first social of 2010 is… Thursday Feb 11th***
To the distinguished membership of the Hand Eye Society: apologies for this double-post (reason: it’s complicated), please note that the corrected date for this event is Thursday, February 11th 2010. ***
For the fifth Hand Eye Society Social, the first of 2010, we are preparing a brief audiovisual presentation intended to thrill & amuse. Hosted by Mr. Nathan Vella of Toronto’s own Capy, a studio that has recently released a couple of thingamjigs for Sony & Nintendo’s machines, the presentation will include glimpses at two types of blinking lights offered by two dudes with beards:
Firstly, Mr. Kris Piotrowski, born in Poland & raised in Cuban Missile Ssauga, a former Ryerson film student and currently creative director at one of them independent videogame studios located here in Toronto, will be presenting for the first time a (hopefully) crazybananas Wiiware project called ‘Heartbeat’, while attempting to explain some learnings from its roundabout design process.
Secondly, Mr. Craig D. Adams, born on Canada’s west coast & living in Toronto since the turn of this 21st century, will be presenting a three-way collaborative project named ‘Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP’, described as a brave experiment in I/O cinema for Apple’s touchtronic machines featuring 1) the remarkable pixel artwork of Superbrothers, an ambiguously pluralized & irritatingly cryptic art & design organization known for the occasional published pixel illustration & a few DIY videogame efforts at ToJam & with the AGI plus 2) the soulful soundz of Toronto’s Jim Guthrie, the Juno nominated recording artist known for using a PSone as a drum machine & sequencer to make marvelous music 3) the engineering capabilities & videogame design prowess of the fine & noble folks at Capy.
These two projects, still deep in development and up until now all but unseen, will be making what is effectively their world premiere at this free presentation and social event at Unit Bar on Queen West in Toronto on February 11th. Doors will open & beers will be available from 19:00 EST and the half-hour presentation itself will begin at 20:00 EST (otherwise known as eight o’clock in the evening).
Afterwards the entire Heartbeat & S:S&S EP teams, including Mr.Jim Guthrie, will be on-hand for chit-chat, poutine or what-have-you.
*** It has been reported by members of the Hand Eye Society that, due to a rare bug with Safari, Mozilla & all internet browsers other than Netscape Explorer v1.7, the date of the next social was incorrectly displayed in a recently published post & in the promotional images on handeyesociety.com & everywhere else on the internet too.
The correct date for the next social is in fact Thursday February 11th 2010. For real. The 11th. ELEVEN. TEN PLUS ONE. (NOT THE FOURTH). We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this confusion may have caused.
Event, Social | Craig D. Adams | 
January 27, 2010 10:26 am
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By Mark Goll, February 4, 2010 @ 10:03 am
Nertz!!. And I had this night off. Bah, I’ll see what I can do to show up to the next one. Are they always on Thursday nights?
By paulhunter, February 7, 2010 @ 2:17 am
I aim to be there. Sounds exciting. Perhaps I’ll finally meet that Nathan Vella guy I’ve been speaking to over email for a few months.
By Pat Nav, February 11, 2010 @ 3:50 pm
Looking forward to this all, never been to a situation that involved both ‘social’ and ‘video game’ all in one neat package!
By Eric Brazier, February 11, 2010 @ 11:49 pm
Congrats on an amazing turnout guys. Unfortunately I couldn’t get past the front door and wasn’t able to see the demos. Perhaps time for a larger venue?
By paulhunter, February 12, 2010 @ 10:14 am
Wow, so many people there last night – what a turnout. Unfortunately I got stuck at the back and couldn’t see a thing (aside from the backs of heads). It’s a little discouraging because I was intending on doing a write-up on the event on the Future Shop Tech Blog, bah!
Victims of our own success.
[any chance we can get a larger venue next time or a bar with a better layout?]
By Craig D. Adams, February 12, 2010 @ 4:36 pm
Yeah, geez, wow… that was a cra-a-a-azy turn-out, which is an immensely positive thing to see because of what it means for Toronto’s videogame communities coming together, but that venue & that set-up just weren’t well equipped to handle the situation. SINCERE APOLOGIES to everyone at the back, it must have been really disappointing to miss 98.2% of everything.
Unit Bar has been really supportive & friendly to us, it’s a great spot for a lot of reasons, the location + vibe are perfect, however the shape & size of the place can be a little awkward for this type of thing.
1) Maybe next time around we can get a huuuuuuuugge canvas screen up front, one that hangs down from the ceiling or something? Seems like one of the big issues was that the screen was too low / too small. At home I just use canvas for a screen and it’s a really cheap option.
2) Perhaps we could look around for other options about town if we suspect a future social will have that kind of turn-out… That said, last night might have been a bit of an exception crowd-wise, and with a huge/higher screen solution like the one mentioned above Unit Bar might still be the right place.
Finally, with regards to S:S&S EP, I’m about to capture footage with sound + music to approximate last night’s presentation which I’d like to share with the Hand Eye membership. Because the project is in-development and not quite ready for prime-time the footage may go up online for only a limited time (eg: this weekend only), but hopefully it’ll soften any disappointment from last night.
I’ll be in touch!
By Craig D. Adams, February 13, 2010 @ 7:31 pm
Ok, for members of the Hand Eye Society:
I’ve uploaded a ten minute clip intended to approximate the recent public presentation of S:S&S EP, unobstructed & relatively glitch-free!
http://www.vimeo.com/9430593
The footage isn’t ready for wide release so access to the clip will be necessarily time-limited (probably only the next few days).
Also, I think you’ll need to use this password: handeye4ever
By paulhunter, February 15, 2010 @ 12:59 pm
Thanks for putting this together Craig, watching now.