Virtual reality, 6DoF, 10’
YEAR 2022
ART DIRECTION, PRODUCTION, DEVELOPMENT Mélanie Courtinat
ORIGINAL MUSIC Yatoni
DISTRIBUTION Diversion Cinema
Certain historical events defy representation; they offer no analogies, no precedents in experience. These are catastrophes of a new kind, for which our eyes, our ears, and even our language remain unprepared.
All Unsaved Progress Will Be Lost is a sensorial journey that explores our deepest fears and resilience in the face of unimaginable horrors, through the story of a survivor who chose not to evacuate her home. Voluntarily confined to a space rendered inhospitable, she recounts her vision of the disaster in a surreal landscape made of concrete and fog—a portrayal of a land where no return to origins is possible.
It is only in the final moments that the nature of this calamity is disclosed, yet without this knowledge, the looming threat remains silent, unnamed, inviting viewers to confront their own anxieties about possible future catastrophes.
Premiered in 2022 at the Venice Biennale within the Immersive Selection, the project has since been showcased over twenty times in exhibitions and festivals worldwide. That same year, it was distinguished with the Best VR Award at Animafest Zagreb.
Video game, immersive installation + virtual reality
YEAR 2024 for the game / 2025 for the VR
DIRECTION Mélanie Courtinat
DEVELOPMENT Mélanie Courtinat, Odran Jobin, Alpha Rats, Alex Sinh Nguyen
VR DEVELOPMENT Mélanie Courtinat, Nino Filiu, Odran Jobin
MUSIC Inès Chérifi at Færies Records, Yatoni
The Siren is a digital exploration that questions the traditional conventions of video games. The project exists in two forms: an installative version played on a screen with a game controller, and an immersive virtual reality experience.
The work probes the meaning we assign to actions within a game, the motivations behind our playful engagements, and aims to introduce an art exhibition public to the medium. This inclusive approach is designed to be accessible to everyone, including newcomers, while also providing an additional level of understanding for those already acquainted with video games. In its installative version, the piece features accessible gameplay and incorporates a so-called “cinematic” dimension, offering a rich visual experience for those who prefer to watch. In the virtual reality version, a new layer of immersion is introduced through hands-free interactions, allowing visitors to engage with the work in a more embodied and intuitive way.
The Siren begins like many games do: you control a heroine clad in shimmering armor, guided by an omniscient narrator, and seemingly tasked with rescuing a damsel in distress. But before you can embark on this “main quest,” you’re ordered to complete a minor side quest: collecting glowing seashells scattered across a quiet beach at dusk. This detour is not just a mechanic, but a metaphor. As the game unfolds, the narrator’s presence intensifies. Their instructions become more insistent, more authoritarian, pushing the player to obey, to perform, to stay on track. This growing control invites reflection on our relationship to authority within games, and beyond them: Why do we follow orders? What happens when we stop?
The Siren draws a direct line between the logic of side quests, like gathering hundreds of Korok seeds in Breath of the Wild, and the way we fill our real lives with tasks, projects, and goals to distract ourselves from the inevitability of death. Learning a new skill, optimizing routines, falling in love, we keep ourselves busy, hoping that purpose will emerge from repetition. These are rituals we invent to trick the void.
At its core, The Siren also questions the narrative of romantic salvation, the belief that by “saving the princess,” or by finding our so-called other half, we might finally be whole. That love might protect us from the absurdity of existence. That if we are the main character, there must be a story, and it must lead somewhere. The player’s path unfolds through quiet decisions, shaping multiple possible endings. None are final. The “good ending” is tough to find.
The Siren doesn’t ask you to win, it invites you to drift. To wonder what it means to keep going when the quest no longer makes sense.
The Siren was first commissioned by the Pully Art Museum, under the curatorship of Victoria Mühlig.
I’M NOT TOUGH ENOUGH TO BE ONLINE ___ ÉDITORIAL MAGAZINE MAGAZINE
CGI images, 3D scanYEAR 2023
ART DIRECTION Mélanie Courtinat, Salomé Chatriot
CGI Mélanie Courtinat
STYLING Salomé Poloudenny
3D SCANS Pierre Moulin, Nino Filiu
MUA Nora Le Dour
CHAINMAIL, JEWELRY Milari Barker (Membrane)
Conceived by Mélanie Courtinat and Salomé Chatriot, this fashion series for issue 40 of Magazine magazine explores the worlds of these two artists through a series of images featuring characteristic elements of their styles and practices.
Serving as models, their bodies were captured through 3D scanning, allowing for their transposition into a virtual universe integrated within Unreal Engine video game software. The sets are entirely CGI, crafted not with the intention of achieving photorealism, but to evoke a sense of ambiguity—celebrating the imperfections of the scans rather than concealing them.
TEN LANDS
Video game, interactive videoclipYEAR 2020
ART DIRECTION, CGI, PRODUCTION Mélanie Courtinat
ORIGINAL MUSIC, SOUND DESIGN Yatoni
Ten Lands is a hybrid format that oscillates between an interactive video clip and a video game. Each level visually illustrates one of the ten ambient music tracks from Yatoni‘s latest album.
Ten Lands opens, in an underlying way, a double reflexion that crosses both the video game industry and the music industry. This reflexion took place in times where the idea of sound resonated with difficulty in public places, at a time where gatherings were forbidden. It raises the question of new places and new ways of listening to music, far from clubs and concerts.
With Ten Lands, the artist seeks to draw a new diagonal that links the two disciplines of video games and videoclips. By recovering the interactive format of one and the stakes of the other, Ten Lands is a hybrid format in which each sound composition unfolds in relation to a specific virtual place. Landscapes and sounds happen simultaneously. One resonates with the other.
From then on, Ten Lands raises the issue of spatiality when listening to an album. Here the logics of unfolding the musical titles differ from those already in place, especially on streaming platforms such as Spotify or Soundcloud. Indeed, where one click is enough to start the next track, Ten Lands requires a journey.
By including the notion of space, distance and thus chronology, Ten Lands initiates a new logic of filiation when listening to a music album; close to the one, in particular, that animates the vinyl record. In fact, in the same way that the vinyl record requires listening to music one after the other, this new format requires that steps be taken in order to unroll the musical thread, unlike platforms that follow a logic of "deferred" listening, and the possibility of a disorderly discover. Here, this format pushes and gives you the opportunity to go through, literally, Yatoni's album.
Moreover and from another perspective, the artist also made the choice not to always do so. There is one unique entity to browse the ten worlds of Ten Lands. The avatar imagined by the artist is characterized above all by its anonymity. His thick opaque metal armor hides his face but also his gender. Mute, neither his voice nor his gait betray his identity. It is therefore impossible to know his features or the color of his skin. The protagonist of Ten Lands is an avatar who wants to be inclusive, so that anyone can take it over.
