Lisa Steele + Kim Tomczak

Mixed Media Light and Sound Installation, 2013 Thorsell Spirit House, ROM Level 1

Toronto based visual artists Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak have created an interactive light and sound installation inside the ROM’s Thorsell Spirit House. The Unsolicited Reply takes its name from the Wordsworth poem Yes, It Was the Mountain Echo. It invokes the image of something reflected back “…like—but oh, how different”* from its source. In this work the artists point to the very human desire for light and ‘magic’ which is countered by the realization that this spectacle is consuming precious resources—in this case energy—and that there is a consequence to our actions. Visitors may choose to blaze up the lights and increase the volume, or they can stand back and allow the lights to return to a resting state and the audio to a faint hum. * From Yes, It Was the Mountain Echo. William Wordsworth The artists would like to thank Mark Pellegrino for Digital Animation, Gerald Grison for Electronic Design and Robin Clarke for Sculptural Fabrication.

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Lisa Steele + Kim Tomczak

Steele and Tomczak have collaborated exclusively since 1983, producing videotapes, performances, and photo/text works that have been extensively exhibited nationally and internationally. They have received the Bell Canada prize for excellence in Video Art, a Toronto Arts Award, and a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. They are co-founders of Vtape, a Toronto media arts centre and they teach at the University of Toronto in the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design.