I went to the Skyharp talk (part of the SoundPlay festival) the other day. It was okay... nothing new since the artists aren't the most hi-tech people though they are really able to bring in an organic quality to their compositions.
The odd thing was that it was sponsored by the architecture program. I continually asked myself what Skyharp (a nature-driven sound art piece) had to do with architecture (building man-made objects) but it all made sense when one of the arch professors said that he recently attended a symposium. Three topics came up over and over again:
(a) meta-data of physical spaces
(b) mapping
(c) embodiment
Hot issues, indeed. I have to wonder if it's really an emergence of a new way of thinking (more of a reaction, I suppose, towards the influences of computer technology and telecommunications) or if it's just trendy.
Oh and check out the Mutation Workspace project by cellophan.de. That poster looks eerily like my Blog City project. (Once again, a reminder that everyone's brains must be connected.) I think the image is just for illustration purposes because they instead use a matrix of numbers on the actual site. Check out the other projects too... interesting stuff.
Remember that episode of The Simpson's when Springfield wins a $3 million lawsuit against Mr. Burns so they hold a City Council meeting to decide the fate of the unexpected budget surplus?
Marge suggests that they spend the money on Main Street, severely deteriorating with gigantic potholes, but she's overshadowed with a song and dance routine for a monorail system. (Sing along... ""Monorail!"") Except the monorail is a disaster and it's added to the pile of other useless things City Council have spent money on: the 50-ft magnifying glass, the escalator to nowhere, and the popsicle skyscraper.
While the real City Council isn't as exciting as The Simpson's, Toronto sure does spend a lot of money on useless stuff. Remember how angry everyone was about Dundas Square? (Like, was Mel Lastman just trying to get a few more squares named after him before his inevitable curtain close?)
Anyways, I just finished a gruelingly-long essay about the Gardiner Expressway. I swear it's Toronto's longest-running urban planning soap opera along with the Waterfront Revitalization Project. If you care to read it, I will post the .pdf here shortly and also worth checking out is Zack Taylor's Masters thesis project about the Gardiner.
So I wonder what Miller, McGuinty, and Martin have up their sleeves? Time will tell.
Admist my research for my urban geography class, I found this article (old but really good) that was published in Eye Magazine about the relics of Toronto that wait.
The first week of classes for me has involved a lot of monologues about what my expectations of new media are, the things I'm interested in, and what projects that I would like to work on this year. I mentioned how I was interested in how the online world affects the offline world or vica versa but when pressed for an example, I blanked out. So today, while listening to CBC Radio (a new hobby), I heard of the BUG project and wish I would have thought of first.
Combining my interests of urban space and mapping, The University of Minnesota's Design Institute are using the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as giant game boards. Join a team (red, blue, or yellow) and vote daily on which path your team's giant game piece traverses. And if you live in the area, you could have volunteered as a mover or you can go to the end checkpoints to roll a dice and give your team a speed boost. Go yellow!
The Globe and Mail has a great series on right now about "The New Canada" -- the 20-something generation of Canada. It really hits home for me and it's definetely worth the read.
Check it out it here.
Nice simple and elegant 'discussion' about urban cities on CBC's web one.
Also, this snippet in the Toronto Star website was misleading (sort of): "Unlike Toronto's new official plan, Toronto's chief planner is happy to get into specifics. Speaking last week at a conference about that plan, Paul Bedford cut through hours of PowerPoint presentations to bring delegates a quick reality check. "This city is screwed," the chief planner said." Read on...