my technosapien life

week 20

Erin Green — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:14:32 +0000

Twenty is one of my favourite words in Icelandic. I don’t know many, but tuttugu is fun to say and easy to remember. Regardless – here we are at my 20th week of my resolution to scour Toronto for all the fun things I’ve been to lazy to go check out for the last ten years. It’s been super fun so far, but this week I think I had a bit of a miss. I didn’t plan well and with the long weekend got stuck with the only free, fast, and open thing I could find to sneak in among church, swim, and family visit.

I totally didn’t understand this. Then a wedding party showed up and started taking annoying wedding party type photos. So Greener was out.

week 19 – still going really strong

Erin Green — Thu, 09 May 2013 21:47:10 +0000

Good week in resolutioning. I don’t have photos though (not that they were much to look at anyway), because I’ve been leaving my phone at home because I’m sick of it. I caught an Icelandic film with my really good friend Victoria at Ryerson. Weird movie, but always good to see the Icelandic landscapes and hear the language. I love the way it sounds. Then on recommendation of a friend, I scoped out a printmaking exhibit at the John B. Aird Gallery. THIS is why this resolution is necessary. The Aird Gallery is tucked away on the main floor of a Provincial Government building just a few hundred metres from where I’ve worked and gone to school for a decade! I didn’t even know it existed! It is free and a delightful dose of art. The show was so good and one of the artists was there and he was super chatty and sweet. And it made me immediately want to run home and research print making classes and make collages and stuff. Super fun. (but dissertation time now).

week 18 and a sunburn

Erin Green — Mon, 06 May 2013 00:01:12 +0000

It’s that time of year again, kiddos! When I’m reminded that my poor, poor skin hates the sun. When I accidentally burn myself some awful tan lines in the time it takes me to cross the street and procure my SPF 160. Man. It never fails. I always forget this and then just torture myself. But it also means it’s super fun to bike around and find good art. So for this week in my resolution I checked out one of my two picks for the Scotiabank Contact Photography festival. I found Food by Martin Parr down on King Street. It was surprisingly jarring. Not that usual pretentious foodie food food photography. Nah, this was like totally in your face mockery of gluttony and our obsession with consume consume consume. (whoops, I’m totally eating a brownie as I blog this . . . eep). The whole thing made me pretty uncomfortable, which I kinda liked. Onward!

Week 17!!

Erin Green — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:54:09 +0000

Man, I am loving this resolution! I had the best day on Sunday. I finally – after multiple foiled attempts over seven years – got to go to the Design Exchange. And then I went to visit my cows on King Street. They are a nice garden of cows that are just being lazy and having some snacks. I used to hang out with them a lot when I was new in town and homesick for the country.

Things I don’t understand: Week 16

Erin Green — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 00:50:12 +0000

Boo ya! Something fun happened this week. I had the invite to check out a contemporary dance show at the Fleck Dance Theatre at Harbourfront. It was really cool. I think I oversell my disinterest in performance arts – it’s been about ten years since I’ve seen any kind of dance, but this was pretty neat. And it was so good to get out and do something different.

Next up? hmmmm . . . .

Week 15

Erin Green — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:37:36 +0000

More Indianapolis adorable happened. I checked out the Eiteljorg Museum, the Scottish Rite Cathedral . . . and probably a bunch of other things I’ve already forgotten. I was pretty excited to discover for myself that there are National Parks blankets for the US parks!! They are beautiful. And I felt really materialistic and whiny about the whole thing.

week o 14 o

Erin Green — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:22:37 +0000

So here we have it! My big Indianapolis adventure is here. I’m midwest-gal this week because of a work conference and meetings. It’s groovy. It’s a really super cute little city. And I think I’ve calmed down enough after the shock of it being true that the only place to sell Canadian currency is at the airport at a 16% premium. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh. AnyHOW. The art here is great. I brought my running gear in absence of hotel pool and so am trotting along adorable canals and looking at interesting things. The city has done a superb job of lacing itself with public art and staying super adorably neat and tidy. We also went on a field trip to the Indy Motor Speedway and museum. That was really something special – I liked all the vintage stickers on the cars more than anything. All the underpasses have murals and there are heaps of fun statues of bison and memorials to wars and disasters. I touched a beam of the World Trade Center. That was . . . surreal.

week 13 #gogreenergo

Erin Green — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 20:09:05 +0000

This week is Holy Week for Christians of the new calendar ilk, so lots of churching. I had occasion to bike by the Anglican Cathedral once already recently and so I thought I’d return for my weekly soul-feeding outing for the Good Friday liturgy. It was wonderful and so strange. There’s such interesting diversity in my religion. Then I strolled across to the sculpture garden across the way and looked at a stack of cars and was confused by the artist statement that went with it.

We’re 25% done with 2013 already! Whoa nelly!

Erin Green — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 17:47:22 +0000

I just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to bike downtown today. Not even to try out my new swimsuit. More than anything I wanted to stay in my neighbourhood. So I visited with the Petroff Gallery and enjoyed it! They always have the most beautiful Israeli jewellery, which I would love to learn to make in more Erin styled proportions. Israeli jewellery is always this super funky mix of fabric and metal and beads, but quite tiny scale. Time to sign up for some metal smithing classes or something!

What I like about the robots.

Erin Green — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:09:58 +0000

Seriously. The best part of my research project is that it has this really neat open-source quality to it. People get excited about it and help me out with it all of the time – showing me movies, and links, and articles, and asking good questions. It’s really awesome. My friend Sara (aka Boss Kitteh) sent me this link to a great NPR programme – Do we need humans? – on robots that featured a lot of the researchers I keep an eye on. It’s wonderful to hear their voices and get a taste for their personalities. It also had the added benefit of hearing how to pronounce Cynthia Breazeal’s last name without an Irish accent.