December 21st & 22nd
Interactive Time Slots: 11am-1pm, 2pm-5pm

Evergreen Brick Works, Koerner Gardens
550 Bayview Avenue
Drop-in, children and families/all-ages

It’s winter… and December, which means it’s the end of the year, and the final entry in Hand Eye Society’s  4-season Game Curious programming at Evergreen Brick Works! Artists Kara Stone, Rekha Ramachandran, and Julia Gingrich will be presenting an interactive installation during Evergreen Brick Works’ annual Winter Village entitled Blocked Future Future Blocks. Join us in reflecting on the changing seasons, as well as the changing climate as we pass into another year on planet Earth.

Blocked Future Future Blocks consists of quilt panels made from used plastic, water/ice, and hand-written notes addressed to our future selves. It asks us to question our relationship to waste, remainders, and quickening environmental change imposed by humans.

We are living in the anthropocene–an era where humans have made an everlasting impact on the earth’s environment and weather patterns. This new era is tethered to our high levels of consumption and waste, and will carry us into the future. Plastic is an everyday object that is an excess manifestation of the wild levels of consumption being encouraged across our planet. Plastic is a remainder, its life span stretches far beyond its use span. It sits at the landfill; it floats through the ocean. It’s a trace of having been there.

This interactive work consists of a quilt panels made from used plastic (cellophane, bubblewrap, packaging, etc.), and filled with water/ice. It asks each of us to question our relationship to waste, remainders, and quickening environmental change imposed by humans. Participants are invited to write a note to their future self on scraps of paper that are then tucked inside a quilt block and surrounded by water. As the weather changes the water surrounding the note will freeze and melt with the ice obscuring and revealing the text. What kind of future do you envision for yourself?

ARTISTS: Kara Stone, Rekha Ramachandran, Julia Gingrich

How are we playing with our food in this workshop? We will be playing a variation of one of Jenn Sandercock’s games in her Edible Games Cookbook called “Roll for Flavour”. In her version of this game, players compete with one another by rolling dice to obtain their favourite cupcake ingredients and toppings to create a yummy–or questionable–flavour combination!

Roll For Flavour on ‘The Games‘ tab of Edible Games.

Instead of baking cupcakes, we have modified Roll For Flavour into 3 rounds, or 3 courses if you will, of competing for ingredients that will go towards a non-alcoholic mixed drink, an appetizer bowl, and a dessert tray. Roll for ingredients to assemble the most delicious meal you can dream of! Sabotage other players by stealing or swapping the ingredients they want for themselves! Or try new food & drink combinations you would have never thought of before! This activity will require assembling your meals. No cooking or food prep will be happening on your end. NOTE: we suggest that you grab an actual meal before or after this event as the foods prepped during this activity are not meant to be a full meal replacement.

Food options provided are based off of what’s available during the fall season and has been planned for what works best with the format of this game. Because the Fido Kitchen is a communal activity space, we unfortunately cannot guarantee that the space is free of ingredients that may cause severe allergic reactions (e.g. nut-free, gluten-free).

Play with your Food may use a wide range of ingredients during gameplay, including nuts, soy, dairy and gluten products. If you are signing up as a participant please contact us with your dietary preferences before the event. Please email us at info@handeyesociety.com and we will accommodate as best we can.

This event is FREE to attend. To ensure your spot, we would like to ask you to pay a refundable deposit of $10 + tax and fees prior to this event. Your deposit will be returned at the start of the workshop. If you do not attend the workshop, your deposit becomes a donation to the Hand Eye Society.

The Evergreen Brick Works Shuttle Bus hours will be extended for the following times: 7.30pm, 8.00pm, 8.30pm, 9.00pm, 9.30pm, 10.00pm

Do I need to bring anything? OPTIONAL: a kitchen apron.

Is the venue accessible? Yes! Please let us know your accessibility needs upon registering to ensure your needs are accommodated.

When: Oct 9 and Oct 23, 7-9pm

Who: Ages 16+

Where: Evergreen Brick Works (FIDO Kitchen)

Up to 20 people, register on Eventbrite

Secure your spot with a refundable Deposit of $10 per person

If you are interested about the Edible Games Cookbook, please follow Jenn Sandercock on Twitter or sign up on her newsletter (on her website) to learn more.

When: Oct 9 and Oct 23, 7-9pm

Who: Ages 16+

Where: Evergreen Brick Works

Up to 20 people, register on Eventbrite

Secure your spot with a refundable Deposit of $10 per person

This playful workshop explores the aesthetic qualities and flavours of local and seasonal food by turning ingredients into edible games! Inspired by Jenn Sandercock’s Edible Games Cookbook, participants will create, play, and eat their way through a better understanding of their personal palates: as a pleasurable sensory experience and a communal activity that brings people together. If you are interested about the Edible Games Cookbook, please follow Jenn Sandercock on Twitter or sign up on her newsletter (on her website) to learn more.

Because the Fido Kitchen is a communal activity space, we unfortunately cannot guarantee that the space is free of ingredients that may cause severe allergic reactions (e.g. nut-free, gluten-free).

Play with your Food may use a wide range of ingredients during gameplay (depending on what’s in season at the farmer’s market), including nuts, soy, dairy and gluten products. If you are signing up as a participant please contact us with your dietary preferences before the event. Please email us at info@handeyesociety.com and we will accommodate as best we can.

This event is FREE to attend. To ensure your spot, we would like to ask you to pay a refundable deposit of $10 + tax and fees prior to this event. Your deposit will be returned at the start of the workshop. If you do not attend the workshop, your deposit becomes a donation to the Hand Eye Society.

The Evergreen Brick Works Shuttle Bus hours will be extended for the following times: 7.30pm, 8.00pm, 8.30pm, 9.00pm, 9.30pm, 10.00pm

Do I need to bring anything? Please bring a kitchen apron with you per participant.

Is the venue accessible? Yes! Please let us know your accessibility needs upon registering to ensure your needs are accommodated.

July 30th & 31st [REGISTRANTS ONLY–Register here]
10am – 2pm both days
Evergreen Brick Works, Children’s Garden
550 Bayview Avenue
Drop-in, children and families/all-ages

Skylab Revolution is an interactive installation in the Children’s Garden at Evergreen Brick Works. It features a space ship with 3 individual activities for kids to engage with whole exploring the park from the perspective an astronaut. There is a kaleidoscope, periscope, and microscope that offer each a unique view of the garden. Kids are encouraging to experiment and uncover the environment from a new perspective!

Facilitators will be on hand to encourage participants to use the spaceship equipment to investigate, experiment, and discover their own unique view of the space around them. This installation was created by Little Dada with support from Hand Eye Society.

We’re also looking for volunteers! If you are interested in helping to bring this program to life, please fill out the following form before July 15 and we will get back to you ASAP.

[button size=’large’ style=” text=’Volunteer for Skylab Revolution!’ icon=” icon_color=” link=’https://forms.gle/d8a2peiWwLESVwtj8′ target=’_self’ color=” hover_color=” border_color=” hover_border_color=” background_color=” hover_background_color=” font_style=” font_weight=” text_align=” margin=”]

Skylab Revolution is part of our year-round Game Curious at Evergreen Brick Works initiative. Check out our Fall and Winter programs as well!

MEET THE JAMMERS

PUBLIC ZINE LAUNCH

        

The birds are tweeting, the trees are budding and winter is taking its very last breath. Hurray! Winter is dying! Now that winter is (almost) gone we can really get to the good stuff. You’ve had the pleasure of meeting our game jammers, and now it’s time to meet our talented artists who will work alongside our jammers to create a zine through our programming with Evergreen Brick Works!

These participants will be paired with our jammers and release a zine booklet, which will be released on Sunday June 16th! More details on that coming soon~

Without further ado, our illustrators!

Lina Wu

Instagram/Portfolio

Lina Wu is an artist, illustrator, and storyteller from Toronto. She is figuring out how to be soft and strong at the same time.

Pree Rehal

Personal Instagram/Art Instagram

Pree (pronouns: they/them) is basically a trans Batman (except not rich, also not a white dude), they are an Account Manager by day, artist by night.

Vincy Lim

Portfolio/Instagram

Vincy Lim is a Chinese-Canadian illustrator whose work revolves around their queer, disabled, and abused identity. Their work focuses on self-love, humanizing disability, and creating an understanding around abuse. In addition to supporting survivors through shared experiences, and telling them the importance, and the fact, of healing.

Shel Kahn

Twitter/Instagram/Website/Comics

Shel Kahn is an illustrator, cartoonist, game designer and educator. Her work in tabletop RPGs includes art, writing, self publishing, GMing and mentorship; she also self-publishes comics and teaches art, games and more with local Toronto community organizations, museums and schools.

Hayden Maynard

Twitter/Website/Instagram

Hayden is an illustrator and cartoonist. He grew up in Kingston, Ontario and currently lives in Toronto. Nowadays he mostly sit in his apartment and draw pictures.

Alejandra Paton

Instagram/Website

Alejandra is a designer and administrator based in Toronto. Her illustration work has been published by Creative Quarterly, Format Magazine, Broken Pencil, and Applied Arts Magazine. She is a graduate of OCAD University with a Bachelor’s in Illustration, and a Graduate degree in Arts Administration from Humber College.

In Partnership With

*Takes in a breath of fresh air* Is spring really here??…The mud’s replacing the ice, it’s raining a lot, like A LOT, and the garbage is unearthing itself from the various snow banks. This wonderfully confusing time of year is just in time for our Spring Jam as part of the Game Curious at Evergreen Brick Works programming. We are super excited to announce our line up of game jam participants who will spend 3 days to create a game inspired by the various systems living at the Evergreen Brick Works.

Interested to see what they end up making? Us too! You can come and play test their games on Sunday, April 7 from 1-3pm in the Young Welcome Centre at Evergreen Brick Works. In part 2 of the Spring Jam program, 6 local illustrators will be paired up with each of the game jam participants and create a ‘zine booklet that we will be distributing on Sunday, June 16 also at the Evergreen Brick Works (stay tuned for more details!).

Say hello to our Spring Jam participants below!

Jord Farrell
Twitter

In the past 5 years, Jord Farrell has made hundreds of games.

Ananda Gabo
Twitter / Instagram

Ananda is a designer/ veg cook/ microbe collaborator/ maker. They are accumulating a lot of weird skill sets in anticipation of running a weird farm.

Ben Moull
Twitter

Ben Moull is a sometimes writer, wanderer, economist, and hobbyist game designer. They live, work and play in Toronto.

Jacob Niedzwiecki
Twitter / Instagram

Jacob Niedzwiecki is a software developer, filmmaker, and choreographer whose work fuses code, media, and movement into inventive new forms. His immersive app-based performance Jacqueries won the Vanguard Prize for Risk and Innovation at the 2014 SummerWorks festival, and toured internationally. He has created app-based experiences in collaboration with TIFF, bluemouth inc, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, It’s Not a Box Theatre, and others.

Sebastian Pines
Twitter

Sebastian Pines is an artist, academic, and neutral good gnome druid with a keen interest in roleplaying games and queerness. The themes of their body of work revolve around queer identity and queer modes of play. They also have a penchant for the macabre and love all manner of spooky media.

Phoenix Simms
Twitter / Medium

Phoenix is the former managing editor of Third Person, Toronto’s premier site for diverse and story-driven games coverage. She’s also a biracial game writer and illustrator who’s fascinated by the intersection of art and science, urban and green spaces, as well as exterior versus interior realities. She migrated from a visual arts diploma to a masters in English literature, with a self-directed focus on game studies.

In Partnership with

Have you ever heard of people talking about games and wanted to know more? Already in the industry, but want to learn about different perspectives and experience games from another angle? Interested in how game design can go beyond digital screen-based work to intersect with nature, urban renewal, and food? We got you.

Game Curious at Evergreen Brick Works is a free, public event series that uses game design and playful media as a lens to explore interconnected systems of urban sustainability, food security, arts/culture, history, and technology. Based on our popular Game Curious initiative, programming will take place on-site at Evergreen Brick Works in the Don Valley over the course of one year, activating different areas and audiences throughout the changing of the seasons.

For updates and more information on the individual programs planned throughout the year, check out our Game Curious at Evergreen Brick Works page, subscribe to our newsletter, hit us up on Twitter, or contact us at info@handeyesociety.com with questions. Don’t be shy, come play for yourself!

Spring

A game jam—no, you can’t eat it, as much as some games do look delicious—typically means getting a group of people to work collectively or solo to make an interactive project within a limited period of time. But this is no ordinary game jam. Six selected participants will tour Evergreen Brick Works to learn about its history and various initiatives. They will then spend a weekend in April designing playful, bite-sized interactive works based on their observations. The final game concepts will be documented in the form of a digital and printed zine, designed by Chris White and illustrated by local artists.

Say hello to our jammers!

[button size=” style=” text=’Click here for more information, FAQ, and our jammers!’ icon=” icon_color=” link=’http://handeyesociety.com/game-curious-spring-jam/’ color=” hover_color=” border_color=” hover_border_color=” background_color=” hover_background_color=” font_style=” font_weight=” text_align=” margin=”]

Dates: April 5 to 7 (Jammers Only) / June 16 (Public Zine Launch)

Location: TBD

Audience: 6 jammers and 6 illustrators selected via submission process. The zine launch is open to the public.

Summer

An all-ages event where participants interact with technology that reacts to touch, heat, water and more! A more hands-on approach to learning how tech can be used to facilitate curiosity, exploration, and wonder. A collaboration with Little Dada.

Dates: [Update: POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER]

Location: Children’s Garden

Audience: Drop-in, children and families/all-ages.

Fall

Have you ever seen a game so delicious that you wanted to eat it? Well, now’s your chance. Inspired by projects like Jenn Sandercock’s Edible Games Cookbook, this workshop gives participants the opportunity to utilize different kinds of food and use it to create a game that you can eat.  This is a fun event where you can learn elements of game design as well think about how we interact with food beyond mere consumption. Bring an empty stomach just in case!

Dates: Oct 9 and 23, after work hours

Location: FIDO Kitchen

Audience: Pre-registration required, ages 13+.

Winter

An interactive experience created by artists Julia Gingrich, Rehka Ramachandran and Kara Stone reflecting on time and climate change. Rocks Die? investigates the Anthropocene, the material and the virtual. It consists of a quilt made of used plastic, dipped in water and then frozen, with materials such as flowers and notes written by participants in advance surrounding it. The pieces are hung, letting the ice drip off them and revealing what is inside.

Dates: Dec 28-31

Location: TBD

Audience: Drop-in, all-ages.

Partners

Through research, design and collaboration, Evergreen moves sustainable city building ideas into action. We believe that flourishing cities are created through the alchemy of placemaking—holistically improving the intersections and interdependencies between people + natural + built worlds. This is evident in our work designing school grounds; building community programs; collaborating on transportation, housing, and water issues; and imagining and developing the Evergreen Brick Works social enterprise.

Since 1991, Evergreen, a Canadian charity and international thought leader, has provoked bold action in transforming public landscapes into thriving community spaces with environmental, social and economic benefits. At the core of our work is the belief that involving people directly in the process of restoring the health of local ecologies and their communities positively affects the attitudes and behaviours that lie at the core of the sustainable city.

Toronto Arts Council (TAC) is the City of Toronto’s funding body for artists and arts organizations. Since 1974, TAC has played a major role in the city’s cultural industries by supporting a very broad range of artistic activity. From the emerging artist to the most established, from celebrated institutions to arts that challenge convention, TAC is typically the first funder to offer support. Today, TAC grants lead to exhibitions, performances, readings and workshops seen annually by over 9.5 million people. Through our ongoing funding, TAC cultivates a rich engagement between artists and audiences.  We are proud to reflect Toronto’s vibrancy through the diversity of artists, arts communities and audiences that we serve.