After overwhelming response from the community for the past two years, River City Company has announced the return of Rock the Riverfront for 2024.
The Chattanooga Green will shimmer with the mechanical poetry of Loop’s 12 giant zoetrope during the month-long festival. Loop is an interactive work that plays short flipbook-style movies inspired by Quebec literature. At the center of each giant wheel is a music box to provide accompaniment for the hand-drawn animations.
The work is inspired by the zoetrope, an optical toy invented in the 19th century. Loop is a hybrid of the music box, zoetrope and railway handcar. Attendees will be able to sit down inside the zoetrope, pump the bar and make the image cylinder turn, springing the pictures into motion. The images, tinted by a strobe, are reminiscent of the earliest movies. The speed of the whirring pictures, the frequency at which the light flickers and the tempo of the music are all determined by how fast the attendee moves the bar.
"Jonathan returned from a trip to Berlin, where he’d visited the Technology Museum. He saw all kinds of mechanical inventions there, including the zoetrope, a device, from before movies were invented, that animates a series of images when you spin its cylinder. Then, thinking of hamster wheels, we decided to build a vertical zoetrope. So we combined three mechanical elements: the railway push-car (like the ones made famous by Bugs Bunny cartoons), the music box and the zoetrope. We came up with the idea and sketched out the project just one week before the deadline for submitting proposals,” said Oliver Girouard, composer and the director of the Ekumen Studio. Loop, by EKUMEN, is a co-production of Quartier des spectacles Partnership and Ekumen, and is distributed by QDSinternational.
“This past Spring, we saw an incredible response from the community, with an estimated 70,000 – 80,000 people attending during the month. We look forward to working with a wide variety of organizations to curate an authentic Chattanooga experience for all ages to enjoy,” said Emily Mack, President and CEO of River City Company. “As in years past, we have created overall themes for the event. Using the base of Loop’s animation features, we will be exploring the opportunity to incorporate storytelling and drawing into aspects of Rock the Riverfront.”
Along with providing an opportunity for attendees to engage with and be exposed to a wide variety of art including the interactive experience of Loop, listening to live music by local musicians, tasting culinary creations by local chefs and shopping from a wide variety of artist vendors, the event has proven to have a positive economic impact on downtown Chattanooga as well, benefiting many local businesses near the Chattanooga Green. The Chattanooga Tourism Company estimated an almost $1 million dollar impact from the event last year. In addition, the local vendors at the event sold over $250,000 worth of goods.
“The community shared with us their hopes and desires through the ONE Riverfront planning process, and we will be excited to share about the next stages of “Evolving our Riverfront Parks” in the coming months. Events like Rock the Riverfront are in direct response to community feedback, and we look forward to making even more enhancements to the Riverfront through the community-led planning processes,” said Mack.
Rock the Riverfront will be free and open to the public from March 14 – April 14, 2024, from 9am – 9pm, opening on a Thursday to provide opportunities for local students to play during the Hamilton County spring break. The public and organizations interested in partnering on the event can find more information at www.rivercitycompany.com/rock. River City Company is also seeking sponsorships to help support the event, allowing it to be free and open to the public.