A few weeks ago I attended the first Technology in the Arts conference in Waterloo, Ont. It was an interesting mix of geeks, artists and cultural curators, all boning up on the latest innovations.
Some interesting sites to check out - such as how the Textile Museum has cloth artists creating virtual pieces… Or how the Group of Seven’s secret spots have been located online. Or how plague doctor puppets and feral robots are sniffing out pollution in our neighbourhoods. We even had a live performance of a Brahms waltz by pianist Alessandro Marangoni (as Benito Flores) from Italy via Second Life.
I was particularly interested in the new breed of ad hoc public art - graffiti, installations and guerilla art enabled by inexpensive technology. In one workshop we made our own LED throwies. In another we watched videos of “projection bombing“.
This sort of thing appeals to me on a bunch of levels - I like the gadgetry, and while I love the spontaneous creativity and wit that graffiti often generates, I don’t really care for the uglifying vandalism aspect of some graffiti. (It’s the reason I’d rather post my attempts at witticism here, instead of on bathroom stalls.)
The tipping point for me was last year’s “Gustav Mahler” tagging of Toronto’s east end. Like many, I was amused at first - the message was so incongruous with the message! - but when it irreparably defaced a public art mural on the side of my local community centre, I got seriously angry. Others did too, apparently.
There are some great exceptions, of course, and I remain a fan of Posterchild’s efforts here in Toronto.
And once in a while I must tip my hat to the truly creative graffiti artist. A while back, a colleague pointed me toward Muto - “An ambiguous animation painted on public walls”, which was created in Buenos Aires and Baden.
Got a corporate e-mail today with a delicious subject line:
Subject: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? shooting at CBC Toronto
Reading on, it’s about the reality show clogging up our elevators again. But I read this subject line and thought of possible answers: By calling the cops? Hiding under your desk? Wearing a bulletproof vest? Man! Maria shooting at CBC really could be dangerous!
Captured some strange lights with my digital camera last week…
Amoeboid UFOs? Not exactly. Actually it was just my kids with some dollar store glowsticks. They waved them around in a dark hallway, and by simply turning the camera flash off, this is what I ended up with.
Sort of neat, though, don’t you think? Best $2 we ever spent. Damned things glowed for two days, too.
Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 05-07-2008 | 12:05 AM
Posted in: Kids | photos | Comments (1)
I was fortunate enough to scrounge up a single ticket for last night’s Raptors playoff victory over the Orlando Magic (see my comments from last year’s playoffs here and here).
Here are 10 observations:
1. Only a the playoffs do I get to enjoy high-fiving a stranger.
2. People sing better when they wear the same shirt.
3. “Fuck you Turkoglu” is a pretty funny chant.
4. Those blonde chicks seem awfully surly for sweat moppers.
5. Watching Jason Kapono on defence is like watching my mom try to breakdance.
6. My new fave mascot iteration: Flasher Raptor!
7. Stan Van Gundy: 3 coronary events an hour for the past 10 years.
8. Message to Dance Pak: Two dances per game isn’t a job.
9. Facecloths make ineffective noisemakers.
10. Apparently there’s an NBA player called Gortat. Who knew?
Also at the game was my colleague and sometime sportswriter Paul Jay, who contributed five more notes from the gondola:
1. Those parachuted basketballs. Worst promotion ever: two were flung onto the court - using the chute as a sling-shot - once during the game. Threat of arrest soon followed.
2. Superman’s reaction to red (kryptonite)? Makes him crazy. Nice work on those free throws, Dwight.
3. Jason Kapono’s trade value two weeks ago versus today. Discuss.
4. Toronto has a unique ability to play intense defence. Y’know, once in a while.
5. All timeout entertainment should be banned during the playoffs. Especially anything involving children, contests or attempts at hilarity.
A miscellany of conversational snippets overheard in the Gorbould household this past week. Thing One is 6, Thing Two is 4.
—————–
Thing One: Dad, we need new markers.
Dad: We do?
Thing One: Yeah. These are out of marker juice.
—————–
Thing One: Hands up, who wishes they were Godzilla?
Dad: Me!
Thing Two, to Thing One: What about you?
Thing One: Nope.
Thing Two: Guess we’ll have to squash you, then.
—————–
Thing One, out of the blue: Ahhhhhhh!
Dad: What?
Thing One: I’m scared.
Dad: Of what?
Thing One: Spring.
—————–
Thing One: Dad, I need you to come to school tomorrow.
Dad: Why’s that?
Thing One: I need you on my squirrel catching team.
—————–
Dad: If you have children, what do you think you’ll name them?
Thing One: Cappuccino, and Streetcar.
Dad, to Thing Two: What will you call your kids?
Thing Two: Poo Poo, Pee Pee, and Bum-Bum Smell.
At this time of year you can’t help but stumble upon those “signs of spring” stories - you know, the crocuses peeping out, tulips in bloom, lovers going for strolls in the sunshine.
Let me tell you, there are precious few crocuses in downtown Toronto, and the lovers don’t stroll until it gets dark on Jarvis. So I did an informal poll of my colleagues, and here’s our tentative Urban Signs of Spring list. See if you agree, or if you can add any to the list:
A winter’s worth of dog turds and cigarette butts resurfaces from beneath the snow.
The good mangos reappear in the stalls in Chinatown.
Don Juan’s chip truck parks across the road for the first time. Don’s back (from Greece to grease.)
Jays home opener. Reporters say, once again, that this year they have a chance.
All the women on Queen St. suddenly wearing giant sunglasses.
Beer drinkers on sidewalk patios, wearing parkas.
Male pigeons start acting… twitterpated.
Rickshaws rides available. New runners, same ads for hot oil body massages.
The guy that delivers the water is already wearing shorts.
Building management discusses removing bike carcasses from around the perimeter.
I watch a lot of TV on mute these days - mostly when I’m trying not to wake the kids, sometimes when I just want some peace and quiet, and very rarely whilst enjoying a cold beverage at a public establishment. So I love the fact that new TVs all switch on closed captioning when they are muted, so I can follow along.
Except, of course, when the captioning seizes up, converts English into ASCII swearing (!@##$!#@$$!), scrolls too fast and nowhere near the person speaking, overlays the sports ticker or someone’s face, spells last names using phonics, or translates “you guys” as “you gays”. I can’t imagine what the hearing disabled have to put up with.
Fortunately, Joe Clark is doing something about it, and he’s here in livid colour. The brand new and admittedly garish CaptioningSucks.com is an attempt to get people talking about how bad TV captioning is, and to help develop a set of standards to make them better. It’s the offspring of Joe’s Open & Closed project, funded at least in part through micropatronage (see the hairless guy’s “indolence” badge way down there on my sidebar.)
Check out Joe’s Flickr site for some appalling examples of the myriad ways TV captioning can be made to suck. And then visit Open & Closed to see how it can be made better. @!#$!@#%%.
So I took my four-year-old to the Raptors game on Sunday, a 118-111 loss to the Hornets. She’s been to a couple of games, and always comes up with some great lines, as I blogged previously.
On the way home this time, she had an idea for overcoming Toronto’s losing streak:
Dad, I have a secret idea for the Raptors but don’t tell. We should tell them to practice 100 times! And then we tell the Hornets to practice only one time! And then the Raptors will win. Tee hee. And maybe because we teached them, the Raptors could even send us a thank you card!
Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 04-01-2008 | 12:04 AM
Posted in: Kids | Sports | Comments (0)
Since I’ve been working on it for more than a year, it seems appropriate that I should give just a wee plug to the shiny new CBC Digital Archives website.
Known among us archives types as simply “Phase II”, the new site has been completely redesigned from top to bottom - the first redesign in six years. Full details in the press release.
In some regards, the fact that the old site lasted six years is a testament to good design - hell, look at Google.com - a homepage designed by accident that has lasted for years.
Still, the old Archives site was getting creaky. In the YouTube era, people expect more video, and they expect it to be bigger than 240×180. And the new design fixed a few major limitations - bitty little graphics, the inability to properly house and showcase solo clips, no way to present classic CBC programs.
We’ve still got a few wrinkles to iron out (mostly pages that render too slowly, particularly in Internet Explorer) but overall I’m really pleased with the new design. I’d love to know what you think.
FYI, you can check out past iterations of the site at Archive.org’s Wayback Machine - an absolutely invaluable site, if you haven’t seen it.
On a similar note, I recently did some work with Joe Lawlor, CBC’s original webmaster, to archive the Archives site. I spend all day creating an archive of CBC Radio and CBC Television, but nobody archives CBC.ca.
So now we do. Using a $30 product called Offline Explorer, Joe and I regularly capture all of CBC.ca (well, most of it, not including media) to DVD. Not exactly high tech or professional, but I now have a catalogue of CBC.ca’s evolving site in a case on my desk.
I hope that one day the Archives site becomes trimedial - very few (if any?) corporations properly document their online development, and certainly not publicly.
As I found when I created the CBC.ca 10th anniversary site, even national broadcasters don’t keep copies of their online journalism.
Even today, websites tend to be seen as transient, disappearing into the past the moment they are published.
It reminds me of the early days of radio - broadcasts simply went out into the ether; why would anyone want to *keep* them? In fact, during the early years of the Second World War, CBC Radio recordings were etched on aluminum discs - which were melted down to make fighter planes as part of our contribution to the war effort.
But today, storage is (for all intents and purposes) free. We can, if we choose, keep all data, forever. The hard part is the planning.
Know any websites that catalogue their evolution? Please tell me about them - I’d love to check them out. And do poke around the new Archives site, and let me know what you think.
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