The Historial of the Great War at Péronne in the Somme is the largest museum dedicated to the 1st World War in France. Its collections showcase the cultural, social and military dimension of this important and cruel chapter of History.

In 2018, the Historial wanted to set up a major project around the theme of ‘Peace to fight’, 100 years after the signing of the Armistice, on November the 11th of 1918, against all current geopolitical tensions.

At a time when extremism and nationalism are plaguing the whole world, the younger generations must never forget past mistakes so as not to reproduce them in the future.

In the aftermath of World War I, France buried the tomb of an Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. This national military monument is dedicated to the memory of all fallen soldiers during the Great War.

100 years later, we made this symbol of War, a universal symbol of Peace for the younger generations by giving a face to the Unknown Soldier. A face composed of 30,000 men, women, soldiers, nurses or civilians, winners and losers, regardless of their nationality or their origins: the Unknown Face.

This face took the form of an interactive and digital work permanently exhibited in the galleries of the Historial.

Our goal was to create a project which would draw the attention of a disinterested younger generation and public opinion through a contextual and technological approach.

To achieve this, we launched a call for contribution to collect as much data as possible from all over the world; Museums, collectors, individuals, world archives. In total, more than 19 countries have contributed to providing us with thousands of authentic portraits from the 1st World War.

The Unknown Face was conceptualized to move people internationally and especially in the countries who participated in WWI. This is where most descendants of WWI fighters are. We made sure to collaborate with historians, collectors and specialists for our project in order to give more strength to our message.

For our campaign to become viral, we asked the French President to inaugurate the work the greatest influencers and specialists of History in France by his side.

In parallel, we unveiled a dedicated digital device on which the public could discover the behind the scenes of the creation of this project, as well as a more educational part highlighting 40 authentic stories of men and women who have taken part in the great war and have atypical destinies.

10 months were needed to give life to this colossal project combining technology and the duty of remembrance. To manage collecting more than 30.000 portraits, we were able to count on the help of museums, historians, collectors and archives from all around the world.

The Unknown Face is the authentic result of our algorithm. Our technology allowed us to recompose missing parts of several photographs in order to match them to the rest of the pictures. We also made sure that the portrait would not go under any retouching or post-production altering phase, so as to crystallize its raw emotion like a real artwork. We met an unbelievable challenge, as it is difficult to link the Unknown Face to a specific nationality or local origin.

The portrait was revealed at The Historial of the Great War at Péronne, as a unique and immersive installation. Visitors were able to skim through the dozens of thousands of faces which together through a leap-motion technology, constitute the piece. By using their hands, visitors could scroll through the lists of portraits. We also thought about everyone who couldn’t be on location to live this experience and created a dedicated digital platform to uncover the portrait.

In only a few months, the website was able to gather one of the most important collections of portraits from the Great War. Still today, we keep on receiving daily contributions from all around the world.

Thanks to this system, the Unknown Face keeps evolving day by day with pictures being added to the database. 6 months after being revealed, the Unknown Face has slightly changed around the mouth and the superciliary arch.

As soon as it was launched, the “Unknown Face” was met by praise from the global media and public opinion: a very wide media coverage with more than 120 national and international press covers. In total, we reached more than 700 million people.

Thanks to the project’s success, visits of the museum rose by 47% in November 2018.

35% of their new public came from younger generations who spent 4 minutes on average watching the Unknown Face and its portraits. The most impressive reaction was the participation of French President E. Macron, who shared the project on his Facebook and Twitter accounts.

But the most important result is the fact that the Unknown Face will now be part of the educational program for the younger generations and will appear in the history books of all high schools in France starting September 2019.