Tori Foster

Text-based installation, dimensions variable

“Spectrum” is a public installation series exploring the contiguity of our species’ bodies and lived experience. As I began uncovering aspects of my own neurodiversity including the possibility of being somewhere on the autism spectrum, I also found myself thinking about the other spectrums that describe who I am—and who we are—particularly the ones that are innate or near innate to our bodies and spirits, including sexuality, gender identity, skin color, and neurobiology.

This piece is largely a reaction to my own self-discovery taking place within a volatile and Othering political climate. After decades of feeling different, I am beginning to come to terms with my terror of exploring, even privately, the aspects of myself that are at best misunderstood by my society and at worst, violently targeted. This is particularly true of my neurodiverse and gender identities.

Photographic composite, 45"x33"

Position Paradigms is a series of photographic composites that depict numerous Major League Baseball players. Each composite contains contributing images that are sourced from a complete set of 2018 trading cards. I've identified cards in which the players share similar physical positions and have aggregated those cards for each work. The resulting superimpositions illustrate archetypes of actions performed within the game.

Exhibition support for this work was provided by the Ontario Arts Council’s Exhibition Assistance grant.

Interactive kinetic installation: plywood, aluminum, mylar, motors, sensors, microcontrollers. 98” x 53” x 15”

The Alchemist Husband places the viewer in the role of a modern scientist. Her proximity to the work determines what breed of wheat grows: a perennial (wheat that grows wild); an annual (a plant we’ve farmed and altered through millennia of breeding); or a scientifically edited plant (a hybridization of each).

If the viewer activates the scientifically edited plant, she will create either the desired hybrid of perennial roots and annual grass or, occasionally, the edit will go awry. Which plant is created is determined by the code embedded in the plant, not by the viewer. The viewer can only determine which physical relationship she would like to pursue.

Alchemy is a form of early chemistry and speculative philosophy practiced in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It is principally concerned with discovering methods for transmuting the atoms of baser metals into gold. Husbandry is the caring for, and cultivation of, plants or animals.

Dataset created and provided by Dr. Jamie Larsen.

Documentation photographs by Jaime Vedres.

Single channel video (HD), 4 minutes 40 seconds

Dundas Square is the second in the Pulse Crowds series. Pulse Crowds are representations of urban spaces in which the movement of people and vehicles is influenced by an external mechanized event. These events produce an undulating effect on the spaces' inhabitants: activity in the space shifts from static to active in a repetitive rhythm, highlighting both the archetypes and the outliers of pedestrian and vehicular movement.

In Dundas Square, traffic and pedestrians navigate an intersection while obeying (or disobeying) traffic signals.

Photographic Series, 24"x36"

A “primary” is the object around which a satellite orbits. In this series, the photographer acts as satellite while individual trees act as primaries. The portraits that result reveal the essence of a particular tree by rendering it from multiple vantage points simultaneously.

Kinetic installation: Electromagnetic flip-disc display, 54” x 11.5” x 4”, 4 minutes, looped

Cadence is an electro-magnetic flip-disc display that chronicles vehicular activity on a one-kilometre stretch of highway during rush hour.

Each vehicle’s headlights are portrayed by two white discs. The fast lane is positioned at the top of the display, below which are the middle lane and slow lane. The curved lane that ascends at bottom left represents the entry ramp, while the exit ramp on the lower right carries traffic off of the highway. The sinusoidal wave generated by the emergent traffic patterns can be seen in the compression and expansion of the vehicles as they travel.

If you view Cadence from the side—perpendicular to the piece—you can see the flutter of hundreds of discs as they carry information across the display. The sound generated by the piece is derived from the subtle clapping of the discs against the display as each circle rotates from one position to another.

Single channel video (HD), 107 minutes

The single channel video, Grand Central Terminal, depicts activity in the main concourse of New York's iconic train station. The piece separates the stationary from the ambulatory, exposing the symbiotic patterns of movement and dormancy within the station. As time progresses the light and shadows shift, and the patterns of commuters who use the space primarily as a conduit, are replaced by tourists who engage with the space as a destination.

Photographic Series, 24"x96". Tori Foster & Jesse Colin Jackson

Iterations is a series of 96” x 24” panoramas of familiar built forms and their surrounding environments (including branded structures, street furniture, and suburban housing). Each panorama is comprised of seven or more photographs that are composited through transparency overlay. Thus, for example, Seven Essos, Toronto, consists of seven different Esso gas stations from around the city of Toronto superimposed on one another, creating a juxtaposition of the common and unique characteristics of each panoramic scene. Consistent elements reinforce each other through repetition such as the bright red canopy over the pumps, while inconsistencies, such as the surrounding environment or placement of columns, appear more ghost-like. The archetype of each architectural form emerges as a result of this accumulation of formal information.

5-Channel HD video installation, 233-minutes, looped, variable size (40 feet x 4.5 feet, up to 222 feet x 25 feet)

How does our bodily experience of place influence our conceptualization of space? In an attempt to tie together the experience of the specific with an understanding of the whole, in Continuous New York the city is presented in the capacity of both place and space. Place is shown in a vertical panoramic window that depicts a rainbow-like arc cast over the streetscape. The dizzying affect of the skyscrapers is captured in a complete 180-degree depiction of place. This panorama is juxtaposed with 74 others, each depicting a space 200 metres away from its neighbour. The numerous windows placed side-by-side form a continuous and unbroken loop through the island of Manhattan. The space of New York as a whole can be witnessed in its entirety while maintaining connection with the experience of individual place(s). The collapse of place and space exposes both the unabbreviated physical form and the intimate living details of the metropolis.

Video series: HD single channel video, variable durations

Downsview Station is the first in the Pulse Crowds series. Pulse Crowds are representations of urban spaces in which the movement of people and vehicles is influenced by an external mechanized event. These events produce an undulating effect on the spaces' inhabitants: activity in the space shifts from static to active in a repetitive rhythm, highlighting both the archetypes and the outliers of pedestrian and vehicular movement.

In Downsview Station the emergent behaviour of pedestrian crowds is orchestrated around a single registration mark: the chimes that signal the opening of the trains' doors.

Video installation: Mixed media, 53” x 36” x 6”, 162 minutes, looped

The Impossibility of Understanding in the Path of a Torontonian, is a video installation consisting of four horizontally stacked video streams. The top three streams each depict the movement path of a different individual, each of whom live in separate regions of the city. Each stream re-presents one full day of movement through the city. Simultaneously, the fourth and bottom video stream displays a streetscape of the entirety of Toronto—from one edge of the metropolis to the other. As the camera cuts through the city, this streetscape depicts buildings, parks, bridges, cars, and pedestrians—all of the actors in the urban environment. The juxtaposition of these four streams of video offers both an opportunity to witness the ways in which individuals experience the city and to witness the city as a whole from one side to the other.

Consisting of highly composited imagery, in which each stream is comprised of billions of stills, the piece merges video representation into a stills representation. Achieved through the design and implementation of custom Processing software, this produces the uncanny effect of buildings coming to life and then forced motionless into the passing of time, and lively pedestrians unwittingly paralyzed and rendered frozen in space.

Photographic composite series: variable dimensions

Unlike traditional photographs, which capture the three-dimensional volume of space in front of the camera lens, Movement Portraits are slit-scan images, which capture only action that crosses a two-dimensional plane of space. As a result, time in each of the Movement Portraits is represented from the left to right. Static elements are repeated in thin vertical slivers causing a horizontal streaking affect. Moving elements, such as pedestrians, are rendered as recognizable figures. The figures appear distorted because we are accustomed to seeing the world in three-dimensions, though they are ultimately an equally accurate representation of space and time. In this series I am privileging time over space as I explore the ways in which we navigate our environment. This shift in representational hierarchy allows us to consider how time impacts engagement patterns within the spaces we navigate.

Installation: 4,700 Map pins, 156" x 48"

One Kilometre, Two Minutes illustrates the emergent behaviour of moving vehicles on a kilometre-long stretch of highway over the course of two minutes. Time-lapse aerial captures that depict the fast lane of a multi-lane highway are taken every two seconds. These time-lapse captures are then placed side by side, centimetres apart, illustrating the flow pattern of complex multi-vehicular movement through a narrow corridor of space. The curved form of the highway is articulated only by the repetition of taillights and brake lights. These lights are represented by pearl-head map pins fastened directly to the gallery walls (smaller pins represent tail lights, while larger pins represent brake lights).

Moments of congestion are articulated by clusters of brake lights, while free-flowing traffic is represented by running lights distantly spaced from one another. Through the representation individual driving habits emerge: a large gap between the same two cars over the captured two minute duration appears as a wide river-like swath of negative space that stretches to the upper left corner; tailgaters clustered together create dense red ribbons of congestion; antsy lane changes cause other drivers to brake and relinquish hard earned territory.