Loop by Ekumen

Each colourfully illuminated cylinder features a mini-story to spark the imagination of kids and adults alike: a frog turned prince, a wolf blowing down the three little pigs’ house, spooky eyes gleaming in the darkness...

The projections feature characters and evocations of the mysterious settings of fairy tales, as well as a series of images representing the looping nature of zoetrope movies.

Creative intention

"Jonathan returned from a trip to Berlin, where he’d visited the Technology Museum. He saw all kinds of mechanical inventions there, including the zoetrope, a device, from before movies were invented, that animates a series of images when you spin its cylinder. Then, thinking of hamster wheels, we decided to build a vertical zoetrope. So we combined three mechanical elements: the railway push-car (like the ones made famous by Bugs Bunny cartoons), the music box and the zoetrope. We came up with the idea and sketched out the project just one week before the deadline for submitting proposals!"

Jonathan Villeneuve, an artist with a love of gadgetry, and Olivier Girouard, a composer and the director of the Ekumen studio

Biography

EKUMEN

EKUMEN is a Montreal-based production company working in the audio and media arts. For the last decade, the organization has been highlighting sound in a variety of settings, including concerts, installations and stage productions.

More information: ekumen.com

CREDITS

Designers: Olivier Girouard, Jonathan Villeneuve and Ottoblix
Collaborators: Generique Design, Thomas Ouellet Frederick, Dominic Thibault, Adsum Lab and Jérôme D. Roy
Illustrators: Gérard Dubois, Marianne Ferrer, Estelle Frenette-Vallières, Éléonore Goldberg, Jacques Goldstyn, Pinabel, Camille Pomerlo, Mathieu Potvin, Todd Stewart, Amélie Tourangeau, Marie-Hélène Turcotte, Urban9

A coproduction by EKUMEN and Quartier des Spectacles Partnership