The Pool by Jen Lewin
POOL
(verb) = combine, amalgamate, blend, join forces, league, merge, put together,
share
The
Pool is an environment of giant, concentric circles created from
interactive circular pads. The Pool is a world where play and movement
create swirling effects of light and colour. Imagine a giant canvas where you
can paint and splash light collaboratively. Like a giant game of light “ping
pong,” the pool will have users running and jumping, adding, bouncing, and
mixing light together.
The Pool
is an interactive environment where movement creates swirling light and color.
As users shift their weight or move from one pad to another, their motions are
reflected on pads with color and movement. As multiple users play in the pool,
their interactions become mesmerizing patterns of shifting and fading colours.
About
the Artist
Jen Lewin
is an internationally renowned light and interactive sculptor whose studio is
located in Boulder, Colorado. Over the last 15 years, Lewin has honed her
highly technical medium to fabricate large-scale interactive sculptures that
combine light, sound and motion to encourage community interaction. From
responsive sound and light forms that incorporate dance to giant robotic moths
that flutter in response to human touch, Lewin’s use of technology as a medium
challenges popular conceptions of new media works and their limitations.
Focusing on pieces made for public use, she thinks beyond a traditional art
exhibition to create an experience that brings vibrancy to neighbourhoods,
parks and public spaces. At once organic and electronic, Lewin’s playful
sculptures leave viewers enchanted and surprised while encouraging delight
through their engagement with the work. In this sense, visitors to Lewin’s
works become artists themselves.
Her
technically complex works have been featured at events including Vivid Sydney,
iLight Marina Bay, Signal Fest and Burning Man, art Biennales in Denver and
Gwangju and solo exhibitions in the United States, Portugal and England. Her design
and multimedia work has been featured in publications such as National
Geographic, The Smithsonian, Wired, The New York Times, BBC News and The
Straits Times. Lewin served as Creative Director for the Ceren Project and Ivee
Project at The Sundance Laboratory for Advanced Computing in Design, as well as
a lead designer for ITN (Saber) in Palo Alto. Lewin attended New York
University and earned her BA in Computer-Aided Architectural Design and her MPS
in the Graduate Program in Interactive.
Rage, Rage, Against the Dying of the Light by Sarah Beck
As of 2015
the light bulb as we know it, also called the “Edison bulb”, will no longer be
produced in North America. While this marks an advance in environmental
responsibility, it also marks the death of a technology that changed the world.
The light bulb, invented in Toronto, but associated with Thomas Edison, ushered
in a new era. The light bulb’s impact was so great that it came to symbolize a
bright idea. As this technology fades into the past, this piece is an epitaph
that invites contemplation of change, hope, passage and death.
“Rage, rage
against the dying of the light” is a line from a poem by Dylan Thomas entitled
“Do not go gentle into that good night”. The poem was written by Thomas in 1952
to examine the death of his father. A year later he himself would be dead, at
the age of 39, from his own hard living tendencies.
Light bulb
packaging claims that each bulb will last approximately 60 days, or roughly
1500 hours, if run continuously. As known from practical experience, the lights
will twinkle out at staggered rates, some holding on longer and some snuffed
out early. The work invites contemplation of the inevitability of the viewer’s
mortality. To resist change is as futile as the fight against death. On the
contrary, lights represent hope and ideas, allowing viewers to bring layered
meaning into their contemplation of the work. Because the piece is time based,
it is likely be different each time it is experienced. This piece is proudly supported by the Ontario Art’s
Council
*This installation will remain on exhibit for a duration of 60 days.
About the Artist Artist
Sarah Beck uses her art
practice to address contemporary issues, engaging the audience with humour and
common signifiers. Her studio practice favors accessibility and moves between
mediums. Beck is a Saskatchewan artist currently based in Toronto. She has won
various awards, including the Canada Council for the Art’s Joseph S. Stauffer
Prize and the Ontario Arts Council’s Chalmers Arts Fellowship. She was featured
at Toronto City Hall’s Museum for the End of the World during Nuit Blanche
2012, and at the 2010 Winter Olympic Cultural Olympiad. Beck completed her
Interdisciplinary Master’s of Art, Media & Design at the Ontario College of
Art and Design University (OCADU) in 2010. During the summer of 2014 Beck was
the first Artist in Residence at the International Space University. In 2015
Beck was named as a finalist for the Glenfiddich Artist in Residence prize.
Trimonic by Stefan Verstappen
Tri-Monic is a multi-sensory interactive
installation that requires viewers to interact musically with the installation.
By singing or playing the correct musical notes, the installation responds by
playing the harmony and providing a synchronized light display.
Each wedge
is programmed to respond to only a specific set of notes. When the correct note
is sung or played, the wedge will activate and play its own tone tuned to the
third interval, lower octave of the viewer’s note. The result is that the wedge
will play in harmony with the viewer.
Simultaneously,
the sound interaction will trigger the screen to light up and flicker at the
same frequency as the note being played.
By singing
a song or playing a tune, Tri-Monic offers an enlightening performance
art exhibit that you will want to interact with every day!
About the
Artist
Toronto
native Stefan Verstappen recently returned from California where he was awarded
the mayor’s recognition certificate for his contributions to the city of
Ventura’s public art program.
In the
years since opening his first studio, SunDog Arts, in 1981 in Kleinberg Ontario
he has worked in dozens of mediums from stained glass and watercolors to foam
sculpture and electronic art. His most recent commission was a pen and ink
illustration for the Joe Fresh 2014 spring fashion line.
From
2000-12 Verstappen lived in Ventura, California and was associated with Art
City and Green Art People where he worked on sculpture, multimedia art and
completed several public art installations.
In 2008
Verstappen was commissioned by the City of Ventura to create his Tubular Zen
installation - a kind of electronic Stonehenge that consisted of five 16 foot
pillars that played notes of the pentatonic scale using the sound of a
Shakuhatchi.
"Technology
allows me to create installations that work on multiple symbolic and sensory
levels. Based on the existentialist concept that there is no art without the
observer, my latest designs combine art with technology to create interactive
public art that requires the participation of the observer in order to work.
As We Are Here by Jeremy Tsang
Historically,
crystals and minerals have always played a cyclical and significant role to
human beings; from beliefs of their healing properties, to their countless
usage in materials and energy production, to our own body`s systematic needs.
Participants will be thrusted into contemplating their own relationship to the
land, feeling mesmerized as the colours and reflections on the surface of the
crystals continuously transform. As We Are Here explores our interwoven
relationship with the earth’s metamorphic elements.
With
special thanks to Ramm Design Labs for their fabrication assistance.
About
the Artist
Jeremy
Tsang (NSCAD University, 2011) is a visual interdisciplinary artist currently
practicing out of Toronto, CA. He has exhibited across Canada, including a
survey of alternative landscapes (Lost Horizons, 2012) at St. Mary’s University
Art Gallery (SMAUG). In 2014, Nocturne Halifax (akin to Nuit Blanche) produced
one of Tsang’s diasporic installations. He was featured recently in the 30
Under 30 curated by art critic Gary Michael Dault at John B. Aird Gallery
(Toronto, CA), the Exposure Photography Award exhibition presented at
the Louvre (Paris, FR) and a photography-based growing collaborative Incubator
Series exhibition at Latitude 53 (Edmonton, CA) over the summer months.
Forthcoming 2015, Tsang has been commissioned by Nocturne to construct a major
large-scale installation, will be featured in the upcoming issue of Concrete
Flux Zine (Beijing, CN), and commissioned to construct a new installation work
in Nuit Blanche Saskatoon and igNIGHT Fort McMurray, AB.
Tsang’s
work of photographs, videos, text, object-making, reinterpretation of found
ephemera, and installations are included in the public collections of Sobey Art
Foundation and SMUAG and as well many private collections around the world.
Additionally, Tsang divides his time to sit and advice on various boards,
concurrently on South Asian Visual Art Centre (SAVAC) and Gallery 1313.
Wreck to the Seaman, Tempest to the Field by Robert Cram and Nathaniel Wong
Wreck to
the Seaman, Tempest to the Field is an immersive installation combining light, kinetic sculpture and
sound that celebrates connectedness, nomadic tendencies and exploration as
compounding attributes that dictate spatial organization and development. As a
sculptural form, the structure will be constructed and utilized as a canvas
vivifying the ecologic process of wind, change and transition. The intention is
to contrast the romantic ideals of open space exploration with the limitations
of stationary place and habitat.
About
the Artists
Robert Cram
is a landscape architect and artist who has worked on a range of public and
private projects across Canada. His design methodology is founded on a post-disciplinary
approach that infuses research, art and ecological thinking. He remains active
in the Toronto art and design community as a practising artist, curator and
member of a local artist’s cooperative.
Nathaniel
Wong is an interdisciplinary artist who works in video, sculpture and sound. His
works incorporate humour and playful forms that are informed by philosophy,
literature and history. Wong recently completed his MFA from Simon Fraser
University, has shown in Vancouver and Edmonton and is an active member of the
Dynamo Arts association in Vancouver.
The Unkindness by Kasie Campbell and the students of Keyano College Art and Design Program
The raven, a local foul, encompasses many affects; a chariot
of the soul; a symbol of hope; a model of resilience; an infamous trickster;
and a mediator of life and death. Throughout time, the raven is depicted by
many cultures and portrayed within their mythologies, legends and folklore. The
Unkindness (formerly “Untitled”) is a piece inspired by the revered avian
creature.
Conceptualized by Kasie Campbell and executed with the
assistance of the students of Keyano’s Art & Design program, their
collaborative efforts bring the notorious raven to life through a myriad of
materials, lighting and performance art. A piece that pushes the creative
boundaries of all parties including: the artist, the students and the
observers, The Unkindness is a piece that will pervade the mind and,
like the raven, stamp its repute.
About
the Artists
Kasie
Campbell is a visual artist working in Edmonton, Alberta. Campbell focuses on
integrating a variety of media including sculpture, installation, new media and
performance. She has earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of
Alberta and hopes to continue on to her M.F.A in a few years’ time. Campbell is
a recipient of the International Sculpture Centre’s Outstanding Student
Achievement Award in contemporary sculpture and her work will be sent to
Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey for the Fall exhibit.
Students of
Keyano College Art & Design program (Fall 2015) worked with Kasie Campbell
to cultivate this large-scale public art installation.
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