EXTRAORDINARY IDEAS UNLEASHED.

A one-night, city-wide festival celebrating academic research in Toronto.

5 April 2019 - cramtoronto.com

During this inaugural event, four of Toronto’s major academic institutions (York University, The University of Toronto, Ryerson University and OCAD University) collaborated with CBC Toronto to present a one-night research festival. Dedicated to promoting the exciting diversity of academic research happening in the city, all of these research partners spotlighted their “Research Rockstars” through free public programming. Similar to Nuit Blanche, viewers were invited to travel across the city to the various locations to participate in lectures, workshops, performances, art installations, and other presentations.

As a member of the organizing committee for York, I worked with an incredible team including Dr. Rebecca Pillai Riddell, Shawna Teper and Liz McMahan to showcase research by a brilliant group of researchers. Events included: Filipino dance performances by Patrick Alcedo, digital soundpainting concerts by Doug Van Nort, a film screening of “Listen to the Land” by Ceilia Haig-Brown, performances and talks by the Humans of Connections Project and the Regent Park School of Music, a lecture on the psychological impacts of low-gravity in space by Laurence Harris, and a lecture by Amro Zayed on bee hygiene. Over the course of the evening visitors were also able to drop into a series of looping art installations such as: a downloadable audio tour of the subway by Taien Ng-Chan, an interactive, self-generating VR ecosystem by Graham Wakefield, Alison Humphrey’s interactive, projection-mapping video game that helps viewers explore the effects of vaccine hesitancy, and Evan Light’s portable archive of Edward Snowden’s files in the “Snowden Archive-in-a-box”.