MAP <Multiple Architectures Platform>
Dundas Square | P A T H
MAP is an ongoing series of videos/animations that examine the mutation of specific urban sites in Toronto documented over multiple time frames and perspectives. Dundas Square is a new “public square” recently launched in the spring of 2003. In two short years the block has been transformed from an area that housed a diverse array of closely packed independently owned establishments, street vendors and dollar stores to an open area containing a spectacle of media towers, multinational retail outlets, video billboards, surveillance cameras and bored rent-a-cops. The animation combines footage gathered over a one year period – a montage of photography, video, blueprints, 3d renderings and ‘use scenario’ schematics.
Going within, burrowing inside, digging up dormant issues.
"gridlock" is a generative art-toy designed to amuse the minds of people who are trapped in traffic or stationary automobiles. By touching and tracing paths over the screen, an infinte diversity of geometric shapes can be generated. Visual escapism for the post-mondrian generation. "gridlock" only stops moving when the user stops touching it. "gridlock" only appears when the car stops.
If
the person is willing they can imagine themselves fluctuating as wildly
and freely as the shapes generated by their fingers. In addition, mobile
touch on the screen influences audio and text functionalities. Good
for hours of fun. Batteries not included. "Gridlock" is a
road-rage antidote and a rubix cube concrete poem.
"YYZ/YUL" explores landmarks lost and found by overlaying maps of two cities.
Kasprzak's recent emigration from Toronto to Montréal, and subsequent
unfamiliarity with Montréal's landmarks, provided an impetus
to overlay a map of Toronto onto a map of Montréal and discover
where the major landmarks of Toronto lurked in relative space.
As you travel in the taxicab past Toronto's points of interest, such
as the CN Tower, Casa Loma, and the Eaton Centre, images of the corresponding
space in Montréal is revealed on the screen. The locations were
chosen for two reasons: their familiarity as landmarks, and also to
provide a diversity within the collection as a whole (some locations
are historical sites, others commercial or governmental sites, et cetera.)
The maps of Toronto and Montréal were overlaid by matching up
two reference points: the waterfront areas of each city; and the two
main streets that delineate the center between East and West (Boulevard
Saint-Laurent in Montréal and Yonge Street in Toronto.) Map cut-ups
and explorations of one space based on mappings of another has a rich
tradition, from the Situationists in the 60s to Wilfried Hou Je Bek
in the present.
What exists in the corresponding space in Montréal may be surprising
with its similarities and differences. Explore Toronto - through the
lens of Montréal.
Garrison
Creek was 7.7 Km long and started as two small streams northeast of
Dufferin and St. Clair. It flowed through the city to enter Lake Ontario
just east of Fort York. It got it's name from the fort which at the
time was a military garrison. As well as the main tributary there were
a number of smaller tributaries that branched out. With this piece I
hope to bring attention to the passenger what we have paved over and
what continues to flow deep beneath them.
Audiences
in Teletaxi are treated to a glimpse of the famous Canadian idol,
Miss Canadiana in this series of celebrity visits to multi-culti neighbourhoods
in downtown Toronto. The public plays an important role in the intervention
by
witnessing and participating in the media events that create this icon.
Miss Canadiana is an ungoing performance project by Toronto based artist,
Camille Turner who has made appearances internationally and in Canada.
“Unter anderen Voraussetzungen”
“Eine mögliche Wiedergabe allgemeiner Dinge”
A
taxi has a certain intimacy that borders between private and public
space – an ideal setting to contemplate my animated drawing.
With the videos in teletaxi I create an intimate atmosphere by portraying
scenes of caressing and constant repetition through thin fragile pencil
lines. Unlike the video advertisement intended for the taxi touch screen
platform my work offers a possibility of quiet concentration for the
viewer.
I normally exhibit my films inside structures that function as a protective
retreat where the viewer is enclosed but not totally cut-off from the
outside world. In its unique way the taxi provides a similar function
as a secluded yet semi-public space.
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| Michael Alstad is a Toronto based artist and curator working in installation and digital media. He is a founding member of the Canadian artist collectives Year Zero One and Symbiosis. Michael has co-ordinated several site-specific projects in Toronto including The Clinic(95), The Bank of Symbiosis(97), The Hoarding Project(98, the Transmedia video billboard exhibitions(00, 02) and teletaxi (03). His web/video works have been included in many international media arts festivals and on-line projects. Michael’s current and upcoming exhibitions in 2003 include: Territories: A kinetic sculpture and library intervention at the Cambridge Galleries - Cambridge, Ontario and The Derelict Sensation: A site-specific video installation at St. Pancras Chambers a derelict neo-gothic masterpiece next to Kings Cross Station that once housed the Midland Grand Hotel. – London, UK http://www.thederelictsensation.com/ |
| Isabelle Hayeur lives and works in Montreal. She is working primarily in photography and video. She also realized Net art projects and site-specific works. Hayeur’s work questions the impact of western development models on environment and invites us to think about the states of the landscape. The unknown, or unknowable, places she fabricates by blending different sites into a single territory, draw attention to the non-places that surround us. She has shown her work in the context of various group and solo exhibitions, in particular at Hippolyte Gallery (Helsinki, Finland), The Ottawa Art Gallery, Gallery 44 (Toronto), VU (Quebec City), Skol (Montreal) and at the Rimouski Regional Museum. Her videos were screened at numerous festivals and presentations. In 2001, she received The Contact Prize for Emerging Photography Artist for her participation at Le Mois de la Photo. http://isabelle-hayeur.com |
| Gernot Wieland is a Berlin based artist working with drawings, collages and video, mainly animations.He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and Berlin. In his installations - most often site specific - he deals with the fragility of physical and social structures as well as private experiences and how they relate to themes such as communication and isolation. His work has been showed in Vienna, Berlin, London, New York and most recently in Zürich, where he was in an artist in residence programm in 2002. |
| David Jhave Johnston is a multimedia-poet currently living in Montreal. Among other artistic activities, he has exhibited site-specific installations with the Symbiosis Collective, written and directed multi-media theatre with the Collective Unconscious Collective, recorded spoken-word electronica for the now-defunct underground ZOI label, contributed to a CD-ROM project entitled Navigateur, modified video for the Transmedia2002 festival, completed a music video for Brian Sanderson, workedas research assistant for Obx Active-Text project http://obx.hybrid.concordia.ca/ and spoken sporadically at conferences on webart. http://www.glia.ca |
| Camille Turner is a media/performance artist and cultural producer. She recently participated as part of a group of international artists in Interaktions-Labor, http://www.aliennationcompany.com/gallery/goet.htm a media arts research project in an abandoned coal mine in Göttelborn, a small village in Germany. She also participated as a collaborator with The Container Project initiated and oordinated by Mervin Jarman of the UK based art/activist group Mongrel http://www.mongrelx.org The Container Project is a 40 foot shipping container which has been customized with donated and salvaged computers and converted into a mobile media arts lab. She has recently completed a one year curatorial residency at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Gallery in Toronto, Canada where she organised exhibitions, workshops and events that explore the social dimensions of technology. She is currently engaged in an ongoing series of site-specific interventions by a persona she invented called Miss Canadiana, a beauty queen that represents Canadian identity http://www.misscanadiana.ca |
| Michelle
Kasprzak is an award-winning artist, researcher and
lecturer currently investigating interdisciplinary practice, performance
and collaboration. Through her role as faculty with the Canadian Film
Centre's new media programmes, she develops and delivers curriculum
that explores the crossroads where technology meets performance. Michelle
is an accomplished public speaker, having lectured about her work
and research across North America. Her lectures and artwork are frequently
featured in international media, most recently appearing on the Independent
Film Channel, Media Television, and Fashion Television. Her solo artwork
and collaborations have been exhibited across Europe, North America,
and virtual space. In 2001, she was honoured with the InterAccess
Electronic Media Arts Centre Emerging Electronic Artist award. The products, services and experiences that Michelle develops as art emerge from her ongoing research. With her artistic and pedagogical pursuits as inspiration, Michelle is researching the integration of performance art and technology, prototyping techniques, and hybrid environments. She is currently attending the Université du Québec à Montréal, obtaining her Maîtrise en Arts Visuels et Médiatiques (M.A.). She is a recipient of an Ontario Fellowship for Studying in French. http://michelle.kasprzak.ca/ |
| Jim Ruxton received his M.A.Sc in electrical engineering at the University of Ottawa in 1988. Between 1988 and 1991 he worked as an engineer designing various satellite communication devices. In 1991 he went to the Ontario College of Art and Design to explore combining electronics and art. In 1993 he graduated with an A.O.C.A and was chosen as a medal recipient. Since 1993 he has worked in Toronto as an engineer/artist bringing electronics into various fields of the arts. He is the sole proprietor of Cinematronics, a company created to service the film special effects industry. His electronic props and special devices have been used in numerous films and T.V. series. As well as creating his own installation art he collaborates in the areas of dance, theatre and film to create interactive kinetic environments, allowing the viewers or performers to alter the space. He has collaborated with a number of well known Canadian artists Jim has designed a number of special machines for creating specific effects including a device which produces a moving projection effect for Atom Egoyan’s opera Salome and special motor controllers for pyrotechnics on the last KISS world tour. He has also produced the electronics for exhibits at the Boston Museum of Science, the Royal Ontario Museum the Vancouver Science Centre and recently the Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art. His varied interests led him to be a co-founder of the annual "Subtle Technologies Conference" a conference that blurs the boundaries between art and science. Jim was awarded 2 Dora awards in 2002 for set and lighting design for his work in Fides Kruker’s production of The Girl With No Door On Her Mouth. He was recently awarded a patent for a new type of lighting system that he hopes will rid the world of "icicle lights" . |