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 […]
