Captain Future and Superpowers at the Gaïté Lyrique in Paris

Everyone has super-hero or super heroine potential. Some people do take a life-time to realise it, if at all. An interactive exhibition in Paris, called Captain Future and Superpowers encourages old and young to think about evolution, where they’ve come from, how, and then how we all effect our planet, through a visit to another planet.

© La Gaîté Lyrique

The smell of candy floss drifts down the stairs of Gaïté Lyrique.

You follow it to the Grand Foyer, whose 19th century colours and decoration has been renovated, and discover tables covered with tubs of blue bon-bons, lots of cake, families, children of all ages, and … a candy floss machine.

05:12

Audio report

Rosslyn Hyams

Formerly a theatre, The Gaité Lyrique, a City of Paris publically-funded cultural space, has been offering a home and a show-case for digital culture and contemporary music for the past ten years. For director Jerome Delormas, children and families, are a priority visitor-group.

“We want children and parents to play together in a digital playground. Digital is considered as cold or not human. We want to show that it’s a tool and we have to appropriate it to be real citizens and not just consumers. Digital could help us improve how we live as part of society as citizens. It’s not only virtual.”

So tea-time is not the only attraction.

Jos Auzende is the curator of the planet/exhibition where you can meet your own Capitaine Futur et les Super Pouvoirs or Captain Future and Superpowers.

The exhibition, depending on how long you stay to play at each stage, takes about half an hour. So let’s have a quick look at part of the exhibition which appeals, after the smell and taste of the candy floss, to the eyes, the touch and the ears.
For example, the irresistably named Jelly Safari. It’s an installation designed to make us think about different life forms. With the help of agaragar coloured jelly shapes, which when touched, make interesting sounds, depending on what you do to them.

Jelly Safari is designed by Marianne Cauvard and Raphael Pluvinage who are actually just completing their industrial design studies in Paris.

The Jelly Safari. © La Gaîté Lyrique

Raphael explains “We have 20 different shapes and each has a different sound. It’s based on evolution. A basic shape makes a basic sound. It depends on many things.

Also everybody will produce a slightly different sound depending on their corporal body mass. They use capacitive sensing, the same as on a mobile phone.”

We go past Weather Worlds designed by Design I/0, an interactive installation where you stand on an empty platform and make gestures with your hands and feet. Those gestures have effects. Creating thunder or stirring up a dust storm, which you can see in the image projected in front of you. And on to the Water of the Lake of Signs , created by Mael Le Mée and Jean-Marie Boyer, which is a play on words in French on Swan Lake, the ballet by Tchaikovsky.

At the end of the exhibition, the real test of the superpowers. The temperature drops, and the bright colours disappear. A sort of desolate man-made moonscape emerges. We enter a room where pieces of broken plaster slabs are piled up on the floor, and two big wooden and metal beams turn ominously or aimlessly above them.

This is the past. It’s not all bad, it’s not all useless. It’s just a little abandoned. But you can, if you look hard, find some nuggets of gold and silver here. That’s the game in Virginie Yassef’s archeological installation where Captain Future’s life began.

To each society its mythology. To each mythology it’s gods and goddesses.

Here at the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, the aim is to recognise the superpower of human beings and nature, harnessing digital technology, to have fun doing it, and before the lights go down.

Captain Future and Superpowers at the magnificent 19th century Gaîté Lyrique in the 3rd district in Paris. Metro Réaumur Sébastapol.

It’s on until 26 May. Tea-time (goûter at weekends), plus plays, concerts and workshops.