i decided to clean my room

if you read my last post it’s a great explanation for my action

View a series of photos that I took after my day-long chore that I feel proud of

Filed under: creativity, design, life, photography, student life

Bloorcourt Village Festival

I am taking a Think Tank 3: Action class here at OCAD with Bruce Hinds in conjuction with Lewis Nicholson’s class working on the same target. Our class’s project is about making a difference in a community and the community we are working with is Bloorcourt in Toronto (from Bloor & Christie to Bloor & Dufferin). The neighbourhood needs revitalization. It is a targeted neighbourhood that needs improvement and a group of city workers / volunteers in the area assemble the Business Improvement Association (BIA) in Toronto. Keith Rushton’s Think Tank class last year got a great deal of recognition for what they did with Ward19 and the solution they presented to the City of Toronto was what has gotten OCAD a lot more involved with the City; they want our thinking to solve their problems.

The third week of class we had members of the BIA come in and we had a panel discussion on what the problems and issues were in the neighbourhood. We then all wrote a response to that meeting and started discussing possibilities for our approach to the project. I must say…this is what I love doing. I love listening, observing, discussing, coming up with ideas, researching then discussing more and coming up with more ideas and loop loop loop. We traveled to the site many times, took photos, and talked some more. The neighbourhood has many great qualities to it: 3 parks (one of which is Christie Pits: one of the largest most active parks in the city), local residential community, lots of ethnically authentic stores and restaurants, lots of diversity, full of artists and inarguably full of potential. The downsides are just like other downsides of a neighbourhood in demise which includes empty storefronts, drug dealing, bad lighting, no visual interest…basically nothing that really puts an identity to the neighbourhood to make it a destination.

We are about to change all of that.

We had a meeting that we had prepared a presentation for yesterday first with the City in the morning and then with the BIA in the evening. They both went exceptionally well and the room was filled with so much energy and excitement.

We ended the presentation with this:

“We propose to design a plan for holding a (possibly annual) festival event using the street and Christie Pits Park. The festival’s engagements and activities will be entirely based on the collaborations we make with local places including highschools, elementary schools, community centres, restaurants as well as current and former residents.

We intend to hold discussions, create excitement, document submitted ideas and creative input, and feature the results in a gallery/studio within Bloorcourt to encourage the revitalization of the neighbourhood and establish a genuine and visible vision
with a unified identity for the BIA of Bloorcourt Village.”

They are so excited and so are we. This is going to be such a fun project and you bet it’s going to hit the press; and it’s going to take it by storm.

Watch out OCAD and Toronto…here comes Think Tank.

Filed under: activism, art, bloorcourt, city, community, creativity, design, humanity, life, photography, school, student life

Henri Cartier-Bresson

This is an inspiring interview with a photography legend.
I feel so connected to every word he says. His perspective on life and his achievements and experiences throughout his life are very touching for me. I value everything he says.

Filed under: photography

incredible future for photo viewing

“Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth (based on Seadragon technology) creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar. “Perhaps the most amazing demo I’ve seen this year,” wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007. Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.” TED.com

view the video on this amazing innovation

Filed under: design, photography