Kontinuum light show in LRT Lyon station promises to be cool — too bad it's late

You'll be able to create a hologram of yourself. You'll be immersed in a futuristic sound and light experience. And you'll get the first glimpse of one of our underground LRT stations.

But you won't be able to do any of those things on Canada Day, as the show is opening July 15, more than two weeks later than promised.

• Under construction: Downtown Ottawa will remain a work in progress on Canada Day
• LRT sound and light show coming to LRT station in summer 2017

Kontinuum — the multi-media production created by Moment Factory of Montreal — is arguably one of the signature and accessible events of all of Ottawa 2017's projects. It's free, but will require dated and timed tickets that will be available starting noon Thursday at ottawa2017.ca (up to 10 tickets can be booked at one time).

And as the production will run from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day for two months, chances of getting in are good, unlike other 2017 events that have sold out in minutes.

Delay not due to LRT construction

The $4-million production was always planned to launch sometime in late June. As recently as the start of this month, Ottawa 2017 executive director Guy Laflamme wrote in an email that the city and Rideau Transit Group — the consortium building the LRT — were "working collectively to respect the established schedule for the presentation of Kontinuum."

While RTG missed its deadline to have all above-ground LRT-related work finished by Canada Day, the delay in the opening of Kontinuum has nothing to do with RTG, Laflamme said. 

The consortium is handing Lyon Station over to the Ottawa 2017 folks on June 15, as promised, so that Moment Factory and its partners can install the production equipment.

It was the "complexity of this project" that required extra time, Laflamme said.

He added that with all the other activities in downtown Ottawa on Canada Day — from Parliament Hill shows, to special museum exhibits, to the unveiling of the National Arts Centre's new entrance — "there was already a saturation in downtown for Canada Day."

Plus, now that Kontinuum will be running through mid-September, it will give returning university students and school groups a chance to visit.

'A world first'

While it will start later than expected, Kontinuum is promising to provide a cool experience for many. 

"This is a world first," Laflamme said, adding that it was the first idea he pitched when he became the head of Ottawa 2017. "Nowhere else in the world have they created such an extensive multi-media production underground." 

It's not a historical or narrative experience. Laflamme characterizes it as "an emotional experience."

Participants will enter into the old Place de Ville theatre from the Sparks Street doors. There, they will have the chance to use one of 12 "scanning stations" to have a hologram created of themselves. These images will be randomly selected and projected later in the train sequence. 

People will then be ushered through a corridor into the Lyon Station. There will be different light-and-music experiences on all three of the ground, concourse and platform levels of the station. Some parts of the show are interactive — put your hand through the light beams in the "Inbound" exhibit, for example, and it creates different music and makes other light beams dart around. In the "Outbound" exhibit, Laflamme swears that "people will spontaneously start dancing."

There's a room that's divided by so-called privacy glass that at one moment looks like a wall, and then next is a translucent surface. One segment uses such intense bursts of light that the Ottawa 2017 will be warning people with health issues that make them sensitive to light to skip this part.

The show on the platform will make it seem as if participants are riding on a train, watching the digital — and fanciful — scenery go by.

There's also an app that will let people download their holograms and, using a pyramid-shaped piece of plastic that will be available for sale, be able to create a 3D effect. Think R2D2 projecting the hologram of Princess Leia's message to Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Some walking, stairs — but accessible

There are a few practicalities to know before embarking on Kontinuum.

The entire experience will likely take about 45 minutes. There's about 500 metres of walking, and three sets of stairs to go down, ranging from 30 to 45 steps per flight. On the way out, participants will only need to go up one flight of stairs, and then use escalators to ascend the last two levels. However, there is an elevator for those with mobility issues — the venue is universally accessible, according to Laflamme.

And don't worry about the scaffolding, Laflamme said. It's not structural, but rather "an artistic decision."