UPDATE: Thanks for your donations so far, we're on our way!
All About The TONY Guide
So you live in the big city. It's loud and it's crowded and it's expensive but is it fun? Well it will be once you have a copy of The TONY Guide in your back pocket!
This book is
the complete resource for creative people living in Toronto and New York City. Our team has scoured the creative underbelly of these great cities and we are ready to show you the light!
Ok, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's break it down:
Who Are We:
We're a group of hackers, hobbyists, programmers, artists and game developers who are in the Digital Futures program at OCAD University.
What is in The TONY Guide:
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A review of cool places to visit (where they are, how much they cost, what you'll find there, etc.)
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Interviews with innovative people who give tips and tricks to living a great life.
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A listing of tools and resources available for use (3D printers etc)
- A localized map to find art centres, maker shops and creative meetups
Why the Indiegogo Campaign?
We need your help to prepare the TONY Guide for a Spring 2014 launch. We are asking for $5000 to fund our transport, housing and food as we document creative cultures in Toronto and New York City.
Indiegogo has funded some amazing projects in the past and we hope The TONY Guide will be the next success story.
Meet the TONY Team:
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Two years ago, a collection of young artists, creators and geeks came together at OCAD University to take our ideas off of the page and into real life. It is amazing how much we were able to create once we started sharing ideas and getting involved in creative communities around the city.
Our team of 20 students and professors has created over 40 games, published an Online Magazine and exhibited works at major showcases such as Vector Game+Art Festival, Level Up and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
With The TONY Guide, we are sharing our first-hand experiences in Toronto and New York with you.
Details on The Guide:
The Guide will be a pocket-sized book (6" x 9"), perfectly bound with a colour cover, a black and white interior, and a page count of between 70 and 100 pages. The book will be published through lulu.com.
The Guide will be divided into two sections - Toronto and New York. It’s a kind of Lonely Planet travel guide or a user’s manual for these cities, but for people who like to create and make and experiment with new media. It is meant for hackers, makers, researchers, artists, educators, and startup-ers. For each city, the book will contain around 10-15 longer feature articles and 30-40 shorter profiles of maker spaces, studios, coops, resource centres, and other cool things to do that people like us should know about.
Project Coordinators
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Project Leader Kate Hartman is an artist, technologist, and educator whose work spans the fields of physical computing, wearable electronics, and conceptual art. Her work has been exhibited internationally and featured by the New York Times, BBC, CBC, NPR, in books such as “Fashionable Technology” and “Art Science Now”. She was a speaker at TED 2011 and her work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Hartman is based in Toronto at OCAD University where she is the Assistant Professor of Wearable & Mobile Technology and Director of the Social Body Lab. She is also the director of ITP Camp, a summer program at ITP/NYU.
Creative Director Emma Westecott has worked in the game industry for over 20 years: in development, research and the academy. She achieved international recognition for working closely with Douglas Adams as designer then producer for the best-selling CD-ROM Adventure Game, Starship Titanic (1998, Simon & Schuster). Since then, Emma has built up a worldwide reputation for developing original as well as popular game projects.
Engineer of Awesome Jeff Watson is an artist, designer, researcher, and Assistant Professor of Digital Futures at OCAD University. His work focuses on investigating how game mechanics, pervasive computing, and social media can enable new forms of storytelling, participation, and civic engagement.
With your help, our team will raise $5000 to produce and publish The TONY Guide.
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Thank you!