Final forecast: Watch out for Fairweather Friends

Mix of sun and cloud, becoming cloudy after midnight.

Thank you Tara Cooper and Terry O'Neill!

Transformation Booth metamorphosis complete

As of 6 pm, Friday, May 25, the booth at Spadina Crescent Circle has been left to its original skeletal design.

The forecast for Friday May 25th – Be Careful – Know Which Way the Wind Blows.

Partly cloudy with a risk of thunderstorms.

anonymous thought bubble

left at Transformation Booth 

Today's forecast: SHOOT THE BREEZE

UV index very high, near the Ward's Island ferry dock. 

Messages left inside Transformation Booth

TIMEANDDESIRE have some snippets of messages to digest, left over 17 bulging pages, mostly in response to the question, "What does the concept of change mean to you?"

May 23 Weather Report: Head in the Clouds

Partly Cloudy, Clearing in the Afternoon, Fog Patches Overnight

Hear sounds from location!

 

Courtesy Tara Cooper ad Terry O'Neill

Meteorological advice and forecast for today:

The Calm Before the Storm 

Partly Cloudy with Chance of Thunderstorms this Afternoon and Evening 

Transformation Booth is weather-proofed

TIMEANDDESIRE have wrapped their chosen booth, located at Spadina Avenue and College Street

(Spadina Crescent Circle) in Toronto, so that it looks like something that you might actually want to rest in, or make a call in. It looks so clean and fluffy. It looks like it's ready to launch into space. It looks like it might come alive. 

... and before it withers away with the next rainfall... 

         

                

 .... leave us a message

Today's Meteorological Advice and Forecast:

Throw Caution to the Wind, Sunny with Chance of Thunderstorms in the Evening  

Tara Cooper and Terry O'Neill reporting daily from Toronto's Centre Island 

jakejohn! kmackevin! de-celled!

For their field research, Jake and Kevin interviewed mall goers, asking them to recall the last time they used a pay phone, and when/if they ever actually made a call inside a phone booth. It becomes an audio series at GmorningPoetry about remembering, that parlays into a disappearing act of their cell prop as evidenced in the google "before" shot and then the artists' photo of a phone booth come spot/trace/memory for their truck stop performance and text. What follows is a response from kevin mcpherson eckhoff and Jake Kennedy from sunny Vernon, British Columbia.

Please welcome[1] to cell[2]! We, our phonebooth, performed an autophagocytosis and Bill&Ted’d into the past… Most excellent[3]! Almost extracellular!

Morals reformed — health preserved — industry invigorated — instruction diffused — public burdens lightened — economy seated, as it were, upon a rock — the gordian knot of the poor-law not cut, but untied — all by a simple idea in Architecture!

Jeremy Bentham, 1787

Have you ever used a remember[4] when they existed and where? Sequestered lysosomal machinery acts intracellular as a tightened degradation of damaged flagella with sonically enhanced vesicles! So many people[5], so few blebs! Human friends and strangers begin mitosis and meiosis through virtual mouth-ear telomere shortening!

To save the troublesome exertion of voice that might otherwise be necessary, and to prevent one prisoner from knowing that the inspector was occupied by another prisoner at a distance, a small tin tube might reach from each cell to the inspector's lodge, passing across the area, and so in at the side of the correspondent window of the lodge. By means of this implement, the slightest whisper of the one might be heard by the other, especially if he had proper notice to apply his ear to the tube.

Jeremy Bentham, 1787

The new allostery depends upon the apoptosis occurring along geographic here and there, everywhere[6]. Hear how prokaryotic equals catabolic communciation of “pardon me?” and “how are you?” Voices grow culture, enzymatic osmosis forever[7]! Between/among real humans! Outracellular! Party line on!

---

[1] Already the booth was in the past tense! As we approached our site we noticed that obsolescence leaves its traces… which made us feel especially surprised and just as susceptible! Cement Welcome mat leading… nowhere!

[2] Oh so the absence at the heart of “such as a honeycomb” or “such as a prisoner’s cell” moved outwards until, as if, “nothing” was the booth.

[3] Part of our exclamation was tied to footnote 1, i.e. “Are we still here?” No answer. “Let’s yell and find out!”

[4] When we asked folks when was the last time they used a public remember it was and sounded like (very much so) quite a different age—as if they were trying to remember when they first learned to speak.

[5] People, before, were “out into the openings” of the world. Without this booth it seemed to us that—to some extent—folks had moved conversely back “in into the closing off” of the cellular moment. We felt a bit nostalgic for the sight of a site made exclusively for “one room for one person to pick up one heavyish phone.”

[6] The whole notion of everywhere was in suspension. The removal of the technology meant the supremacy of another—the condition of the “everywhere” seemed so much greater than the human. For instance, this booth used to be called “Post-Midnight Rain Refuge Resting Area.”

[7] For us, the cement slab was unavoidably a memorial. Anyway, there was very little left to occupy. 

What a forecast!

Tara Cooper and Terry O'Neil's latest weather report from Toronto Island: Nothing but blue skies ahead.

Lovely weather!  And a lovey installation!

If you are out on the island throughout the week, let us know if you've seen the forecasts!  And if you are there today, here's a hint on where to find this one:

TRANSFORMATION BOOTH ... say what?

The TRANSFORMATION BOOTH is a cocoon-like structure going up at a booth at Spadina Crescent Circle in Toronto on May 21st and will stay until weather permits. It will urge pedestrians to enter and reflect on past, current and projected civil, social and personal transitions, and ultimately the concept of change itself. Created and watched over
by TIMEANDDESIRE, they have this to say about the installation:

While the gradual disappearance of telephone booths throughout a city reflect the growing utilization of cell-phones, it also represents the loss of a communally shared good, one which fostered a sense of togetherness. As the TRANSFORMATION BOOTH suggests, that which appears lost with the telephone booth does not need to be. Rather, such qualities can take on new forms, configurations and functions within the ever-shifting urban landscape.

Tara Cooper and Terry O'Neil chase the weather to Toronto Island

During a week long stay on Toronto Island from May 20-27, Tara Cooper and Terry O'Neil will leave chalk messages on the platforms of 27 booths they have located. Check in daily to see what's the word. Here's a chalk test run and a teaser for what's coming... 

May 19: Vernon cell occupied!

Jake Kennedy and kevin mcpherson eckhoff occupy a rural booth together in Vernon, British Columbia for a day tomorrow for what will be a controversial installation of voices and people and telecommunication waves. Look out for text, sounds and images over the next few days.

Tel-talk Announce: Poetry Reading Saturday, May 12, 2 pm

Dyan Marie installed "Lansdowne Light Box" yesterday and it looks beautiful! Local residents offered their help to install, have expressed several further opinions about the project and granted their overall approvals of the box's colour enhancements. A local lady named Judy set up camp by the light boxes all day yesterday.

As part of this install, Dyan is reciting her poems this Saturday at 2 pm inside the Coffee Time at Lansdowne Avenue and Dupont Street. Bring a friend, buy a coffee, listen to some words!

Dyan Marie's deep in colour!

Image by Dyan Marie

Lansdowne Light Box: Change The Colour

Change The Colour

When you want to speak to the invisible

This Coffee Time will do

but it helps to change the colour.

At the pay phone,

down at heel, high on something

a man is talking to a woman.

Connection at a click

- disconnection at another.

She hears red.

The colour of his skin

the rash between his fingers

an occupational hazard

of washing with chemicals

in a night-time-day-job.

Red

rush of confusion

when he, says her name.

The telephone booth transforms

when he imagines her as colour.

Yellow,

the colour of her humane voice

on a visible journey coming from

the other end of the line.

Holding the receiver

she waits out pauses

listens to his breathing.

The listening saves him

from this moment,

maybe his life

and the multi-colours sticking to his shoe -

chewing gum and gravel spit out

while looking for change.

He

keeps trying hard

to say what needs to be said

with words he doesn’t have.

Distracted, distressed by what’s on the ground,

street traffic, and living this way.

Colour arrives
just-in-time to fill the empty space

and stains the windows

with all things human.

End Notes:

The church at Wallace Ave. and 243 Perth is another example of church architecture with stain-glass windows disappearance or transformation.  The billboard shows the grand, red brick church transformed into a beige stucco condo.

Check out Dyan Marie's installation up through to the end of July. Image by Dyan Marie.

Lansdowne Light Box by Dyan Marie

Dyan Marie's Lansdowne Light Box opens at 2 pm, May 12, 2012 with a poetry reading at the Coffee Time next to the phone booth located at the northwest corner of Bloor and Lansdowne Ave. Buy a coffee or tea and stay for some words.

Here is Dyan's description of her installation:

Lansdowne Light Box transforms a phone booth into a lighthouse and listening station. It recalls the stain glass windows of local demolished churches—places where people came to hear stories and quietly put words of their own into prayer.

Phone booths are disappearing and the Bell Telephone logo will disappear from story telling on street corners. Bell relocated their public signature to the Bell Lightbox, home of TIFF, a public space to quietly consume stories in film.

The installation in the phone booth, manifested in various shades of colour, comments on changing forms of communication ( and miscommunication) as well as the comforts, dysfunctions and needs addressed in acts of story telling.

Lansdowne Light Box is located in the phone both at the corner of Dupont Street and Lansdowne Avenue. The rapidly changing intersection is the site of an industrial rise, fall, decay and aggressive re-development process. The nominal centre of this whirlwind of urban evolution is a long-established Coffee Time drive-in restaurant.  Coffee Time’s outdoor public telephone is the site of this project.

About the Lansdowne and Dupont Intersection Location:

South-west corner Dupont and Lansdowne
The Standard apartment complex was an American Standard toilet factory until the late 1990s that sat derelict for several years until it was renovated into the current large-scale rental unit.

South-east corner Dupont and Lansdowne

Formerly a parkette fashioned from a previous TTC turnaround loop, the site has been a seven-story condo building since the early 2000s.

North-west corner Dupont and Lansdowne

This classic early-20^th-century factory structure is now flagged with advertisements announcing plans to sprout a multi-storey high-rise condo tower from its center core.

North-east corner Dupont and Lansdowne

Just north of the telephone booths, 1011 Lansdowne is an infamous rental high-rise known as one of Toronto’s 10 worst buildings in press stories that have reported its various transgressions and tragedies. In recent months, improvements efforts are underway to stucco the building’s exterior.

Coming very soon are Dyan's poem and installation images...

Applause by Francis LeBouthillier, applause Indeed!

Francis LeBouthillier has responded to Stuart Keeler's call for flags with the "APPLAUSE" flag, currently waving above the pair of booths located at Wellington and Jarvis. Through to June, Stuart is coordinating a series of flag installations. Visit often. Photo by Stuart Keeler.

"Ash Take 12": Last Call by Otino Corsano

Otino Corsano operated his booth at Finch and Bayview as a sound recording booth. He invited three professional actors (Ash, Emily and Maarika) to perform audio tracks guided only by general parameters: to invent realistic scripts ad lib - metaphorically referencing the slow extinction of telephone booths across Toronto. For each "last call", actors injected their own undirected themes and voice designs. Otino then edited their source performances and worked with Waltar Sawan, a sound technician based in Vancouver, to mix the final audio tracks for the gallery show at Telephone Booth Gallery, opening party and book launch on June 15th. The results are unexpected. Otino explains,


These brief artworks were designed as "movie trailers sans visuals" warping the sound components of telecommunication radio spots into detritus - slowly dissolving to reveal new digital bliss. 




"Ash Take 12" original voice recordings were conducted on Sun. Feb. 19, 2012.

Paradise' Lost Call by Colleen Osborn

Photo by Colleen Osborn

Exactly one decade ago tomorrow, a phone call was placed from the payphone located outside the Paradise theatre; a friend inviting another friend to see a movie. Although it is not clear from the answering machine message what film they went to see, it is apparent that Bloorcourt was a much different neighbourhood back then. The theatre closed it's doors in 2006 and the payphone no longer works.

This small stretch of unused space may be easily overlooked if it was not for the influx of trendy culture creeping up and down Bloorcourt over the last few years. Across and down the street are hipster cafes & bars, Shopper's Drug Marts and gutted church condos popping up. The artist cannot help but feel nostalgia for the old pre-cell phone days watching rep films from the balcony, yet acknowledges her part in the area's revisions as though the call she placed that day was inviting gentrification to see a show.

The transcribed answering machine recording will be posted on the marquee beside the broken pay phone for 24 hours (or until it is stolen) on May 5th 2012.