With so many exhibits we had to find some reasonable way of establishing criteria. The night turned out to be surprisingly lovely, quite mild for October and ... a rarity this year .. dry. So we decided to stick to the outdoor venues; turned out to be a great idea, they estimated a million people were milling around downtown and the sidewalks were crowded enough, I can't imagine what a gallery would have been like.
The next criteria was to avoid installations that featured video ... I do video all day long and while I can appreciate it as an art form, I don't need to see it on my night off. We had a vague idea of what some of the exhibits were but mostly we were going in blind. We stared off at Dundas Square, right down at Yonge and Dundas, an area that has become nicely revitalized lately. Tons of people out, which became a theme of the evening. It was quite exhilarating to see so many people .. so many you couldn't get on the sidewalk .. out in the city at night. Even later, at three in the morning, there were literally thousands of people roaming around; even downtown that is extremely rare. It gave the night this great energy so that us old folks didn't feel tired at all ... much.
The installation in the square was called 15 Seconds. The artist built this wooden tower (doesn't that remind you of the guard towers in The Great Escape?) He was up there with this spot light and the idea was that he would randomly shine it down on individuals in the crowd, giving them their Andy Warhol 15 seconds of fame. An interesting idea I guess but unfortunately most of the people there did not seem to be aware of the script. Perhaps if people understood the concept better, there were would have been more interaction; they should have put the tower on Church Street ... then we may have seen some audience participation.
From this angle it was interesting, the thing was just huge. But it became truly interesting when you got under it and shot upwards.
The thing took on a whole different dimension from the angle ... in the video (at the bottom of the post) you will see that it was turning and you got this real sense of motion, like a vortex, strong enough to induce some mild vertigo. 
The ceiling was made out of bright white tile and was well illuminated. So this alley, normally dark like most allies at night, was brightly lighted. They staged some "trash" around the alley, I suppose this stuff was all meant to represent something, I just found it a little odd.
At first this "installation" did nothing for me but as we hung out for a bit, seeing this normally dark, unused (but not dirty, this is Toronto after all) alley way transformed by the white ceiling and fluorescent lighting, the colours of the "trash" jumping out at you ... and just the fact that so many people were moving through it, the video will give you a good sense of the number. As I said, the sheer number of people moving through these art pieces was something I found very compelling. People interacting with art .. almost regardless of what that art is ... is pretty sexy and people using their city in any new kind of way definitely has an appeal to it.
From Massey Hall we made our way over to Nathan Phillip Square and Toronto City Hall. On our way we passed by some "unscheduled" art, including some incredible sidewalk chalk drawing.
We also came across this young woman who was doing the "living statue" thing but apparently her statue was a little frisky in the cool autumn air because she was not shy about moving.
Here, Collette captured one of the images, a human silhouette that moved from one tower to the other, its shadow following it. Again, check out the video. From City Hall we moved west along Queen Street. It was great to see the street so busy; this time of year, around midnight, even a street like Queen W is normally sparsely populated. We made our way to St Patrick's Market Square and found that some very strange fruit was growing in the trees.
This was the Cocoon Garden, created by some local artists. Translucent plastic wrapped around chicken wire forms, illuminate from within by different colours.
Some of the cocoons had speakers inside them and they played snippets from commercials and jingles; some of the recordings were on a loop, others were activated when someone pushed the cocoon. That was one of the things I liked about this installation, many of the cocoons were at eye level and you could physically interact with them. Obviously, if you have a public arts festival, the Ontario College of Art is going to be involved. We went there to take a look at just a couple of the many events which they featured.
Sketching Beauty was another interactive installation. Hundreds of people were given paper and pencils and made their own sketches, messages etc and everything was posted up all over the square.
Another installation at the OCA was A Dream of Pastures, a big shadow projection where people participated in the illusion that they were riding horses through a flickering woodscape.
Another big installation ... that wall is huge, about half a block long .. and one that invited participation. You can get a sense of the crowd here, and this is probably after 1 am.
From Queen's Park we made our way up to Yonge and College to the College Park shopping/condo building. Here we found zombies ... well, Zombies in Condo Land to be exactly.
The idea here was having people off the street get dressed and made up as zombies and then participate in an ultra low budget movie. So it was really a movie shoot and as anyone who has ever watched a film being made ... about as exciting as watching hair grow (even my hair, which we all know is fabulous) Still, the idea of making a movie on the spot, with random actors is interesting and I wait to see the final product
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