Described Toronto Podcast
A podcast with rich descriptions of Toronto, its flora and fauna, inhabitants and culture.
Described Toronto Podcast
Description Rich Story Hour - Part Three
As a Blind person Christine is always attentive to the sounds around her; they offer essential information, and it's how she navigates the world. For Sound Artist Anna Friz sound is also an anchor, but in a different way. In this episode, you'll hear a conversation Christine had with Anna about her sound art installation 120 Mirrors in Lee Lifeson Art Park. Christine had been to the park to experience the work before they spoke, but the conversation empowered her to do what she really wanted to do, which was make lots of playful noise in a public space, so she went back, and she wasn't alone... . Listen to what you can get up to in public spaces when so effectively invited to go wild!
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The Description Rich Story Hour and The Hopewell Garden Audio Story are created by Christine Malec, Rebecca Singh and Katherine Sanders. They are a trio of artists who came together for the purpose of creating audio experiences of the natural world from a Blind-led perspective.
These stories are made possible thanks to the generous support of the Toronto Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Foundation.
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Christine Malec (00:17)
What's that? You might well ask yourself if you happen to be strolling through Lee Lifeson Art Park on a hot summer afternoon, expecting only cicadas and traffic noise. It's a bird whistle mimicking a cardinal. It's a small, bird-shaped plastic thing you pour water into, then blow. Why is it weirdly resonant? Because I'm standing in front of one of the horns on Anna Friz's Hornucopia.
Christine Malec (00:45)
part of her sound art piece called 120 Mirrors.
Is that a duck?
Nope, it's a duck whistle. Amplified by the cone-shaped horn.
Christine Malec (01:02)
Welcome to this episode of the Description-Rich Story Hour podcast series. I'm Christine Malek. In this episode, we'll hear from Anna Friz, who co-designed the sound art piece 120 Mirrors, which you can find in Lee Lifeson Art Park. Our associate producer, Janis Mayers and I, went to the park with a microphone. We took turns. One of us would keep the mic, moving varying distances from the wide end of horn shapes
while the other stood at the mouth making noises into it and checking out how sound got projected. Anna Friz works in sound. She's persistently intrigued by how the sounds around us help us to build our landscape. Her piece, 120 Mirrors, invites park dwellers to play with sound, to notice what we say and what we hear. On a hot August afternoon, Janis Mayers and I brought some instruments to the park
to goof around.
Christine Malec (02:02)
In my conversation with Anna, I came to understand how interactive she intended this piece to be, and I felt validated to go to the park and do what I really wanted to do, which is to make noise. In the recordings Janis and I made, I became more conscious of just how much background noise there is in an urban park during the day. Cicadas, planes, cars, trucks, machines, wind.
and other part-goers. As someone who does a lot of field recording, I first experienced this as an irritant, but then I understood that this is exactly Anna's point. What are the sounds around us, and how do we experience them? How do we add to them?
Rebecca Singh (02:49)
Before we hear from the artist herself, let's check out the work 120 Mirrors in the Park. Rebecca Singh and I spent some time walking around exploring them, as Rebecca described the visuals of the park and the art. 120 Mirrors consists of three pieces. Hornucopia, speaking tubes, and the horn of reflection. Let's start
with the multi-part hornucopia. Well, let's start off with the plaque. So here we have 120 Mirrors, Public Studio and Anna Friz 2016, Steel, Wood and Audio Recording. 120 Mirrors is a series of horn-shaped sculptures that each play with a different aspect of human communication, specifically the acts of listening, speaking, conversing and reflection. By using materials such as mirrors,
referenced in the controversial land trade between the Mississaugas and the British Crown known as the Toronto Purchase of 1787, 120 mirrors seeks to deepen the visitor's engagement with the importance of communication in public space through a sonic experience of space. We become more aware of our surroundings in historical, political and contemporary social landscapes. Again, public art and monuments collection, City of Toronto.
We're going to now walk towards the work. It's just a few meters away. It's on an pad, which gives a different footing when we step onto it. then there's ⁓ four main works. So Chris, right now you're standing in front of what looks like a hexagonal horn. It has its opening towards you. It's black on the inside and it's gray on the outside. I'm...
I'm talking into it right now. It's this big open circle. It's maybe a meter across and it's at sort of starting at my chest height and it's seems conical, right? It's going in towards a, is it open at the other end? There's a opening as large as someone's open mouth. okay. So this would be an amplifier of some kind. And so I'm sort of, ⁓
talking into the wrong thing. Testing one, two, Oh my gosh. Okay. So there's Janis on the other side talking into, okay. So Janis, our co-producer there is on the other end and she's talking into the small, small piece. And I'm standing here. I'm very well. How are you? I'm trying to figure out how far, how, how, what's the distance do you think between? I think it's twice as long as your arms three times as long. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And there's four of those, three of those. So there are one, two, three.
Five, no six. There's a hidden one. Each one is in the same shape hexagonal with a conical interior going towards a open mouth sized Hole on the other side, okay, and they're on two stands. So the stands are ⁓ Pink and orange the one that you're standing in front of right now has the words speak Listen, and it's in relief. So it's raised and that's just above foot level maybe 10 centimeters off the ground
Now ⁓ we're going to go around its left side to the next closest conical shape.
So you're touching a pink and a support pole, which is basically like an upside down L shaped from the ground. Okay, yeah. And the exterior of these cones is white. So this one is much smaller and it's like I would have to crouch down. Well, hold on. I'm going to come to the narrow end. I'll listen. I'm at the narrow end and I'm sort of crouching down.
into it which you're probably hearing right there. I really just sing into it. So it's supported by these metal but this one's much lower and much smaller so kid-friendly for sure if you were a kid you would walk up to that and similar similar vibe talk into one end or the other. So we're just gonna continue walking further and now we're at the next one which is facing a new direction. Oh okay it's a
It seems a little lower than the first one, maybe a little smaller, but ⁓ I'm sort of standing and poking my head into the wide of the cone and ⁓ I don't need to crouch down or anything. slightly different. Are they all slightly different sizes? Is that right? I would say that the very first one was three times as big as the second one. And this one that we're at right now is in the middle. Okay. That's an interesting texture inside too. It's almost like a gravelly rough ash.
asphalt or I don't even know what to call that but I'm like a concrete I doubt that it is concrete but it seems like wood on the outside and then something textured on the inside. Yeah ⁓ kind of a concrete except for that it's painted black and then surrounding this asphalt pad is ⁓ more grass so we're on the grass now and we've just moved another two meters over and so now there's a separate structure which has the same writing on the base of it speak slash listen
except for it invites actually people to come inside of it. So we've got the one sculpture we were just at to our backs. we are now faced with three different mouth openings. So the first of which is pretty much at your mouth height. Hello. Okay. It's yeah, perfectly at my mouth height and seems to be going out to a cone, cone shape. Now there's another one right in front of you that is more in the child.
Oh yeah so it's all on this sort of scaffold of metal horizontal and vertical rectangular bars I guess you would say. So here we go one final one and it's just right next to the one you were just at. Okay yeah same little bigger but I'm at the narrow end here very cool. And basically that shape is is pointing out towards the path that we're just on so we're going to step back onto the path.
Christine Malec (09:02)
On our way to the speaking tubes, we stopped to admire the flora. Then we explored the somewhat mysterious speaking tubes. Don't worry, the mystery gets solved later in the episode. Well, sort of.
Rebecca Singh (09:16)
⁓ And we're coming to a place where another path crosses it. ⁓ We are facing a mountain of thistles. are taller than me, six or seven feet tall. And they have blossomed and when thistles blossom, they have, it's almost like cotton, like a fluffy ball. That's what their flowers are like. I'm going to give you some, Chris, in your hand. Ooh, it's all feathery.
very cottony, very feathery. You can feel little seeds in it, think. Yeah. Yeah. wow. I thought, yeah, thistles are normally scratchy, right? Yeah. So if you were to touch the rest of the plant, you would regret it. ⁓
Yeah, that's very feathery and fluffy. It looks beautiful, to be honest, but what I if I'm looking down, I see that it is crowding out the cone flowers, which I think is what we're supposed to be appreciating here. Beautiful cone flowers. they've got purple petals and a golden orange mound. And ⁓ OK, so when getting to the art right now, we are where the two paths meet.
And on either side there are metal hexagons like beams that are sticking up out of the flower beds and then towards us on the path. One of them on the left hand side here has a circular opening. It would be perfect for a person who is maybe seated in a wheelchair. it has a circular opening on its end with a mesh grill.
⁓ The beam that is sticking out of the flower bed is red in color and from the mesh grill it really appears that it's perhaps hollow. ⁓ okay. And you can certainly reach out and touch it. Okay.
I see. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm at the I'm at the narrow end and there's definitely a grill covering it. It turns. So I'm touching where I'm talking into, but then it turns downward. There's like the pipe is going to the ground. Is that right? Yeah. And right into the ground? Yeah. So we need to solve this mystery. So we're to go over to the right hand side, see if we get any more clues. OK, so that one is at mouth height. And now just
taking another few steps towards the other side of the path and we're at another one it is at ear height. Yeah ear height okay and it also standing level ear height to the ground going into the ground how mysterious should one of us go back to the do you think if you talk into one you hear it in the other
It just echoes back. Janis is telling us it echoes back. Do you want to? It echoes back.
Okay, so I'm ⁓ I see ⁓ yeah
So maybe, so if you, I'm talking right into it and it's, ⁓ yeah, it sounds like I'm talking into a cave, a very, very small cave. Okay, cause that pipe, does look like it's going down into the ground.
Christine Malec (12:29)
and finally, the horn of reflection. Also a bit mysterious at first, but my conversation with Anna will make more sense out of our visitor experience.
Rebecca Singh (12:40)
And we are standing in front of the largest of the ⁓ three installation horn sculptures, another hexagon. There are a bunch of wooden slats right in front of it. And it has a mesh grill that goes clear across the front of it. It's again, it's a horn shape and you can almost see inside of it.
but not a lot of clues as to what's in there. It's really big. It's maybe what two, two meters across. Yep. And ⁓ I have this feeling like this grill was not always here because, well, I don't know. So I'm leaning in and talking into it and it sounds, ⁓ you know, confined, like my voice isn't really going anywhere. Do you see anything when you look in?
Okay, so the sun is shining through the grill and I can see the shadow of the grill so I can see the little dots of sunlight. Okay, wait, let me, ⁓ I see, wait a minute. Yes, I do. Okay, so it's, it is another horn shape. At the very back of the horn where there used to be in other places a circular ⁓ hole to talk through, there are two speakers. So two like subwoofers.
Again, we're at the wide end of what seems like a cone, right? So there's speakers inside. These look like they've been sort of custom installed. So everything inside is wood, but the wood is cut perfectly around these two round shaped speakers. Yeah.
You kind of want to crawl in there. Maybe that's why they put the grill on. tend to crawl in. Possibly. Yeah. So let's, let's take a walk around the side of it. Now just on the left hand side of it, there is a manhole cover, which is kind of sticking up out of the ground. So we're just going to skirt around that. And I'm standing at the side of it and the side is, it's like a mirror. It's basically like a mirror so we can see ourselves reflected.
How's that feel? Yeah, that's very, I would not have, it's quite dirty. So I wouldn't have tagged it as a mirror cause it's really gritty. yeah, this is sloping down from the cone.
in the cone shape down to the little opening that should be, I think it's maybe closed off now, I don't know. But yeah, it's big and very heavy too, I dare say. Is this the only spot where you've seen mirrors? Because I understand the 120 mirrors is referring to a historical piece of information, but is this the only place you've seen mirrors? Yeah, the only other thing that reminds me of this is actually the band shell.
Yeah, yeah, there's that that yeah, and then this one because of its size it's interesting how they have it connected to the ground So the other ones were connected via these like large kind of chunky beams here It's it's basically connected to the ground just via two wooden posts So it at the back it looks like a little post which is made of maybe a two by four So just one foot tall off the ground and then towards the front. There's a little H shape
So you can really see the grass underneath and I can see some tree roots and pine cones and gravel and dirt. So this is big like from so the cone is off to my left and the narrow part is sloping down to my right and that's what maybe five meters or so four meters? Yeah about four yeah. let's go around to the back and see what's happening at the other end.
Okay, so the the opening ⁓ is basically underneath my knee height. yeah, okay, there it is. very, yeah, it's shin level and it's capped. There's a, I think that's wood, a wooden cap that's closing it. So I wonder if that was always there. That's a substantial piece of art and it's solid.
And the thing that it does because it's mirrored at the top is it's reflecting all of the trees. Oh, how nice. So we're standing at the back of it. I'm looking down, but all I see is tree trunks and leaves and like I see like a maple tree on the left hand side and then the evergreens on the right hand side. So it's all all even though it's a mirror, it's all like green and and sky. Yeah. Oh, wow.
We have a blue sky today, little fluffy clouds. nice.
Christine Malec (17:10)
Anna Friz is a radio, sound and media artist and media studies scholar. She creates broadcasts, installations, short films and live performances, continually returning to themes of transmission ecologies and the intimacies of signal space, environment and land, infrastructures, time perception and durational performance, and critical fictions.
She specializes in self-reflexive radio for broadcast, installation or performance, where radio is the source, subject and medium of the work. In 2025, Anna joined the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California Santa Cruz, where she is currently Associate Professor. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
in the Department of Sound, 2011-2013. Anna is currently a Guggenheim Fellow, 2023, and has been a Rydell Visual Arts Fellow, 2022, and a Hellman Fellow, 2018. Her radio artworks have been commissioned by National Public Radio in Canada, Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, Denmark, and Spain, and heard on public and independent airwaves all over the world.
Anna, I've been to the park a couple of times and I have ⁓ touched your work, spoken into your pieces of your work, listened, and I still have a certain disconnect of trying to understand how it all fits together. So I'm hoping that you could start by giving us a really literal description of the piece that someone would encounter, ⁓ blind or sighted, might encounter as they enter the park.
Anna Friz (19:08)
Yeah, so we call the overall piece 120 mirrors, but it actually consists of three parts. there's ⁓ there and I should say they're all riffing off of different kinds of ⁓ physical amplification that's enabled by different sorts of horn shapes like horn loudspeakers. A hearing trumpet was another shape we were interested in.
⁓ the kind of loudspeaker you would have on an old phonograph, which is a horn shape. So basically a conical shape that's narrow at the bottom and wide at the ⁓ end and is designed to amplify ⁓ sounds either for someone to listen to or sounds that someone might produce in an analog way. And also we have ⁓
these speaking tubes, which are specifically referring to a kind of technology that you would find in a submarine, for instance, in the old days. And it allows ⁓ someone to speak to somebody else over a distance ⁓ due to the fact that sound bounces along the inside of the tube based on the angles that it has so that, again, there's an analog amplification, so a non-electronic amplification of sound.
So these three pieces that ⁓ together make up 120 mirrors, ⁓ we called them ⁓ the horn of reflection, which is a large horn shape with chrome on the outside. So it's reflective, ⁓ meaning that you can see yourself in it on the outside. And it's wood on the inside. And it's possible to actually get inside of it if you wanted to, especially if you were a smaller person ⁓ or like,
younger person who enjoyed playing you might enjoy sitting inside the Horn of Reflection. And there are a series of horns that we call the Hornacopia and they are a variety of sizes and are mounted together on a metal scaffolding that has a lot of right angles on it. It's painted very colourfully so it's orange and magenta and
pink, it's meant to be sort of attractive and to stand out in the environment because it's definitely a colour that you wouldn't see otherwise. And the horns themselves are white and metal on the outside and wooden on the inside. And ⁓ these are ones that you can adjust a little bit and you have the opportunity to listen again to acoustically amplified soundscape around you or to make sounds that would be amplified.
And also the Hornacopia has ⁓ in raised lettering on one of the metal sides, it says speak slash listen to sort of explain or maybe to encourage people to understand that they can make their own sounds as well as use them to listen to sounds that are in the environment. And then the last are a set of two sets of those speaking tubes that I mentioned that connect underneath some of the landscaping.
So they sort of stick out of the plants in either pink or orange so that they're visually kind of exciting to look at. And it really is intended for conversation. So you can't really play that with those unless you're with someone else who can stand on the other side to the other corresponding and be able to converse with you through those tubes. So that's the overall thing. And I should mention that the horn of reflection
⁓ When we installed it, it contained a small electronic element which is that a little composition would play approximately once an hour during daylight hours. Honestly, now that it's been a few years, I'm not 100 % sure if the electronic part is still running, but we always intended for this piece to be fully functional and realized without that element necessarily functioning.
Christine Malec (23:16)
That piece now has a metal grill over the wide end. And apparently if you peer in really, really carefully, you can see some what look like speakers or electronics. So I was particularly intrigued because I thought, did that always look like that? What, what is, what's meant to be happening there? So there's meant to be a soundscape coming out of there and maybe you could even crawl in if that grill wasn't there, correct?
Anna Friz (23:42)
Right,
actually, I I honestly have not been back to the park since 2017 or 18. So whenever the grill was not there at the front of the horn when I saw it, and that was never the intention for the grill to be there, it was always meant to be that you could sit inside of the horn. But I could imagine that there might be another explanation for this that may
Christine Malec (23:59)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
What happened? Rules
are meant to be broken, right? They, I'm sure, yeah, why did that grill get put there? Maybe I could find out.
Anna Friz (24:15)
I mean, there may
be that people or animals were inhabiting it. I'm not quite sure. mean, I can sort of imagine some possibilities based on the tendencies in public ⁓ furniture design that are usually meant to be ⁓ unwelcoming, or it could also be that maybe creatures or maybe snow, or I'm not sure anyway. ⁓ But that was not the design intention. was
Christine Malec (24:21)
Mmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Anna Friz (24:44)
that it was meant to be that the horn had a tiny little grill at the very, back that was protecting some speakers and such, but that overall you could get inside of the horn. You could sit in it.
Christine Malec (24:57)
What was the sound that the speakers were projecting?
Anna Friz (24:59)
They
were playing some very quiet ⁓ little compositions that I had composed based on field recordings in the Toronto area. So they included sounds that were from different seasons. So ⁓ thunderstorm and heavy rain, a little soundscape with the subway and different kinds of subway sounds from the winter, ⁓ crickets and ⁓ sort of passing.
passing vehicles and trains ⁓ again from the summer. So they were meant to be quite atmospheric, not very loud. ⁓ We anticipated that if they were being played once an hour that we wouldn't, someone who was usually ⁓ coming to the park or coming quite regularly might get tired of hearing the same things. And so we didn't want them to play too often. But as I mentioned, ⁓ it felt
clear to us that over time, ⁓ just understanding how ⁓ public art budgets work and that sort of thing, once something's installed, there's not so much of a budget for upkeep. And so ⁓ we imagined that ⁓ even though we installed the electronics to be able to run in all kinds of weather and for a longer period of time, that it may be that that element would subside at some point based on either.
just the technology wearing out or ⁓ there being some other issue related to weather that then wouldn't necessarily be solved.
Christine Malec (26:40)
The Horn of Reflection as well as the band Shell, they both brought up an interesting experience for me, which is that both of them begged me to make a loud something. wanted to sing into, I'm a singer, so I wanted to just sit in front of it and sing really loud into the grill and what would happen. And I was inhibited from doing it, which
Anna Friz (26:54)
Mmm.
Christine Malec (27:08)
I still puzzle over because I've been on stage once or twice and I sing in groups, sing in the subway, but in the public space, I felt inhibited. I, did you, in your dream of this art, did you picture someone walking up to the small part and just wailing into it or speaking or singing or vocalizing? Did you have a sense that it might be used that way?
Anna Friz (27:34)
Well, definitely the hornicopia, the cluster of horns, we absolutely imagined that people would walk up to those and just yell into them or sing or yodel or anything they felt like. with the horn of reflection, we had the idea that once you were sitting inside, could be fun to make sounds in there. could be playing an acoustic instrument if you wanted to, because it would have some amplificational features.
Christine Malec (28:02)
And here's Janis, grooving with her guitar at the mouth of a horn of hornucopia. I'm about 15 meters away with the mic, and so this sweet little acoustic guitar is sounding quite a bit louder than it would otherwise. Was I executing a few inexpert dance steps? Yeah, I was.
Anna Friz (28:31)
You know, we made this, I had already moved away from Toronto, but I had lived in Toronto for, I guess, seven years and I had done a lot of field recording, particularly around like this suburb of Toronto, because I was part of a different art project where we were installing installations into some homes that were slated to be demolished ⁓ kind of nearby. And so I got kind of used to commuting up into
that segment of Toronto and going to eat good Korean food not too far away and ⁓ just kind of getting used to the space. ⁓ And when ⁓ Public Studio was given the commission to make this work, ⁓ Al and Tamira were still living in Toronto, but I no longer was. I'd already moved to California where I live now. so I feel like there's this... ⁓
kind of an echo or reverberation for me when I think about this piece. It's like ⁓ when I look back at the photographs of the work and so on, it's like I can almost hear this reverberation of sounds that I was listening to in that area. So there's an aspect of it that is very material for me. ⁓ And it's been nice to think about that through speaking with you.
Christine Malec (30:01)
As a singer, I really wanted to try blowing some hot air through one of these horns. Interestingly, the horn didn't change the quality of my voice or the sound, but as you'll hear, Janis is some distance away, highlighting the analog, that is to say, non-electric, organic, nature of the amplification.
Janis Mayers (30:26)
Okay, all right about 10 meters away here. Just across the path standing on grass. ⁓
Anna Friz (30:57)
I guess the last thing I'll say is for me, I always think that the body is a recording device and the most important kind of audio recording I make is just when I'm walking around noticing things ⁓ with all of my senses, whether those be tactile or odd-ile or visual or whatever. so that feeling that something has left its impact in me is somewhere there in the body is the feeling I have about that park is.
⁓ and that neighborhood, since it's still, there's still echoes of it in me.
Christine Malec (31:33)
Public art is in public spaces, and often doesn't maintain its pristine condition, or continue to do quite with the artist originally intended. The speaking tubes don't seem to be connecting to one another the way Anna describes. Maybe rodents have built nests inside? Maybe a playful child dropped some sort of message in a bottle? But still, speaking into them does produce an intriguing echo.
So Janis laid the small mics inside the speaking tube and read a passage from a book called Haiti Glass by Lin-El Moise.
Janis Mayers (32:14)
Jazz is underwater. Days like La Ciel, Fer, Mena does not fall, saviours to fade.
Christine Malec (32:26)
On September 27, 2025, join us in Lee Lifeson Art Park for the description-rich Story Hour. As part of making the event as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, we'll have 3D-printed, hand-sized models of Anna Friz's 120 mirrors, as well as a model of the stage and band shell. There will also be a roughly 1m x 1m tactile map of the park
to help blind and low vision guests get the big picture. The stories start at 2 o'clock. The Tactile Tour starts at 1.15. If you'd like to join the Tactile Tour, email ChristineMalec at gmail.com. That's C-H-R-I-S-T-I-N-E dot M-A-L-E-C at gmail.com. We hope to see you at the event, but if you're unable to make it on the day,
The storytelling will be recorded and will appear as a podcast in this series in early October. Thanks for listening. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Toronto Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Foundation.
