In the “Carambolages” exhibition in Paris, pieces are meant to ricochet off each other to create a domino effect of logic of the viewer’s own imagination.

The Grand Palais show is based on the billiards idea of a “carambolage” or “cannon” where a cue ball pushes others to quite different places. The mixed bag of art has unexpected consequences.

The display opens with art historian Aby Warburg’s “Atlas Mnemosyne,” Da Vinci-esque drafts of internal memory mechanisms. There is an orchestral warm-up for those using the mobile application to listen to the smart sound design for each segment.

Visitors zig-zag through 27 segments of grouped pieces as one series introduces the next, evoking the labyrinthine model of Mnemosyne as an imagined city at the beginning.

Charles Le Brun’s sketches of eyes “Têtes d’expressions” and a Mesopotamian eye idol lead into a 4th-century Chinese deer sculpture that stood guard at royal tombs, which gives way to a series that includes Albrecht Durer’s “Tête de cerf percée d’une flèche.”

Annette Messager’s “Gants-Tête” opens a segment on demons. “L’enfer” by Vincenza Minozzi and a Tibetan Kalachkara Mandala briefly explore the afterlife.

While the concept of presenting works to speak for themselves in clustered thematics allows viewers to create their own narrative around the art and relationships between works, traffic pools at the ends of aisles as visitors watch a small slideshow naming pieces just seen and to come. Viewers spend more time looking at screens and navigating the application than looking at the actual art and objects.

If the idea is to shake up how we view art and force the use of imagination, the execution is still restrictive. “Carambolages,” if nothing else, is a welcome break from traditional presentation as a stroll through a global survey of art and cultures that does not overwhelm or demand too much.

“Carambolages” is on show at the Grand Palais until July 4.