{"id":21622,"date":"2011-08-05T10:00:34","date_gmt":"2011-08-05T14:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=21622"},"modified":"2011-08-04T14:58:37","modified_gmt":"2011-08-04T18:58:37","slug":"new-spaces-playnation-with-the-department-of-unusual-certainties-dx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/08\/05\/new-spaces-playnation-with-the-department-of-unusual-certainties-dx\/","title":{"rendered":"New Spaces: Play>Nation with the Department of Unusual Certainties @ DX"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DXPlayNation\"<\/a>
A Mare Usque Ad Mare in 50 paces<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What if you could experience statistics and graphs spatially? I mean, really climb inside a well-made graphic chart and walk its clear proportions? It\u2019s a question that Ms. Frizzle could have asked of the adventurous children of The Magic School Bus, and it\u2019s a question that is explored with similar playfulness by the Department of Unusual Certainties (Brendan Cormier, Christopher Pandalfi and Simon Rabyniuk, currently Spacing Magazine contributors) in their first collaboration as innovators-in-residence at the Design Exchange. Play>Nation, the new exhibition on the 3rd<\/sup> Floor of the DX covers a great topic \u2013 exploring how geography is linked to the Canadian identity by playing with landscape, with history and with the symbols of Canadian outdoor culture. The Play>Nation curatorial team (Noa Bronstein, AnneMarie Minardi, Mark Scheibmayr and Katie Weber, with the DX Graphic Designer, Lisa Zych) is particularly interested in how it came to be that so many Canadian designers of outdoor recreation gear have attained world-class status. Chock full of iconic and innovative Canadian outdoors design, the items on display by themselves would be worth a look, but the DoUC\u2019s contribution to the exhibition design makes the show a truly exciting place to take a spatial frolic.<\/p>\n

DoUC created the \u201cPlay>Nation Playground\u201d by working with scale and proportion, putting into practice the exhibition\u2019s theme of physicality in order to trigger the deeper level of understanding that comes from a body\u2019s experience of a space. The DoUC\u2019s first step was to shrink Canada\u2019s massive territory to fit the floor area of the 3rd<\/sup> floor DX gallery, running a bright red strip of vinyl around the edge of the gallery floor with \u2018Canada 9 984 670 km2<\/sup>\u2019 showing at intervals. DoUC then used more brightly coloured vinyl-strip rectangles to measure out the total percentages of Canada\u2019s territory taken up by each of the country\u2019s geographic outdoor play sites: \u201cFresh Water\u201d (with sub-rectangles to show the total area of major lakes and of the Great Lakes), \u201cGlacial Ice Cover\u201d and \u201cMain Land\u201d, the ten biggest \u201cUrban Areas\u201d, \u201cLow Arctic Tundra\u201d and \u201cForest\u201d. Each block of floor space is shown in true proportion to the size of the country itself, or the total area of the gallery floor.<\/p>\n

\"PlayNation<\/a>
Legend for Play Nation's Playground released as exhibit teaser by DoUC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"2D<\/a>
Play>Nation\u2019s Playground, from the Play>Nation catalogue \u00a9 DoUC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The result is that the difference that size makes becomes apparent. \u00a0Geography on a national scale begins to be experienced like, well, your own back yard (except more fun and in vivid technicolour). A visitor to the exhibit walks around, and after a bit, starts to internalize that the city and space all around them – the huge urban grid of Toronto – is literally as big as a foot’s print in this shrunken man-made country-place. To make it even more of an immersive spatial experience, DoUC represents measurements of length on the lower section of the gallery\u2019s walls. Four parallel horizontal bars unfurl at the wall on the right hand side of the gallery entrance, simultaneously travelling the total scaled-down distance of the east and west \u201cCoastline\u201d, the nation\u2019s \u201cTrails\u201d, \u201cHighways\u201d, and the \u201cCanada-U.S.A. Border\u201d. Highway and trail segments are labeled further by the total length contained within each province. It\u2019s all like walking through a giant pop-up \u2018resources\u2019 page in an atlas, but with the bonus of getting to see historical, iconic and innovative design for the outdoors in this strangely abstract but physical environment.<\/p>\n

The DoUC\u2019s “Playground” design is integrated into the exhibit through the curators\u2019 choice of where to place displays \u2013 there’s some riffing on spatial representation with canoes in the \u2018Fresh Water\u2019 portion of the floor – and through the way that the abstract squares and bands of bright vinyl echo the iconic Hudson\u2019s Bay Company point blankets, on display in the \u201cShared Symbols, Values and Culture\u201d section of Play>Nation. Walking through DoUC\u2019s model of geographical concepts and Play>Nation\u2019s objects is a spatial experience worth having, that of a landscape of abstract and yet extremely physical exploration, which gets a person looking in new ways at how geography and activity influence each other to create how we live.<\/p>\n

Play>Nation will be on until October 2011, at the Design Exchange<\/a>, 234 Bay St. Admission is $10. DoUC also has a project on exhibit at Harbourfront Centre\u2019s Architecture Room until September 18th<\/sup>, 2011. It focuses on a study of Toronto\u2019s public space parkettes, and ways in which their design could be revitalized with meaning. You can find a free newsprint publication about that at the DX front desk or through the Department of Unusual Certainties\u2019 website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What if you could experience statistics and graphs spatially? I mean, really climb inside a well-made graphic chart and walk its clear proportions? It\u2019s a question that Ms. Frizzle could have asked of the adventurous children of The Magic School Bus, and it\u2019s a question that is explored with similar playfulness by the Department ofContinue reading “New Spaces: Play>Nation with the Department of Unusual Certainties @ DX”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[69,170],"tags":[18071,457,18074,18079,18070,18078,4300,2823,2243,17562,18075,18077,18073,18076,18072,19,391],"class_list":["post-21622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curiosities","category-maps","tag-brendan-cormier","tag-canada","tag-christopher-pandalfi","tag-department-of-unusual-certainties","tag-dx-gallery","tag-frizzle","tag-graphic-designer","tag-great-lakes","tag-harbourfront-centre","tag-hudsons-bay-company","tag-katie-weber","tag-lisa-zych","tag-mark-scheibmayr","tag-minardi","tag-simon-rabyniuk","tag-toronto","tag-usd"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNew Spaces: Play>Nation with the Department of Unusual Certainties @ DX - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/08\/05\/new-spaces-playnation-with-the-department-of-unusual-certainties-dx\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New Spaces: Play>Nation with the Department of Unusual Certainties @ DX - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What if you could experience statistics and graphs spatially? 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