Carrousel

Your digital carrousel of televised memories  

Spin from vast space to deep underground in a fantastical audiovisual collage of 70 years of Canadian children’s television with Normal’s immersive installation, located inside the exhibition From Pepinot to PAW Patrol® – Television of Our Childhoods, at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec.

After a call for proposals, we won the mandate to create this six-and-a-half minute experience, from storyline to stage direction, light design, sound conception, set design, motion design, and video content production.

A carrousel inspired our concept; born from childhood excitement, nostalgia, and glee. Situated at the exhibition midpoint, the installation’s carousel concept feels like an amusement park ride. You enter through one side, enjoy the experience, and at the end of the loop, exit through the other side and jump back into the exhibition.  

Our process began with story: We were mindful of including equal proportions of Indigenous, French, and English programming hailing from past to present, accompanied by our original soundtrack featuring snippets of familiar melodies from classic TV themes.  

Creating a brand new original narrative using television archives  

Using archival footage provided by the museum, the installation is a new way to introduce artifacts and video content. Working with writer Olivier Kemeid, we foraged footage for clips to build our own new narrative that pays homage to how television can inspire creativity.  

Our story was sourced in more than 10 hours of Canadian children’s television! We repurposed clips from classic shows such as Rocket Robin Hood, Fraggle Rock, Passe Partout Our original little red visual elements guide your eyes along this imaginary trip through each scenes. Magnified by lights and LED strips to create multilayers of technologies and video mapping, our gigantic grid of colourful screens initiates you into a new story through this fun celebration of Canadian kids TV.