During the entire time of “Life in the soil”, I kept thinking of the above little animation. Then, I attended Lisa Hirmer’s presentation. “The Law of conservation of mass states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be rearranged”. This principle informs her work Pile Dirt. […]
Despite the differences in their interest and area of competence, the three presentations by a soil scientists, Jeffrey Howard, a community gardener, Steven Green and a bioartist, Nicole Clouston, revolved around the idea that soil is essentially a live entity which grows, changes and interacts with the surrounding environment (this […]
A few days before the events, participants were asked to collect one handful of “dry soil in a plastic zip-lock bag.” The sample could be from your garden or backyard, but could also come from a contested site, such as a contaminated site, a remediated land, or a site of […]
Geologically speaking, the area around the great lakes has a very interesting story. In fact, the land shifted and folded quite frequently and glaciers advanced and retracted unevenly. The result is a very diverse soil whose content may range from sandy to rich in clay. The Windsor region, known as […]
Life in the Soil started with an evening keynote event following a welcome introduction by Theresa Sims (Upper Mohawk, Turtle Clan, elder for South West Detention Centre, elder for Two-Spirit community in Windsor region) who acknowledged our presence on stolen land and gave thanks for our ability to enjoy it […]
It’s been roughly one week since Life in the Soil has come to an end, leaving a long lasting impression and, as it is the case for such complex and multifarious events, an inexhaustible number of questions. As Amanda White and Alana Bartol, two artists collaborating at the intersection of […]
I am on a train to Windsor, heading to a three-day intense workshop titled Life in the Soil. This series of public events will feature a mix of scientists, farmers, activists and artists interested in invested in “the scientific, indigenous, embodied and practical knowledge about the vital nature of soils”. For […]
In his performance Fields, Martin Messier asserts to play with magnetic fields. What he did, in reality, was much more complex. Using a –probably pre-programmed sound base– he coordinated his performance by manipulating two “connections patches that offer many possibilities to connect many outputs to many inputs”. The two artifacts you […]
In the past few years, art inspired by and producing Afrofuturism has been growing in Toronto and surroundings, thanks to a number of artists with strong agendas: I spoke before about Camille Turner, whose space adventures reveal the real stories and histories of migration, refuge and slavery of Afro- Caribbean and […]
I was looking forward to listening to Kara Stone’s presentation. While she locates her work in the realm of gaming, she refuses to follow the usual and trite narratives imposed by the gaming industry. Her goal is to inject games with affect, a term that she uses loosely to identify […]
This was by far the most Canadian performance I have ever seen in my life. Dressed as a ranger at times sitting on (and playing) a toilet and playing a Caribou antler, Dave Gould did a mesmerizing performance that incorporated electronic music and other hybrid/unusual sounds that could be synthetic but they […]
I am sure many of you have heard of Hitchbot, the funny looking and a bit rudimentary robot that successfully crossed Canada from Halifax to Victoria, went to Germany, The Netherlands, only to find its demise in the US a few days after it had started a tour of America. By then, […]
It would be unfair not to mention the Madscience exhibition that took place on the main floor on the first evening of FunctionKeys . In fact, this was a bit different from the science fairs I had seen in the past. A truly local event, it featured instruments and synthesizers by […]
Function Keys took place in a historic building downtown Hamilton called “the Spice Factory”. it is worth spending a few words about it, since its story, as I heard it from its new owners and attendees, is quite interesting. At more than a century old, the building hosted quite a diverse […]
Among the growing series of festivals, events, conferences dedicated to (and often over-celebrating) new and not-so-new technologies, I thought I would introduce you to this new-ish (in its third year) conference with the great title of “Function Keys“. There are several reasons why I decided to attend the conference and to write […]
I decided not to go in order with my report, because I thought that some presentations on the saturday spoke to some issue that had emerged the day after. specifically, I thought that Matt Garcia’s Eco Studio, Marc Böhlen’s WaterBank and Tom Sherman’s videos as an amateur scientist were linked […]
Recently I have observed – with mixed feeling and a bit of disorientation– the rise of maker culture. Among them, agitators, activists and artists are finding ways to use the latest developments in 3D printing, DIY and citizen science to produce innovative tools and ingenious artifacts for the benefit of the common […]
I am usually very critical when it comes with working with communities, especially when these communities are what the West or the Intelligentsia considered “disadvantaged” or resourceless. I have seen countless examples of interventions where a well equipped, educated and clearly hegemonic individual or group literally descended upon a group of kids […]
Open Medicine is not just about publishing or sharing information about experts, but also about empowering. Billiam James’ powerful and passionate intervention, peppered with evocative images, addressed the power relations inherent in medicine and advocated the necessity for the patient to become an expert, in order to be able to ask […]
When we think of open culture, open science, DIY and making are probably the first things that come to mind. However, It is often thanks to the availability of information available through open access publishing that knowledge is made increasingly shareable, as open access journals (OA) continue to emerge out of academia […]
In addition to more traditional journals with Open access structures, John Dupuis in a later talk on Open Science, pointed out to a diverse number of tools that not only scientists, but also other researchers and artists use to share their work. from Academia.edu, to bibliography databases such as Mandelay, […]
