Museums: Hanging with Napoleon in virtual reality
Immersive experience at the Canadian Museum of History is experiential, indeed
I knew I was in trouble when I realized I was standing in the middle of Napoleon’s war table. Then I saw the cannonball coming for my head.
It was a preview of Napoleon - The Immersive Saga, at the Museum of History in Gatineau. It’s a “virtual reality adventure,” wherein visitors don a VR headset and stand/wander around as Napoleon, and the city of Paris, rise above Europe.
“Travel through pivotal moments in Napoleon Bonaparte’s life, from the Battle of Austerlitz to his final days on Saint Helena,” say the exhibition notes. “Epic battles, strategic triumphs, bitter setbacks and personal reflections unfold around you through striking reconstructions and immersive storytelling.”
When they say “around you” they aren’t kidding. At one point, along with a dozen or so other real visitors, I’m standing in a VR grand salon after the walls and furnishings appear all around us. I can see other exhibition visitors, who are each outlined in a simple white line, just the head and torso, like spectral silhouettes. We are limbless in this ghostly life, though I can see everyone’s white, disembodied hands floating where the end of their arms would be. (The rational me supposes our hands are visible to help us maintain our balance in this challenging VR world. The cynical me suspects it’s perhaps so women, with their visibility of the real world constricted, can see where everyone’s hands are.)
Regardless, I hold my left hand right in front of my face and watch it flex. I feel like the cyborg in Terminator. I want to turn to one of the other spectres and in a robot-Austrian accent ask, “Are you Sarah Connor?”
The scenes around us change from interiors to exteriors, from grand chambers to grim battlefields, all of it in 3D and seemingly real and close enough to touch. At one point I notice that all the other white-line ghosts are looking my way, and I realize that Napoleon and his generals have a map of Europe spread on a table and are planning a campaign, while I stand directly in the middle of the table like a plump, inexplicable centrepiece. This could make it difficult for the generals to see the map — my white-line ghost is quite wide — though in this simulation they can see right through me. (Hardly the first.)
I gingerly move to my left to get out of the table, with the help of one of the thoughtfully provided walking sticks, though in this case I might call it a Not Falling Down Stick, or a Not Completely Embarrass Myself Stick.
Hardly have I moved aside when the room changes to a blustery battlefield, and I notice something in the distance coming my way. A dot, it seems, getting larger. Finally I see it’s a cannonball, and I stand there like a stunned bunny as it flies through my head. Clearly, I wouldn’t have lasted in the Grand Armée.
Lots of things go through you; at one point a whole cohort of soldiers on horseback run through me. I don’t feel a thing, which was surprising as I am allergic to hay. Seconds later I see a bullet approaching in slow motion. I hold up my hand again and watch as the bullet goes through it. I feel like Neo in The Matrix. “There is no spoon,” I want to say to someone.
The simulation is 30-minutes, and it trots apace through the Napoleonic era. I find myself standing on the shore at Austerlitz amid a French artillery crew that’s firing shells at those unwitting poor bastards out on the ice. Then it’s on to another illusion.
All this led to glory and riches for France and Napoleon, and, as European conquerers are wont to do, he set about making his capital city even more grand. Famous buildings that were built, or somehow elevated, by Napoleon rise up all around us — the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, and even Notre Dame, where he had himself crowned Emperor (and immortalized in a splendid painting by Jacques Louis David.)
One moment gets an audible and collective gasp from the ghosts; a massive column rises out of the ground at Place Vendôme, amid us. We all rise along with the column, and suddenly find ourselves ascending into the air to a height of 40 metres or so. We hang in mid-air like Wile E. Coyote, and we all know what happened to him. At this point I cheat and raise my headset for a quick, stabilizing peek at the real world, as I was what the experts would call “freaked out.”
The museum attendants had warned us about this feeling, this sense of hanging in “the void.” Staring into it, I wondered about the weight limit on my walking stick.
The adventure is not historically comprehensive, and doesn’t need to be to be effective. It’s also possible one could miss something while standing in the 360-degree projection. I never saw Napoleon’s great love Josephine, for example, but perhaps she was standing behind me at some point. Perhaps I trod on her toe and she thought, “Qui est cet imbécile?”
(The accompanying exhibition of art and information about Napoleon includes much of Josephine, and more context about what is seen in VR.)
At the end of the adventure we find ourselves standing on the deck of a ship that is taking Napoleon to his island exile of Saint Helena. I am standing at his shoulder, and I see his face as he stares out over the waves. His expression is a mix of pride and regret, or at least resignation. It was thrilling, even in virtual reality, to stand so close to such a giant of history.
It all leaves me so discombobulated that minutes later I go to the wrong level of the parking garage and wander about before I realize my mistake. Napoleon crossed the Alps, and I can’t find my own car.
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Napoleon - the Immersive Saga continues at the Canadian Museum of History to Jan. 10, 2027.
Museum note: “This experience may cause dizziness for visitors that have balance issues or a history of dizziness (and) is not recommended for individuals with epilepsy, heart conditions, or those sensitive to flashing lights or motion effects.” Click here for more restrictions and other information.