Titles 6 opened Sunday 31 January at Musée d’Art de Joliette and runs until 25 April 2010.

Soft Copy’s first music video from their new 2010 release “Vicious Modernism”: Hot Cakes.

“Sounding like a muscular cross between XTC at its most adventurous and Gang of Four at its most accessible, this Toronto band has a knack for making the daring sound user-friendly. ” John Sakamoto, Toronto Star

VIDEO by ANDREW MCALLISTER & SOFT COPY. WWW.SOFTCOPYMUSIC.COM ©2010

3D MODELS CREATED BY THE FOLLOWING CREATIVE USERS OF THE GOOGLE 3D WAREHOUSE COMMUNITY:

TheHark0, Amfab, anonymous, chuck in the air, dr.CYBORG, PaulDesign

Click here to view the embedded video.

 “Sounding like a muscular cross between XTC at its most adventurous and Gang of Four at its most accessible, this Toronto band has a knack for making the daring sound user-friendly. “ John Sakamoto, Toronto Star

Soft Copy – Paul Boddum, Wes Hodgson and Andrew McAllister – are readying themselves to release the angrier and pointed Vicious Modernism (2010) out on CD and iTunes on January 30th, 2010. The band is converging with already canonized post-punk innovators Danger Bay, the unstoppable The Magic Cheezies and New York art- rockers Steve Shiffman & The Land of No for their release on January 30th at the Garrison (1197 Dundas Street West Toronto Canada).

In 2008, Ryan Bigge of Broken Pencil described Soft Copy as “[...] a swirling mix of power-pop that reminds me of my favourite bands from the 1990s (including Sugar and My Bloody Valentine) while still sounding fresh and contemporary.” NOW Magazine (NNN) described Soft Copy’s live performance of “steady rhythms and ego-free guitar solos, a welcome contrast [...]” to the rock star stereotypes or posturing.

Vicious Modernism operates as an homage and requiem to recent rock history: the eleven track recording operates with brevity and clarity, echoing personal and political themes from Soft Copy’s 2006 release Wolf, wolves and more wolves including groupthink, the financial meltdown, being lost and young love. In 2007, Wes Hodgson (previously of Newfoundland punk-rock act Hung Up) swung the band’s tonality from Stooges to Shellac: this lent itself to ideally to sharp edges of Vicious Modernism (2010).

The lead track Hot Cakes describes our current culture of “failure entertainment”: like televised gladiatorial fashion shows, Soft Copy hints at the fiscal doomageddon that oft passed for spectator sport (and speculator sport) in spite of the real effects on the un- and underemployed. In other tracks, Extracurricular portrays an image of office romance at Fanny Mae, while the more optimistic First Date tries to recapture the idea of young love and blank slates.

Formed in 2005, Soft Copy’s ethos is embedded in the punk rock DIY aesthetic, with their music informed by early post-punk and later avant-rock. As Bigge describes “[...] they’re DIY to the core, having recorded and mixed the album themselves.” Vicious Modernism was recorded and engineered by Andrew McAllister with Soft Copy entirely at the Rehearsal Factory. McAllister learned his craft from Tom Heron & Jeff McMurrich (on Christiana’s Hydrofield of Myth) and Dave Newfeld (on NECK’s Uncrated Distant Star) and others, and has recorded or assisted with other Toronto bands including The Silt, Christiana and Republic of Safety.

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For the past while, Kerry Potts and I have been working on a short doc (11 mins) entitled Love on the Street, which premiered at the imagineNATIVE media arts + film festival. In this work, we interview people who are homeless about their perspectives on love. The video also interweaves the interviews with shots of Toronto to convey an intimacy that people on the streets develop with the city. The overall goal was to redirect the audience’s gaze to focus on each person as a partner, friend, parent or lover.

Browse on over to Eye Weekly for a great overview of the imagineNATIVE film + media arts festival, and read their wonderful praise for our short documentary:

Much better is the short doc Love on the Street (***, plays with Jackpot), which marries beautifully shot urban landscape sequences with unguarded interview subjects discussing homelessness and love.

Originally screened at the imagineNATIVE media arts + film festival, Thursday, October 15, 2009. Watch the trailer below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

FIN DE SIÈCLE presented as dual-screen video installation with audio soundtrack as a part of the VEHICLE project at University of Toronto Art Centre for Nuit Blanche 2008.

For suburban teens, cars enable vices and passions: they facilitate making out, meeting up with friends, and getting to the crucial rock & roll gig in the city. The car creates a private space for sharing secrets, taboo acts and dangerous music. Cars allow freedom, the promise of ‘getting there’, often in spite of the end result. “FIN DE SIÈCLE” is a document of youth, rock & roll, angst, poorly articulated dreams, missed opportunities, let downs, fleeting revelatory moments, expressed in the format of a dual-screen video loop and a limited edition soundtrack by rock band Soft Copy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Documentation of the Vehicle at Nuit Blanche 2008 by the Way Up Way Down collective.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Presented by the Scarborough Arts Council, CONTACT Scarborough is a multi-faceted project that explores issues of public and private space, representation, and notions of identity associated with Scarborough. The project includes photography, video and a podcast developed by Scarborough youth. CONTACT Scarborough considers how photographic practice is expanding and presented in time-based media while dealing with the experiences of those living in an area under-represented in the social and cultural life of Toronto.

With the Scarborough Arts Council and Mobile City Project, this podcast involves youth from Scarborough, reflecting on their images of their environment. Thanks to Angelica, Anesha, James, Tammy, Tolu, Tope, and the Boys & Girls Club of East Scarborough.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You Knew Everything There Was to Know, and photographs from Weekend Getaways, MobileCity Podcast presented at CONTACT 2008 in cooperation with the Scarborough Arts Council, Scarborough Civic Centre.

Gallery

Acknowledgements

With assistance from:

About

You Knew Everything There Was To Know is a look at the culture, nomenclature and legacy of the idea of Scarborough through the lens of a video camera. The two cities included in this video are Scarborough, Ontario and Scarborough, England.

Scarborough, Ontario began in the vision of Elizabeth Simcoe who claimed that the Scarborough Bluffs reminded her of the limestone cliffs of Scarborough, England. Places inherently manifest the visions of the makers while adapting to the changing needs of inhabitants, which is reflected in the ethnic diversity of Scarborough, Ontario. The use of the camera in this case is like a measuring device, taking stock of the landscape and the people living within it. This project is a kind of social science, (part taxonomy, part scientific investigation) of the legacies of post-colonial cities.

My work positions the viewer as an observer to the everyday, those things which are often overlooked and otherwise considered too banal for serious scrutiny. As such, my videos provoke in the viewer a sense of unheimlich, the uncanny: as the video unfolds, the familiar begins to appear as unfamiliar. As we watch what happens over a brief period of time in everyday urban and rural spaces (the abandoned street corner, the landscape of a glacial mountainside), these places begin to unfold themselves and reveal a sense of wonder. Hence the uncanny: what was previously thought of as an “empty” place, void of any real humanity, begins to point up zones of desire, commodification, growth and change.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Acknowledgements

This project is produced with the support of the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, and with the support of the Ontario Arts Council. The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.