In-Site Toronto: Art on Wireless Networks

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In-Site Toronto is a series of six new art commissions that are available to the public through the free community wifi network operated by Wireless Toronto, the Greater Toronto Area community wireless internet network. Artists Jeremy Bailey, Brian Joseph Davis, Dave Dyment, Willy Le Maitre, Fedora Romita, and Swintak have created new artworks that will be automatically displayed when users connect to the free wifi networks at designated hotspots.

In-Site Toronto from Year Zero One on Vimeo.

Viewing or listening to the works is as simple as opening your laptop and signing in to the Wireless Toronto network. Wireless Toronto has over 35 hotspots across the city and tens of thousands of users, ensuring the project will reach a wide range of people.

The projects commissioned for In-Site Toronto range widely in tone and style. For example, artist Swintak's work consists of multiple wanted posters, inviting participation from the public in tasks ranging from moving a three tonne concrete cube to using massage as a method of nonverbal communication between people of disparate socioeconomic status.

Fedora Romita has created an extensive verbal description of Dundas Square, and invites the participation of the public in contributing to this cataloguing of one of Toronto's most rapidly-changing public spaces.

Willy Le Maitre has developed an "art drug", which is an actual capsule that is being dispensed, along with a companion website describing the benefits of ingesting art objects.

Dave Dyment's 'Teriyaki Experience' is a series of found texts, originally posted as boast, heresay, rumour and slander, about celebrity encounters. They were compiled from a variety of online forums, blogs and comments pages. The work interrogates notions of celebrity and how this has expanded vastly through online channels, generating masses of information that is both fascinating and banal.

In-Site Toronto curator Michelle Kasprzak says, "Like sculptural public art, these works oblige your gaze, even for a moment. Theartists have each created witty, accessible works that will reach people on their personal devices in everyday situations. I believe it's important for art to be woven into the fabric of life, and presenting these commissions in collaboration with Wireless Toronto
does just that."

Wireless Toronto co-founder Gabe Sawhney says, "The free wifi access which our volunteers have been setting up for the past five years have helped activate public and publicly-accessible spaces in new ways. By working with Year Zero One and the In-Site Toronto artists to use our network as a platform for exhibiting site-specific media artworks, we hope to contribute to the unique hyperlocal community in these spaces, and are combining culture and technology in novel ways -- asking Torontonians to reimagine the value that wifi networks can offer."

In-Site Toronto was produced by media arts organisation Year Zero One, is curated by Michelle Kasprzak, and was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and Spacing Magazine.

Where to see the work:

View In-Site Toronto in a larger map