As we took our seats, I looked out through 40-foot tall windows lit up beautifully by the setting sun.
Not.
Not that it wasn’t beautiful: it wasn’t the setting sun. As I admired the colours, they changed: not in the gradual way of sunsets, but in the sudden way of electronic billboards. Every 15 or 20 seconds, the colours and shapes changed. Swatches of bright colour morphed into paisley patterns, changed again into letters (all backward from our perspective), and back to swirling colours.
It took us longer than it should have to realize that we were sitting behind the National Arts Centre’s display wall. From our side, it was a window overlooking the street, with the view partially obscured or enhanced by a shifting palette, a sound & light show without any sound. From the street side, it was less remarkable: a series of colourful ads for current and coming attractions.
When I went and stood right beside the window I could see a mesh of teeny-tiny lights on the other side. When I looked north, I could see the Peace Tower and the East Block and the construction cranes adorning the Hill in the distance. The pictures shot through that mesh with my phone lack a certain precision, but do offer an interesting perspective.
So maybe we’re all just pixels in a gigantic video display. Wasn’t that the premise behind Matrix? The question then becomes, “Who’s watching it?”
Jim T – I think humans were trapped inside a simulated reality (the Matrix) so yeah, pixels in a sense, I guess. I had to look it up, but humans were sedated in pods (somehow generating more energy than they consumed, yeah right). We had lost a war to AI. Just a second . . .
I take beauty wherever I find it. A similar technology is used to portray patterns on the Telus Sky buildin downtown. It is their art component, rather than a statue or mural. I like it because I can see it from my neighbourhood, and there are enough patterns to make things interesting.
Judith – Good to know. I’ll keep an eye out for the Telus building when next in Calgary.
Incredible photos, Isabel! So creative, original, surprising, mesmerizing! So ‘in the moment’! I think these could stand beside Yayoi Kusama’s works any day! https://ago.ca/exhibitions/yayoi-kusamas-infinity-mirrored-room-lets-survive-forever!
Beautiful florals also! (Note to self: try using various punctuation marks besides the breathless “!”).
Marilyn – 🙂 I’ve read writing advice that says we should *never* use an exclamation mark. I think the idea is that the desired emphasis should be achieved by other techniques, like word choice and sentence structure. Me, I’ve never achieved that skill.
What’s fascinating is the shadows cast in those windows.
Tom
Tom – It would be fun to go back and see it after dark. Nit sure they’d let me in without an event to attend.
These photos are lovely and among your most memorable. When I lived in Toronto, I often was mesmerized by patterns of light. For example, other houses, street lights, and vehicle lights that made patterns through bamboo shades in my apartment. Or a panorama of the tall apartments in north Toronto at dusk, lit by the setting sun while people were starting to turn on lights in their apartments. Some of those large billboard signs with lights in the design that “turned on a white rose” in a moving wave of light. The memorable facades of insurance companies, the Queen’s Park Legislature buildings, Casa Loma, and certain churches floodlit from dusk till dawn. The street lamps partially hidden in maples on certain walks through the neighbourhood. I am sure it is a very different city now, and lit rather differently, too. I am surprised, since you raise the subject, how vivid some of those light displays remain in memory.
Laurna – That was exactly my thought as I read your comment. It’s impressive and (I think) a little unpredictable what will “stick” in our memories. Your description sounds like in this case it was a delightful result.