Montreal gets some Luminotherapie with Loop
The mechanical poetry of Loop’s 13 giant zoetropes has created magic in the Quartier des Spectacles district in Montreal as part of Luminotherapie 2016 – 2017.
The interactive, participatory installation in Montreal’s Place des Festivals consists of 13 rings of coloured light each presenting a story lasting a few seconds: a toad becomes a prince, the wolf blows the three little pigs’ house, scary eyes appear in the dark.
The work is inspired by the zoetrope, an optical toy invented in the 19th century. Loop is a cross between a music box, a zoetrope and a railway handcar. Through the combined efforts of members of the public working the hand lever, the image cylinder lights up and creates the illusion of motion in the drawings.
The black and white images, tinted through a strobe effect, recall the earliest movies and are visible inside the cylinder as well as outside it, so that they can be watched from close up or far away. A music box at the centre of each zoetrope provides accompaniment for the giant animated drawings.
A work by Ekumen, Loop is designed by Olivier Girouard, Jonathan Villeneuve, and Ottoblix in collaboration with Générique Design, Jérôme Roy and Thomas Ouellet Fredericks.
Every year, Luminothérapie presents an original, interactive and captivating winter experience in Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles, with a major installation for the Place des Festivals. For this year’s 7th edition, designers were asked to work with a fairy-tale theme to create a work that would inspire a sense of wonderment, day or night, and that would be open to participation from a broad audience, including families.
“The experience offered by Loop is universal, just like the illustrated imagery seen in the zoetropes and video projection. The jury was also impressed by the installation’s participatory and physical element,” said Rami Bebawi, an architect at Kanva Architecture and the chair of the Luminothérapie 2016 jury. “The connection between fairy tales and childhood is made both in the animation triggered by turning on the zoetrope, and in the physical components of the work, particularly the music box that plays the soundtrack.”
More information: www.quartierdesspectacles.com
Photo: Ulysse Lemerise / OSA Images
