I Love Media

// This video was taken at the 1st annual Social Media Week in Toronto in past Feb, 2010. The event is tagged as #SMWTO, on Twitter. I didn’t attend this specific event but speaker and CEO of agency Capital C Tony Chapman, has great insights. He founded his company 15 years ago, and claims it was built on an unreasonable lust for change. I love that. Also, their YouTube channel is worth a look around @ http://www.youtube.com/user/CapitalCbigideas.

Comps of www.colourlovers.com

// Thanks to COLOURlovers, I was able to peek into insights on what colours (I prefer the British version) are dominating the top brands in the marketing world. Quick and easy answer? blue & red. Isn’t it interesting that Twitter allows the public to choose their own theme to identify their persona, brand or individuality? If the globe was made up of colour preferences, what would blogger, dad or fashionista look like? Who has the most colourful personality? Check it all out here.

Comps of sharyboyle.com

// Toronto artist Shary Boyle opened her exhibition ‘Flesh & Blood’ @ the Art Gallery of Ontario today, smack dab in the middle of TIFF. Thirty pieces of her work are displayed in mediums like: sculpting, painting, audio-visual, installations & drawing. “Shary Boyle’s symbolic language generates daring and original perspectives on the present,” says Louise Déry, director Galerie de l’UQAM in Montréal. “Her work unveils a consciousness haunted by considerations of the nature of life, heredity, sexuality, death, and our relationship to other species, and is executed with ingenuity and virtuosity across multiple media, in a formidable range of scale and detail.”

Comps of Applied Arts

// One of my favorite publications & Canada’s visual comm mag, Applied Arts, launched their 2010 Applied Arts 2010 Interactive Awards call for entries, open until OCT//8. Check out the latest new category entitled ‘Young Blood,’ geared toward creatives out of school for 3 yrs (or less) who can participate under any overall section. The microsite for entries is @ http://www.appliedartsmag.com/im_awards.

// Great insights tonight from leaders (Mark Evans, David Skok, Elmer Sotto, Anjali Kapoor & Kunal Gupta) in the digital media space at The Future of Media 2010 @ the Drake Hotel. The future in this new media space raised questions on how brands and the media will manage content, and truly, content is king. Moderator David Silverberg, Managing Editor of Digital Journal, asked the tough questions like: Should brands put up Pay Walls? What does it mean to be a kid out of J school? Is facebook and Twitter the place to spread conversations? Does anyone use facebook insights? Is the future citizen journalist a curious storytelling geek? All worthy topics. Get caught up on all the panel convos @ http://www.digitaljournal.com/djfom or on Twitter @djfom.

Comps of Vision Visible

// This looks amusing, Nike launched an interesting show for the new Air Max in Argentina where consumers can blow the air in their own breath into a microphone to make the shoes float, move and then race. Anyone in their home or the retail store can play! Try it online here.

//It’s always nice to take a break and enjoy the long weekend, so I hope you did too. It’s back to school, and speaking of, OCAD Uni announced a natural progression to their educational roster of programs, it’s called the  Digital Futures Initiative (DFI). The program was created to attract global creative talent to challenge themselves by fusing together art, design and technology in our increasingly demanding digital media world. “The DFI undergrad program is unique to art and design universities in North America,” says Paula Gardner, 2009/2010 DFI Chair and Associate Professor, Faculty of Liberal Studies. “[It allows] students to ‘get under the hood’ of science and computational logics, to foresee future needs and creative applications of a range of technological practices. OCAD’s Digital Media major is practice-based, merging hybrid technology and computation with aesthetic and critical inquiry. [It] will offer students the opportunity to engage with industry in a range of creative ways, including research projects and investigations of new technologies.” Phew, I think I’ll just opt for my course on the art of the blog.

Introducing Nudgeables, a fashion tech project by Kate Hartman, leading OCAD’s new Wearables Research Lab, which is geared to artists creating wearable technology such as clothing with built-in electronic devices.

The Art Institute of Vancouver is conducting one of those all too common right brain vs left brain online tests. The test concluded that I’m 63 percent more right-brained than left-brained. The right side of your brain controls the left side of your body. In addition to being known as right-brained, you are also known as a creative thinker who uses feeling and intuition to gather information. You retain this information through the use of images and patterns. You are able to visualize the “whole” picture first, and then work backwards to put the pieces together to create the “whole” picture. Your thought process can appear quite illogical and meandering. The problem-solving techniques that you use involve free association, which is often very innovative and creative. The routes taken to arrive at your conclusions are completely opposite to what a left-brained person would be accustomed. You probably find it easy to express yourself using art, dance, or music. Some occupations usually held by a right-brained person are forest ranger, athlete, beautician, actor/actress, craftsman, and artist.

Ah, so forest ranger it is my friends