Nuit Blanche: Liquid Cohesion

Liquid Cohesion
Interactive Video Installation
Commerce Court Central Courtyard & Fountain
September 29th, 2012 @7pm
25 King Street West
(Access via Bay Street or Jordan Street)

The Commerce Court plaza water feature will be visually transformed into a utopian aquatic playground. A video loop composed of people swimming among marine life will be projected down onto the shallow circular pool surface creating an open-ended virtual aquarium. Designed in 1994 by Zeidler Architects, the Commerce Court plaza is a highly urban space nestled between Toronto‘s key financial district bank towers. The site-specific video projection will infuse a colourful and random whirlwind of nature as a counterpoint to the stark simplicity of the geometrically defined modernist courtyard. The video also takes cues from Derrick Hudson‘s nearby public art sculptures – a work that transposes a majestic elephant family onto the austere urban plaza.

The visual effect of Liquid Cohesion, an integration of human and aquatic forms, suggests a temporary suspension of the delineated boundaries between humans and the natural world. Building on artist Michael Alstad‘s ongoing engagement with urban space and public memory, the work integrates architecture and environment to pose an alternative history and meaning of the urban landscape, an imagined time and space beyond visible surroundings.

Special thanks to Paul Degner, Carolyn Hurren, Mark McMaster, Sasha Wentges, Elisha Holst, Serenity Hart, Camille Turner, Janet Hethrington, Michelle Breslin – Lost World Sounds, Corina Macdonald, Cathy Inouye, Shauna McCabe, Dan Surman, Umbereen Inayet, Simon Clemo, KD Thornton,  Leah Lazariuk and Phil Clemo