Month: September 2022

It’s just past dusk at Boston City Hall Plaza. I’m immersed in a fluid crowd of about 30-odd onlookers, to see the second night of the Symphony of a City presentation. Lila Kanner is here and so are most of the remaining members of the project’s epic crew. That includes two directing artists (Liz Canner […]

Start with eight people in Boston and give them video cameras for a day. Strap lenses and mikes to their glasses and record everything they say, see, and hear. Show the results on the Web — and on the exterior of City Hall, in 30-foot-high projections. What do you get? Eight home-movie variations on “Being […]

Boston’s City Hall, a gloomy cement structure near the picturesque town houses of Beacon Hill, suggests a Soviet monolith more than the red-brick character of the city. But on the evening of April 27th, Boston documentary film-maker and muralist John Ewing introduced some personality to this stark box by projecting four giant color-video images on […]

Symphony of a City is a public cyberart documentary project by Liz Canner and John Ewing that is designed to create dialogue and reflection about housing and community building. Dynamic individuals, from a homeless person to a multi-millionaire, were nominated by over 50 community groups from across Greater Boston, to wear tiny video cameras on […]

Boston, a city known for tight quarters and high rents, is facing perhaps its worst housing crisis yet. Repeals of rent control, market forces, and avarice have allowed landlords to yank up rents inordinately, leaving low and medium-income tenants insecure, poorer, and often homeless. But as opposed to the years when rent control was on […]

Ever wonder what a city councilor does all day? Chuck Turner will show you. He set up a thin digital camera and microphone next to his glasses at Wednesday’s City Council meeting. Turner was participating in “Symphony of a City,” a project by Boston artists Liz Canner and John Ewing in which the councilor and […]