawad are among the artists who use digital to create immersive works of art. More than reflecting on the message to convey with the work, the challenge is to know how to create this feeling and think about the management of the space so that in the end, as Cyril Laurier explained, “The technology disappears and the message appears”. But new technologies themselves can be a source of inspiration: “We are obliged to clean the tools, to know what is possible. Available technologies can also give us ideas. »
Introducing the event, the co-founder of FisheyeBenoît Baume, has raised the first problem in the metaverse ecosystem today: “The merchant aspect of the metaverse may be at the end of the road, but it’s not at the beginning. » It is the real obsession for profit, monetization and potential wealth that dictates many decisions in today’s metaverses, the speculation around virtual real estate and the debacle of Meta in the face of the lack of profit in World World which are particularly prominent examples. The doctor of economics Julien Pillot, he regrets that the think tanks around the metaverses are made up of “many industrialists and few intellectuals”while it is a complex concept that requires a multidisciplinary approach.
Ethics and philosophy in virtual societies
The idea of the virtual society will recall this idea of a “sovereign metaverse” on a French or European scale, proposed by others in the French political class. If this concept is so widespread, it is because Europe has been traumatized by its failure to create a company with a global impact on Google and to guarantee basic freedoms online, giving the impression that there is no control over our digital destiny. Despite these concerns, the digital chief of the Ministry of Culture, Romain Lasupers, insisted that the government considers the metaverse above all as a matter of cultural policy. An approach confirmed last September by creating a fund of several million euros per year dedicated to immersive works.
Éric Sadin, thinker specialized in the digital world, provides a philosophical perspective on the evolution of technologies since the 2000s to reach the metaverse and the dangers it may cause for humanity, by creating a form of collective isolation that increasingly sits upon us. more by bringing the world to us and, finally, by replacing our real perceptions with virtual sensations. This intervention is supplemented by a theatrical performance of the 6ml collective of the sometimes fusion, obsessive or conflicting link between the user and his avatar, between the real and the virtual.