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Robert Lepage and Ex Machina unveil The Image Mill in Quebec
Québec City, Wednesday, April 9, 2008 - Robert Lepage, playwright, author, producer, actor, scenographer and director, opened his studio to the press today to unveil The Image Mill, the mega projection he is preparing for Québec City’s 400th anniversary.
“Its geographic location, urban culture and history make Québec one of the world’s most beautiful and highly photogenic cities. Québec City has been mapped, drawn, engraved, painted, photographed and filmed, and we have invented a mill that transforms, animates, dramatizes and pays tribute to these 400 years of images,” explained Robert Lepage, creative director of The Image Mill. “The images that the public will see are almost all drawn from archives dating back to the time when Samuel de Champlain drew Québec.”
The Image Mill is a sort of animated mosaic that, moving from engravings to paintings and from photos to videos, creates an impressionistic portrait of the city over time. The work will consist of four movements corresponding to the city’s four centuries of history: waterways, the age of exploration and discovery; road building, clearing and developing the land; the railroad and industrial expansion; and finally, the age of air travel and the development of communications.
“We are privileged to have an acclaimed artist such as Robert Lepage here in our city. For him to have agreed to apply his talent and that of his team to the 400th celebrations is a gift in itself. But much more than a gift, this creation will project Québec City, its creativity, modernity and expertise onto the world stage!” exclaimed the CEO of the Société du 400e anniversaire de Québec, Daniel Gélinas.
The production will draw on all the technological expertise and experience that Ex Machina brings to the integration of images to the narrative. With the first teams in place since 2005, today 32 people are working on this bold and complex project that will turn Québec City’s Bunge silos into the biggest screen ever seen.
These 81 silos measure 600 metres long by 30 metres high. Twenty-seven video projectors, 20,000 lumens each, will project millions of pixels onto Bunge’s south and west façades. With 238 spotlights, 203 of which are DEL, and 329 speakers in place, the audience will be able to see the show from several viewpoints: from the Château Frontenac to the Marie-Guyard building, from the ramparts to the Louise Basin piers, Espace 400e and the south shore of the St. Lawrence River.
The soundtrack for this unique sensorial experience was composed by René Lussier and can be heard in different ways depending on the location of the audience. The entire south shore of the Louise Basin will be wired for sound. The public will be able to listen to the original composition in the section adjacent to Rue du Quai St-André from the Pointe-à-Carcy to the west end of the basin. Outside this zone, the public can tune into 88.3 (CKIA-FM) on the radio for a simulcast of the soundtrack.
The Image Mill is an invitation of Desjardins, in collaboration with Hydro-Québec and with technological support from ETC. The show will be presented from June 20 to July 29, 2008, at 10 p.m., in the Port of Québec, and admission is free.
The Société du 400e anniversaire de Québec wishes to thank its partners for their generous contribution to the organization of the 2008 celebrations, including Major Partners Desjardins, Bell, Hydro-Québec, the Brasserie Unibroue, SAQ/Vins de France, IGA, CBC/Radio-Canada and McDonald’s Restaurants, as well as Official Partners Le Soleil, Pepsi/Alex Coulombe, Cascades, Air Canada and Laurier.
The Société du 400e anniversaire de Québec is an autonomous, non-profit organization that is financed by the Government of Québec, the City of Québec and the Government of Canada, and whose mandate is to coordinate and produce Québec City’s 400th anniversary.
