Live Art at the Distillery
This is part 2 in a series of profiles on live art exhibits as part of the LuminaTO festival.
Besides the many live music shows happening at the Distillery District throughout the past week, it’s also been host to another type of performance: painting. Over a dozen artists and illustrators converged on the historic area of the city, contributing many diverse and brilliant works of art.
As I said earlier in the week, I think one of the most fascinating aspects of any artistic endeavor is its creation. Continue reading for a selection of before and after shots and a showcase of some of the art created in the Distillery District this past week.
Good music: Datarock/Bravery
I’ve picked up a lot of good music lately, and among it all, there’s a couple really great albums that have stood out.
Datarock is an new (to me) group out of Norway (of course; What’s with all the amazing Norwegian artists?) with the cleverly doubled self-titled debut album, Datarock Datarock. They tend to appeal to my geek-rock sensibilities, blending a nice mix of electronic and rock music with quirky vocals and lyrics. On top of that, they make me laugh out loud every time I hear Computer Camp Love (full track on last.fm!).
I hear that they opened for a group called CSS in Toronto this week, which sadly I missed. I’m completely unfamiliar with CSS, though I’m hearing a lot of buzz about them lately, so I’ll have to see what the big deal is all about.
The Bravery’s new album, The Sun and the Moon is not the typical kind of music I usually get in to, well, I should say, it hasn’t been lately. I used to be a huge alt/rock fan years gone by, but their stuff has a really refreshing, energetic vibe on the whole genre. The first two tracks, Intro and Believe really bring that across right away.
Open Source Art
This is part 1 in a series of profiles on live art exhibits as part of the LuminaTO festival.
Two of the most prevalent themes of the LuminaTO festival are without a doubt interactivity and collaboration. Coming from a technology background, I always find some of the most compelling innovations in the industry have come from transparent collaborations between groups of people. This is often defined as “open source” development.
Be it the completely open contribution-based community behind Wikipedia, the democratically inspired nature of digg, or the more ambitious Open Architecture Network, there never seems to be enough cooks in the kitchen when it comes to forging new ideas.
I’m of the opinion that the same holds true for art. Discovering the many layers of complexity that go in to creating a work of art only serves to further enhance its underlying beauty. As it turns out, the opportunity to observe and influence the creation of many works of art is right at our fingertips all through this week.
Rethinking the ordinary
I’ve already expressed my interest in retooling a stale and staid concept that many people are too comfortable or familiar with, using clocks as an example. I love this though; The Polar Clock has circular bars that move to complete the day of week, date, hour, minute and second in what first appears to be a confusing arrangement, but is surprisingly logical.
There’s also a Windows/Mac screensaver available over at the pixelbreaker blog.
[via digg]
blogTO: LuminaTO’s Floating Artwork
Those of you who follow my blog through RSS will likely have seen a story about the Floating Artwork exhibit as part of the LuminaTO fest going on now in the city. As you can see, the post isn’t here anymore, it has a new home!
The long and the short of it is that I’m now writing for blogTO, contributing mostly pieces about arts, design, and culture events in the city. Any future write-ups like Doors Open or LuminaTO that I traditionally would do here on my personal blog will show up over on blogTO from now on, thus if you’re so inclined, feel free to follow my posts over there.
T-Shirt Friday: Chewie Sushi
I think it’s about time I started doing loopy features on Fridays, no? I’m a sucker for a cleverly designed, maybe slightly ironic t-shirt. Between Threadless, Oddica, Nerdy Shirts, and countless others, there’s certainly no shortage of those on the Web.
This week’s favorites are Chewie over on Bountee.com designed by Toronto’s own Dale Hayward, and Revenge of the Sushi on Threadless by Teddy Baudoin. I love the style of art on both of these, and now that I’ve found out that Threadless ships to Canada sans custom fees, I may have a bit of shopping to do!
Video Friday: Cool Hunting / Tord Boontje
This week over at Cool Hunting they’ve intereviewed Dutch designer Tord Boontje at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. Tord’s designs take an environmental focus, and he explains the nature of his interest in this type of design evolves from the attempt to evoke emotion, rather than the coldness of minimalistic design. Cool Hunting’s video features are always a pleasure to watch; They’re impeccably produced, shot with a real professional eye, and has always been one of my favourite podcasts.
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Adam lives in Toronto, Canada and likes to make cool stuff. He sometimes even gets paid to make things for the Web.
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