Special thanks to our Play Path partners:

• Cossette
• City of Toronto
• Toronto Hydro
• Fort York National Historic Site
• Residents of 50 Bruyeres Mews
• Residents of 20 Bruyeres Mews
• Residents of 137 Fort York Blvd
• CityPlace / Fort York BIA
• Waterfront Neighbourhood Centre
• Waterfront BIA

Midsummer Mix Vol. 1 sees GTA pixel artist Nelson Wu playfully transform the everyday icons and landmarks of Toronto’s waterfront — from the CN Tower to the Toronto Island Ferry Terminal, Billy Bishop Airport to the Toronto Music Garden — into unique levels of an intimately local video game.

Here, flying fish, fierce dragons, and other fantastic creatures inhabit the spaces once so familiar to us, encouraging us to see the waterfront in another way. Rendered as street banners along a length of the lakeside Martin Goodman Trail, they hint at Toronto’s tourism industry: both local and international. Amidst COVID-era travel restrictions, this is a journey to spark the imagination and explore a world unknown.

Accompanying audio by Wu’s frequent collaborator, GTA composer biosphere, creates a nostalgia-infused yet distinctly contemporary soundtrack to our waterfront journey. Ranging from dreamy to energizing, biosphere’s sounds seamlessly blend fantasy with reality. Signaled by Wu’s visuals, and accessed by personal device through a series of QR code prompts along the path, biosphere’s audio invites us to turn on, tune in, and level up our waterfront experience — within a summer where we could all use a power boost.

Listen Here!

About the Artists

Nelson Wu is a Chinese Canadian artist who is interested in animation and video games. Graduating from OCAD University, he is currently working in the gaming and entertainment industry. He has produced a variety of illustrations, pixel art, and animations. A sense of dystopia, nostalgia, and surrealism are often themes present in the work.

And follow along on Instagram and Twitter

biosphere is a Taiwanese Canadian composer and producer based in Toronto. He started out experimenting with lo-fi hip hop and orchestral music, but is now focused on branching out into R&B and hip hop. Although his ultimate dream is to compose OSTs for anime and movies in the future, he is more than satisfied creating beats to make a listener’s day a little bit better.

Welcome to Dream Street! Use the different backdrops to create and record your own stories using #playinginpublic. From the urban forest to the local store, there are many places to explore.

Dream Street is a vertical playground open to all, inviting visitors to experience the city from a child’s perspective. This utopian cityscape mural is co-created with youth from Paris and Toronto. Like an outdoor film set, the different backdrops are perfect to play, to imagine, and to record stories. Mixing scales and perspective effects, the mural offers a fully immersive experience.

Dream Street was produced as part of The Bentway’s Playing in Public exhibition. Created and designed by The Street Society (creative urban agency based in Paris), with Bérénice Milon, Margaux Grappe, Eloïse Gillard, Edoardo Cecchin, Justine Lipski, Clémence Chapus and Alice Cabaret.

About the Artist

The Street Society is a creative urban strategy agency based in Paris. Structured around a global network, its multidisciplinary team of urban thinkers and designers, writers and illustrators, artists and architects create strategies to transform underused spaces into new places. The Street Society provides strategic solutions to build, transform or activate public spaces, buildings or neighbourhoods – through research, urban design, community engagement and art installations. At the heart of The Street Society approach is the willingness to explore the link between people and places, and to always design contextual, bespoke interventions.

Follow The Street Society on Instagram

Pierre Poussin’s Jax reimagines one of the world’s oldest and most widespread games by amplifying its scale and colour, inviting visitors to see the game anew. The popularity of Jacks endures as it’s a portable activity that’s playable by all ages. It is traditionally played by tossing a ball, and collecting as many small objects as possible before the ball hits the ground. Here those “small items” are scaled up by a factor of 25, creating a larger-than-life playscape where passersby can assume the role of Jacks’ iconic red rubber ball, hopping from one zone to the next.

Tetrapods, an architectural element found along shorelines, are re-appropriated for new and playful purposes. Here, their bright colours reference the most recent 2SLGBTQQIA+ flag, signaling an inclusive play space where all are welcome, and where chance encounters serve to better unite us.

Play. Laugh. Embrace Silly. Encourage Love.

Co-commissioned by Concord Adex and The Bentway Conservancy.

About the Artist

Pierre Poussin creates public art that unites abstraction, functionality, and fun. When approaching an opportunity, he considers the physical site and the interests of the community, and then works to create a piece that both defines the space and provides an engaging and immersive experience for the audience. Within that exploration he juxtaposes elements of nature and industry, past and future, and dynamic and static. The result is artworks that resonate within the urban environment and bring continued long term interest to a site.