Jeff Morton Doing Several Awesome Things at Artengine

May 3rd, 2011

Morton’s installation welcomes interactivity through the one irresistible object that begs to be pushed: the button. Toy farm animals (and the odd T-rex) have been re-wired and fitted with buttons and sliders, sorted into groups, and then presented on eight pedestals in a kind of fantasy tableau.

Awesome Indies: LCRC LED Foldie and Pac-Man Tag Game Workshops

April 28th, 2011

Amid screams and shouts the stamping feet of 25 kids jumping from line to line to avoid the ghosts chasing them, their hands cupped tightly around tiny cubes of light illuminated by LEDs, echos up to the rafters in the darkened gym. Gosh those kids were loud. This game was the culmination of a two […]

Objet Indirect Object

April 20th, 2011

My recommendation (so far) from the Objet Indirect Object series is Catherine Béchard and Sabin Hudon’s Free-Fall of Possibilities. If you want to see it for yourself you only have until 23 April to get to Axené07 / Daïmön. Whilst enthusiastically trying to describe this work to friends, I have discovered that Free-Fall of Possibilities is actually quite […]

Awesome Indies: LCRC Squishy Circuit Workshop

April 14th, 2011

We’ve underestimated the potential use of energy emanating from 25 excited kids eating sugared playdoh. I reached this conclusion shortly after starting to talk about squishy circuits with a group of 6-8 year olds at an LCRC after school program. This project is part of Artengine’s community arts initiatives and is funded by the Community Foundation of Ottawa. I was […]

Cliff Notes: Free School 2 / Ecole libre 2

March 30th, 2011

Galerie SAW Gallery’s Free School was touted as continuing education for professional artists with “a curriculum few learning institutions deliver…speaking to artists in practical terms on a wide-range of subjects.” These subjects included: Working with Larger Institutions: Jonathan Shaughnessy; Running a Successful Studio: Daniel Barrow; Community and Socially Engaged Art: Harrell Fletcher; Public Relations for Artists: Nadja Sayej; Qui a peur de l’art contemporain?: Marie-France Beaudoing; La creation d’oeuvres d’art public: Jean-Robert Drouillard.

Mod Lab’s March 2nd Recap

March 9th, 2011

Jean-Marc LeBlanc demoed his hack to an Evalbot, a mobile robotic evaluation board for the Stellaris microcontroller, that allows him to host a webpage on a USB stick on the back of this rolling robot. I’d never seen a website that could run away from me before and I do so hope to again. How […]

Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens

March 8th, 2011

White Wedding to the Snow By: Kate Barry I met a colleague at the Manx pub a couple months ago and she handed me a piece of paper with Annie Sprinkle’s email address on it, then she said “I think you should contact her, Annie is interested in giving an artist talk at the University […]

Le livre d’artiste : lieu de rencontre entre le design graphique et l’art visuel

March 1st, 2011

Cet article est basé sur un entretien avec Marie-Hélène Leblanc, auteur, artiste et commissaire. Les livres d’artistes ont de plus en plus la cotes ces jours-ci. Geste de publication autonome ou bien supporté par une grande maison d’édition, ces projets s’appuient tous sur une idée singulière: utiliser le langage du livre dans la création d’une […]

Thelivingeffect Panel

February 22nd, 2011

On Saturday 29 January, I attended a panel discussion held by the Ottawa Art Gallery in conjunction with the exhibition The Living Effect. The exhibition and the panel discussion were the result of the research, effort and connections of curator Caroline Seck Langill (although she wasn’t alone and the support of many others was mentioned).

some notes from transmediale 11

February 14th, 2011

Earlier this month I attended parts of the transmediale 11 festival in Berlin, and I thought I would share some of the ideas and discussions I encountered during my festival meanderings, on subjects like freedom, power, knowledge, privacy and openness…all tied to the main theme of the festival itself: Response:ability. Here are some notes on […]