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Behind the scenes of The Machines of the Imaginary
By Lili Trottier
2025-11-20
Crédit photo : Dpt.
Strange machines have come to life inside the Grande Bibliothèque de BAnQ. These intriguing devices invite you to explore the institution's heritage and documentary collections in a new way. They reveal the hidden links between the works, the emotions they evoke, and the memory of the media that preserve them.
Entitled The Machines of the Imagination, this immersive exhibition by Dpt., in collaboration with Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) and with the participation of GSM Project, Studio Transversal, Studio Réunion, and Jack World Inc., transforms the discovery of knowledge into a sensory experience.
To uncover the mysteries behind the scenes of this project, we met with Maude Thibodeau, creative director and experience designer at Dpt.
What is the exhibition The Machines of the Imagination?
Presented at the Grande Bibliothèque for a period of 18 months, The Machines of the Imaginary is BAnQ’s first interactive experience. It offers a non-linear journey, spread over several floors, where the public can move freely among the immersive installations.
Crédit photo : DPT.Each machine reveals unexpected facets of the collections, whether books, films, posters, photographs, or archives, bringing them to life through light, sound, and interactivity.
« The innovation of the project lies primarily in the way it showcases the collections: books, archives, and documents come to life through immersive digital devices that transform consultation into a sensory and emotional experience. [Translation]
— Maude Thibodeau, Creative Director and Experience Producer at Dpt.
What are the main stages of the creative process?
Before arriving at this result, Maude Thibodeau and her team conducted extensive research: exploring collections, scouting locations, and gathering inspiration.
« My creative process often begins as a vague image that becomes clearer over time. The first step was a period of in-depth research, followed by several collaborative working sessions that helped define the central theme of the exhibition. [Translation]
— Maude Thibodeau, Creative Director and Experience Producer at Dpt.
Once the concept was approved, the Dpt. team moved into the design phase. The schematic design laid the foundations for the exhibition and defined the content direction to better guide the research of librarians and archivists.
Then came the detailed design phase, where each element, including the definition of the visitor paths, interactions, and scenography, took shape until the space was finalized. The team then moved on to the production of the interactive devices, with a rigorous testing and quality control process throughout.
The final installation at the Grande Bibliothèque was completed with a period of testing and promotion.
Crédit photo : DPT.What are the main challenges of such an exhibition?
Designing The Machines of the Imaginary was a major challenge: we had to come up with an experience that would appeal to all audiences, from young people to adults, while fitting into the multi-story spaces of the Grande Bibliothèque. We had to find a strong enough theme, while respecting time and budget constraints.
« Another challenge was collaborating with numerous teams from diverse backgrounds and finding consensus among sometimes very different visions. This required clear, constant, and thoughtful communication to ensure a shared understanding of the objectives and the visitor experience to be created. [Translation]
— Maude Thibodeau, Creative Director and Experience Producer at Dpt.
Ultimately, Dpt. rose to the challenge with flying colors. It focused on designing autonomous, freestanding installations, and thanks to user detectors in the space, each machine turns on when visitors pass by, making the experience lively and intuitive.
« These approaches have helped to create a lively and organic user experience, where technology takes a back seat to the encounter between visitors and the imagination of the collections. [Translation]
— Maude Thibodeau, Creative Director and Experience Producer at Dpt.
Any advice for students inspired by the project?
For Maude Thibodeau, the key lies in curiosity and the courage to experiment:
« Ask questions about the work of other disciplines. Understanding their processes enriches your own. [Translation]
— Maude Thibodeau, Creative Director and Experience Producer at Dpt.
She emphasizes the importance of trying, exploring, visiting exhibitions, and immersing oneself in the culture.
Would you like to learn how to write for an immersive artistic experience?
The EXPERTS learning platform, powered by SYNTHÈSE, offers the course free of charge and exclusively: Screenwriting of immersive artistic experiences by expert Vincent Brault, in partnership with École NAD-UQAC (3 hours).
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Immersion and immersive arts
Immersive devices
Storytelling and digital media
Contexts, themes and objectives
Elements of the language of immersive arts
Interactivity and user experience
Production stages and organizational models
Conception, design and prototyping
Maude Thibodeau's career path
Trained in fashion design at Cégep Marie-Victorin, then in graphic design at UQAM, Maude Thibodeau discovered interactive design after completing her bachelor's degree. It is a captivating field due to its ability to combine image, sound, meaning, user experience, real time, and space. Passionate about innovation and continuous research specific to digital creation, she has developed an approach that is resolutely human-centered.For more than 15 years, she has been designing immersive and multisensory experiences at the crossroads of design, video games, museology, advertising, and cinema.
Maude Thibodeau has been working at Dpt. since 2016, where she has contributed to several major projects, including The Enemy, Plastisapiens, Basquiat and Music, and Oto's Planet.
In addition to her professional practice, she is pursuing a master's degree in communication at UQÀM, where she explores how technology shapes our relationship to the body through a posthumanist perspective.
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