I’m delighted to have an article on the Adobe Design and Film School Connection this month, writing about the work at OCAD University with the Microsoft Surface and Adobe Flash. Check it out here.

Soft Copy released Games on November 5, 2011. Entirely written and recorded by Soft Copy, with an absolute minimum of studio trickery: just 100% honest to goodness live off the floor noise. It’s available on iTunes, but why not have a listen first.

Similarly, the original artwork is by London-based artist Emer O’Brien, in a tradition of us working with other artists and designers such as Paul Boddum and Dan McCafferty (no, not the lead singer of Nazareth, the Toronto based designer) and Shelley Heebner McCafferty.

 THE SUMMER COURTYARD SERIES

Presented by the Music Gallery. In Collaboration with Scion. June 3-10, 2011

“FIN DE SIÈCLE” by Andrew McAllister Suburban teen angst is nostalgically distilled through a dual-screen video loop with music by the band Soft Copy. View

Music Performances by:

Friday June 3 RADIAN With guests, Odradek

Saturday June 4 CATL. + BILL ORCUTT With guest, Black Walls

Thursday June 9 CHARLES GAYLE & Composition for Light, Percussion and Ultrasound: An Installation/Performance by Paul Walde

Friday June 10 DUBLAB: TONALISM. Featuring: DNTEL, Teebs, Matthewdavid + more

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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.

Buy on iTunes

soft-copy-band-photo-nov2009-copy

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 While the current chapter of the Titles exhibition, organized by the WayUpWayDown collective closed at Art Metropole on the 7th November, it’s expected that the exhibition will continue as Titles 6 in Quebec at Musee d’art de Joliette.

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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.

At Adobe MAX 2009, I presented Driving Large Scale Installation Design with Adobe Flex to a interesting and diverse group of education technology professionals.

See how OCAD used Adobe Flex as the development platform for driving electronic signage in the campus lobby to display student work.

Gallery

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Podcast

Driving Large Scale Installation Design with Adobe Flex

A presentation by Andrew McAllister and Christopher Bennell, Faculty IT Support Technician

As Canada’s oldest art and design University, the Ontario College of Art & Design requires IT systems appropriate for
visual teachers and learners. Since 2004, OCAD developed and maintained its own learning management system instead
of looking elsewhere.Why not use the plethora of other tools? With open-source tools like the Zend framework, and
user-centered design methodology our LMS has been a string of successes. In this presentation, we will show you how to
excite your faculty and IT team alike by focusing on innovation from within.

Gallery

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Presentation

CANHEIT Presentation 2009