Flights to the exoplanet Arcadia depart from Area15’s Zone 2 daily, aboard a vessel called the Interstellar Arc. It’s a lengthy voyage—262 years—but you’re in cryogenic sleep for most of it, waking up one hour before arrival. You’re invited to take an unhurried walk through the Arc’s massive centrifuge, called the Agora. You meet a fox seemingly made of blue crystal, and a holographic librarian that strongly resembles Carl Sagan. You lean on a railing and gaze into the vast, beautiful interior of the ship and feel genuine wonder.
Interstellar Arc is, frustratingly, not a real space voyage; it is a walkthrough attraction that employs virtual reality to create massive sets no movie director could build. Without the VR headsets on, Interstellar Arc looks like the world’s coolest indoor walking trail. But while it isn’t real, it does feel true, thanks to the Montreal-based creative team of Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël, founders of VR entertainment firm Felix & Paul Studios.
Felix & Paul has collaborated with creative partners as varied as Cirque du Soleil, Funny or Die and the Obamas. But in Interstellar Arc, they create a uniquely cinematic attraction, combining it with hard science, revolutionary tech and unfettered optimism. On a video call from another place, Lajeunesse spoke about the paths not yet taken.
What inspired Interstellar Arc?
We spent almost seven years working with NASA, working with astronauts on a project called Space Explorers: The ISS Experience. … One thing that fascinated me over the [course of] that collaboration was this thought, this recurring question in my mind: Why invest so much in something like exploration? Why would astronauts with families risk their lives to explore? What are we pursuing?
A couple of truths that came out of that were extremely inspirational for Interstellar Arc. Astronauts see themselves as part of a continuum of exploration. They know that exploration started tens of thousands ago, when we moved out of our caves. … Astronauts are very aware that they will just do a few missions and then their career will be over. So they spend their time and energy to inspire the next generation. They refer to this sometimes as an “intergenerational collaboration,” the pursuit of exploration through generations, and I thought this was such a profound and interesting idea—a space program that would unfold over decades, if not centuries.
Man, I hope so. Feels like we’re a little behind.
We do live in a world where, generally, visions of the future tend to lean to the dystopian side. I thought by following the thought process of astronauts, maybe we can project a future that would be a little more optimistic. … We create everything with one very simple central idea: our audience is the main protagonist. It’s a virtual reality experience, and it’s really about your journey.
And you feel it. Every real-time step advances the story.
One thing we decided to go for with Interstellar was to create an uninterrupted experience, something that would feel just like reality. Reality, it’s a continuous time flow, right? Reality doesn’t get edited. We don’t get moved around by invisible forces; it feels to us like we have free agency. We wanted to replicate that. There is no edit [in the story] apart for the cryosleep. It’s a continuous space with continuous time flow, and that was a condition that we felt we could put into place to maximize immersion.
And Area15 met that condition.
We wanted [the Agora] to feel like an architectural space, and so the idea of building it as a centrifuge really came early. … As we did this research and development, we ended up with a sense of the scale we needed to actually deploy that show, and we found that space in Area15. They were wise enough to build an experiential space huge enough for big visions.
The optimism of Interstellar Arc is such a joy. I expected something like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Interstellar, but it hews closer to the influential PBS series Cosmos. And when the host of Cosmos and the creator of the Voyager probes’ famed “Golden Records,” the late Carl Sagan, shows up as a holographic intelligence, I thought, “Of course.” How did you pull off that cameo?
I thought it a very interesting way to connect the present with the far future, around a figure that resonates across eras. And Carl Sagan is that person. We approached the Sagan estate: Ann Druyan, the widow of Carl Sagan and the co-creator of the Golden Record and Voyager Initiative, and Carl’s son Sam Sagan. We explained it would not literally be Carl Sagan, but an entity that pays homage to him. They appreciated the nuances, and they became creative collaborators and friends.
Carl Sagan called his Cosmos spacecraft a “ship of the imagination.” You actually built one.
That’s true! It is like a spaceship of the imagination. Yeah.
INTERSTELLAR ARC Area15, 725-567-6700, interstellararc.com. Daily, noon-9 p.m.
