Installations in 2018

This exhibition by multi-media artist Steven White from Walter's Falls, Ontario includes three interactive kinetic sound sculptures. They are made from a variety of found objects that are re-worked and un-designed to function in ways that are quite unlike their original function. Viewer interaction is a key component in these works that raise questions about obsolescence and the struggle between technology and nature.

NAISA wants to hear your voice – the voice of your children and the voice of your parents and grandparents. All of these voices are combined in this interactive exhibit with historic photos of South River to tell the story of our community and our place in the Near North.

Lounge outdoors as you listen to binaural ‘Psychoactive Music' composed by Aaron Labbé. The music you will hear will be created live through algorithmic responses to your real-time EEG data.

Moving Sounds is a curated program of sound art works for Nuit Blanche North in Huntsville. Audience members will manipulate a sensor-based system in order to move sound art works around the listening space. The works on the program have been selected from previous NAISA events and include Emotion Machine by Donika Rudi, Redo Speaking Song by Debashis Sinha, Urban Gardens by Pierre-Luc Senécal, ecologie materielle by Adam Basanta, Frozen Voyagers by Ambrose Field and Bora by Vanessa Sorce-Lévesque.

The Culture Days presentation at NAISA North Media Arts Centre features two interactive works ‘WAVES Playground’ and ‘Table Piece’ by Dutch multi-disciplinary artists Petra Dubach and Mario van Horrik. The interactive audio-visual experience will teach you how sound travels through space and different materials. Fun for the entire family! Dubach and van Horrik are a Dutch multi-disciplinary media art duo that have been combining movement, sound and architecture in every thinkable way since 1983.

The presentation of Dutch multi-disciplinary sound art duo Petra Dubach and Mario van Horrik at NAISA is supported by a financial contribution from the Consulate General of the Netherlands in Toronto. The Sunday presentation includes a free artist talk at 1:30 pm.

An interactive virtual reality film directed by Lisa Jackson, 3D art by Mathew Borrett and produced by NFB.

A large urban city is flooded. Its infrastructure has merged with the local fauna; mature trees grow through cracks in the sidewalks and vines cover south-facing walls. People commute via canoe and grow vegetables on skyscraper roofs. Urban life is thriving.

Rooted in the realm of Indigenous futurism, Biidaaban: First Light is an interactive VR time-jump into a highly realistic—and radically different—Toronto of tomorrow. As users explore this altered city now reclaimed by nature, they must think about their place in history and ultimately their role in the future.

Language carries the knowledge of its speakers. Indigenous North American languages are radically different from European languages and embody sets of relationships to the land, to each other, and to time itself. But as Indigenous languages face the risk of disappearing, we risk losing what they have to teach us.

Biidaaban: First Light asks users to think about their place in history and their role in a possible future. As they move through a highly realistic future Toronto reclaimed by nature, they hear the languages of the place originally known as Tkaronto. Through gaze-based interactions, users engage with the written text of the Wendat, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and Anishinaabe (Ojibway) and gain insight into the complex thought systems of this land’s first peoples.

The VR environment was created using to-scale architectural models of Toronto’s Osgoode subway station and the buildings surrounding Nathan Phillips Square.

Lisa Jackson (Anishinaabe) is one of Canada’s most celebrated contemporary artists working in film and VR. In Biidaaban: First Light, Lisa joins forces with 3D artist Mathew Borrett to create a future for Canada’s largest urban centre from an Indigenous female perspective.

This presentation of Biidaaban: First Light would not be possible without the generous support and production of the National Film Board.

The Empty Room explores new musical composition and spatialization methods in virtual 3D spaces. The user moves freely trough a virtual plateau in the middle of a giant hypercube orbiting over the earth. All around and inside the plateau a genuine 64-channel audio spatializer is combined to create an abstract and ever changing organic visual environment. The Empty Room is a real VR experience – not a 360° film.