Miroir Miroir

In the heart of their home city of Montreal, Moment Factory created a highly interactive experience illuminating time’s constant change.

Just a few weeks ago, Moment Factory opened the doors to their new experience, Miroir Miroir, at Place Bonaventure, Montreal. The experience invites the audience to discover multiple immersive installations centred around the theme of the human mind and the ever-shifting nature of memory. Through a web app, visitors can even contribute a piece of their past to create a single collective memory to accompany the choreography of the synchronised lights within.

Moment Factory began by creating a physical template comprising seventy-two media bars and forty pixel lines in a sixty-foot-wide scaffolding structure. Technical Directors Julien Roberge and Guillaume Cavalière-Beranek previsualised the structure in Cinema 4D, and the creative team imported that model into Notch and used their horizontal and vertical template as a texture map. This way, they could visualise their content on the 3D light fixtures. Using the show’s original soundtrack as a style guide for the mood and rhythm, they crafted a nine-minute animation in After Effects.

The Moment Factory team also used Notch and Ableton Live to build an interactive layer on top, where participants could use a web app to control animation and sound effects. Playback was handled by their own X-Agora system running Notch Blocks.

“Because Notch feels familiar to motion designers, with just a bit of training, they can easily incorporate a real-time and interactive aspect to work they already know how to create. This ensures creative cohesion between pre-rendered and interactive layers of a project like this and reduces a lot of back-and-forth between artists.”

Étienne Varin, Motion Designer, Moment Factory

Additional press coverage:
Journal Métro, Narcity, Montreal Families.

Credits
Production Company: Moment Factory
Creative Direction: Marie Belzil & Sakchin Bessette
Multimedia Director: Sophie Midavaine
Notch Lead: Gustavo Rangel
Notch Designer: Étienne Varin
Motion Designer: Étienne Varin
Music: Vincent Letellier & Joris Bourgault Paquet

Lighting Designers: Alexis Bowles & Erwann Bernard
Production: Valerie D’Amours & Alexis Bowles
Technical Direction: Julien Roberge & Guillaume Cavalière-Beranek
Interactive Team: Maïlys Gandin & Joseph Browne
Web App Design: Philippe 
AV Designer: Loic Lerat & Francis Handfield