On December 2, 2025, the NUMIX LAB will offer Budapest a panel dedicated to new cultural venues. We spoke to Marie-Pier Veilleux, Senior Director, Global Communications and Public Relations at Moment Factory. This world-renowned creative studio specializes in transforming a variety of locations (railway stations, natural spaces, cathedrals, airports) into new cultural spaces through immersive artistic and digital creations.
Marie-Pier will be taking part in the panel, presenting a number of projects designed to boost visitor numbers in natural areas by creating animated trails and visual works to be discovered in the evening.
Can you introduce yourself and Moment Factory?
Senior Director, Global Communications and Public Relations at Moment Factory since 2017, I contribute to the company’s outreach to make its DNA travel both locally and internationally. I suggest and develop strategic initiatives in line with the company’s business objectives and positioning with government bodies and the media.
Moment Factory was founded in 2001. In 2026, the studio will celebrate its 25th anniversary. Based in America, Europe, Asia, Oceania and now in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) region, our 450 employees work with a wide range of expertise, in museums, theme parks, airports, public spaces… Today, we have over 600 projects to our credit.
The projects we develop use technology to bring people together and let them experience emotions in the real world, while generating positive impacts on local social and economic development. When we think of Moment Factory, we often think of striking visual content. However, for us, immersion is also largely a matter of sound. We have developed extensive expertise in sound spatialization and have in-house music creation teams. The sound and musical environment is therefore designed in-house, sometimes in collaboration with local artists or orchestras.
On December 2, you’ll be taking part in the first panel, entitled “New cultural venues”. This panel will highlight spaces seeking to renew the experience they offer, by proposing digital creative projects (real estate developers, places of passage, creative labs, train stations, etc.). How does Moment Factory contribute to this type of project, particularly in natural spaces?
For the past 12 years, we’ve been developing our Lumina night trails, immersive outdoor experiences that take visitors on enchanted journeys into the heart of natural environments. Born of the initial desire to illuminate a suspension bridge to attract more visitors and enrich the tourism offering, the project evolved from the realization that the forest itself was a source of wonder and a story to be told.
Origins of Lumina night-time routes
From this observation was born the first edition of our Lumina trail series, now deployed in over 26 destinations worldwide, with the ambition of revealing the voice of nature and reconnecting visitors to natural environments, especially in a context of increasing urbanization . We have chosen locations such as botanical gardens, parks and forests in the evenings, as they are emotionally rich environments that evoke the world of storytelling, offering the experience of being in singular places steeped in history. The very first course, launched 13 years ago in Quebec, is called Foresta Lumina and was created in Coaticook’s Gorge Park.
The models in the Lumina night trail series
We offer two categories of outdoor night courses, each measuring between 1 and 1.5 km:
- Signature experiments
These permanent installations blend harmoniously with a specific location, telling a unique story inspired by its local culture or heritage. Designed to last over time (a minimum of five years, often ten or more), they transform the site into a true evening cultural destination. For example:
- Alta Lumina is an immersive, year-round night-time trail designed to diversify the activities on offer in Les Gets, in the French Alps. In place for five years, the luminous experience evolves with the seasons, interacting differently with the flowers in summer and the snow in winter. Alta Lumina is part of Les Gets’ four-season diversification strategy, enriching the summer offering and providing an attractive winter alternative in the face of diminishing snow cover.
- Kamuy Lumina has been in existence for six years, and comes to life in the heart of Japan’s Akan National Park, the ancestral territory of the Ainu community. The project was designed in close collaboration with this community, particularly in terms of storytelling, to highlight its culture, characters and the animals that play an important part in its traditions. We also worked with the Ministry of the Environment and Akan Adventure Tourism Co. to ensure minimal impact on the site’s flora and fauna.
- Touring experiences
For some years now, we’ve been creating night-time itineraries around a universal theme, such as Astra Lumina and Light Cycles, two of our touring experiences that have seen the light of day in Istanbul, Los Angeles, Milan, Currumbin in Australia and elsewhere, and will soon be opening in Paris and Mexico City. They offer great flexibility of deployment in different locations and markets, as well as faster implementation. These installations, whether temporary or permanent, take into account the particularities of each location, particularly in terms of vegetation, which can vary considerably from one site to another.
Moment Factory’s strength lies in the way it integrates technology while respecting not only the primary function of the site, but also its integrity. Our inspiration always comes from nature, and we’ve developed an approach that respects the environment: we can install and remove our equipment with ease, ensuring a zero or minimal footprint even in sensitive natural environments.
What’s more, we make sure that multimedia integration is as unobtrusive as possible. For example, at the Arsenal de Rochefort, which hosted Oceana Lumina last summer, our installations were designed not to alter the experience of the site during the day, while offering a 1.2 km nocturnal sensory trail that immerses visitors in the city’s maritime history.
What are the three main challenges facing your projects today in terms of production and distribution?
Make sure you have the right place
Site selection remains a central issue. It must meet several criteria: accessibility, public awareness, creative interest, and compatibility with a luminous narrative. In urban environments, light pollution represents an additional challenge for creating total immersion.
Moment Factory has a great creative capacity and adapts its stories to the location. For example, at the Toronto Zoo (Terra Lumina, launched in 2019), adjustments were necessary to preserve the animals’ tranquillity: unexpected reactions by the wolves to the initial sounds necessitated a change in the positioning and intensity of the loudspeakers. The same rigor applies to lighting, whose impact must remain strictly confined to the perimeter of the experiment.
Sustainability of the business model
To guarantee the viability of each project, it’ s essential that the chosen venue combines creative potential with sufficient capacity to achieve a suitable ticketing volume. To achieve this, we work in partnership with promoters and operators (e.g. FEVER).
Site accessibility and infrastructure
Permanent experiments sometimes require additional facilities, such as paths, parking lots, sanitary facilities, internet connections and electricity. Some locations identified as relevant do not have these basic infrastructures, which can compromise the feasibility of the project. These constraints are even more common for touring experiments, which often have to contend with the light nuisance of a public park or urban environment.
How can the NUMIX LAB event help?
For us, the NUMIX LAB represents a highly valuable network, not only for the presence of industry experts, but also for the perspectives it offers on creative and sustainability approaches. These topics are crucial to us, given our strong commitment to respecting the environment. The NUMIX LAB is an essential venue for these discussions, particularly when it comes to the challenges of sustainable entertainment, a sector where there is still work to be done, and which the NUMIX LAB can help to structure.
We’re also always interested in discovering new venues that could host Moment Factory experiences (indoors or outdoors). We work for a wide range of customers (museums, theme parks, airports, public stages). In addition to my participation on the panel, this event allows us to establish business relationships with operators and broadcasters who will help us bring our experiences to life and broadcast them internationally.
The NUMIX LAB returns for its sixth edition in Austria and Hungary, from December1 to 5, 2025, with the theme “Beyond Borders”. NUMIX LAB is an initiative of {CORRESPONDANCES DIGITALES] and Xn Québec.
Many thanks for your participation, Marie-Pier!
Charlotte BAUGÉ