Event Guide: CFC Media Lab prototype launch at Nuit Blanche

Images from TRANSPORT

Each year the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab launches a new crop of new media prototypes created by lab residents. The prototypes can be viewed by the public all night long during Nuit Blanche at the Lennox Gallery at 12 Ossington (just north of Queen), in the middle of Zone C, just as they were last year . CFC Media Lab is where we developed [murmur] back in 2002, and their commitment to telling stories using digital media has resulted in quite a few public-space focused projects. Below are the new prototypes to be unveiled this year:

TRANSPORT: Life Happens In Public Transport – A series of very short video clips of stories that happened on buses, streetcars and trains.  Delivered on interactive screens, TRANSPORT invites us to think of public transport as a “third space”, and of commuting as an occasion for insight into our fellow travellers.  A bus, a train, or a station, is a place where we witness the life of others; a place of chance encounters; a place where amusing and alarming things can happen; a place of romance and heartbreak.  The interactive screens, shaped like a regular city poster, are meant to be installed in public transport nodes: subway platforms, streetcar stations, bus-stops; all places where people find themselves waiting.  The initial image the viewer sees on the screen is a black and white still of the first frame of a micro-narrative clip with the tag line: “TRANSPORT: life happens in public transport”.  A camera and face-tracking software then search for a viewer.  If the viewer pauses in front of the screen, colour begins to seep into the “poster” and the narrative clip starts playing.  At the end of the clip the screen will display a black and white still of the captured image of the viewer, with the tagline: “TRANSPORT: life happens in public transport”.  The stories featured in TRANSPORT are “found” stories that creators Isabella Stefanescu and Carlito Ghioni witnessed in public transportation and were filmed on streetcar #506 in Toronto and on a Grand River Transit bus in Kitchener.

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The interactive audio-visual installation “shh aah ohh” encourages participants to step into the crossroads of light and shadow.  In this space Trickster — a character based on many cultures’ tales of a spirit (e.g. Eshu) or animal (e.g. Crow) emerges, bending the physical and temporal laws governing participants’ digitally-projected shadows.  Play, performance and exploration guide participants as they discover whether they themselves can trick the Trickster!  The installation, made up of screens, cameras, lights, computers, video projectors and recordings of sound poets, invites participants to see themselves in a new ‘light,’ for their own movements trigger the ‘tricks’ they experience.  Created by Rea McNamara and Nicholas A. Longstaff, future applications may include use in galleries, public spaces (such as night clubs), and to facilitate play amongst children for learning purposes.

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Collect. Connect. Create.  My Time is a set of designer collectibles that integrate with your computer via USB to express time in creative ways.  Each object has programmable characteristics specific to their function including the ability to:
Glow ambient light
Play your favourite music
Record your own sounds
Display custom text messages or the time graphically

Each module expresses time by behaving when and how you want it to.  Combine them together to schedule events that alert you with elegance and pizzazz, or that simply enhance the passage of time.  Whether you collect one or all, each object comes with a special function for you to program, customize and enjoy.  My Time was created by GUSTA, consisting of: Genevià¨ve Godin, Ulysses Castellanos, Simone Maurice, Tristen Brown, Andrew Mallis.  Future applications may include: commercial applications as mass produced collectable designer toys for home and office.

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Challenge yourself, challenge your friends…And make a difference!  greenwave is a Facebook application for people who care about the environment and are ready to make a change in their lifestyles.  Users team up with their friends and commit to taking on environmentally friendly challenges together.  Week long challenges range from taking home fewer plastic bags, to leaving excess packaging at the store, to turning off more lights and electricity hogging equipment, and hanging up the keys to the car.  greenwave users have fun cheering their friends on as they learn how to change their daily habits and build a greener lifestyle.  Created by Elliot Woolner, Zan Chandler and Sharon Saporta, future applications may include: online community activism, eco-friendly messaging and partnerships with environmental organizations.

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Any relationship requires consistent and meaningful communication to blossom into a truly loving connection.  Nowhere is this more true than in the engagement between a grandparent and a grandchild, especially when distance divides them.  Gaku is a one-to-one communication tool that provides a meaningful space to share photos, video, and audio with loved ones across distances, specifically between grandparents and their grandchildren.  Gaku allows for the direct sharing of images, along with an embedded audio message that provides the story behind the picture.  Sharing moments big and small, old and new, preserving generations of wisdom and imagination, Gaku creates an essential inter-generational archive that will be cherished.  Created by: Patrick Dinnen, Deiren Masterson, Jefferson Wright, Angella Mackey.