On Saturday night Christian and I walked over to the Artscape Wychwood Barns on Christie st. to catch a sound performance by animator Pierre Hebert and musician Stefan Smulovitz. The performance was part of the SOUNDplay Festival, put on by New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) and it also included a screening of recent short animation works from Toronto artists under the title Locavore.
The space was lovely and the sound, as you can imagine, was impeccable. We saw some really creative and curious animation shorts and were sensually overwhelmed by the live animation and sound improvisation that were part of the performance. It was a small room with around 20 people in attendance. We were surrounded by speakers and enveloped by digitally processed nature sounds and live viola squeals, clicks, and notes. On a projected screen, Hebert displayed his live animation drawings and on occasion he would run over to an old projector and make scratches in the film reel to create dancing lines of light over top of his digital creations. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves but felt some tension between the frontal display of the animation and the surrounding environmental atmosphere of the sound.
This was my first visit to the Artscape Wychwood Barns, and I've been wanting to see it since it opened in November of last year. We'll have to go back for a daylight inspection of the building and grounds, but what we did see we really enjoyed. We almost walked into a wedding that was taking place inside, but eventually found our way to Loop Studio Centre for Lively Arts space. Here's a video with architect Joe Lobko speaking about the Wychwood Barns project.
We'll be checking out some of the other offerings of New Adventures in Sound Art soon. Here are some shots of the Barns.
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