Last Saturday was nuit blanche, Toronto's all-night art thing so we met up with some friends and perambulated throughout the city streets. I learned that art can be interactive, transformative and sometimes, "the Public" can ruin a good thing. I also learned that nuit blanche takes place in very low light and that there's only so much a small camera can do. This is some of what we saw.
One nice thing about holidays is you can capture them in pictures then force your friends to watch an excruciatingly dull slide show that lasts for 2 hours. Well, let me save you at least an hour and 55 minutes. This movie is just some clips I put together to capture some of the highlight reel stuff of my short visit to New York recently.
The one thing I omitted was my trip to the Highline park, because there were just too many photos and recordings to add, so I'll make a separate clip for that. If you'd rather not sit through the 5 minute movie, I'll be posting more photos which you can find here:
If, for some reason, you find yourself trying to impress a little kid who loves drawing dogs by actually drawing a dog yourself, then it would serve you well to watch this brief but important video:
August and September are so full of birthdays in this family it's hard to keep track and easier to give one big shout-out (August: Gina, Angela, Mom, Aunt Stephanie and Therese; September: Lucia, Brian and Louisa).
Here's some video from the combined Gina + Angela birthday done a week after Gina's and a week before Angela's (the video is about 90 secs long but 22 MB so it may take a moment to load).
Our little backyard has finally come back to life. The Virginia Creeper is creeping and the grasses are growing (both the Karl Forestor and the Bamboo) and the potatoes look fairly healthy too.
Enjoy these photos, some taken in Newfoundland, some in Toronto, of our holiday shenanigans. Speaking of which, my getting back to the Big Smoke was an awful kerfuffle. My 6AM flight (which we woke up at 3:30AM to catch) from St.John's (YYT) left late which mattered little because my connecting flight in Halifax (YHZ) was cancelled (ostensibly due to weather - 20 flights were cancelled, mostly Air Canada ones). Thoughtfully, Air Canada went out of their way to offer me a piece of paper with a phone number on it. After oscillating between the customer service desk and trying the phone number (I never did speak to an agent) I discovered I had been placed on standby, along with everyone else on two afternoon flights and reserved on a flight for January 1st. Rather than passively accept whatever crap they handed me, I decided to connect to Halifax airport's wi-fi (thank you Internet) and find another flight. WestJet came up empty but Porter Air had a flight leaving early the afternoon that went through Ottawa (YOW) and landed at the downtown Island Airport (YTZ, not YYZ which is Pearson Int'l). I booked it, I took it, and I landed terra firma at 4PM local time (30 minutes late due to head winds) which was only 6½ hours later than I should have arrived. 45 minutes later, I walked through my front door, over 30hrs faster than had I accepted Air Canada's offer. I later calculated I had travelled by car, jet plane, prop plane, passed through 4 airports (though only 2 security checks), took a ferry (probably less than 300ft separate the Island Airport from mainland Toronto), a bus, the subway and finally, a streetcar. I suppose if I'd taken my bicycle or hitched a ride on a donkey I would've covered every mode of transport. I'm like the armed forces (by land, sea and air). Ah well, that only leaves me to try to recoup my losses from the indubitable scoundrels at Air Canada (hereby known as Air Cannot). I will say this, while I'm opposed to an airport on Toronto Island (It doesn't make sense economically or environmentally and unbelievably, can take the same amount of time to get as Pearson), flying Porter does feel pretty glamorous. You get all the little perks such as complimentary lunch and Stella Artois and when you land on the island you see Toronto's skyline stretched out before you. All this while stepping out of a small twin prop plane onto the tarmac, followed by a short boat ride to shore. It's like you're in an old film noir movie or something ("this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship" kind of movie). Shameful isn't it? Me enjoying glamour over principles.
The following video shows the storm that scraped over Halifax that begat my mini-epic odyssey in the first place.
This is Jardin de Métis and it is here that we found ourselves to construct a curious confection. A half-submerged clapboard shed with a roof as big as an aircraft wing, houses a chirping, talking and blinking battery powered by local Gaspé potatoes. The shed is surrounded by planted heritage variety potatoes which are bordered by marigolds and a simple wooden walkway. Some 1200 potatoes within the shed, each pierced with a pair of metal electrodes roughly the size of a stick of Wrigley's gum, sit, spiked on nails on narrow shelves and are connected by red sheathed wires to a 12 different mason jars. Each jar contains its own innards of wires, a single clear LED and an electronic chip and in turn is connected to a 4"x 4" plastic speaker. The speakers, controlled by the chips and powered by the potatoes emit uniquely tuned beeps, bops, chirps and squawks. Each beep is preceded by a short pulse from the LED that is not unlike a firefly's spark. The effect, when standing in the shed, is strangely funny, irritating, mesmerizing and eventually meditative. Your first reaction is to laugh.
Dave posted this short video recently and the folks at Jardin de Métis have posted the photos you'll see in the Flickr set. Just think of this as Potato Power.
It should be said that the week we were in Mont Joli or (wherever it was we actually stayed) was intensely social. We were housed with other artists and designers and every night there was a large gathering of people making supper, drinking beer and doing dishes. Being out of cell phone range, without Internet access, without television, radio or newspapers was disarming at first but you got used to it. I suppose it forced you to be social. Without our commodities, all we were left with was our humanity.
(Rider Created Content for the Toronto Transit Commission) Rather than write a post, I thought I would just post this series of speculative ads I made for the TTC. Basically I was just trying to show how simply an effective ad for the TTC could be created. Of course, there's no chance the TTC would ever think of marketing themselves outside of their own vehicles. Print ads on streetcars and in the subway always struck me as preaching to the choir. I mean, if I'm on a streetcar - I don't have to be convinced to take the streetcar. In any event, this is what happens when you stop watching TV - you make some out of boredom.
This one has a great piece of music, appropriately called, "No Cars Go" by Arcade Fire
Have Rocket - will travel. Stock NASA footage plus funky Broken Social Scene track and voila - a transit ad.
Seeing as my hand has steadily improved - I thought I would revisit the video clip showing the weird wrist splints I wore a few months ago. Eventually though, I found the splints only enabled me to do things I shouldn't be doing and thus I developed different pains in my wrist and forearm. I stopped wearing the splints altogether and hoped nature would take it's course. By July, I finally had more ability to extend my fingers and today, two weeks shy of eight months, I'm about 80% recovered (4 of 5 digits have extension - so that would be about 80%). I'll try to post a more current video so the comparison will be easier.
God bless Bob Cannon and UPA. Hopefully this cartoon will stay on uTube for awhile - it's such pleasure (especially the sequence when Gerald runs away).
Before thinking that you might want to upload a video for discussion, search to see if it's already posted. I know this sounds obvious, but a few weeks ago, I searched for this Daft Punk Video (Around the World) directed by Michel Gondry and found nothing. Now here it is. Like using stop-motion animation and information design set to music - Gondry assigns a different set of characters for the different components of the track (giants are the bassline, bathers the synth keyboard, mummies are the percussion, skeletons the guitar hook, space men are the vocals), all in front of a light display programmed by Gondry's brother. So simple, so logical and so funny, it makes you want to laugh, cry and dance all at once.
I realized after posting those pictures that the video clips didn't load properly so I've re-posted them and added a BONUS video clip! That's right! View two, get a third free! That's just how much our customers mean to us! Click here to see the first clip (description: Green house scene, butterflies flying by). I don't know if you've ever looked through catalogues of educational videos but they all have these basic descriptions. I know a guy, Jerry Bannister, who is now an associate professor of history at Dalhousie and winner of the John A. MacDonald Award for historical somethin' or other, who spent one summer working for a prof at M.U.N. writing such descriptions. He always said he wanted to slip some lewd or bawdy descriptions into the normally stale catalogue. Maybe I'll try to sex up these little clips to encourage your viewership. Clip Two (description: Conservatory interior. Bucolic scene interupted when vicious butterfly attacks unsuspecting jacket.) Bonus Clip!! (Description: Watch the sizzle, smell the tension, feel the heat, experience the vastness of a fifteen foot wide urban back yard! )
I realized after posting those pictures that the video clips didn't load properly so I've re-posted them and added a BONUS video clip! That's right! View two, get a third free! That's just how much our customers mean to us! 
