Toronto Light Fest 2018

As it got dark on February 3, I went east from downtown to the Distillery District for the latest incarnation of the Light Fest. I had been quite taken with the installations last year (see my posting,  https://aproposno.blogspot.ca/2017/02/toronto-light-fest.html), and wanted to see what they came up with this year.

It was a cold evening, and very windy, so some of the videos you'll see in this posting will be slightly marred by the sound of wind - just so you know.
So many of the pieces depended on movement, interaction and shifting colours that you'll notice there are almost as many videos as pictures this time!

I didn't get pics or video of every piece there, but tried to get as many as I could, given the harsh weather, and, well, my personal preferences, too. So there.

I didn't go through the installations in any particular order, so here they are - pictures first, I think, then videos.


On entering the area at Trinity Street, I had to smile at this piece, called - rightly so - Perspective.

The next piece that caught my eye was called Gummy Bear Pyramid, a strikingly colourful structure, lit from within, that you could go inside of.
Here it is from one angle:

And from the opposite side:

If you're wondering where the title comes from, it's because - as you see in this extreme close-up - the piece is made from thousands of tiny, hand-crafted glass-like gummy bears! Incredible!

The next piece I saw was called Talking Heads. This is a still pic of one of two LED-lit head sculptures, that face each other across an open space in Tank House Lane. The lights race around and around each face, creating amazing effects.
There is a video of the other one of them below, to show what the full effect is like.

(You may also notice the furiously blowing snow that was coming down that night!)

Off Tank House Lane was this startling piece, called the Light Tunnel. You could enter and walk down to the end to see Solar Sail, which I didn't photograph.

And here is the equally amazing interior of the Light Tunnel:

Again - wow, what a lot of work!

This installation is called Nest. The colours change here, from a combination of  different shades...

...to this greenish-blue hue, and back again.

Now, the rest of the videos:

This first sculpture is called Zoa, kind of a short form of "protozoa." The artist imagines it as kind of an alien life form. It turns slowly on its axis, although the strong wind inhibits it a bit.
You'll hear a child's voice in the video say, "Look! I told you! It's spinning!"

This was another amazing spectacle. In the first part of the video, you'll see The Electric Dandelions as they shimmer and pulse with different colours; then, Birds Fly Around With You, in which sensors in the middle section capture movement as people run around it, making the bird sculptures appear to be following them. Very remarkable, both of them.

Another piece, in Gristmill Lane, Entwined, also features constantly-changing colours:

(You can hear that it was super-windy in Gristmill Lane!)

This was a surprise, and a treat; appearing again this year (or maybe it never left?) is the towering sculpture, IT, inspired by the tripod alien ships from "War of the Worlds." This year, there were laser beams trained on it from various angles. I kind of thought of it as a "battle with the aliens"!

Here was another remarkable piece, LightPiano 2.0. Visitors were invited into a small plexiglass booth, to sit and play an electric piano, and these shapes would light up as they played. Apparently, each one was connected to a key on the piano, so a single note would light up one shape, while chords would light up several!
(You may be able to hear that the person was playing the Beatles' "Let It Be.")

This one was called Guardians of Time, and featured transparent, sombre, cowled figures that changed colours slowly:

Finally, this beautiful piece is called The Glowdecahedron, and also features constantly-shifting hues in the interiors of these three intricately patterned ten-sided shapes:

As I mentioned, that's not all the pieces there are at this exhibit; I chose the ones that struck my fancy most to post here. And, yeah, it was really cold - and windy - and snowing - so I didn't exactly want to hang around outdoors for much longer than I did. I eagerly (and gratefully) retreated to Balzac's Coffee again this year once I was done!

(I recently bought a pair of "touchscreen" gloves that you're supposed to be able to use in cold weather with a tablet, so I'm eager to try them out with my camera. I'm hoping it won't be such a hardship with them on. I'll let you know!)

So, do try to get to this exhibit. It's well worth it. But try to pick a warmer night than I did, OK?

Ice Breakers

On another very cold day on the first weekend in February 2018, I decided to take in two art exhibits happening in downtown Toronto (I don't know what makes me want to get outdoors during these cold snaps - maybe because it's easier to walk? Haven't figured it out yet).

The first was the Ice Breakers exhibit, happening along Queen's Quay. There were five different sculptures in all, set along a very easy-to-follow - and well-mapped out - route along the street.

The overall theme of the exhibit was kind of an environmental one, and, as you'll see, all the pieces are constructed from natural or recycled materials.

I decided to go from east to west, from York Street to Lower Spadina.


First up, in front of the We Brew Cafe, was this piece by two sculptors, titled Root Cabin. As the name implies, it's made entirely of found tree roots, and shaped into a kind of shelter.
At roughly centre of picture, you can see a small electric light that dimly illuminates the interior.
People were going in and out and posing for pictures the whole time.

The interior is spray-painted a kind of purple colour, some if which is visible on the outside, too.
It was interesting to see this group of roots at the rear of the piece, and note that some of them must have been pulled from the ground wholesale, earth and all.

The next piece, set up on the Lower Simcoe Wavedeck, was called Black Bamboo, and is another sculpture made from trees (bamboo, as you can see), and also spray-painted, this time in black.
I got the first shot against the harbour and the sky:

And the next one against the condos along the north side of Queen's Quay.
Apparently, you could go inside this sculpture as well, but I didn't try. It looks kind of fragile, and I suppose that's part of the point.

The most colourful of the pieces was Winter Fanfare, at HTO Park.
It consists of a series of fan-like shapes, made, interestingly, from two-by-fours, and painted (with an airbrush apparatus, I'd guess) these striking colours that move from gold to red.

The piece is designed to be looked at from all angles, its appearance changing as you move around it, so here it is from three more perspectives:

At HTO Park West was this piece, Through the Eyes of the Bear.
This was another one you were invited to enter, and you can see the child in this pic, looking out, as intended by the sculptor, "through the eyes of the bear."

Moving close to one of the "feet," you can see that the outer part is made from a soft fabric.

And, from inside the "head," I'm getting my own view, through one of the "eyes," of another photographer. I never did find out what his picture of me photographing him looked like!

The final piece was a musical one, placed, appropriately, at the east end of the Music Garden. It's called Ensemble, and consists of a wooden frame supporting a series of metal tubes that sound when the wind blows or when someone moves through it. You could think of it as giant wind chime.
There happened to be a child going through it at this moment, so I took a short video of how it sounds. There doesn't seem to be any particular "tuning" to the tubes, but I found their sounds charming anyway.

And, while I was near the harbour, I thought I'd get some pix of how starkly attractive it is when partially iced in.
Looking south, you can see the planes at Billy Bishop Airport in the distance.

More to the west, an ice-locked marina along Spadina Quay, and the slowly crumbling silos overlooking Ireland Park - don't know what they intend to do with those.

Finally, I guess any day is a good day for ducks, whether it's at Tommy Thompson Park (as in my last posting), or here in Toronto's inner harbour. The brutal cold seems to have no effect at all!

And that was it for the Ice Breakers exhibit.
I also wanted to see the Toronto Light Fest at the Distillery District, but had to wait until it got dark for that to have the best effect. So, it was up to a restaurant on lower Bathurst St. for dinner, then on to Trinity St., and the next posting...