My Nuit Blanche Picks

There are so many amazing projects this year at Nuit Blanche! Are you going on September 29th? Take a look at some of my choices!

Zone A

Green Invaders, 2012 Presented for the first time at Lyon fête des lumières, Green Invaders reconciles Yves Caizergues’ interest in video games and his expertise in lighting design through the creation of an army of fluorescent green creatures that will invade Toronto’s downtown core. Offering the viewers the possibility to re­connect, in an entertaining way, to a time where the low-tech technology was part of our lives and the practice of saving energy had yet to be thought of.

Fly By Night at the Gladstone Hotel Fly By Night’s theme of Into the Wild will feature the raucous creations of makers from all disciplines, including contemporary art, sculpture, photography, performance, new media, and textiles. Temporary and site-specific installations by dozens of artists and designers will be showcased on the hotel’s exterior and first and second floors. Look for a special feature by Broken City Lab on the Gladstone facade.

Fortune-ate Okay, shameless plug here. I’m so happy to be part of Nuit Blanche this year, at the Gladstone Hotel. Please stop by and see my project at 2am! Everything that can happen in this world has already happened to someone else, and will probably happen to you. Traveling through the hallway at Gladstone, you will have the chance to explore the idealist and realities of others fortune through a series of hanging fortune cookies. At 3am, the installation turns interactive. You will have the chance to tear down a fortune, break it open and see what’s in store.

Zone B

All Night Convenience, 2012 Two thousand smaller lanterns are displayed upon shelves inside the store, illuminating its translucent walls.  These small lanterns, laboriously assembled by the artists, represent a cornucopia of products ranging from toothpaste to canned pork goulash. During the course of the evening the store will gradually darken, as visitors enter the see-through building and select lanterns, which are offered for free, to carry off into the festival atmosphere of the event.

The Jelly Gene Machine At the epicenter of consumerism in downtown Toronto, The Jelly Gene Machine dispenses jelly beans inscribed with super human traits like x-ray vision, telepathy and invisibility. Personalizing genetics like trying on a pair of jeans may sound like science fiction, except the debate is both historic and contemporary.

Glow in the Park, is as if a large meteor hit Toronto leaving thousands of meteorites glowing in the grass.  Mirroring the night sky can help us to reflect upon our contemporary understanding of time and what it means when we bring concepts from outer space into our inner space.  Each time we reflect on an idea we refract moments of it in isolation.

Zone C

Thought Balloon, 2012  explores what happens when intimate messages are available for public consumption. Participants write on typewriters and project their words onto the surface of large, glowing balloons.

The QR Poetry Project engages viewers by having them scan paintings using their own smartphone in order to activate the work. The act of scanning the large-scale QR code paintings will reveal each to be an original poem on the theme of night.