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There’s a new art festival breaking barriers between audio, visual and new media. This new media experience is the first of its kind in Toronto, bringing the city’s art forms together with a distinct nightlife vibe more often found in Miami or Berlin.
NOXTE is the first collaboration betweenNullsight,Derooted Immersive andIC Contemporary – three collectives looking to set a new standard for how the city experiences and interacts with art.
Billboard Canada has partnered with the festival for its first Toronto edition, creating a space for NOXTE to evolve into new musical realms.
“Across the globe, we can see how New Media Art is presented in esteemed modes, but that’s something that Toronto is missing,” says Ignazio Colt Nicastro, the Toronto curator behind IC Contemporary. “I am constantly looking to challenge how audiences engage with art, and that’s exactly what NOXTE does.”
The inaugural launch takes place on July 12 from 6 pm to 1 am at Body Shop Studios on Geary as part of the video game art and creative media series Vector Festival. With the theme of Luminal Connextions, the event will feature works by emerging, established and mid-career artists including: Ali Phi, El Ekeko, Ashorii, Alexander McLeod, Matthew Davies, Victoria Kamila and Joy.
Ali Phi and El Ekeko
The name is a pun that plays on the transitory properties of light and the liminal space between different art media. All of the works play with those unique elements, harnessing light’s power through AI, 3D renders, data analysis, robotics and everything in between.
Ali Phi and El Ekeko have put together a light installation called Datum, which transforms in real time based on how participants interact with it. Audience members are invited to submit their feelings in written sentences, which are then processed with AI to turn emotional nuances into patterns of light and audio.
Sound is a major element in NOXTE, which will activate all five senses in a uniquely participatory way. Matthew Davies, a Toronto-based musician of the hardcore band Friction, has put together a project called Intertwining Currents, a digital and audio celebration of cross-cultural unions. The left and right channels depict his parents’ journeys from Hong Kong and England, while the middle channel creates a harmony of mixed identities accompanied by sound.
“There was once a time when I felt like an aberration when trying to seek community amongst my parents' respective cultures and this caused years of discontent,” Davies says. “As I get older, the conscious reframing of my perception and experience has given me a new peace with identity and expectation. With the music, I wanted to create a composition that was reflective of this transition of thought; something warm and comforting but with an air of melancholia.”
Every part of NOXTE can be experienced as art, down to food and drinks. Edible art created by Made of Sugar and Saffron are a "food installation" designed and crafted through recipes that are conceptualized like art pieces. Celestial cocktails are an activation from Toronto’s space-themed bar Off World.
“It was important that the experience within NOXTE was not only contained to the exhibited artwork but also the hands of all our guests,” says Nicastro.
Cycles by Alexander McLeod
Additional work exhibited by Ashorii offers an immersive experience that explores the fusion of digital art and computational creativity, leveraging the strengths of AI and deep learning algorithms.
The event is billed as NOXTE Vol V because it has taken place in previous incarnations in Europe, but never in Toronto. Now, the curators say, the city is ready.
NOXTE VOL 5: Luminal Connextions will take place:
July 12 | 6 pm-1 am
July 13 | 5 pm-10 pm
Body Shop Studios, 302 Geary Ave, Toronto, ON
Admission to the event is free, and RSVP is needed.
The exhibition venue is accessible and contains flashing lights and visual effects and is not recommended for individuals with epilepsy or light sensitivity.
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