LAPS is a series of eight giant interactive illuminated hourglasses, designed by Quebec scenographer Olivier Landreville, which will invite young and old alike to play with time at Illuminate Adelaide from late next week. Thanks to a wheel that can be turned at your own pace, each visitor becomes the master of time, moving the luminous balls along or suspending them at will. In this poetic, playful and sound-filled work, the public becomes part of an installation that combines technology, design and gentle reflection on our relationship with the passing of time. We spoke with Olivier, creator of LAPS, about the genesis of the work, his creative process and the role of interactive art in today’s public space.
Olivier Landreville, the LAPS installation is coming to Illuminate Adelaide this July. It consists of giant hourglasses that the public can control by turning the wheel at their own pace, in either direction. Why did you decide to work with the idea of time?
When the Creos company approached me to create interactive works, they already had the idea of an hourglass and suggested it to me. I was immediately excited and inspired. The idea of working with time is both playful and fun, like playing with an hourglass. Being able to take time for yourself to watch time pass. There was something very zen or amusing about being able to both move it forward but also be able to stop the hourglass halfway through, so it stops. It’s the idea of being in control of your own time.
So that’s how I approached this work, in terms of how we can be masters of our own time.
So it was Creos who wanted something on the subject of time?
Yes, exactly. Because initially, they approached me because they needed to create new installations because their catalogue was too small for the number of customers they had. And they already had the idea to start from that. So for the first project, we teamed up to create LAPS. But after that, the others I created with them, for them, were more my ideas at the outset. But yes, I still have a small hourglass that they gave me at the beginning as inspiration. We started from that, then we found something to do with it.
And do the hourglasses offer a sound and light experience?
Yes. So, as you turn the wheel of the boat like a rudder, the faster you turn, the more the sound increases or decelerates or accelerates. And there’s a whole set of lights at the base of the hourglasses that illuminate them in different ways, so that it’s interesting both during the day and at night.
Yes, and after all, Illuminate Adelaide is a light festival.
Yes, that’s right. We designed the top and bottom of the hourglass to be transparent so that the light can pass through the balls.
Ah yes, because I saw the images with the balls that looked white.
Yes, they are white, but with the light, they sometimes take on colours. It’s cool.
So, did you make them yourself or did you do the design?
I do the drawings, I do the design. And then, with the team from Init, which is the company supervising the construction, we did tests, made mistakes, and figured out how to build them. And then their partners build them because there are metal specialists, polycarbonate specialists. Because the shell of the hourglasses is transparent polycarbonate, we had to find specialists in that.
So everyone has their own speciality, and we work with people who are good at what they do. That’s how I always work as a scenographer: I’m the designer, and then I draw up the plans for construction. After that, there’s always a workshop or people who will build the work I’ve designed.
And is it made in Canada?
Yes, we’ve been lucky. Most of Creos’s works contain a lot of metal because they have to withstand the elements, transport, and so on. So they’re quite sturdy. There’s a metal industry right next to Creos, so we often work with them. After that, we look for partners all over the place, but everything is always built in Quebec.
Yes, because I think it’s getting harder and harder to find craftsmen who can do the work.
Yes, but we’re quite lucky. And we look for things that are a bit unusual sometimes. For another piece, we found people who worked with fibreglass, and they were specialists in theme parks who made figures or tunnels for water slides. And the others were specialists in that field. We find specialists who do something unique. Then we twist it around to make something artistic out of it. But we still have a lot of small industries in Quebec that help us make our works.
I think so, because I believe that here in Australia it’s getting more and more difficult. Unfortunately, not much is manufactured in Australia anymore.
Really? It’s a long way to go to have things made elsewhere.
I think it’s like everywhere else, it’s increasingly in China.
China, you’re right next door. In Quebec, we still have the entertainment industry, which is quite strong because there have been pioneers like Cirque du Soleil and so on, who have developed expertise that extends beyond their own industry. So we’ve been lucky in that respect. And we’re known for being creative and all that. So, I did a show a year ago on the island of Guam, which is closer to you than to us, since it’s in the middle of the Pacific. The whole thing was created in Montreal, and then we sent it all to Guam.
You’re not coming to Australia with LAPS, so your projects travel more than you do?
Yes. Well, I had the chance to go to Guam. I would never have gone there if I hadn’t had a show playing there. But yes, I’m lucky to have projects that allow me to travel. I went to Russia several times before the war in Ukraine. I worked in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, the United States and Japan. So there are lots of projects that allow us to spread our wings around the world. And that’s fun; it’s always interesting.
Let’s go back to LAPS. The name is LAPS in capital letters. In English, and I think in French too, there’s the expression ‘lapse of time’, and ‘doing a lap’ is also laps in English. Where does the name LAPS come from?
From a brainstorming session. You’re always trying to find a short name that you know will have an impact. A name that can be said in French or English. And so LAPS, I can’t remember who came up with it. We immediately thought, ‘Ah yes, there’s something interesting there’ in terms of time, doing a lap of the track as you say, in movement, all that. It just struck us.
And I understand that you have a lot of experience in circus theatre sets. How did you get started in this field?
I studied theatre to be a set designer, to do sets and costumes, and pretty quickly I gave up on costumes and focused on sets. And over the 30 years since I finished theatre school, I started doing small theatre shows in Montreal and then started doing a bit of television. So I spent part of my career at Centre Television.
And then came opera, and all that. And the circus world presented itself to me. I met people from a company called Seven Fingers. I still work with them. I have a lot in common with them. We have lots of projects together. So the circus has become quite a big part of my life. And again, all of this stems from what I was saying earlier: Cirque du Soleil spawned smaller companies, which in turn became bigger and bigger. I work a lot with Les Sept Doigts de la Main now. But also with other companies. And I created something with a Montreal company called Moment Factory.
Moment Factory is well known in Adelaide. They’ve been at Illuminate Adelaide several times now.
That’s right. They often create light trails in forests. So I’ve done two of what they call Lumina. I did two Lumina in Japan with them, in Japanese forests. It’s magnificent. So, as I was saying, the entertainment industry in Quebec is strong enough to make us shine across the globe.
I’ve always been artistic. I thought about going into film when I was a young adult. And then, through a series of circumstances, I went to study theatre, thinking that there are a lot of people who work and study theatre and end up working in film. And I’ve never worked in film in 30 years.
Not yet.
Not yet. I realised later that it’s not a field that really interests me. I much prefer the stage, the performing arts. So that’s why I stuck with my second love, I would say, and became a stage designer.
How did your stage experiences influence your creation of LAPS?
Working for the stage involves a relationship between the audience and the stage in the theatre or on stage, and there is always the stage setting, which often imposes something. The audience’s vision. The audience sees what we want to show them within that stage setting. We can suggest things that are not on stage, in any case.
But here, it was about having a more 360-degree view. The idea was to appeal to the audience so that from a distance they would say, ‘Ah, something’s happening there. I have to go.’ To attract the audience. But it’s all the experiences I’ve had throughout my career, whether with Moment Factory or small pocket theatres where people are very close to what’s happening on stage. That’s perhaps where we can find what influenced my creation of interactive works such as LAPS: finding the relationship between the stage and the audience, between the object and the audience. How do you attract the viewer? How do you intrigue them? How do you fascinate them with an object?
Because it’s still completely different. In the theatre, you can’t go up on stage and touch things. How do you approach the narrative of LAPS without an actor, only with light, sound and the movement of the hourglass?
The viewer becomes the actor at that moment. They become the primary interlocutor, and it is them who bring the work to life. Without them, there is still a luminous impulse to attract people, but it takes on its full meaning in movement, and the movement comes from the audience. So my interpreter, my actor, is the audience. So it’s about inviting them to play. It has to be fun for them. They have to enjoy themselves.
And then we realised that they really play with this hourglass in ways we hadn’t even imagined. You know, people often have fun trying to balance the balls or just have one ball in the neck between the two parts, and then play with the balance. All kinds of games that we hadn’t imagined people would play with LAPS, and in which people are somehow more creative than we are. They find other uses or other ways to have fun with the interactive work, which is fascinating and very enriching for us.
Does audience interaction change depending on the culture or country in which it takes place?
I couldn’t say because, unfortunately, I haven’t travelled much with my works. I think play is universal, so it’s intuitive. That’s what’s interesting about Creos’ works: the gameplay has to be simple. You don’t need instructions; you just have to arrive and be able to understand immediately what to do with the work.
And since the gameplay is simple, people arrive and immediately understand. They see the big wheel and then it moves. Everyone becomes a child again when faced with this big thing. Maybe it’s because it’s oversized that people see themselves as children facing an hourglass. There’s something unconscious about it. But now you see it in people’s faces and they say, ‘Ahhh.’
Kids these days probably don’t know what an hourglass is.
Maybe. Yeah, probably.
We don’t really use them much anymore.
Not really. We all have hourglasses here. [points to his phone]
Do you consider LAPS to be a sculpture, a scenography or an installation?
I would say installation because it’s interactive. It would be a sculpture if we were just looking at it without touching it, I think. It comes to life when we interact with it. So scenography too, in a way, but there’s more distance. So I would say more interactive artwork, interactive installation.
And what does controlling time mean to you in the context of this interactive installation?
I think it’s a metaphor. We’re all chasing time right now. Twenty years ago, we thought there was going to be a leisure society, as they called it, where people would have more time for leisure and less time for work. And the exact opposite has happened. We work more and more, we work harder and harder, and we’re glued to our mobile phones. We’re no longer in control of our time. We’re chasing it. So to have this work that tells us to take five minutes and play with time, to take some time for ourselves. With this work , it’s like a philosophy or a metaphor, really, to say, ‘Get out of your busy life and take some time for yourself.
It’s a beautiful thing. We can stop time for a little while. Or at least it feels that way. Is there a message or feeling that you want visitors to take away from their experience?
I think people should feel joy and pleasure in having taken this time. That’s why it’s still a playful thing with the balls falling to make the hourglass. I think you have to take a breath and smile. That’s it.
Is there anything around to prevent people from trying to climb the structure?
No, we thought about that at first, but we designed the installation to be safe enough that there wouldn’t be any problems with someone getting their arm stuck and getting crushed… Well, you know, we have to think of everything.
With the public, you never know.
Exactly. Creos’ strength is creating works that don’t need a mediator. The works are always installed, and people are free to do what they want with them. So they’re made to be solid, safe, all that. You know, there are very, very, very strict specifications that they have to be able to survive in Quebec at -30 degrees and in Saudi Arabia at over 40 degrees in the desert, you know, to be able to do that without any problems.
But actually, at the beginning, in the design, I had put in a kind of little guardrail to keep a distance. But at the same time, it wasn’t interesting. It’s like saying, look but don’t touch. There are a few small pictograms on the work to say don’t touch here and all that, but we’re confident. And anyway, I think LAPS has been travelling around the world for a few years now. It’s solidly built, we do tests, we hang on…
How long has LAPS been around?
I started creating it during the pandemic, so it’s been four or five years now, I’m not sure. It must have been in circulation for three years or so.
And there are eight hourglasses that are part of the installation, right? Are they always together, or are they separated and sent all over the place at the same time?
They’re always together. It’s the strength of numbers that makes the impact. Having several hourglasses in the same space is perhaps the scenography aspect of it, the appeal. If there were just one hourglass, even if it were quite oversized, say two and a half metres tall, that would still be something, but having six or eight of them creates an appeal. You think, ‘Oh, there’s something over there. I have to go and see it.’
How long have you been working with Creos?
Four or five years, actually. Since the pandemic.
So LAPS was the first project you did with Creos.
Yes, it was the first project I did with them, and I’ve done two others since then. It’s been a wonderful experience. It’s something I never thought I’d do in my life, works that would tour like this. It’s a very family-oriented company. And they’re very friendly; they’re kind. And in our lives, we always need that, kind people.
So when we find good connections, we try to nurture them. So I’m very happy to have done three works with them. I’m always open to seeing them once a year and saying, ‘Ah, maybe we could do this’ or ‘we could do that.’ I throw ideas at them and we’ll see what time brings. But I’m sure it won’t be my last work with them.
Did you know them before the pandemic?
I knew the works they were touring because they had been in a festival in Montreal. So I had seen those works. I was familiar with the type of works that travelled, but I didn’t know the people themselves. When Benoît Lemieux [one of the co-founders, and CEO of Creos] approached me, it was because he was looking for new creators to create new works, as I said, and it was a mutual friend who put us in touch. He said, ‘If you’re looking for a good, friendly creator, go see Olivier,’ and ‘Olivier, go see the others, they’re nice and they’re creative, too.’ We met and it was professional love at first sight.
And is LAPS normally part of light festivals?
I think many of them travel to festivals like yours. I know they were in Liverpool, England, at a light festival six months ago, I think. Yes, it’s often at festivals like that, but it can also be just a city centre that wants to attract people. Or it’s all requests that are listened to. But yes, often it’s festivals.
Here, it will be part of what is called City Lights. There are several works together. There is a short route to follow, but it is a free installation for us. Is this normally part of free public art?
Yes. It is always free. It depends if a festival charges admission to go to the festival site, yes. But the idea is that it’s installed in an urban centre where there are people passing by, so that if you come across it, you can play with it. It’s about bringing a little light into people’s lives.
In your opinion, why is interactive public art particularly important today, socially or emotionally, for cities?
I think one problem that the whole world has faced with the pandemic is that city centres have emptied out. Often, people who worked in the city centre did a lot of remote working during the pandemic, and they have often continued to work remotely to some extent, so there are fewer people in city centres. City centres are trying to attract as many people as possible, so works such as LAPS and others are creating a point of attraction, a point of interest in the city centre, which I think is an attempt to bring people back to the heart of cities. I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, but I imagine that with urban sprawl, people are increasingly moving out of city centres, to the inner suburbs, then the outer suburbs, and so on, further and further away.
We need to restore the appeal, the heart, the reason for being in the city centre. People are going there less and less; they’re going to the big malls outside the city centre. It’s quite a problem, almost an urban planning issue. We need to breathe new life into these city centres, often with a little love, as they’ve been neglected by infrastructure and all that. So that’s it, I think it’s about bringing a little joy back to the city centre.
It’s true that many people are still working from home.
Me too!
Did Montreal go into lockdown? Was it a long one?
Memory is a faculty that forgets, but sometimes that’s a good thing. But yes, we were in lockdown for a few months where there was nothing visible. And that gave me an opportunity too, because I worked a lot in the performing arts, and all that came to a halt. I had no work. At least, with Creos arriving in the middle of the pandemic, we were able to start working again on projects that came about later.
But at least it gave me a little work during a quieter period.
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We would like to thank Olivier Landreville for this interview and we look forward to discovering LAPS at the Illuminate Adelaide festival.
KEY INFO FOR LAPS
WHAT: LAPS, a work created by Olivier Landreville, produced by Init, and tour produced by Creos, part of the Rundle Illuminations in the free City Lights program at Illuminate Adelaide
WHEN: Nightly from 4-20 July
WHERE: Rundle Street ADELAIDE
HOW: Just go
HOW MUCH: Free
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