A huge thank you to the brave singers of the Choeur Art Neuf that sang at the inauguration of the Champ de pixels on December 15th despite the freezing cold!
The Choeur Art Neuf performs a cappella pieces in a wide variety of styles and eras as well as works by great masters of sacred choral music. For Champ de pixels, we had the chance to listen astunning interpretations of Christmas songs. What brighten our little child’s heart in this holiday season!
Montreal has been white for almost two weeks. The shops and boutiques smell Christmas in the air. While the snow blows along Président-Kennedy Avenue, the second story of the red-roofed Church of St John the Evangelist is anything but cold. Underneath the bright-red ceiling, volunteers are bustling like elves to get everything ready for the reception on December 25th.
For ten years now, the enormous gothic church in the Quartier des spectacles has welcomed the poor, solitary and homeless of the area for an annual holiday dinner. “We try to do something for the people that sleep on the streets of the neighbourhood” explains parishioner Drew Graham-Smith as he comes out of the kitchen. Since the economic crisis set in, the famous feast has welcomed more and more families who don’t have the means to lay out their own holiday spread.
From the Gesù Church on Bleury, the Bon-Pasteur Chapel at the corner of Sherbrooke and De Bullion, as well as at St James and St John the Evangelist, the four churches of the Quartier des spectacles project the real spirit of the holidays.It’s a welcome refuge from big-box stores and stress. “Here, it’s not a question of purchases and presents, but of the traditional spirit of Christmas” explains Drew Graham-Smith. Pierre Bélanger, superior of the Gesù Jesuit community, notes sadly that people have grown distant from religion. But he holds that Quebec people know that “Christmas doesn’t have a true meaning beyond its connection with its spiritual roots.”
At the Gesù, the Jesuits promise a Christmas of tradition and openness. In addition to a special December 24th mass, the Gesù auditorium will present a night of Jewish and Muslim comedy on December 23rd. For this religious community, Christmas is an opportunity to celebrate all beliefs. Past the huge frescoes, on the right of the nave, is a next-generation Nativity scene sculpted by Quebec artist Stella Pace out of recycled materials. Pierre Bélanger believes that it’s a remarkable combination. “It takes a traditional element, the Nativity scene, through which the artist expresses herself and addresses the demands of contemporary life. In this case, it’s the environment.”
All the neighbourhood churches put art to good use during the holiday season. Even though the Bon-Pasteur Chapel will be closed from December 20th to January 26th, it will present a Christmas soprano concert on December 19th, and jazz and classical artists will return for the rest of the winter after the break. You can drop by St James Church almost every day during its open-door hours, to fill yourself with the holiday spirit or attend Christmas services.
At St John the Evangelist (the Red Roof church), in addition to the December 12th Bach concert, there will be the traditional midnight service, the supper for the poor, and various scheduled performances. Don’t miss traverso player Joanna Marsden on January 16th, and the January 23rd concert with the organist Federico Andreoni.
During these cold days of December, everyone gathers in the Quartier des spectacles: preachers and parishioners, the secular and the saintly. Come in out of the snow for a moment to renew your holiday spirit, under the four church spires of the neighbourhood.
Three families of giant spheres, three different experiences of the same subject: winter.
Sphères polaires is an installation that generates sound and images in response to your movements. When its motion detectors register activity, the spheres rouse from their slumber to project amazing images.
The urban winter family of spheres has made its home at the north end of the Place des Festivals. A theater of striking shadows highlights winter in the city.
The winter light family, with its mobiles of bulbous, varied forms, can be glimpsed to the south. At the center of the family, an enormous red lever lets you control the spheres, as the lights and sounds coming from each one change in response to the speed of your movements.
The winter games take place at the Place des Arts esplanade. The most ancient forms of light nestle among the most modern; a paper lantern and a snow globe are enthroned atop a series of spheres, themselves inhabited by remarkable little virtual people displayed on LED screens.
So come and leave your mark on the black and snowy Montreal sky by interacting with the 25 Sphères polaires, from December 15 to February 27 at the Place des Festivals and the Place des Arts esplanade.
Created by Bernard Duguay and Pierre Gangnon of Lucion Média
After your mandatory snow angels, you’ll have a new winter ritual: drawing paths of light through the Champ de pixels.
To light it up this year, we’ll need your thighs. Yes, you read that correctly: hop on the Bixi bicycles set up next to the installation and help power the 300 light fixtures. 15 minutes on the bike for 30 minutes of light! If the volunteers don’t move, Champ de pixels doesn’t shine…
Each light fixture has a motion detector that, once triggered, changes the color of the light from red to white. You can recreate the traditional snow games and create paths of light, or let your creativity run free and trace out luminous pathways! It all happens at Place Émilie-Gamelin, from December 15th to February 17th.
Created by Érick Villeneuve of Novalux and Jean Beaudoin of Intégral
The façade of Saint-Jacques Church, part of the Pavillion Judith-Jasmin at UQAM, transforms itself into a luminous laboratory. For nearly three months, you will be able to rediscover this part of Montreal’s heritage thanks to the many creators who will project their video art onto this former church façade.
They’ll come one after the other: L’Acte Lumière and Congo bleu with their joyful graphics, students from the UQAM École des medias with their interactive and generative experience, Novalux with their playful and festive transformation, Oli Sorenson with a contemporary projection for the people – not to mention the NFB with its critical, social contribution. Watch for more details!
December 8 to January 7 | Creation of Novalux
January 8 to January 17 | Un point c’est tout, created by Congo Bleu and L’Acte Lumière
January 18 to January 30 | Control Room 3, created by Oli Sorenson
January 31 to February 15 | Un point c’est tout, created by Congo Bleu and L’Acte Lumière
February 16 to February 27 | Different projections created by UQAM’s students
February 28 février to March 5 | Réminiscence apocryphe, created by NFB
Place des Festivals isn’t the only fertile field where installations are sprouting up. At Place Émilie-Gamelin, in the eastern part of the Quartier des spectacles, the Novalux team is working hard to install 300 light fixtures for tomorrow’s Light Therapy launch, which will illuminate the famous Champ de pixels.
The installation is powered by six Bixi bicycles, and everyone’s invited to pitch in (maybe more like pedal in) to help keep it lit. Every minute you spend on one of the bikes will keep the Champ de pixels shining for two minutes. It all starts at the launch tomorrow, at 5 PM.
This Wednesday, at 5 PM.
That’s all you need to remember to be at the simultaneous launch for all three of our winter installations. At 5 PM on the dot, the Sphères polaires at the Place des Festivals, the Champ de pixels at Place Émilie-Gamelin and the projections on the facade of Saint-Jacques Church at UQAM will all light up at once, to give you a much-needed shot of collective light therapy.
Each of the winter installations was specially designed to minimize any noise impacts on public spaces, and no street closures are planned in connection with these activities.
For additional information, you can contact the cultural officers at La Vitrine anytime. As always, we strongly suggest that you use public transit to access our events.
Enjoy your light therapy session!
New architectural illumination will light up the personality of three new sites: Club Soda, Metropolis and the Church of St. John the Evangelist (that’s the one with red roof). So far, 17 cultural venues have switched on and shine brightly in the nighttime landscape of the Quartier des spectacles.
Club Soda is adding a new, permanent show to a lineup that already sees hundreds of performances each year. The façade now presents a numeric work of art. It’s Moment Factory that has developed the multimedia design for Club Soda that combines video, light, and signage effects. To respect the traditional exterior image of the hall, the design digitizes its marquee and vertical banner without overwhelming them. The façade illuminations will also vary with the atmosphere to create different impacts.
The lights twinkle and the stars shine on the Metropolis marquee. Inspired by old-fashioned marquees while employing new technologies, Moment Factory took the mandate to create a marquee worthy of the prestigious hall. To do this, they used an anodized aluminum façade perforated with hundreds of small and large stars. It’s magic!
The Red Roof Church now has a gentle new lighting design by Lightemotion. The design highlights three particularly significant elements of the neo-gothic building: its greystone façade, its windows and its distinctive red roof. The façade is bathed in a soft light while the windows are illuminated from within. For the roof, the spiritual side of the site inspired the designers to create a lighting scheme composed of five large streaks of light that sweep across the surface like the fingers of a hand.
The luminous pathway pays its own kind of tribute to Montreal’s culture; a nocturnal tribute that uses light to reveal the splendor of the buildings and the personality of these important cultural institutions. We want to illuminate all cultural venues of the Quartier des spectacles.
Hard to miss, those huge structures that invade the place des Festivals. Since the installation has started last week, you already made a lot of noise about it … and they are not even finished yet! So just for you, here’s the first video of the Sphere polaires.
Until the inauguration on December 15th, Lucion Media will be improving them by adding all the interactive component. We can’t wait to see it!
This is a Time Lapse of the Spheres Polaires, I created.
Quartier des spectacles says: Thanks for the sharing!
… are growing slowly on the place des Festivals! By December 15, all the 25 spheres will be installed on the place des Festivals and the Esplanade de la Place des Arts.
We can’t wait to see the final result 
This is a Time Lapse of the Spheres Polaires i created.
This winter, the Quartier des spectacles presents three installations that will help make Montreal’s cultural heart a rich destination, even when it’s below zero! Starting in mid-December, you will enjoy a light therapy session thanks to three new outdoor lighting installations. This new programming comes on top of the 80 cultural venues that already make this destination its distinctive reputation.
December 15 to February 27, Sphères polaires, a creation of Lucion Média, will sprawl out from the Place des Festivals to the Place des Arts esplanade. 25 vinyl spheres, 3 to 10 meters in diameter, will explore three themes: winter games, winter light and urban winter. Each sphere will express its own imgaination, generating sequences of light, sound and video in response to the movements of participants.
December 15 to February 9, a new version of Champ de pixels will sprout at Place Émilie-Gamelin. Visitors will be able to make their way through a playful installation made of hundreds of interactive light sources. This year, we introduced a new element : Bixi bikes will be mounted around the installation, and the activity of pedalling cyclists will feed energy to different spots and change the color of the light. What’s more, the three Melvin Charney-designed structures in the square will be illuminated. Here’s a video of last year project at place des Festivals:
After a makeover by light artists from Lyons during the previous All-Nighter, Montreal’s highest clock tower – the Saint-Jacques church tower, now integrated into the Judith-Jasmin building at UQAM – will be transformed with light yet again. For almost three months, numerous creators will produce video works, using the church façade as a canvas under the direction of Jimmy Lakatos. Here’s a video of last year project:
Polar Spheres | December 15 to February 15 | Created by Bernard Duguay and Pierre Gagnon, Lucion Média
Champ de pixels | December 15 to February 9 | Created by Jean Beaudoin, Intégral and Érick Villeneuve, Novalux
Projections | From mid-December to early March | Many creators, under the artistic direciton of Jimmy Lakatos
Plus de photos
This is our sixth installment of the Moment in Motion time lapse series. Filmed in the winter of 2011, this interactive artistic installment « Spheres Polaires » is located in Montreal Quebec and the Place des Arts/Quartier des Spectacles. If you are around and haven’t seen it yet, check it out as soon as you can. If you can’t check out the video.
Enjoy!
Check out the other « Montreal a Moment in Motion » series;
Winter Edition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw0s7x…
Summer Edition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDygNn…
Spring Edition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCIyrM…
Autumn Edition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZEd9W…
Graffiti Edition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwQ6yZ…
Thanks for watching!