Nestled within the framework of the Department of Architectural Science at Ryerson, the contributors and talents that compose [R]ED[U]X LAB fluctuate within its capacity to create an ever-evolving extrospective engine.

Rooted in a culture of design inquiry and innovation, [R]ED[U]X LAB’s transient contributors are nevertheless bound by the task of pursuing the intersection between defining a contemporary design standard and the use of visionary technologies and media to inform this process and its product.

[R]ED[U]X LAB’s current pursuits include a room installation for Come Up To My Room 2012, a mobile device application that exposes layers of textual and graphical information about Toronto landmarks using augmented reality, and a yearly repertoire investigating rapid prototyping technologies in the realm of industrial design.
ryearchdesignlab.blogspot.com

MIRRORED ROOM WITH SHINY SPINNING THINGS from Sam Mogelonsky on Vimeo.

Looking up at the installation from underneath

University of Toronto Architecture students Matthew Blunderfield and Skanda Lin talk about their installation Firmament, displayed at CUTMR. Firmament comments on the technological obsolescence and disposable nature of the virtual world in which we live. It reflects on the hard costs of an increasingly digital culture.

The installation is sponsored, in part, by Ontario Electronic Stewardship (OES). OES addresses Ontario’s e-waste challenge by overseeing the responsible reuse and recycling of end-of-life electronics through a network of drop-off site across the province. To find out more, visit: recycleyourelectronics.ca

Skanda Lin & Matthew Blunderfield

The Love Design Party is the free, all night party where we celebrate our love of design. Come Up To My Room and the Gladstone Hotel host all the alternative, indie designers from the city and their enthusiasts at this no-nonsense dance-a-thon.

2012 Love Design Party – Sat, Jan 28, 2012 – Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West
Featuring the Mix Mastery of DJ’s Joe Blow and Denise Benson.

Entrance installation by Roland Ulfig and John Mestito

Second floor lobby installation by Interstice Studio; with Wes Wilson and Matthew Peddie’s installation beyond

vÆry Studio’s fabric scrims taking shape

WE-3′s innovative use of paper strips … to be animated soon …

Formed by an association of several ‘offsite’ shows, all of our exhibitions and events feature and promote the best in new, Canadian practices – not only the art and design within each show, but also the ways they are organized, curated and produced.

TO DO is committed to promoting top-notch exhibitions and events during Toronto design week. Our web and printed map, social media, and iPhone App, provides the public and media with up-to-date information about participating exhibitions and events. In this way, TO DO also operates as a resource and guide for accessing great art and design.

Room 201: Wendy W Fok’s work getting unpacked and painted

After a 30 hour journey from Korea, Hyungshin Hwang starts to maticulously assemble his Art Bar installation

Room 202: Gareth Bate explaining his process to Gladstone exhibitions coordinator Britt Welter-Nolan (not featured)

Room 204: uA makes good use of their room’s extra spaces

Room 205: [R]ED[U]X LAB diligently leveling…something

Void Engineering sets up in the alcove

Room 207: merk! & their many ladders

Room 210: Two-thirds of the WE-3 team take a needed break

If you missed the unofficial launch of this year’s TO DO festival brochure (with handy map and event listings), be sure to keep your eyes out for it all of the participating sites.

Thanks to Trevor Embury from aftermodern.lab for crafting this awesome piece of ephemera.

Now in its second year, this fellow TO DO-er, is an annual exhibit of new work by female, Canadian designers, curated by Katherine Morley, Erin McCutcheon and Ange-line Tetrault. It will be presented in January 2012, at the Bev Hisey Studio (1066 Dundas St. W., at Shaw). The exhibition will feature a wide range of media (ceramic, textile, furniture, product design, illustration and more) that will examine and express the word “capacity” as it relates to the role of women in the field of design.

“CAPACITY” was conceived of in 2010, while Katherine Morley and Erin McCutcheon were discussing an upcoming local design event, and looking at the names of the designers who’d been invited to participate. Not only were there no women designers on the roster, the organizers were not even aware of their omission, when it was brought to their attention. Not long afterward, they launched an informal poll asking people to name any women designers they could. To their shock and dismay, many couldn’t list any at all, and only a few managed to repeat one or two names. At that moment, Morley and McCutcheon knew it was imperative to do something to raise the profile of Canadian women designers, and that they were the ones to do it.

The inaugural “CAPACITY” exhibit garnered much critical praise and press coverage, and attracted a large number of attendees both within and outside of the design community. The curatorial team was extremely honoured to be invited to re-exhibit “CAPACITY” at the Design Exchange in August 2011; as well, McCutcheon was invited to exhibit her individual “CAPACITY” project at the RH Gallery in New York, alongside other contemporary ceramic artists, including Jeff Koons.

The success of “CAPACITY” 2011 reinforced the importance of giving a voice to Canadian women in design, and the Curators have vowed to make it an annual event. In its second year, Morley and McCutcheon are excited to announce the addition of Ange-line Tetrault as Assistant Curator.

capacitytoronto.com

Image of Free City Paper project, provided by JP King

Saturday, January 28 – 11am to 1pm – Gladstone Ballroom

Since 2009, CUTMR has hosted a series of talks by artists and designers.  Our first talk, The Origin of the Designer!, featured talks by participating artists and designers Andra Hayward, Andrew MacDonald, Jeremy Hatch, Studio Junction and Derrick Hodgson, as they tried to answer big questions about bringing themselves into designer “existence” and surviving in the field.  In 2010, Thrive Design for 100%! explored how to bring design to 100% of the community, so that everyone can have access to good design. Last year, CUTMR Design Talks asked the organizer’s of Toronto Design Offsite (TO DO) shows: What to do? Representatives from MADE at HOME, Capacity, Tools and CUTMR reflect on this question, anticipating what’s next in Toronto design, design communities, exhibition making, collaboration, and more.

The theme of this year’s design talks, Let’s Talk, is DISPOSABILITY. Taken in its broadest, strictest, object-oriented or ephemeral sense, these talks explore disposable, ubiquitous objects and the reactionary repurposing of such objects, while also investigating abstracted notions of disposability.

Speakers:

Kerri Flannigan - The After Party: Coming of Age Stories

WE-3 - Hoarding Unpacked

LeuWebb Projects - Film, Vinyl and Paper – Books Unbound

Wendy W Fok - CRAFT // Resilient Production

Sean Martindale - Politics, Challenges and Opportunities

Jp King - Free City Paper: If You Want To Be Rich Tomorrow Buy A Landfill Today

Click here for more information about the speakers/topics

January 25, 2012 – 6:30pm – 8:30pm at the DX, 234 Bay Street

20 makers from various design disciplines are each given 5 minutes to walk through a single project from conception to presentation.

Mark Buchner of Compass360 || Antoine Morris of The Practice of Everyday Design || Hoi-An Tang of Mehoi || Vesna Jocic of Elliott Jocic || Joey Suriano ||Steven Beites & Christian Joakim of studio kimiis || Heidi Earnshaw || Robert Wu || Michal Maciej Bartosik || Clayton McMaster ||Naomi Aiko Yasui || Evan Bare of 608 Design || Jana Watson & Katrina Tompkins of Tinsel & Sawdust || Joshua Brassé of ideacious || Miles Keller of MKDA Industrial Design ||Noelle Hamlyn || Christopher Pandolifi & Simon Rabinyuk of Department of Unusual Certainties || Zahra Ebrahim of archiTEXT

Pay What You Can – Recommended admission $10. Confirm attendance with rsvp@dx.org

Health is a focus of contemporary political debate in a moment of historically high anxiety, but are architects, urban designers and landscape architects seeking a new moral and political agenda within these concerns? Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture examines the complexity of today’s interrelated and emerging health problems juxtaposed with a variety of proposed architectural and urban solutions.

Pollen, pollution, toxic materials that make up the built environment, globalized industrial food production, reclaimed manufacturing landscapes, unbalanced population demographics, sedentary and indoor lifestyles, and efforts to fight death are becoming imperfect materials for architecture to explore. Emerging as trends like healthy cities, green buildings, fit cities, global cities, re-use cities, tailored cities, these strategies suggest inspired solutions, but could also address isolated concerns which privilege specific users or conditions. The focus on problems sometimes creates conflicting agendas and disregards the complexity of the urban fabric.

A book accompanying the exhibition and extending this research will be published in Spring 2012 by CCA with Lars Müller. Edited by Mirko Zardini and Giovanna Borasi, it includes essays by Carla Keirns, David Gissen, Hilary Sample, Linda Pollak, Deane Simpson, Margaret Campbell, Sarah Schrank, and Nan Ellin.

This exhibition is at the CCA from October 25, 2011 to April 15, 2012.

More information available here

The Starving Artists Collective presents:
THE ARTISTS' SOUP KITCHEN
FREE HOT LUNCHES FOR ARTISTS

FREE hot lunch for artists
A different menu each week
Mondays from 12-3pm
January 9 – February 13
The Raging Spoon Cafe
761 Queen Street West, Toronto
Wheelchair accessible space

January 9 – February 13, 2012: For six Monday afternoons this winter, artists are invited to a FREE HOT LUNCH at the ARTISTS' SOUP KITCHEN. Each week is hosted by different artists who will bring their creative practices to The ARTISTS' SOUP KITCHEN. Lunches include a Dr. Seuss homage by artist Ulysses Castellanos offering green eggs and ham on January 9 and mystic pizza crust divination readings by Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling on Janaury 16. Documentation from the ARTISTS' SOUP KITCHEN will be used to create a printed catalogue/recipe book that includes recipes, images from participating artists and critical writing about the project. The ARTISTS' SOUP KITCHEN is presented by the Starving Artists Collective: Catherine Clarke, Jess Dobkin and Stephanie Springgay.

SCHEDULE of Host Artists:

Monday, January 9: Ulysses Castellanos
Monday, January 16: Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling
Monday, January 23: Tobaron Waxman
Monday, January 30: Natalyn Tremblay
Monday, February 6: Annie Cheung
Monday, February 13: Swintak

ABOUT The Artists' Soup Kitchen:
The Starving Artists Collective Artists' Soup Kitchen brings together gastronomical services, social need, and creative/artistic investigation into performance, art, and food. While acknowledging the extensive history of artist restaurants, the sensory experience of performance and food, and the collective experience of community kitchens, the Artists' Soup Kitchen examines the space between art and labor and addresses the myth of "the starving artist".

The project will take place on six Mondays during January and February 2012 at the Raging Spoon Café in Toronto. Artists have been invited to create work for the café environment, bringing their performance and/or social art practice to the space and merging it with the idea of cooking and feeding other community members/artists who will come to the café to eat, talk, and share. In the winter months when many artists are creating work in isolation and paid work is slow, the Artists' Soup Kitchen will provide a space for community, for people to see each other, and come together over a hot meal.

The project explores through cooking, food, and performance the concept of nourishment, both physical and relational. It is important that the kitchen become a performance-based art practice but likewise it is a space to feed each other, to nourish and offer support both bodily and professionally. The goal of the project is to use cooking, an artful, everyday experience, to empower the lives of people in urban environments and to deliver physical and mental health to communities. Through discussion, social bonding, and working in groups, participants are brought out of isolated routines and interact in new ways to activate their minds and bodies. The Artists' Soup Kitchen celebrates a highly social, lateral learning structure in which participants share their cooking skills and feed each other.

Made possible with support from the Toronto Arts Council and Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada.

For more information:
https://www.facebook.com/events/261043463949543
jessdobkin.com

Media Contact: Jess Dobkin 416-666-6220 jess@jessdobkin.com

Toronto, Ontario – 01/04/2012

This Winter, an unusual and extremely interactive exhibition promises to breath new life into the inundated space of the World Wide Web. Opening on February 1st, CrossTalk: Speech Acts and Interference in Networked Art is an experimental exhibition format that combines a virtual gallery with a real-time virtual critique. Featuring works of net art (art made on and disseminated through the Net) by Evan Roth, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo and Dina Kelberman, visitors to the site will be able to view each artist’s piece and at the same time participate in a live online discussion about their work via message board. The idea behind this unconventional model is to offer a way for the public to become part of the exhibition process through conversation, and also to provide a way for visitors from many different locations and backgrounds to connect and exchange ideas using art as the centrepiece.

Over the course of three days, February 1st through the 3rd, the public is invited to log on at www.crosstalkexhibition.com, view the artworks, register on the message board and participate in an open, unmoderated critique. Registering on the message board for the critique is free, easy and similar to interfaces that the majority of users will already be familiar with. To get the discussion going, an international group of six curators and critics, including former Institute of Contemporary Arts Head of Talks Helena Reckitt and Art Gallery of Ontario contemporary Canadian art curator Michelle Jacques have been invited to post their commentary on the artworks first. After their initial posts, those six curators and critics will stay active in the critique, but as equals to any other participant.

Every person who registers on the board will receive editing privileges, and have the same amount of control as any other person. This is an intentional move by the curator to hand the reigns over to the audience for a change, and to create the conditions for a true democracy amongst visitors. Just like a piece of software, the CrossTalk exhibition model sets up conditions and variables and lets its users determine the final product or outcome.

Lastly, CrossTalk is unique in the way its featured artworks are made. Each of the selected pieces use publicly available content from multiple other users on the Internet to generate how their respective looks. Dina Kelberman’s piece I’m Google uses Google’s Image Search as a continuously changing and evolving image-bank for constructing a visual poem. Evan Roth’s work Banners and Skyscrapers, culls over six hundred images from banner advertisements and collages them together to form a moving fabric of consumerist imagery. And, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo’s piece Tricolor v.2007 rakes Colombian online new sources, building the national flag in text that is laden with nationalist tone and flavour. In these different but related approaches, each work symbolizes a kind of interference in the large flow of culture and communication that the Internet represents. By collecting and reassembling the content of others to create new meanings, Kelberman Roth and Jaramillo turn the usership of the Net into a material itself.

More about the Artists:

Evan Roth (1978) is an established digital media artist and part-time professor at Parsons The New School for Design in New York. His body of work is diverse and often politicized, dealing with issues of authorship, appropriation and public space through a wide range of interrelated media and disciplines, from graffiti and illustrative typography to open source technology and net art. Evan received his bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Maryland and his MFA from the Communication, Design and Technology school at Parsons The New School for Design. After graduating Evan worked at the esteemed Eyebeam OpenLab as Research and Development Fellow from 2005–2006 and a Senior Fellow from 2006-2007. He was also a 2005 recipient of the grand prize Prix Nora Krea at the Norapolis International Multimedia Festival. Evan permanently resides in Paris with his wife.

< http://evan-roth.com >

Dina Kelberman (1979) is an American multimedia artist, web designer and playwright who is best known for her comic strips and illustrations serialized in the Baltimore City Paper, on the humour blog Mutant Funnies and on tinymixtapes.com. Kelberman’s comics are minimal but dynamic, and her characters strangely relatable and yet poignantly misanthropic. This duetting of disparate traits carries over into her net-based artwork where Dina curates the found photography and video of others to create a mapping of her own online-experiences. Dina earned her BFA in 2003 at Purchase College, State University of New York. She continues to live and work in Baltimore, Maryland.

< http://importantcomics.com > / < http://dinakelberman.com >

Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo (1974) is a Brooklyn-based Colombian digital artist, technologist and educator. Her work concentrates on reconfigurations and representations of time and space through media, and has been internationally exhibited and performed, including at Giacobetti Paul Gallery, HERE Arts (NYC), UCLA Hammer Museum (LA) and the Museums of Modern Art in Bogotá and Medellín (Colombia). Cynthia has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá) and a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications (ITP) from New York University. She is currently Assistant Professor of Integrated Design in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons The New School for Design and an active member of Madarts, an arts collective in Brooklyn, NY.

< http://www.cynthialawson.com >

More about the Curator:

CrossTalk: Speech Acts and Interference in Networked Art is curated, designed and programmed by Zach Pearl. It is the culmination of his thesis work for the anticipated receipt of a Masters of Fine Art in Criticism & Curatorial Practice this Spring from OCAD University. Zach has formal, interdisciplinary training in variety of fine art, performing art and design practices. He came into curating serendipitously through museum education and private gallery positions that served as the bread n’ butter of his early twenties. Currently, Zach’s curatorial focus is on the intersection between new media, relational aesthetics and community art practices. Accordingly, Zach has worked independently to curate a variety of projects that integrate aspects of each area for a range of venues, including the Gladstone Hotel, the Textile Museum of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Zach currently lives and works in Toronto, Ontario.