Client: ILLUMINART - Montréal en Lumière

Overview

Created by Serge Maheu, Passage is an immersive, minimalist, contemplative and interactive artwork that explores the emotional connections we develop with light and sound. Passage: the act of moving through or past something on the way from one place to another, and also the process of transition from one state to another in a temporal dimension.

The installation consists of 20 circles of light that form a 84 feet long tunnel which bystanders will go through, and a sound system. The passage through the tunnel activates light animations and sounds. Each configuration has its own ambiance.

Goals

ILLUMINART , taking place in the frame of MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE, is a new circuit fusing art, lighting and technology, unfolding through downtown Montreal. Aimed at an inquisitive audience eager to discover and explore, ILLUMINART assembles projects by artists, designers/creators, engineers, architects, and videographers from home and abroad. The illuminated urban space springs to life, becoming a must-see destination for creativity, inspiration and shared experience thanks to works that are at once surprising, impressive and entertaining.

This call for creative proposals focused on illuminated installations aims to : offer designer-creators and artists an inspiring showcase platform; support and stimulate creativity and the dissemination of artistic installations combining illumination and technology, and the illumination of sites, objects, buildings and structures, as well as illuminated staging in public spaces in winter; allow ILLUMINART to consolidate its “project bank”.

Among selection targets and criteria, the submitted proposals had to; include illuminated elements, be welcoming and “warm up” downtown Montréal, be aesthetic, innovative and surprising, be inclusive for the public, and potentially immersive.

From that starting point, the artist was given carte blanche to create his installation.

Process

Passage is a creation of Serge Maheu, a cross-disciplinary Montreal-based artist interested in creating innovative art based on a certain digital poetry, while pursuing the relation of mankind with the digital world.  It has been created in 2017 for the massive ILLUMINART project, an annual international crossroads for illuminated, interactive and immersive avant- garde creativity, that take place every winter in the frame of the MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE Festival .  Since 2017 ILLUMINART 's edition, with the help of Creos, a world leading broker for public interactive installations in urban spaces, Passage has traveled and been seen at Niagara Falls' Winter Light Festival, Canada, New Orleans' Luna Fete, United-States, Singapor's I light Marina Bay and many more cities around the world.

Additional Information

Passage refers to this enigmatic moment between life and death, figured here as a pleasant space as part of another temporal dimension. A personal and sensory experience that remains playful.