Nuit Blanche 2010: some final thoughts

Considering it's only 5 years old, Nuit Blanche has certainly made an impression on Toronto. And just as we always, there's highlights and things to improve.

My Nuit Blanche 2010 blogposts:

• Nuit Blanche 2010: Part 1 > Fly By Night
• Nuit Blanche 2010: Part 2 > Here Is What Is or Saved by Lanois
• Nuit Blanche 2010: Part 3 > Until The Night Is Over

• Flickr - Nuit Blanche 2010 - the2scoops

Favourite installations:

The Task by Chris Shepherd proves to be one of the most fascinating projects I saw that night. A man stacks and unstacks cement blocks all night. It's not in the effort of building anything, but simply the task. Nothing will be built, nothing destroyed.

Big O by Žilvinas Kempinas. Like The Task, it was beautiful in its simple concept: a loop of magnetic tape precariously balanced between a series of fans. It wavers, it flows, but still remains aloft. It's like some simple game we played as children, growing anxious every time it touches the floor that the game will be over.

So what to improve on for next year? Well, there's the annual complaining about drunks and crowds, but not much can be changed about that: it's a public event. If it can't be changed at homecoming, it won't be changed much here.

For constructive criticism that's actually realistic, I found Torontoist had a good list of ideas to improve the event next year:

I liked their suggestion to close off Queen: closing Yonge was a new change for Nuit Blanche which I hope to see next year, but it's time to consider closing Queen Street to traffic from Church to Dufferin. With so much foot traffic going through, it was impossible for streetcars to get through. Close off Queen, make Dundas and King "streetcar only" and make the TTC free for the night.

It's all night, not late night: as in previous years, I found myself at 4am standing where an installation should have been, only to find they pulled up stakes and left. And some of the installations, such as Koerner Hall, were merely on auto-pilot with pre-recorded music playing on a player piano. If the event is marketed as "until sunrise", we'd count on the installations to still be there until sunrise. I especially admire installations which are designed to reach their climax at dawn.

Nuit Navigating: this was the first time using the Nuit Navigator on my iPhone. I stand by the hope that the Toronto International Film Festival adopt a similar app, but while I found the Navigator handy for planning, I wasn't using it as much that night aside from the occasional GPS check. Part of that was it didn't seem the app was compatible with the new multitasking OS for the iPhone, causing me to restart the app every time I used it - I can understand how that happened, probably not much time to update the program given the new system was a late summer release. But I found in order to access the "My Night" planner, I had to log in each and every time I started the app. If that kink can be worked out, all the better.

Another idea would be to integrate the My Night into the maps - show pins for all the installations, use a different colour for the installations corresponding to the My Night planner, and give us the ability to "check" off installations as we go.

Best advice learned from that night? If you intend to last the 12 hour event, stick to water and coffee, skip the energy drinks and alcohol. The latter two make you crash pretty hard - in previous years, around the 4am mark. Seeing a few installations and then taking a late dinner break also helped too.

Each year Nuit Blanche evolves, and they listen to public feedback. If you have some suggestions, be sure to let them know. Myself, I definitely will be diving into to next year.

Nuit Blanche 2010: Part 3 > Until The Night Is Over

Feeling re-energized by Daniel Lanois's performance, 3am seemed like a good time to visit the installations along Bloor Street in Zone A. One subway ride later, and we arrived at the Royal Conservatory of Music.

At the RCM and the lush lights of Aurora continues to draw audiences in (a5); calming
by the2scoops via iPhone at 10/3/2010 7:28:28 AM3:28 AM Sunday, October 03, 2010

The atrium of the Royal Conservatory of Music was filled with these remarkable creations, with calm waves of light and sound reacting to the crowds passing underneath. Aurora was created by Philip Beesley Architect Inc. as "a responsive forest of light". The mechanics of it looked fascinating, but what we found ourselves in was a technological Northern Lights as we were washed in strangely calming sounds.

We made our way to the auditorium of the Royal Conservatory of Music, hoping to find some live performance, but only to find a player piano on stage. It was the first of many disappointing installations that seemed to shut down before the sunrise. Some installations closed not by choice, such as Iskootāo, a performance in the heart of Yorkville that was reportedly ended after noise complaints from a neighbourhood condo. Some installations just seemed to pull up stakes early, such as KortuneFookie, which was nowhere to be found at 4:30am.

Finally got a look at Lower Bay Station. Sadly no Starbucks built yet
by the2scoops via iPhone at 10/3/2010 8:14:16 AM4:14 AM Sunday, October 03, 2010

One installation that was open and still drawing an audience was the Interactive landscape Dune set in Lower Bay Subway station. A relic of a 3-line subway plan that was never implemented (Wikipedia - Lower Bay Station), Lower Bay Station is seldom open to the general public. But for Nuit Blanche, it was opened up and turned into "an interactive landscape of light".

The lights resembled a wetland full of glowing bullrushes and flickered with each noise from the audience, but the real show was when the subway trains passed above through Bay Station.

Only our 2nd coffee of the night, the hopping the subway down to the TIFF Lightbox in Zone C
by the2scoops via iPhone at 4:46 AM Sunday, October 03, 2010

By 5am, the streets had taken on the air of post-apocalyptic zombie movie. Survivors staggered the streets, in search of the installations still open. Empty cans of energy drink piled into the gutters. As much as we wanted to check back in to some of the Zone C exhibits like Erik Satie’s Vexations (1893) and The Task, but we likely only had enough energy to take in one more stop. For us, our goal was to check out the brand new Bell Lightbox complex at King and John. By all reports, the new home to the Toronto International Film Festival was a stunning addition to Toronto, and I hadn't had a chance to see it yet.

The building was, as promised, a testament to film. We found ourselves in a beautiful, bright space, warmly greeted by the volunteers. We took a peek at the The Essential Cinema exhibit and grabbed a seat for some stunningly disturbed clips from their Grindbox! trailer screening (Make Them Die Slowly is a very messed up film that surely influenced the Saw series).

Nice to end the night with a singalong to Always Look On The Brightside of Life at c47 Singin' in the Dark, Sunday, October 03, 2010 6:02:24 AM via Twitter for iPhone

Shaking off the Grindbox, we sat down in the cinema that was home to Singin' in the Dark. Early in the night, a host was rowsing the crowd in a singalong to traditional movie musicals, and later more eclectic selections. By 6am, the audience was comfortable just taking in the clips, laughing and cheering the stranger selections. At the start, we had scenes from "Reservoir Dogs" and "Blue Velvet", charming clips from "500 Days of Summer" and "Almost Famous", and then just outright weird clips like "Clockwork Orange". To end the show, and the clip that finally got some singing from the crowd (or at least me), it was Always Look On The Bright Side of Life from "Life of Brian".

As we were leaving the Lightbox, a volunteer asked if we had seen the Atom Egoyan's 8 ½ Screens. It wasn't really on our radar, but was part of the exhibits marking the opening of the Lightbox. We told the volunteer no, and he in turn responded like we needed to catch the last helicopter out of Saigon. "It's your last chance, it closes tonight! Go, run to the elevator!!!!"

And you know, he was right, it was pretty spectacular. The cinema experience is inverted: from a projector mounted on the stage in front of the main screen, a key sequence from Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 is shown. It flickers out into the cinema seats where various screens in all shapes and forms are hung.

It was something very unique to see, and we would have missed out on something cool if we hadn't listened to the volunteer. We made sure to thank him for his enthusiastic directions on the way out.

Thanks to all for a terrific Nuit Blanche. And with the last notes and the first glow of sunrise, adieu
by the2scoops via iPhone at 6:49 AM Sunday, October 03, 2010

As the sky glowed with the pre-dawn, we passed through Nathan Phillips Square where Daniel Lanois was overseeing the teardown of his installation. Within an hour or so, the city would be restored to its normal state, and bleary eyed, despite a mixed bag of an evening, I absolutely look forward to the next year.

The morning was creeping up on us, and I was looking forward to taking advantage of a late checkout time from the Metropolitan Hotel, and all-day breakfast at a favourite diner.

I'll post a little wrap-up tomorrow with some final thoughts on Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2010.

Nuit Blanche 2010: Part 2 > Here Is What Is or Saved by Lanois

Part 1 of my Nuit Blanche night here

The hours between 11pm and midnight were not kind to us.

We fought our way north for the better part of an hour, browsing the Atrium on Bay and make it into Ryerson. By now the crowds were thick with drunken partiers, giving the night a bacchanalian flavour. And I don't mean that as a compliment. The streets were noticeably strewn with garbage, discarded samples from the corporate advertisers. The exhibits around Ryerson were, for the most part, underwhelming in scale and our Plan B falls apart when I couldn't find any sign of the shuttle to The Distillery District. All in all, about an hour and a half bogged down in the crowds, nothing "cool" seen, and the wind starting to flag from our sails.

But there's hope yet. We dove straight for two of the installations put on by well-known musicians. Sight Unseen was the more abstract of the two, from Lee Ranado of the band Sonic Youth and Leah Singer creating a fluid musical and visual landscape within the confines of the Old City Hall. Then it was on to Nathan Phillips Square.

Packed in at B1 Later At The Drive-in w/ Daniel Lanois & friends drawing us in by the2scoops via iPhone at 10/3/2010 4:58:59 AM12:58 AM Sunday, October 03, 2010

Daniel Lanois's installation Later That Night At The Drive-In turned Nathan Phillips Square into his personal canvas: screens and speakers of every shape and size filled transformed the square into a forest of sound, abstract video collages playing. We made our way to the small stage set up in the heart of the installation where we found the man himself at work. Every hour or so, Daniel Lanois and friends would play a few songs, their images projected onto the screens. It was like seeing him jam a house party that he invited a few thousand close friends to.

And now the cold quiet hours that tends to thin out the crowd to manageable levels
Sunday, October 03, 2010 2:03:43 AM via Twitter for iPhone

A highlight of the show was a gutsy performance from a brave salsa dancer on a cold night.

B1 Daniel Lanois just wrapped up another set, time to move north to Bloor

by the2scoops via iPhone at 2:48 AM Sunday, October 03, 2010

Nuit Blanche 2010: Part 1 > Fly By Night

Considering this is only its 5th year, Nuit Blanche has become a Toronto mainstay in a relatively short time. I think it's the romance of the concept: 12 hours from sunset to sunrise when the city is teeming with people until the wee hours, roaming the streets in search of art and spectacle. And like any romance, there's good (witnessing a city at play, seeing the gleam of discovery in people's eyes) and the bad (the drunks, navigating the crowds, not every installation connects with me). But every year, the streets are thriving and alive at 4am and I want to be a part of that.

This year I served as one of the Nuit Narrators for the event, sharing the night as I went. It proved to be a great motivator for staying out for the whole event. Also, it helped piece together the next afternoon after 4 hours sleep.

If you want a few tips for getting through the night: wear good walking shoes, dress in layers, and pack some supplies. On the supply side, packing light is good as you're on the move and need to maneuver through the crowds.

6:51pm all signed in at the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche centre at Yonge and Dundas. One of the changes this year was Yonge Street being closed to traffic from Bloor to Front Street, and it proved to be a highlight, walking down the middle of the road at 7pm. Pedestrians turned out in the thousands to take advantage of the festivities. Woe unto any drivers who didn't get the memo.

By 7:15PM I've met up with my partner in Nuit, Ms Rita, and we're off into the night. It takes a little while to come up with a plan of action: the challenges are 1) don't miss anything cool; and 2) avoid those areas that get clogged with crowds. You'll see later I forget about #2.

We decide to plunge south into Zone C, curated by Christof Migone. When the exhibition is named "SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO", how can I resist.

Auto Lamp, C1 shining into the night. Ms Rita wants to make it into a Lite Brite

by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 8:00:51 PM

7:45PM we reach Yonge and Queen and the sun's gone down. The twilight is all the better to take in Auto Lamp by Kim Adams.

A van turned into a landlocked lighthouse, it's skin punctured with holes and insides filled with light. It shines out into the night:



"The vehicle's consistency is compromised, it's barely there, it's more holes than whole. "

C2 scape with 6 and 7 sound installation sounds like it's stalking us, the sound of breathing altered into something menacing

by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 8:31:46 PM

We walk further and find ourselves at the Cloud Gardens on Richmond. We're drawn to the noise of Annie Onyi Cheung's installation "_scape with 6 and 7".

C14 The Task at 8:32pm moving bricks back and forth all night without building anything. An endurance test?

by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 8:34:25 PM

South of Adelaide we find one of the open call projects selected by the curator. The Task by Chris Shepherd proves to be one of the most fascinating projects I saw that night. A man stacks and unstacks cement blocks all night. It's not in the effort of building anything, but simply the task. Nothing will be built, nothing destroyed.

We talked with the artist, Chris Shepherd, about how the repetition of the task is a meditative thing, as much mental as physical. He found the murmer of the crowds akin to white noise, nice and comforting. Chris wasn't doing the task for a purpose, "I'm just doing it because I want to do it."

C13 Wait Until You See ... I can't spoil what's behind the curtain
by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 8:46:40 PM

As a perk of my role as Nuit Narrator, I was given a media pass that allowed us to bypass any lines and head straight in to an installation. At "Wait Until You See This", my "skip the line" media pass was my undoing. This installation was based on the idea of lining up, the anticipation. And when you line up for 5, 10, 30 minutes, and finally peek behind the curtain?

Well, I skipped the line and wait straight in, to see what everyone else would eventually see: nothing.

My reaction was amusement, but what would my reaction be if I had waited like the piece intended me to?

Wedged between two buildings, three enormous inflatable clown heads.

Creepy but satisfyingly held at a distance, stuck with no place to go. One of the most popularly photographed installations at Nuit Blanche.

C8 Endgame squishing your fears

by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 8:55:24 PM

C10 1850 where the waters of Lake Ont reached
by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 9:08:25 PM

At the southern tip of Zone C, we arrive at the point where Lake Ontario once reached. The water once stretched inland to Front. Those days are gone, but the shimmer of blue lights creates a ghost of that long gone time.

C9 Vexations the cycle continues song, sculpture, song ,sculpture
by the2scoops via iPhone at Saturday, October 02, 2010 9:18:16 PM

I seemed drawn to these installations themed around repetition and time. Vexations was a remarkable project. Built around a composition which instructs the player to play 840 repetitions, this installation had to accomplish the task in 12 hours. 2 pianists, 12 hours, each of the 840 repetitions printed on an individual sheets which, after playing, were taken and transformed into a paper sculpture.

The dancing clock of The Endless Pace (C7)

by the2scoops at Saturday, October 02, 2010 9:34:28 PM

In the Bay Adelaide Centre we found what was one of my favourite installations, Big O by Žilvinas Kempinas. Like The Task, it was beautiful in its simple concept: a loop of magnetic tape precariously balanced between a series of fans. It wavers, it flows, but still remains aloft. It's like some simple game we played as children, growing anxious every time it touches the floor that the game will be over.

Area around Ryerson is crowded, prob a good time to check out The Distillery District by the2scoops via iPhone at 12:16 AM Sunday, October 03, 2010

Greatly pleased by the pieces we found in Zone C, we take a break for food, and that's when we're struck by indecision: it's 10:30pm, either we head back into the main zones where it's likely the crowds are out, or head to one of the outlying areas like Liberty Village or The Distillery District. We decided to check out the exhibits around Ryerson University, which in retrospect was a wrong turn.

Nuit Blanche 2010: Nuit Narrating and Navigating

It's the 5th Annual Scotiabank Nuit Blanche tonight, with Toronto awash in public art and people from 7pm Saturday until 7am Sunday. As I have done for the 3 previous Nuit Blanche events, I'll be out and about. What's new this year is that I've been selected by the City of Toronto to be one of their Nuit Narrators, providing live updates, tweets, photos and commentary throughout the night. I'm one of 10 narrators, with all our content pulled up under the dedicated Nuit Narrator stream.

To follow the Nuit Narrator stream, either while you're on the streets or from home, go to:

http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/share

and my content will be streaming through the Nuit Narrators section.

I'll also be tweeting all night http://twitter.com/the2scoops so come check it out.



SHARING

You can be a part of the action to with the Nuit Nation stream. This is the moderated stream where the public provides the content from various avenues:

TWEET: use #snbTO (other Nuit events are happening around the world, so this is the hashtag to identify the Toronto event) and the tweet will enter the moderated stream

EMAIL: send messages and photos to share@scribblelive.com

LINK: share directly at http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/share

UPLOAD: send photos through the Night Navigator app

FOLLOW

Four ways to follow:

MOBILE: visit http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/share on your mobile device

APP: download the sweet little Night Navigator app for Blackberry, iPhone, and Android devices

ON SITE: check out the SHARE YOUR NIGHT screens set up at the Scotiabank Information Centres around the city tonight

AT HOME: during the event or the morning after, check out http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/share

Night Navigator App

I'm looking forward to using the terrific Night Navigator app on my iPhone tonight. It's a wonderful tool to enhance your night:

• Scan complete project details and public transit routes
• Locate the most active and closest projects
• Recommend your favourites with a "thumbs up"
• Find out which projects are creating a buzz
• Share Your Night and send real-time photos and comments
• View the photo gallery submissions
• Access My Night, your personal itinerary planner
• Vote for Scotiabank People's Choice and enter to win an iPad or pre-paid Visa card
  

Makes you with some other big Toronto events that have you running all over would get something like this. (Toronto International Film Festival, I'm looking at you.)

Nuit Blanche 2009

I neglected to put up my pictures on the blog last year, so here's the link to the my Flickr set:

Nuit Blanche 2009

http://www.flickr.com/photos/the2scoops/sets/72157622520445026/

Nuit Blanche 2008 Heart of a Saturday Night

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2008

Heart of a Saturday Night

(all photos by the2scoops/Jason Carlin - see something you like, drop a line)

6:45pm - Finished an 8 hour shift at work that dragged into 10 hours, leave the office and immediately hit Shopper's Drug Mart for supplies: Red Bull, trail mix, water, spare batteries for the camera. I'm determined to go as late as I can.

6:46pm - Curses! Left the flask of good rum at home. Now I have to rely on my scarf and gloves to keep me warm.

7:45pm - My companion for the night is The Doctor, who meets me for dinner. I applaud my common sense as I fully predict downing several Red Bulls, so makes sense to bring my own physician.

7:53pm - The Doc downs a drink. Looks like I'm looking after my own well being...

9:05pm - Finish dinner and hit the streets. Already the intersection at Queen and University is packed with people going everywhere. We follow the strategy to stick to the bigger public pieces until the crowds die down around midnight. The downtown core exhibits will be jammed.

9:17pm - Make it to the Stereoscope exhibition at Metro City Hall. The installation is by the German group Project Blinkenlights, who've placed lamps behind every window in the twin buildings of City Hall, wired into it, and turned the iconic building into a pixelated computer screen. The public gets to use controllers and cell phones to manipulate the screen. It's the type of large scale exhibit that I hope to see more of around Nuit Blanche - huge in ambition and the public can participate.

9:26pm - Oh look, they're using this miraculous contraption to play Pong.

9:46pm - Walk up University to see "Waterfall" by Katherine Harvey. Recyclable plastic waterbottles are woven into a net quilt to form a suspended waterfall.

While crowds pack the front of the exhibit, we check out the view from behind the falls.

10:00pm - We make our way across University of Toronto. Disappointed there isn't any big projects making use of all that space at the centre of campus. We make our way up to the Gardiner Ceramics Museum to browse a bit.

>

11:30 pm Hollander York Gallery in Yorkville is hosting Painting to The Beat with live music and artists at work.

Tucked at the back of the Hollander Gallery, we found this painting by Toronto's Bev Rodin. It's part of a Forest Light series, and she captures it beautifully. We take a few minutes and just take it in.

11:45pm - Circus of Dreams at the Metro Reference Library.

12:20am - Everyone seemed to get a shot of Into The Blue at the Eaton Centre.

1:20am - The Doc calls it a night, so I set out for Liberty Village at King St. and Dufferin Ave. I'm looking forward to exploring the neighborhood, a new area to Nuit Blanche. The area's exhibit is Beginning to See The Light, the title from a 1969 Velvet Underground song.

In addition to the clear connotation of daybreak, the phrase implies anticipation, hope, expectation, enlightenment and a gradual epiphany. The works in the show embody these ideas, employing a variety of strategies such as play, protest, agitation and resistance.

1:25am Imagine Peace by Yoko Ono.
Make a wish, tie it to a branch. So many wishes shining like cherry blossoms in the night.



1:39am I Promise It Will Always Be This Way, 2008
Jon Sasaki - Toronto, Canada

In a stadium, rock music plays and mascots entertain a crowd for a game that never comes. Fun and oddly energizing.

2:00am - I follow a crowd and stumble onto the 2am show for SMASH! Droppin' Stuff by The Custodians of Destruction. We're going to see trash getting trashed. Computer monitors, a Nintendo, office furniture, a microwave, a TV. You know the saying that goes "I don't know art, but I know what I like"? Well I liked this.

2:20am - Warm up with a coffee at Balzac's, or as Amy says phonetically, "Ball Sack".

2:36am Purified by Fire - Video loops of fire are rear projected onto the windows. Hypnotic and a sense that something is amiss, that we're seeing fire but no destruction, no sound, no smoke.

2:45am Overflow by Michel de Broin. In a former prison chapel in Liberty Village Park, Michel de Broin summons a waterfall to flow from a 3rd story window, with all the appropriate detritus and debris. Would have been stunning up close...

...but this was as close as we could get. Someone didn't get the memo on this being a public art event as the park was entirely fenced off and no one was allowed near the exhibit. Stupid stupid stupid decisions that make me angry. Left a bad taste in my mouth.

4:25 am - I've been at St James Cathedral at King and Church Street for about an hour now. I had really hoped to catch some of the performance aspects of Don Coyote & Quixotic, but I've hit the wall, nothing left in the tank. I've been sitting here, listening to organ music blasting and watching video installations. I'd hoped to make it to the next stage of the live performance around 5am, but I'm bagged. I get the subway and a cab, and get to bed by 5:30am

Should have managed one more Red Bull, because here's what I missed as around 5am, Quixotic built up to "a phantasmagoric roaming ritual" as "'La momma morta', (The Dead Mother), reveals herself in protest as a spectral divine" (video from Dear Toronto):

Count me in for next year - I just have to make sure I clear my day ahead of the night. We staggered out that night, in search of a city brought to life from dusk til dawn and teeming with art. We found that people really like things getting smashed, wishing, and finding beauty in the strangest places.

Two weeks until Nuit Blanche

It's that magical time of year when Nuit Blanche is upon us. The annual sunset to sunrise all night culture, arts, performance, and general cool stuff to see while vibrating on Red Bull festival is happening Saturday October 4th. It's all night, and all over the city from east to west, north to south. And did I mention free?



I had a blast last year, as evidenced by my bloggie photo essay The Night Starts Here - the2scoops . I managed to go from 10pm till 4:30am, so this year I'm going later and longer. Some of the more popular exhibits were pretty crowded during "tourist" hours from 9pm til 1am, but there's so much to see, it's easy to find something else to check out. Yorkville and Queen West got crowded, so I spent time in The Distillery District and University of Toronto until the crowds died down. TTC subway runs until 4am that night, so getting around is no problem. Transit day passes last all night, but sell out on the evening of the event (2 adults ride on one pass). Buy one ahead of time.

I suppose it's too much to hope that some of the exhibition streets are being closed to car traffic, more frequent TTC shuttles between sites, or Starbucks is offering free coffee from 1am - 4am (okay that last one isn't so plausible)

Official Nuit Blanche website with schedules

Nuit Blanche 12:09am The Blue Room

Nuit Blanche 12:09am
Originally uploaded by the2scoops

I've been getting some interest in this particular picture I took at Nuit Blanche, so I thought I'd re-post a larger version.

The Blue Room at Toronto Reference Library

art à la carte
Group exhibition

Coinciding with its 30th anniversary, the Toronto Reference Library transforms into a space of discovery, art and culture. Unleash your imagination among installations from the Library, AGO, Gardiner Museum, Textile Museum of Canada and others - all colliding in one interactive space.

Nuit Blanche pictures - The Night Starts Here

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2007

The Night Starts Here

(all photos by the2scoops/Jason Carlin)

10:30 pm - Meet up with Kay and we start at Charles Street at the top of the University of Toronto campus. The Canard Development Group is a concept of a development company office, but all I saw was a canvas roof suspended by balloons. It was a beautiful and strange thing to find floating over campus. "Strange" and "beautiful" would be the theme of the night.

11:30 pm Hollander York Gallery in Yorkville for Progression: Painting and Jazz


Midnight: The "art à la carte" all-nighter at the Metro Reference Library.

12:30 am Noite De Sao Joao: under a laneway of star flags, Brazillian field recordings immerse you in the Night of St. John


1:30 am The Distillery District where it wasn’t as packed as Queen or Yorkville. The site was lively with nightlife as many of the artists who operate out of the area opened their doors to the night. The glass sculptures by David Chihuly on display in the Sandra Ainsley Gallery are some of my favourite things.

2:00 am - The highlight: Dance Ontario presenting a live performance of the Michael Jackson "Thriller" dance number.

The crowd cheered them on as they thrilled into the night.

3:30 am – Ontario College of Art and Design had a number of works and installations on display

Lorena Salomé’s Closeness embeds autonomous technologies inside kinetic sculptures to probe temporality, randomness and mutual destruction

The view from the 6th floor of the OCAD structure, looking west on the city.

Some of the art on display at OCAD

4:30 am – After strolling through Grange Park behind OCAD we popped in to catch the last few minutes of the Theatre of Ephemeral Music in the Music Gallery. We’re in a church, with a guitarist, pianist, DJ’s and multimedia artists are mashing together in a mellow, trance-like way. The mood is relaxed, the visuals hypnotic, and the music otherworldly. A perfect end to the night.

Theatre of Ephemeral Music in the Music Gallery

5:00 am – Time to call it a Nuit. Off to catch the subway to bed.