Illuminart trail at Quarter des spectacles will brighten sky
When the Montréal en lumière festival kicks off next week, a 3.5-km trail called Illuminart will wind its way through the Quartier des spectacles, brightening the night sky with an ‘open-air museum’
Illuminart runs from Feb. 22 to March 3, between 5:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. On Nuit Blanche, March 4, the light displays will be on until 3 a.m. For more information and to view an interactive map of the Illuminart trail, visit experienceilluminart.com
During last year’s Nuit Blanche, Montrealers got a preview of Illuminart in the form of l’Îlot de Chaleur, an art installation at Quartier des spectacles that resembled a great campfire, only it was made out of light fixtures.
As part of this year’s Montréal en lumière festival – the catch-all winter fête of art, music and food that this time around also features a cavalcade of 375th anniversary activities – Illuminart is returning as a fully-fledged event of its own. From Feb. 22 to March 3, between 5:30 p.m. and 11 p.m., a 3.6-kilometre path will wind its way downtown, mostly through the Quartier des spectacles – from City Councillors to Berri Sts. — and will feature 25 outdoor pieces of art involving lights and projections. Some will even be interactive, offering an opportunity to create your own light amid winter’s darkness.
“It’s like an open-air museum,” explains Mikaël Frascadore, production VP for L’Équipe Spectra. “You’ll discover a lot of the city – through video mapping on buildings, interactive installations and lit-up sculptures — by walking along the Illuminart route.”
Frascadore has spent the last three years visiting light festivals around the world, including Fête des lumières in Lyon, France and GLOW in Eindhoven, Netherlands, searching for potential projects that could work here. Thanks to a partnership with the Lyon festival, six installations by designers from the French city will be presented at Illuminart.
Last August, Spectra put out a call for local designers, including a number of schools, to propose their own projects.
“We had two elementary schools from the Commission scolaire de Montréal (CSDM) create a city with 1,000 LED sticks (called Quand la ville s’illumine, j’habite les couleurs at de Maisonneuve Blvd. and St-Dominique St.),” says Frascadore. “We had schools working together with professional companies to bring projects to life. We’re bringing international designers and light festival programmers here, but we’re also hoping these schools and designers get to travel the world with their art after Illuminart is over.”
One of the local companies involved in Illuminart is 4U2C, perhaps better known for their projection work on the Bell Centre ice before Canadiens games and on Mount Royal earlier this winter. The 4U2C team was tasked with creating an animated sequence to be projected on the façade of the about-125-year-old MonumentNational on St-Laurent Blvd.
They came up with Ex Umbra, a three-and-a-half minute ode to the building ’s rich, diverse history. It’s the oldest Quebec theatre still in operation, and it currently houses the National Theatre School of Canada, but it was originally built for the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society and was a longtime Jewish community centre and Yiddish theatre.
“We went old-school with the animation, doing it by hand and making it black and white,” explains 4U2C art director Rémy Dubois.
“Our theme is light coming out of the shadows. Because of technology and all the options out there, it’s getting harder to get people to go to the theatre.”
“But throughout history, from ancient Greece to France to today, the theatre has been seen as a revolutionary place.”
Shelley Dupasquier, 4U2C production manager and National Theatre School alumna, says the projections will “pay tribute to the writers, actors and costume designers of theatre in a dynamic and modern way.”
The projections will perfectly contour the façade’s many crevasses, while Yiddish music will play in the background. To create the effect, they took photos of the building, then it was scaled down and used as the backdrop so Dubois could draw sketches on it. The company has done something like this before — for a library in Mexico — but there are different concerns with having such precise animations placed on a wall on a cold, windy Montreal night.
“I hope the wind isn’t a problem. A bit of wind can slightly move the structure that’s holding the projector and throw it all off,” says Dubois. They’re also wary about potential noise and light pollution on that stretch of the Lower Main, which could dull the impact of their presentation.
Another 4U2C creation, titled Carina Nebula, will be on display at Parc Toussaint-Louverture on de Maisonneuve. Inspired by the city’s public pianos, Montrealers will make their own light show by tickling the ivories of a keyboard connected to a series of illuminated trestles and festoons.
“The piano is linked to a system where hitting each note can create a different lighting effect around you,” explains Dupasquier. “For both projects we wanted to enhance the beauty of the part of the city they’re in, and with the piano, we hope it will encourage people to hang out in the park and enjoy the changing environment around them.”
Frascadore recommends a pair of entries from Lyon. One titled Face, at Parc Paul-Dozois, is a sculpture that assumes the face of whoever is standing in front of it, making for an intriguing reflection via projection, while Promenade des Artistes (also on de Maisonneuve, at the corner of Jeanne-Mance St.) will be watched over by a giant red elephant created out of recycled polyethylene containers stuffed with LED lights.
There’s also an interactive minicircuit about big data and artificial intelligence within the Illuminart trail, called Instance, created by UQAM interactive media students. Look for it at the corner of Ste-Catherine St. and St-Laurent Blvd. “It starts with a visit to the installation’s brain, which will collect information from people’s smartphones and use it to create artwork,” Frascadore explains.
Perhaps the largest of the stations is Fantastic Planet at the Parterre on de Maisonneuve and Clark St., from Australian Amanda Parer.
“You’ll see five gigantic humanlike figures, all in white with LED lights inside,” says Frascadore. “They’re like aliens coming down to Earth to explore the planet for the first time.
“The figures are 12 metres high — they’ll look impressive when you’re standing in front of them.”