401

Forgotten stories leave traces in forgotten places. Strewn along highway 401, the bustling Windsor-Montreal corridor, there are places that outlive their usefulness, structures without function, misplaced architectures. An abandoned drive-in movie theatre stands near the Ontario-Quebec border. An old meteorological platform looks like a spaceship. A former racetrack is now an ordinary roadway.

Dominique Banoun’s “401”, invites you to rediscover these three sites at the wheel of a miniature automobile, driving along a miniature replica of a freeway where mini video monitors provides the scenery.

Several flat-screen mini-monitors project images that bring imaginary dimensions to depicted realities. The floor installation adds a playful aspect to the total experience. Sounds and movements give new life to places progress has left behind.

Landscapes in movement
Through the camera’s lens, visitors wander, clamber over structures, soar above them. Structures and their environment are blended through varying rhythms of visual editing, which can be slow and peaceful or fast and fitful, as well as plays on perspective.

Audible landscapes
Sounds sculpt and inhabit abandoned spaces, reinventing them. Wind whizzes around structures. The growl of nearby diesel motors becomes the roar of a crowd. A far-off train cries out. A remote-controlled miniature car goes from site to site, crossing paths and projecting their ground level perspectives onto a large video screen.

Imaginary journey
Thus the car travels between sites and sounds that intersect and it in turn projects on a large screen what it perceives on its way. On the whole, spectators feel they are at the center of this interactive installation.