Installations in 2008

Photographer Tim Wainwright and sound artist John Wynne were artists-in-residence for more than a year at Harefield Hospital in the UK, one of the world’s leading centres for heart and lung transplants. They worked closely together, photographing and recording patients, the devices attached to or implanted in them, and the hospital environment itself. The project was funded by Arts Council England and supported by Royal Brompton and Harefield Arts.

Someone Else - All of the people featured in this installation have had a heart and/or lung transplant or were waiting for one when the artists met them. Some have died since, most are doing well. Every sound you hear was recorded within the transplant centre, though some have been twisted and shaped afterwards, often in response to what was said by the patients.

In the ITU (Intensive Treatment Unit), where this piece was shot, both the sound and the treatment are intense. When a patient is wheeled in from the operating theatre, curtains are drawn around the bed for the sake of privacy, and to minimise potential distress to other patients as the newcomer is attached to various monitors, pumps, suction devices and drips. But the curtains do nothing to attenuate the sound; indeed they heighten auditory sensitivity and arouse the imagination. ITU patients spend much of the time heavily sedated on strong pain killers, and they often suffer from paranoid, sometimes violent hallucinations, moving in and out of consciousness amidst what anthropologist Tom Rice has called the “cacophony of disease”.

The red woollen "super sonic sound scape shoes"- installation is an experimental multisensorial tactile interface producing imaginative narrative soundscapes. By standing into “super sonic sound scape shoes”, hearing and feeling the sounds under their feet and traveling through their body, the public can “get in touch” with a specially composed sonic portrait. Ricardo Huisman is a sound-sculpture-artist based in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Le vivant bruit du corps is an immersive interactive sound installation which questions the perception of space in relation to mobility and the relation to the “other”. Le vivant bruit du corps is based on a radio art piece called Tanz which attempted to relate the state of dance through the medium of text and the sound on the levels of physics (gravity, acceleration,…), physiology (different body systems), of space (volume and movement) then relationships (interaction between dancers). While conserving the concerns approached in Tanz, Le vivant bruit du corps invests another medium. With this new approach, an immersive interactive sound installation, the listener is no longer kept captive in the box that is the radio receiver. S/he inhabits the physical space of sound. S/he moves in the three dimensions modifying the sound composition with her/his presence.

MAX/MSP programming : David Drury.
Sound Material: Andre Leroux, saxophones, Martin Tetreault, turn-tables and prepared surfaces.
Thanks to Robert Chretien and Freida Abtan.

Visitors that encounter the "Synthecycletron" generate power by pedaling on stationary bicycles which in turn activate synthesizers and generate sounds connected to their movements. There are several performances scheduled to happen through the summer using the sound sculptures as instruments beginning with a special performance on June 22nd. Stay tuned for more scheduled performances.

Sonic Boardwalk, by Robert Mulder and Kristi Allik, is a sound installation located on the Ward Island boardwalk that generates a microsound landscape activated by the kinetic imprint of passing visitors.

"Resonating Bodies" is a series of mixed media installations and community outreach projects which focuses on biodiversity of pollinators indigenous to the natural and urban ecosystems of the Greater Toronto Area. Conceived by Sarah Peebles with Rob King, Rob Cruickshank and Anne Barros, the installations illuminate aspects of local biodiversity such as bumblebee colonies and their foraging activities, ultraviolet bee vision, pollinator/plant co-evolution, solitary bee and wasp nesting life/life cycles, and colour-coded DNA barcodes (a novel new technique for species identification pioneered by Canadian researchers). Resonating Bodies coincides with the release of Toronto’s first guide to native bees, “Bees of Toronto”, by Laurence Packer, Professor of Biology at York University (published by the David Suzuki Foundation). The theme of the booklet — some 23 genera of bees found in Toronto — is woven into the fabric of the project on several levels, with talks on related topics by collaborating researchers Laurence Packer, Jessamyn Manson, Peter Hallett and Stephen Buchman.

The two installments of the project, "Bumble Domicile" (2008) and Nest Wall (2009), highlight distinct features of bumble bees (which are social) and of solitary bees and wasps through observation of the physical world, visual and audio transformations, scent, touch and genetic and other biological information. "Bumble Domicile" weaves observation of an on-site bumble bee hive containing live video and audio of its internal activity with the hive’s pollen-collecting activity, and, real-time ultraviolet video of flowering plants in the building’s communal garden adjacent to the gallery. Portions of the garden are being cultivated and tended especially for the installation by the building’s tenant-gardeners and neighborhood youth involved in the CARE and Art in the Park programmes at Trinity Bellwoods (*new* gallery is located within the 900 Queen West Artscape artist tenant building). The pollen-gathering activities of our bumble bees will be the focus of two cameras observing the hive. By routinely painting the stamens of a variety of plants in the adjacent garden with flourescent dye powders and by tracking their pollen collection via the cameras, data gathered over time will trigger the growth of virtual plants projected within the gallery space and will visually reflect the changes within the hive as a whole. Real-time (live) ultraviolet display of our bumble bees foraging upon flowering plants in the garden will be projected separately using an adapted video camera which has been modified and fitted with a UV filter. This will reveal petal markings visible only in ultraviolet light, known to function as pollen guides for bees and other pollinating insects (markings invisible to the human eye, but visible to bees and other insects).

Continuous audio transformations of pre-recorded bees and shoh (the Japanese mouth-organ, an instrument which has utilized beeswax since ancient times) and headphones which “plug” into the actual hive bring together sight and sound. Visitors are invited to place aromatic offerings of beeswax and pine resin - materials utilized within beehives and solitary nests - into a heated copper tray which resembles the interior of our hive, and which has been created through a unique process involving the remnants of a discarded bumble bee hive.

Free bee trading cards feature macro photography of bee anatomy, life facts and colour-coded DNA barcodes of some local bumble bee species, and will be on-hand with copies of the “Bees of Toronto” booklet. Both art object and educational item, these cards are the first in a series of trading cards of pollinators featured in Resonating Bodies at both *new* gallery and at our bee-wasp condo at the Franklin Children’s Garden on Toronto Island, our data gathering site for “Nest Wall” (2009).

A site for interactivity and reception, "Wish You Were Here" is a collective soundscape of audio greeting cards intended to be experienced within the hands of visitors through physical and aural sampling. Our sounds are of field recordings, fragmented and manipulated to reinterpret the conventional notion of a sentiment and sense of place in the model of a greeting card. Re-contextualizing recorded material within this format places limits— including time, compression, and availability—while initiating an accessible, portable, and participatory narrative.

Visitors are able to browse and select cards, to then open and play, by interacting with the card display racks within the installation. Systems of exchange become evident through the selective re-authoring and re-playing of these sounds, quoting a theoretical giver and receiver-- absent and present. Through the opening and closing of cards on display, the gesture of a greeting becomes amplified, defining a space that is, at once, personal and public, intuitive and mechanical.

This 10th anniversary Sound Travels Documents exhibit traces the history of the Sound Travels festival on Toronto Island through photos and sound recordings.

Travel the world soundscape through the imaginations of sound artists from around the world. A selection of sonic portraits of cities from around the world will be available for your listening edification.