Long Winter
Long Winter Music and Arts Festival ↗ - Toronto, Canada (2016-2020)
Tea Base Collective, Harbourfront Centre, the Gladstone Hotel, Workman Arts, OCAD University, Venus Fest, Bedroomer, Trap Door, Pleasure Dome, Trinity Square Video, Lost is Found Collective, The Tranzac, ISO Radio, FSR Radio, True Connection, InterAccess, Club Quarantine, et al.
Toronto’s kaleidescopic, carnivalesque all-ages, pay-what-you-can multi-arts series. In four seasons, brought the organization through a critical period of growth: established a first arms-length Board of Directors and strategic planning process, helped formalize collective communication and programming processes; sourced 10+ new venue, program, and presenting partners when the fest lost its home base; initiated first-ever international projects and increased annual revenues and activity by over 400%. Successfully guided the organization into public operating funding and status. Presented over 1,200 artists and engaged audiences of over 20,000. Initiated first international and cross-sector programs, including collaborations with research (Ryerson, Université de Rouens), policy (City of Toronto), and real estate.
A More Beautiful Journey ↗
Intersection Festival, Music Gallery, City of Toronto ↗ - Toronto, Canada (2022-2023)
CREATIVE TEAM
Amy Gottung (co-creator, creative producer) + Joseph Shabason + Dan Werb (co-creators)
Sanjeet Takhar + David Dacks (project design + development - Music Gallery)
Soundways (geolocated XR audio software)
Karen Vanderborght (creative technologist)
Intersection Festival (presenter)
CURATOR PARTNERS
Arts Etobicoke
Regent Park School of Music
Council Fire Native Cultural Centre
SKETCH
RISE
Long Winter
The Remix Project
Canadian Music Centre
REGENT PARK NEIGHBOURHOOD SPONSOR
The Daniels Corporation
TECH PARTNERS
Ableton
Splice
PRESENTING AND PROMOTIONAL PARTNERS
City of Toronto
ArtworksxTO
TTC
JURY
Hugh Marsh
tUkU Mathews
Cadence Weapon
Alison Cameron
Mario Anzola
TTC, ArtworksxTO The Music Gallery, Regent Park School of Music, Council Fire, The Daniels Corporation, Taxi Agency, City of Toronto, Intersection Festival, Taxi Agency, Soundways, Collectif MU, The Daniels Corporation, The Music Gallery, The Remix Project, Regent Park School of Music, Council Fire Native Cultural Centre, SKETCH, Arts Etobicoke, RISE, Long Winter, Canadian Music Centre, Ableton
An historic XR (extended reality) audio installation to transform Toronto public transit, in honour of the centennial anniversary of the TTC.
Through a web-based mobile app, riders experience an eclectic mix of site-specific ambient songs, soundscapes, and scores for over 25 discrete stretches of TTC line – written by musicians from, and for, neighbourhoods spanning the breadth of the public transit grid. These sounds can be experienced through a web-based mobile app. Musical excerpts unfold generatively for listeners travelling across streetcar or bus routes. AMBJ offers new modes of encounter with our urban geography: simultaneously public and private, intimate and communal, and accessible to millions of daily riders across the TTC.
ARTISTS included:
Absolutely Free
birthday boy
Brodie West
Casey MQ
Chelsea Stewart
chiquitamagic
Debashis Sinha
Emissive
Felipe Sena
Jahmal Padmore
Korea Town Acid
Kind Mind
Nick Storring
OBUXUM
Prince Josh
Red Bear Singers
Stefana Fratila
+ more
Together Apart ↗
Toronto, Canada; Paris, France (September - November 2021)
Collectif MU, Collectif Ascidiacea, University of Ryerson (Faculty of Communication and Design), City of Paris, City of Toronto, French Consulate, Université de Rouens Music Ontario, Club Quarantine, Unit 2, Sou Sou, Strangewaves, FSR Radio, Gentrification Tax Action, Bunker 2, True Connection, ISO Radio, Not Dead Yet, The Shell Projects, Debaser, On Earth, Gendai, Making with Place, Xpace, Lula Lounge, Together Apart Research Conference, Music Ontario, InterAccess, Canadian Independent Music Association, Dundas West-Little Portugal BIA, St. Anne’s Anglican Church, The Garrison, Process, Studio AM, Réseau Map, Manifesto XXI
International DIY music and art festival , showcase, and conference co-presented by Long Winter and La Station. Sept 24 + 25 // Nov 26 + 27 Toronto, Ontario // Paris, France // Virtual Fieldgate Lot // St. Anne’s Anglican Church // Lula Lounge // Xpace // InterAccess Gallery Second instalment of a two-part, binational exchange: multi-arts festivals, conference, editorial, and industry events, co-produced and co-programmed by Collectif MU/La Station (Fr) and Long Winter (ON): September 20-21, 2019 (at La Station in Paris, France), and Sept 24-25 (Dundas West - Fieldgate Lot / The Garrison) and Nov 26-27 (St. Annes, Lula Lounge) An international conference on DIY scenes and spaces: Nov 27, based at Lula Lounge, St. Anne’s (651 Dufferin), and streamed internationally 2 nights of live shows and art installations on Dundas West (Fieldgate lot); all performances filmed for online showcase. 13 international, cross-sector panels and talks on issues of equity, DIY space, accessibility, networking, and more (Building and Sustaining DIY spaces, DIY outside the core, DIY across Ontario, Hip Hop & DIY, Building Trust & Advocacy for the DIY sector + much more) Over 9 free IRL workshops for local DIY organizers, artists, industry, and community members that included social mentorship lunches, technical workshops with free tools (Serato workshop with Freeza Chin, Ableton workshop for trans and female-identifying participants by Ciel, Touchdesigner integration of visuals x music workshop with Karl Skene), and practical, community-building workshops (co-visioning future spaces with It’s OK*, Budgeting for your DIY event with On Earth, Funding your project with Josephine Cruz, ISO Radio, et al.) B2Bs for labels, promoters, tour bookers, and music agents – included local workshops as well as panels and keynotes Offered in parallel to an academic symposium (not included in our activity / budget), co-presented with Ryerson Faculty of Communication and…
Mini-docs - neighbourhood spotlights: A More Beautiful Journey
(2023)
DOP/Editor: Adam Seward | Tomorrow Night Films; PA/1st AC: Callum Kelley @vhsdeath8; AMBJ Marketing/Comms: Kat Cooper
Kat Cooper (communications)
Commissioned, produced and co-directed three quick digital features on Toronto artists and their site-specific work of the 2023 AR sound project for public transit.
OBUXUM - Jane & Finch
Red Bear Singers - Regent Park
Felipe Sena - Dufferin
Long Winter Paris
Long Winter (Toronto, Can), La Station Gare des Mines (Paris, Fr) - Paris, France (September 2019)
Long Winter, La Stations - Gare des Mines, Collectif MU
Le Bureau Export, La Gaîté Lyrique, French Consultate
With Collectif MU at La Station (Paris, France), co-presented a two-day festival and music industry conference, bringing 40+ Toronto-area artists and industry to Paris: an eclectic roster of under-represented, high-potential talent. Presented an accompanying France-Canada DIY music industry conference at La Gaîté Lyrique.
JESSICA93 • FUCKED UP • NEW FRIES • BUDDY RECORDS • PHÈDRE • ICE CREAM • CARIN KELLY • EDNA KING • JOEL EEL • DOOMSQUAD • HAVIAH MIGHTY • ATELIER CISEAUX • TELEPHONE EXPLOSION • OPALE • MATTHEW PROGRESS • SYLVERE • SCOTT HARDWARE • MYST MILANO. • DJ SUNDAE
Second Spring ↗
Julian Hou, Matt Smith, Fan Wu, SF Ho, Kasper Feyrer, Eddy Wang et al.
Ensemble, programming, project development
Never Grow Up / Ne Grandis Pas
KRAK XR, Le Labo ↗ - Toronto, ON (2021)
Karen Vanderborght, Gillian Bleckenhorst, Maxwell Lander, Omar David Rivero, Mehdi Cayenne
Do you remember your favourite games you liked to play as a kid? Never Grow Up celebrates traditional children’s games, enciting re-discovery through a series of whimsical immersive puzzles.
But you are not alone. A demanding sidekick cries for your attention and care. This creature will be your companion, antagonist, and nemesis. Time is limited as slime invades the scene while you solve the challenges.
After a stressful first round, shapeshifting wormholes give you a chance to replay the same scenes by changing roles, perspective and strategy.
Game interactions are a metaphor for the mechanics of childhood trauma. They demonstrate both the power (and corruptibility) of positions of control, as well as the dependence of mental health on compassionate relationships.
Changeup (hackathon/exhibition)
Toronto (September 2018)
Brian Wong, Jeff Van Harmelen, Oscar Chiu, Matt Raymond, Sherry Kennedy
Toronto Media Arts Centre, MUTEK (Montreal)
Pop-up tech and art jam, workshop series, and exhibition at Toronto Media Arts Centre. 50+ participants. 3-day creation period. 1 exhibition. ●○○●●○ MENTORS • PROJECT LEADS ●○○ | FLOATER MENTORS ●° Markus Heckmann / Derivative / #synth #audio-visual #cg #collaboration #installation ●° Sarah Friend / https://isthisa.com / #blockchain #interactive #generative ●° Nadine Lessio / #games #tech #design #installation ●° Protim Roy / #machine learning #music #art ●° Henry Faber / #community #VR #games ●° Jonathan Carroll / http://toughguymountain.com/ / #VR #interactive ●° Cat Bluemke / http://brandscape.club / #VR #interactive | PROJECT LEAD MENTORS °● Kyle Duffield + Daniele Hopkins / Electric Perfume °● Xavier Snelgrove / wxs.ca °● Izzie Colpitts-Campbell / Dames Making Games Toronto / https://dmg.to/ °● David Psutka / actactact.bandcamp.com °● Xuan Ye / a.pureapparat.us/g-a-r-d-e-n °● Trevor Blumas °● Julia Romanowski / www.juliaromanowski.com °● Monica Bialobrzeski / monicabialo.com/ °● Peter Rahul °● Projoy Roy °● Karl Skene / www.youngoffenders.co/artists/karl-skene/ #generative visuals #lighting design #interactive °● Greg Smith / HOLO °● Sherry Kennedy / HOLO °● Sarah Jane Mortimer °● Brian Wong / It’s Not U It’s Me | MC °● Zoe Daniels / writer/comedian / Hacker U | Speakers + Workshop Facilitators °● Tom Augur / Art+Science °● Xavier Snelgrove / https://wxs.ca ●° Sarah Friend / https://isthisa.com / #blockchain #interactive #generative °● Protim Roy | Adjudication °● Jeremy Bailey / Famous New Media Artist °● Adam Tindale / OCAD University °● Henry Faber / Gamma Space Collaborative Studio °● Daniele Hopkins + Kyle Duffield / Electric Perfume °● Anthea Foyer / InterAccess ●●○●○○○●●●○○○●○○●●●○○ PARTNERS ○○○ | PRESENTING ●• Toronto Media Arts Centre ●• MUTEK Montréal | CREATIVE •° Gamma Space Collaborative Studio •° Dames Making Games Toronto •° Charles Street Video •° Electric Perfume •° The Brandscape •° Gen Art Hack Party •° HOLO •° Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC) •° It’s Not U It’s Me •° Playnice&Co / www.letsplaynice.ca |…
Should I Be Scared of This?
Toronto, Canada (2017)
Jordan Foisy, Chris DePaul, Miles DePaul
Comedian Jordan Foisy lives in a scary place. We all do. It’s called The World. From rising sea levels to war to worrying about being a bad friend, there are simply too many fears to fit in the day. We need a better way to fear. Join Jordan as he interviews experts about all the things that freak him out so he can decide whether he should be scared of this.
Make 'em Laugh: The Funny Business of America
PBS/WNET - New York, New York (2007-2008)
Ghost Light Films, Thirteen / WNET (as Thirteen / WNET New York), Rhino Entertainment Company (in association with), BBC Cymru Wales (in association with), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) (2009) (USA) (TV), Yleisradio (YLE) (2010) (Finland) (TV)
In core production team of five, delivered six-hour broadcast documentary series on the history of American comedy. Managed stills research, placement, licensing; prepared interviews.
A-Site
KRAK XR - (2020)
Karen Vanderborght, Mandy Lam, David Psutka, et al.
With Creative Director, developed curriculum, curated team, generated funding for this interactive, multi-platform training toolkit for artists.
A-site’s hands-on workshops and interactive toolkit series introduce mobile augmented reality and AI as essential contemporary tools in the presentation and dissemination of artwork, and an accessible archive bridging past and future.
“Big tech” offers ubiquitous, accessible tools that abet digital access – but at costs in areas of autonomy, ethics, and finances - for artist, curator, and public. Do we really want a global conglomerate gatekeeper? Artists and artist-run institutions need their own tools, access, and knowledge to fully benefit from the implementation of AR and AI technologies. The A-site workshop and digital toolkit series put knowledge directly into the hands of artists.
Cutting-edge, custom AR and AI workshops for independent artists and small to mid-range arts organizations: introducing low-cost and free, open-source tools for the presentation and dissemination of multi-disciplinary artistic work.
AR or augmented reality technology creates opportunities around inclusivity, mobility, way-finding, and decision-making — both individual and collaborative. AI needs more input from artists. We explore AI as a co-creator and co-creator. Write with GPT-2, auto-generate music lyrics, compose music, or transform your voice into a violin.
Workshops are targeted to artists, curators, and arts presenters across a full range of disciplines. Topics explore tensions between open-source and models and proprietary concerns, creative constraints and augmentations of AI, and exhibition space-making possibilities of AR.
Song of Extinction
Luminato Festival, Music in the Barns - Toronto, Canada (2015)
Rose Bolton, composer / Marc de Guerre, filmmaker / Don McKay, poet. Performed by Music in the Barns Chamber Ensemble, Members of Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, VIVA! Youth Singers of Toronto, with Music Director John Hess.
World premiere of live score + film on 25-foot screen with 100+ member ensemble in the Hearn Generating Station at Toronto’s international Luminato arts Festival.
SONG OF EXTINCTION was a visual and sonic experience exploring the calamitous impact humans are having on the planet and its creatures. Featuring stunning large-scale projections and a tightly enmeshed score for live chamber orchestra, chamber choir, electronics, and youth chorus, SONG OF EXTINCTION interwove breathtaking moving images with live surround sound on the Hearn’s towering industrial space.
Charity ↗
National Film Board - (2021)
National Film Board of Canada, PFR (Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour and Ryan Ferko)
Production management for 360 video shoots for the National Film Board and MoCCA’s co-presentation of this interactive media art project.
North of Toronto, in the centre of a sprawling suburb sits an ornate, unfinished cathedral once surrounded by farmland. Built by a late mining mogul, this structure is now encircled by newly built homes on streets named after members of his family, as well as his prize-winning Holstein cows.
The most famous of these cows was named Charity.
In July 2017, residents of this community awoke to find a chrome replica of Charity, double its original size, suspended on 25-foot tall stilts in the centre of a small crescent facing their homes.
In the cow’s reflection we witness a struggle between a municipal bureaucracy, a wealthy donor and an unsuspecting community, all forced to confront questions of how to represent the identity of a place.
Save the Cat! [working title]
Carma Productions / Miriam Carlsen, Director - Germany, Denmark, Iran (2023)
Pitch development support for this early-stage documentary about the ambitions and trials of a young, aspiring filmmaker in Iran. When, in the months preceding the uprisings, he decides to make an illegal action film depicting Iran as a mistreated cat, he unknowingly creates a strange allegory for what might become his own destiny in the months that follow. [In production]
Music in the Barns at the Great Hall
Music in the Barns and the Canadian Association for Theatre Research / Association Canadienne pour la Recherche Théâtrale
With Artistic Director, produced this extended, inter-media concert. An imaginative transformation of Toronto’s Great Hall, addressing urgent social and environmental issues with interactive installation, live chamber music, and politically-charged performance.
John Cage’s Lecture on the Weather, Michael Oesterle’s Daydream Mechanics, Becoming Sensor installation Room with Ayelen Liberona, filmmaker and dancer, Natasha Myers, anthropologist and dancer, Allison Cameron composer and field recordist, Rosina Kazi & Nicholas Murray of LAL, composers
Opus: Testing
Canadian Music Centre, Musica Reflecta, et al.
Co-programmed and produced series of community-driven composer/ensemble workshop series at Canadian Music Centre. Facilitated collaborations between composers and filmmakers, DJs, dancers, scientists, carillon towers, period ensembles, live electronics, traditional Chinese instruments, NASA field recordings (image and sound), and more. Co-presented interdisciplinary one-day collaborative intensive with Canadian Music Centre and Jumblies Theatre.
Noye's Fludde (opera)
Trinity St. Paul’s | VIVA! Youth Singers of Toronto | Kingsway Chamber Strings
Produced this unique rendering of Britten’s beloved opera with 100+ local performers: an eclectic mix of Toronto-area youth and amateur musicians alongside professional chamber orchestra and soloists. VIVA! Youth Singers, Kingsway Chamber Strings, Trinity-St. Paul’s, et al.
Florentine Films
New York, New York (2008)
Buddy Squires, Kerstin Park-Labella
Assisted co-director/producer team in organizing footage and shaping an early narrative for a project-in-development about changing conditions and rising threats to unembedded war correspondents. The project follows photojournalist Yannis Behrakis in the aftermath of the death of his Reuters colleague Kurt Shork and AP cameraman Miguel Gil Moreno from a 2000 ambush in Sierra Leone. [Unreleased]
Nuville ↗
KRAK XR - Toronto, Canada (2021)
Karen Vanderborght and team
Museum of Toronto, Mammalian Diving Collective, Mandy Lam, Workman Arts, Cara Spooner, Tangled Art + Disability, et al.
In partnership with Creative Director Karen Vanderborght, generated funding (Canada Media Fund, Canada Council), exhibitions (Myseum of Toronto) and built an interdisciplinary team for the first phase of this experimental new media adventure.
Nuville is a real world augmented audio game that turns your urban walk into a sci-fi adventure. Guided by audio instructions, players perform whimsical urban interventions which they record and share via accessible social media platforms. Nuville’s story and AR experience are a continuous collaboration between humans and AI technology.
A “Gesamtkunstwerk” encompassing interactive performance, open AI, and urban design, the multiplayer sci-fi story is a casual XR game. Its creation, and first realizations, include collaborations with performance and parkour artists, sound artists, and a range of creative communities with unique urban perspectives.
Nuville’s dystopian technocratic narrative is inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s nouvelle vague classic Alphaville and the manga series Blame by Tsutomu Nihei. Interactions are inspired by books by Alain De Botton (Architecture of Happiness), cultural theorist Paul Virillio (City of Panic) and architect Pierre Thibault (Et si la beauté rendait heureux).
Planet Earth ↗
Dynamic Maestro
Dyan Machan, Johan de Meij, Jed Parker
Archival stills and footage research for this 50-minute visual accompaniment to a new symphony by Johan de Meij. For Director-Editor Jed Parker.
Treasures of the AGO: The Hulk ↗
KRAK XR, Art Gallery of Ontario - Toronto, Canada (2021-2022)
Priam Givord, Gillian McIntyre, Sherry Philips, Karen Vanderborght, et al.
The first proof-of-concept VR pilot to establish a museum standard for narration and immersive viewing in virtual reality. Presentation of the AGO’s permanent tall ships collection in virtual reality.
A multi-player, interactive narrative allows visitors and online viewers to immerse themselves in the history of the time and discover details usually hidden within the object on display. The VR format engages through active learning and stimulated imagination.