Categories: Things To Do

This free all-night celebration will bring floating sculptures to Toronto’s waterfront

Image via City of Toronto

Nuit Blanche 2024, here we come! Toronto’s free all-night celebration of contemporary art is back for 2024, happening on October 5th. The night will include three exhibitions with more than 80 works by local, national and international artists including “Amphipoda Song”, an art installation featuring floating sculptures along Toronto’s waterfront.

Nuit Blanche

According to the City of Toronto, the 2024 edition of the festival will run “from sunset to sunrise, starting at 7 p.m. on Saturday, October 5, and concluding at 7 a.m. on Sunday, October 6.”

This year’s theme is Bridging Distance and will explore the “different ways we experience distance and reimagine how we can bridge distance through art.”

The festival is totally free and the art installations throughout the city will evolve over the course of the night whether that’s through performances or guest interaction.

You can enjoy the art from almost anywhere in the city with locations spanning from Little Norway Park in the west to Sherbourne Common in the east.

Amphipoda Song

One of the notable art installations is Amphipoda Song. This art piece is actually a water performance made with floating sculptures, lights and soundscapes.

To be exact, the art will feature a series of large two-dimensional sculptures “shaped like singing amphipods float near the shore of Lake Ontario.”

According to the installation description, “Their silhouettes are animated by the moving water against the reflection of lights and set to the sound of wind instruments in a soundscape created by Brandon Valdivia and Karen Ng, in collaboration with Miko Riviera.”

Pretty interesting! There’s a backstory, too.

Amphipods are an order of crustacea, shrimp‐like creatures that are said to have become extinct from Lake Ontario during the 1990s and no one can truly figure out why.

“One speculative late discovery of this species is the singing amphipod, a unique musical creature also known as the water cicada. Though there are a few recordings thought to be attributed to the creature in mythos and little scientific understanding of their sound, it is believed that they sing collectively and only to communicate a threat or even their own extinction.”

So, the exhibit “Amphipoda Song” aims to recreate the sound and experience – cool!

You can find this specific art piece at the Spadina Wave Dock (415 Queens Quay M5V 1A2).

See you at Nuit Blanche, Toronto!