Arcade

A museum, gallery or science centre is often the first place many of us get to view and interact with displays that illuminate the wonders behind our everyday experience of the world. The Ontario Science Centre's Science Arcade is such a place. For almost four decades, it has engaged us hands-on in exhibits that inspire and compel us to see how science plays an integral part in our lives, etching memories of delight. It's fun. It's science. Can we come to see it as art? What new wonders might we see in that act?

Now, at Harbourfront Centre we bring the two seemingly opposite disciplines of art and science together to address those questions, and to explore a new arcade. Six artists have taken decommissioned exhibits that once sparked curiosity about science and transformed them using the lexicon of art. John Dickson, Panya Clark Espinal, Alex Geddie, Gordon Hicks, Annie MacDonell and Sally McKay are all artists with a keen interest in science and digital media. To further explore the correlation of disciplines, included in the exhibition is the fiction work The Transformed Man by science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer. The artistic transformations of Arcade transcend perceived barriers between art and science and create new focus. Arcade provides a holistic approach to science and art that appreciates its interdependence of ideas and creative arrangements.

Patrick Macaulay
Head of Visual Arts
Harbourfront Centre

Ana Klasnja
Senior Multimedia Producer
Ontario Science Centre

I hear and I forget
I see and I remember
I do and I understand
— Lao Tsu/Confucius

It's a fair bet that Lao Tsu would have loved the Science Arcade. Since 1969, the revolutionary concept behind the worldwide popularity of the Ontario Science Centre — "let visitors touch the exhibits" — has found expression in this playground for the mind and senses.

In the Science Arcade you can actively engage in learning by turning a crank, tracing a pattern, pushing a button, pedaling a bike, playing an instrument, perceiving optical illusions and, of course, making your hair stand on end.

For millions of visitors, the delights of the Science Arcade have been a spark for curiosity and a greater interest in science. And even as the Science Centre evolves — with visitors creating art and tackling real world challenges in new areas like the Weston Family Innovation Centre — the Science Arcade remains a source of inspiration.

Ontario Science Centre origin: Bicycle Generator
Mixed media

Bubble is an inflatable structure which I occupy. From within, I ride the stationary bicycle which powers the fan which keeps Bubble blown up. I also intend to get some work done while occupying Bubble. Viewers are welcome to visit me, one at a time, and keep me company and, should they wish, assist me in generating power. Should we be able to sustain this perhaps we can float for a while and see to making a little beauty of some other kind.

Panya Clark Espinal is a Toronto-based multi-media sculpture installation artist. Upon graduating from OCA in 1988 she was awarded the Governor General's Medal. She has had solo exhibitions at the AGO, the National gallery of Canada, the Toronto Sculpture Garden, Oakville Galleries and the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, among others. In 2006 she collaborated with Crystal Mowry in leading The Terrarium Project, a Fresh Ground new works initiative at Harbourfront Centre.

Ontario Science Centre origin: Spiral Tunnels Diorama
Mixed media

Mountain subtly shifts the focus away from the model railroad, with its complex net-work of tunnels, to the sublime and indifferent landscape. The train tracks are in a state of disrepair, obstructed by rock slides, and fallen trees. New growth replaces the old, bright and fresh beside the skeletons of the dead. The viewer's point of view has also shifted: from an idealized birds-eye view to a vantage point of a small and insignificant creature looking up.

John Dickson is a Toronto-based artist whose kinetic sculptures and installations explore humanity's tenuous relationship with the natural world. His interest in exhibiting work in non-gallery situations has led to his involvement with collective projects such as Nether Mind, Persona Volare and hic, and out-door venues like THE TREE MUSEUM. He has shown internationally in the Czech Republic, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Paris, France.

personavolare.com

Ontario Science Centre origin: Player Piano
Mixed media

Feedback Piano is a drastically stripped-down player piano. The automatic playing mechanism and a portion of the regular playing mechanism have been removed, and the regular hammers-on-strings method of creating vibrations has been replaced with a semi-conscious system of electromagnets, forcing piano players of all skill levels to return to the moment of learning how to play from scratch.

Alex Geddie is a Toronto sound artist, composer and performer interested in old-timey instruments, the weather, and baseball on the radio.

Gordon Hicks, Whirl

Ontario Science Centre origin: Fibre Optics-Light and Sound
Oscilloscope, acrylic disk, laser, optics, audio speaker, video projector, electronics, computer, custom programming

Spinning the disk sets in motion an electronic drawing machine. Simple circular motions, originating with the disk, are combined by the machine to produce volatile drawings of surprising intricacy. An audio speaker presents the same drawing as sound.

Gordon Hicks is a Toronto-based artist whose work flirts with science and questions of how we know the world. He first visited the Ontario Science Centre during high school and remembers the Arcade very well. Hicks' work was last seen raining on passers-by at Nuit Blanche (2007) and in Neutrinos They Are Very Small, a collective show at the Agnes Etherington Centre, Kingston.

Ontario Science Centre origin: Whisper Dishes

At the base of each parabolic dish sits a pile of tape cassettes and a player. The user chooses and plays a sound from each pile. The dishes, positioned at either side of the gallery, project the sound towards a given point. When the viewer takes up the right position the two sounds merge into a single experience. Scenes, sounds, dialogues, room tones and events are layered together in whatever wonderful, nonsensical, revelatory combinations the user can come up with.

Annie MacDonell works with a number of different media. Lately, she's tempted to describe what she does as ‘installation' and just leave it at that. Recent shows include Modestly Spectacular, at Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Arts, Signals in the Dark at Blackwood Gallery, and Nuit Blanche 2007, which was a disaster.

anniemacdonell.ca

Ontario Science Centre origin: Phenakistoscope

In 1795, William Blake used his powerful inner vision to make a painting of Isaac Newton, a scientist who studied empirical phenomena, including optics. In this video, Newton is surrounded by animals borrowed from paintings by Edward Hicks (c.1830). Images emerge from the minds of the characters. These spinning animations are based on the phenakistoscope, a 19th century technology that employed the science of vision to create moving pictures. This version of the machine, however, is trying to reveal the dreams of other beings.

Sally McKay studies art and science. Her current research explores connections between the neurological discovery of mirror neurons and the cultural concept of mimesis. Recent works include Thicket 1: The Voyage, and Thicket 2: Stranded, part of an ongoing series created in collaboration with Von Bark.

sallymckay.ca

Ontario Science Centre origin: Phenakistoscope

In this personal essay, art and science collide in literature, in life, and on the silver screen, and each step in Sawyer's incisive story represents a transformation. In The Transformed Man, Sawyer proceeds via a series of seemingly unconnected dots as his thoughts, opinions, anecdotes, and asides come together in a catalogue of transitions. The common condition: that the new must inevitably become the old.

This literary component of the exhibition Arcade is presented in partnership by Authors at Harbourfront Centre and Visual Arts at Harbourfront Centre: part of an ongoing interdisciplinary focus.

The Transformed Man
by Robert J. Sawyer

Space, The Final Frontier ...
     I used to be called Robin. But when I was ten I discovered my legal name was Robert, so I switched. I was tired of getting invitations to join girls' skating teams.
     Back then, Mississauga was farmland. Now I live in a high-rise there. But you can still see one farm out my window; the guy refuses to sell.
     We science-fiction writers talk a lot about the singularity, a coming moment during which the rate of technological progress will asymptotically approach infinity, and—whoosh!—plain old human beings will be left far behind. Charles Stross, a writer I know, calls this “the Rapture of the nerds.” Charlie has recently started shaving his head.
     On an early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, guest star Stanley Kamel was supposed to say the word “asymptotically,” but he'd never heard of it, so he said “asymptomatically” instead. He died this year of a heart attack; he'd had no previous signs of heart disease.
     My favourite movie is 2001: A Space Odyssey. Arthur C. Clarke died this year, too. He lived long enough to see the actual 2001 come and go with none of the miracles he portrayed becoming reality.
     My editor claims science-fiction writers should never put dates in their books. “The future has a way of catching up with you,” he says. He has a Ph.D. in comparative medieval literature—so he should know.
     Battlestar Galactica used to be camp; now it's serious. Ditto, Batman.
     The Presidency of the United States used to be serious. Now it's camp.
     They remade Planet of the Apes. They shouldn't have.

Computers, The Ultimate Tools ...
     I did a talk recently in Second Life. My name in that virtual world is S.F. Writer. I have hair there.
     SFWRITER is also my license plate, but I don't drive. When I talk about the plate, I say, “Oh, the car vanity!” People younger than me don't get the pun.
     My Canada includes Quebec—but its license plates no longer call it La belle province. I can't remember what they say now.
     I went to the Yukon in the summer of 2007, on a writing retreat at Pierre Berton's old house. It had been renovated the previous winter by the Designer Guys. They put diaphanous curtains on the windows. Dawson City gets 21 hours of daylight in the summer, but the Designer Guys hadn't thought about that.
     I got to see the Northern Lights. The aurora changes moment by moment.

Biotech, The Last Challenge ...
     My father sold his vacation home last year. He'd had it since 1974. It was time, he said.
     I'd lost my virginity there.
     When I turned 40, I had a vasectomy. OHIP will pay for your vasectomy, and pay to have it reversed, and pay to give you another vasectomy. But they won't pay to have that one reversed, because, you know, that'd be frivolous.
     I had a mole removed from my cheek earlier this year. It wasn't cancerous or anything; I just didn't like it.
     I've had all my amalgam fillings replaced. What were they thinking, putting mercury in people's mouths?
     I got my degree in Radio and Television Arts in 1982. I can edit audiotape with a razor blade.
     When I went to Ryerson, it was called Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. Then it became Ryerson Polytechnic University. Now it's Ryerson University. But people still call it Rye High.
     After I graduated, Ryerson hired me to help teach TV production. My salary was $14,400 a year. Even then, it wasn't much.
     Six million dollars used to be a lot of money, though. You could buy a cyborg with it. But the bionic woman didn't cost quite six million. After all, said her boss, her parts were smaller. He always called her “babe.”
     I cringe when women today refer to themselves as “girls.” In the summer of 1980, I lived in Waterloo. The people I hung out with there always called Fischer-Hallman Road “Fischer-Hallperson.” No one does stuff like that anymore.
     Still, interstellar space used to be where no man has gone before. Now it's where no one has gone before.
     William Shatner's 1968 debut album—on which he mangles Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds—is called The Transformed Man. He won Emmy Awards for best supporting actor in 2004 and 2005, and was nominated again this year.

Nanotech, The Next Big Thing ...
     Ingrid Bergman calls Dooley Wilson “boy” in Casablanca, and no one cringes.
     The year I was born, Robert was the fifth-most-popular boy's name; now it's number 47. Robin has never cracked the top 100.
     My first freelance writing job was editing the CRTC license application for what became Vision TV, Canada's multifaith television channel. Back then, we called it the Canadian Interfaith Network, or “CIN” with a soft C; that pissed some people off.
     Used to be my books were shelved in stores next to those by Hilbert Schenck. Hilbert has disappeared; I have no idea what happened to him.
     NASA has a sister organization called NOAA: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The acronym is pronounced “Noah.” A government couldn't get away with a Biblical pun like that today, but everybody wants to know about the faith lives of presidential candidates. If Joe Biden becomes veep, he'll be the first-ever Roman Catholic to hold that post. Tempus fugit.
     Here in Canada, we used to have Pierre Trudeaus. Now we have Stephen Harpers.
     I collect plastic dinosaurs. My one criterion: they must have been accurate portrayals at the time they were made. Brontosaurus used to drag its tail; it doesn't now. And it's no longer Brontosaurus.
     Oh, and Pluto used to be a planet. It isn't anymore.
     Someday, the same thing will be said of Earth.

Robert J. Sawyer—dubbed the “dean of Canadian science fiction” by The Ottawa Citizen—is one of only seven writers in history (and the only Canadian) to win the SF field's top three awards for best novel of the year: the Hugo (which he won for Hominids), the Nebula (which he won for The Terminal Experiment), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which he won for Mindscan). His website is sfwriter.com.