Video | 15:46 Re-Imagining the work of James Duncan with Iregular
Understanding Mental Maps an immersive video installation created by Iregular and presented in the exhibition Becoming Montreal: The 1800s painted by Duncan.
January 30, 2024
Understanding Mental Maps an immersive video installation created by Iregular and presented in the exhibition Becoming Montreal: The 1800s painted by Duncan. See Stephanie Poisson, Head, Digital Outreach, Collections and Exhibitions, Catherine K. Laflamme, Project Manager, Exhibitions, McCord Stewart Museum and Daniel Iregui, Founder and Creative Director of Iregular, during a conference for MuseumNext.
More about the exhibition
James Duncan, a little-known figure to the public, is a painter and watercolorist of Irish origin. Chronicler of his time, artist James Duncan documented Montreal’s development over a period of five decades, from 1830 to 1880. Exhibited together for the first time, these one hundred or so works offer viewers a unique journey into 19th-century Montreal.
Bringing together a variety of the artist’s views, the exhibition offers a vivid look at Montreal and the realities of its residents and focuses on subjects that characterize life in Canada and Montreal’s urban landscape.
As a sort of epilogue, Iregular’s reinterprets Duncan’s work with their installation. Mental Maps is an immersive piece created with projections that invites the audience to explore a world imagine by a computer after the computer has been exposed to the works of James Duncan watercolor artist from the 1800 that documented Montreal during many years.
Iregular
Founded in Montreal in 2010, digital art studio Iregular creates audiovisual installations, architectural projections and scenographies, with a focus on interactive and immersive experiences. At the crossroads between art and technology, these artworks experiment with geometry, light, algorithms, communication protocols, and AI. lregular’s work has been shown in 25 countries.
MuseumNext
MuseumNext is a community of international experts talking and discussing through a diverse range of online events and webinars. Their dynamic sessions dive into everything from the health and wellbeing to the power of technology, all designed to broaden the understanding of what a museum can be.
Speakers
Stéphanie Poisson
Stéphanie Poisson is Head, Digital Outreach, Collections and Exhibitions at McCord Stewart Museum. She has since coordinated numerous digitisation and outreach projects such as EncycloFashionQC, the unique encyclopaedic reference on the history of fashion in Quebec.
She also works jointly with the exhibition team to integrate multimedia elements into the installations. She has a Bachelor in Art History and a Master in Museum Studies from Université de Montréal.
Catherine K. Laflamme
Catherine K. Laflamme is Project Manager, Exhibitions at McCord Stewart Museum. She subtly juggles colours and evocative decorative elements, adding a touch of creativity to all the exhibition projects that she oversees with her multidisciplinary teams.
Daniel Iregui
Daniel Iregui is the Founder and Creative Director of Iregular. He’s a Montreal-based New Media artist who creates interactive sculptures, immersives spaces and architectural interventions using technology as both a tool and an aesthetic.
He works with the infinite and random combinations produced by interactive systems that the audience influences and transforms; the interaction between the human being and technology has always been his focus since the beginning.
See also
Video