Each winter season, Montreal’s Quartier des spectacles ushers in, well, spectacles — in the form of interactive light installations and projections. Collectively known as the annual Luminothérapie, the dazzling display features winning designs (conceived by architects, lighting designers, artists, and engineers) that bring holiday cheer to one of the chilliest cities in North America.
The 2015–2016 edition’s centerpiece, Impulse, adds the element of sound, too. Toronto firm Lateral Office and Montreal-based CS Design, in collaboration with EGP Group, devised a series of 30 varied-size seesaws that, once in motion, activate sounds and lights via integrated LEDs and speakers, as well as nine architectural video animations projected onto nearby building façades. As the seesaw angles shift, so do the light intensities. In a sense, the sitter is participating as a player of a novel instrument.
Luminothérapie will be open to the public at the Place des Festivals from now through January 31st, 2016, and so will the projections, which were produced by Maotik and Iregular. Sound design was executed by Mitchell Akiyama.
View a behind-the-scenes video (mostly in French with parts in English) on Luminothérapie 2015–2016.
