Old Man Winter

With winter finally releasing its grip on Toronto, the last Long Winter music/art festival was held Saturday night in conjunction with CMF. As usual, a mix of visual arts, music, and indie video games were showcased.

Two art installation caught my eye. Video Portraits replay the last few seconds of its capture over a live feed so that you see a "time trail" of your actions. The time trail gets progressively shorter leading people to typically gesture maniacally to make a kaleidoscope of overlapping images. Others went in the opposite direction, slowing down their movement to stretch out the effect.

The second installation invariably put a smile on everyone. A tiny hot dog stand (called The Big Dog) was set up. The vendor has his/her head poking through, but they had to do their job by manipulating a puppet body. For a loonie, you can have them grill you a teensy hot dog and served in an itsy croissant bun. Even the condiments came in smurf-size jars and bottles.

In the main Hall, Emma McKenna had an early time slot. She sang with a quaver, sounding like Tori Amos on the high notes, folk/pop songs about California sunsets and unfaithful lovers. The Skeletones Four (members of Legato Vipers and The Magic) did funky pop with driving bass and extended solos. Burning Love played loud, loud punk.

In the conversation room, Petra Glynt played noisy sampled dance with tribal beats. Her pixelated projections made the white walls and windows resembled an 80s video game made life-sized. Kool Thing, from Berlin, came to entertain the crowd with catchy dance/pop driven by jangly guitar hooks,  metronomic synth, and pounding percussion. Cold Specks ended the night with some gothic folk/rock. Her voice was big and powerful, but the overzealous mix saturated the signal.