À propos de Stern - Montreal High Lights 2012

À propos de Stern - Montreal High Lights 2012

The 2012 Montréal en Lumière (Montreal High Lights) Festival - visited it the weekend of Feb 18.

It is cold, yet Montrealers find no problem enjoying live shows and music and food out on the streets!
Here's one of the cool shows: A Propos De Stern
It takes something I noticed just this year to a new level. This year I noticed a some buildings in Montreal showing animated pictures projected on the side of buildings.
This specific show is really engrossing. And the props and movement in the images fit very well with the windows on the wall of this building!

In addition to that they had a number of other activities. The program was dedicated to Wallonia-Brussels regions, so they were selling Belgian (French? No!) Fries, with Mayo of course.
Their blurb states: "Among the multitude of attractions, get ready for a mind-blowing new-generation interactive slide, projections and lighting displays redesigning the facades of the surrounding architecture, spectacular video mapping displays on the Maison du Festival Rio Tinto Alcan (3 displays nightly), illuminated musical spectacles, characters in illuminated costumes created especially for the MEL…"

I could not stay for the full festival - on Feb 25, they have a whole night of festival activities! Nuit blanche à Montréal: "Calling all nighthawks and nocturnal friends—Saturday, February 25, 2012 is the date set for the wildest night of the year!"... Maybe next year a US holiday will fall around Nuit blanche so I can make it up here then ... :-)

Some video snippets:
À propos de Stern - Snippet 1
À propos de Stern - Snippet 2

Just in case some links above stop working, here's the writeup from the High Lights web site:
One of the major highlights of the festival will be the mega projection “A Propos De Stern” on the east wall of Maison du Festival Rio Tinto Alcan. It’s an audiovisual experience created by Géodésik and Marc Leclair that will transform, distort, transfigure and deconstruct the entire building using state of the art video mapping techniques.
This audiovisual spectacle created by Geodezik and Marc Leclair will bring the east wall of the Maison du Festival Rio Tinto Alcan to life, transforming, distorting, transfiguring and deconstructing the building with video-mapping techniques. In practical terms, the façade will come to life with spectacular projections creating movement, characters reminiscent of those created by Magritte, as well as from Alice in Wonderland and Star Wars, and droll, hilarious or even psychedelic scenarios. Get set for a stunning and innovative visual adventure that promises to be a real eyeful!