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Exploring A City By Throwing Balls Into The Sky

Iregular’s LIFT uses balloons and a dome to let you discover Montreal’s iconic landmarks.

Montreal is finally shedding the winter, but even if the cold persists, the city is offering an unmissable rendez-vous to mark the beginning of spring. Furthermore, if you missed the last edition of Montréal en Lumière, which concluded last week with the Nuit Blanche, let us give you a taste of one of its highlights.

For this, the 15th edition, Iregular, the creative studio led by Daniel Iregui, presented LIFT, a performative and interactive installation allowing you to explore the city without moving.

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The set-up included a dome, used as a projection screen, and big bright balloons which allowed the public to interact and control the projection. The method is child’s play: balloons launched into the air activate sensors, gradually unveiling a visual on the dome. The installation, as described by Iregui, tracks and interprets the speed and position of the balloons in the space. “We are using an interactive system developed by Moment Factory that uses a laser sensor to detect ‘blobs’ in an area. On top of this software we developed a way to measure the speed of the balls going up and down and that way we could connect this speed to how high the graphics will be affected on the projections.”

Montreal’s Biosphere as represented in the installation

It made for an unconventional experience, where a series of six city icons allowed people to discover Montreal in an original and fun way. “I started by looking for images, places, food, and words that I thought represented the city.” Iregui explains. “The choice for the final six was based on physical form. I wanted to be able to break the form into geometrical shapes to be rebuild them after people’s interaction.”

In addition, the process was centered around randomness and surprise, thus making each launch unique. "Everything I do is based in code and generated in real time." Iregui told me. “This means that the computer is taking thousands of decisions per second, and what I like to do is add randomness to these decisions so that they are always unique. I love the fact that when you are looking at one of my graphics, the probability of it all existing again exactly how you see it is so unlikely that you probably will never see it again.”

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Montreal’s Habitat 67

“Surprise is what makes this installation an experience and not just a video projected on a dome. The fact that you can affect what is happening and then discover each image being built makes this an experience with a beginnning and an end, a learning curve, and many surpises in the process. ”

Undisclosed future projects will be released throughout 2013, but we’ll have to content ourselves with details as they come, one bit at a time. “This year we are pushing light installations a lot, so you will see some nice sculptures, scenographies and other nice projects that explore light, bulbs and other fun materials.”

Check out more GIFs of the installation below.

Mt. Royal

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Bixi

Iregular is currently looking for a band that would be interested in using one of their light sculptures, called Towers, for a video clip (and possibly a tour). If any bands are interested please send an email to info@thisisiregular.com

@princebenoit