Nuit Blanche

From Saturday sunset to Sunday sunrise the streets of downtown Toronto were transformed into a contemporary art exhibit called Nuit Blanche. The term is, of course, French for "white night" and refers to the polar phenomenon of the sun not setting all night - a little ironic considering the time frame the event takes place, but hey. So we ventured out of our cozy little apartment to see the cultural sights of the big city. The problem is that Nuit Blanche has been outwitted by its own success. The streets were teeming with at least hundreds of thousands of people (even around 11:00 when we decided to call it an evening) and it was difficult to gain entry to the various exhibits - particularly the indoor ones. Basically you walk around and sudden random acts of art happen to you. There were four costumed characters on high stilts walking along Yonge street and weaving through the traffic on the street (sounds dangerous, but remember - there were a lot of people out and the cars weren't going anywhere too fast).

These stilters were bending down to peak their heads in restaurants to the amazement of patrons inside. There were drumming circles. There were floating lights and floating big orange balls. There was a simulated plane crash with supposed emergency people wandering around and excavating the site. There was reverb distorted violin and voice at the UT Faculty of Music. And then there was this:

It's not too often that you get to play with a subway train. And it's not too often that Lower Bay Station is open to the public. It was a station built under the current Bay Station several decades ago that didn't pan out the way the TTC expected, so today it's just used for training and so forth. The art here is that someone had recorded the subway sounds and distorted them computationally before playing them back from huge speakers placed inside the subway cars. There was also a mechanism to vibrate the ceiling which had bolt and rod rattles hanging from it. The result is a rumbling, chinkling, cacophonic symphony, with audible belches at the lower threshold of human hearing. The station is already said to be haunted and this eerie soundtrack was supposed to engender the paranormal, but instead there were too many patrons thronging around, keeping it real.
So that was our Saturday evening, in an artshell.