Montreal’s Quartier des Spactacles Unveils IMPULSE And Its 2016 Call For Proposals
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Montrealers and visitors are invited, from December 10 to January 31, to explore IMPULSE, a winter installation comprising 30 giant seesaws that will transform the city’s Place des Festivals into a vast illuminated playground, accompanied by a set of all-new video projections.
The creation is the work of Toronto-based firm Lateral Office and Montreal-based CS Design, in collaboration with EGP Group of Montreal. The consortium, chosen through an open competition for the sixth annual Luminothérapie event, has created a playful interactive space geared to warm the hearts of all ages during the cold season. The associated video productions are by digital artist Maotik and Iregular and music by Mitchell Akiyama.
The official unveiling of the works, with the creators in attendance, took last evening (Wednesday, Dec. 9/15).on the Place des Festivals in an event featuring music, braseros and food trucks.
“Every year, we are eager to give Montrealers a new creative winter experience in the heart of the Quartier des Spectacles,” said Chantal Rossi, Ville de Montréal Associate Councillor, Culture, Heritage and Design. “Luminothérapie’s public installations transform our relationship with the city, beautify it, and give it a wonderful friendly touch. Luminothérapie also keeps Montreal shining bright around the world as a hub of interactive art.”
The interactive work presents a series of giant illuminated and sound-producing seesaws. To activate them, visitors straddle them like any other seesaw. Once in motion, the built-in lights and speakers produce a harmonious sequence of sounds and lights, resulting in a constantly evolving ephemeral composition.
Through the use of architectural lines, a hypnotic soundtrack and an entertaining illusion of depth, the nine architectural video projections echo the seesaws of the Place des Festivals. Playing with the notions of balance and unbalance, symmetry and asymmetry, tension and harmony, the video projections are visual experiments illustrating the original soundtrack created for each video that all show up on the buildings surrounding the Place des Festivals.
IMPULSE is an urban installation that renews itself for every different audience. Each person becomes, while on the seesaws, the player of a novel instrument. It’s another example of experiential design. Last year’s musical swings at the Place were shown by a speaker at the Society of Experiential Design’s Xlab2015 conference during New York Digital Signage Week in November.
The Bureau du design of the Ville de Montréal collaborates with the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership to plan and produce the annual Luminothérapie.
The Luminothérapie 2016-2017 competition is now open for proposals for works to animate pub Quartier des Spectacles public spaces next winter. This is Quebec’s largest competition for temporary public art installations. The goal of the multidisciplinary competition is to produce an original winter-themed interactive experience in the Quartier des Spectacles and to stimulate creativity in the disciplines of urban installations and digital art.
For this seventh edition, the Quartier des Spectacles is bringing something new to the competition by providing a theme: participants must work within the theme ‘tale’. Chosen for its narrative power, the tale – which can take many different forms (fantastical or urban, classic or newly created) – must provide a captivating experience.
“We are very proud to give creators a unique opportunity to express their talent and original vision, particularly for this seventh edition with its special theme,” said Jacques Primeau, chair of the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership. “We want to inspire artists to further their exploration of narrative in their work, while keeping sound and light at the heart of the Luminothérapie experience.”
From December 8, 2016 to January 29, 2017, the winning designers will present an installation on the Place des Festivals that creates a sense of wonder both day and night, while encouraging the participation of a broad audience, including families. Architectural video projections for two adjacent building façades will complete a unified concept through integration with the narrative structure of the primary work.
The competition has two phases: in the first, proposals are reviewed anonymously (to ensure impartiality and openness to new talent); in the second, the finalists selected in the first round will give a presentation to the jury.
The jury will favour projects that combine a variety of perspectives by bringing together multiple disciplines: design, the performing arts, visual and media arts, etc.. The total production budget is $300,000.
The registration form, rules and evaluation criteria are available on the Quartier des Spectacles website.
The free competition is Canada-wide and open to all teams whose lead designer is based in Canada.
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