Behind-The-Scenes: Discover Optik at Yonge-Dundas Square
From March 3 to April 2, 2023, Yonge-Dundas Square is turning into a creative and playful space where visitors of all ages can connect with one another through an immersive sound and lighting experience.
Optik features 10 gyroscope-like displays that produce various rhythmic sounds and cascades of colours when manipulated and interacted in a spinning motion. The sound and light installation seeks to offer visitors an unique experience for visitors to re-imagine their surroundings by using the forms to refract and reflect the vibrant, ever-changing displays and screens.
“Our intention in presenting Optik, is to bring a different way of viewing the busy tapestry of buildings and advertising that surround us and to cheer up Torontonians after the dark, cold months of winter. We are excited to present an interactive activation to attract people into the neighbourhood and to continue encouraging people to discover our city”, says Julian Sleath, General Manager at Yonge-Dundas Square.
As we’re gearing up for Optik, we had the opportunity to connect with the creative team at The Urban Conga and go behind the scenes to understand what inspired this installation.
Interview with Ryan Swanson, Founder and Creative Director at The Urban Conga
What does Optik mean to you?
Optik is an exploration in creating more Playable Cities, an ecosystem of multiscale playable opportunities intertwined within our existing urban infrastructure that impacts the health, equity, social, and economic values of our cities and communities. Optik serves as a way to look at how temporary public activations can begin to impact our spaces and places in a positive way. It becomes a tool for evoking community interaction and social activity through its open-ended play design. The work begins to transport people away from their daily routine and into a state of play, allowing them to engage with the work, the surrounding space, and others in new ways.
What is the story of Optik?
Optik was designed as a temporary public activation to showcase the value of play in everyday spaces. Play is our natural driver as humans to discover, explore, and empathize with others. It is universal, and can be applied as a powerful tool within the development of our urban fabric to break down social barriers and bridge divides. And yet, play is often seen isolated within specific spaces for specific people. With Optik and all our work at The Urban Conga we look to shift that narrative and highlight how play should be implemented as a part of our everyday spaces for all demographics. Optik was designed to showcase the impact of implementing more open-ended play as a part of our infrastructure. We hope that it encourages people to look at public space through a new lens.
How did your team come up with the inspiration?
In the public realm, if people can manipulate the space even slightly, they feel a greater attachment to it. With Optik's design, we wanted to evoke that feeling and create a piece that allowed people to manipulate it and make it theirs. We also wanted the user to not just manipulate the work but also the surrounding space. This led to the creation of a kinetic gyroscope-like form that could interact with the surrounding space by framing different views and casting light. It creates an opportunity for people to look at a space they might have walked through every day differently. The sound component was developed to evoke people to engage with each other. Each unit becomes its own musical instrument that can be played. The work then uses its playability to encourage communal interaction within the space. Optik then becomes much more than a photographic moment in space and becomes an opportunity for people to connect with each other, the work, and the surrounding space in new ways.
What’s next for Optik?
We are excited for Optik to continue to travel around the world and showcase the value of implementing open-ended play within everyday spaces. Our collaboration with CREOS, Serge Maheu, and Init has allowed us to develop an installation that is versatile and can adapt to many different spaces.
About The Urban Conga
The Urban Conga is an award-winning Brooklyn, NY-based multidisciplinary design studio comprised of a diverse group of creatives focused on sparking community interaction and social activity through open-ended play. Their work explores the idea of creating more playable cities as an ecosystem of inclusive multiscale playable opportunities intertwined within our existing urban fabric. Investigating new ways to transform often once overlooked or underutilized situations into stimulating creative outlets that bridge divides and begin to break inequities by bringing people together through moments of play. Through this work, they have had the opportunities to collaborate with communities, NGO’s, businesses, municipal agencies, and institutions worldwide, delivering multi-scaled urban interventions, playable products, workshops, lectures, development plans, and public policy recommendations.
Social tags: @theurbanconga
Website: www.theurbanconga.com
Optik was created by The Urban Conga in collaboration with Serge Maheu.
Creation and artistic direction: The Urban Conga
Sound and light design: Serge Maheu
Owner: Init
Tour production: Creos
Design of interactive control systems: Serge Maheu
Structure and engineering: Maintenance Industries Meca-Fab inc.
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