canada council for the arts Archives

White Water Gallery is pleased to present Haptic Voices, a vibrotactile exhibition experience from Hamilton-based VibraFusionLab, from September 19 to November 15, 2025! The exhibition opens with a reception on Friday, September 19, 5 to 9 pm, during North Bay’s Downtown Gallery Hop. Co-creators David Bobier and Jim Ruxton will be on site.

Haptic Voices is a sound and vibrotactile installation from VibraFusionLab, founded by David Bobier. The Haptic Voices installation was designed and created by media artist and electronics engineer and VibraFusionLab partner Jim Ruxton. Other works in the exhibition are from the studio of David Bobier.

Haptic Voices features a large scale ten channel vibrotactile wall with the potential for 10 independent streams of sound signals. Visitors are invited to stand against the wall to experience vibrations that are controlled using an iPad.

Five sound compositions, designed explicitly for the vibrotactile experience, were commissioned for the wall. The composers include Toronto-based John Gzowski and Ravi Naimpally, Deaf Irish composer Ailís Ní Ríain and Haptic Voices co-creator Jim Ruxton.

Using vibration as the final output, Haptic Voices is equally accessible to the hearing, Deaf, and hard of hearing communities to experience the wall.

WWG would like to thank our funders for making this exhibition possible:

White Water Gallery is proud to present Wild Waysides: Queer Ecologies and the New Natural, which will run at the gallery from January 11 to March 15, 2025. This is a group exhibition by sixteen 2SLGBTQSIA artists who participated in the Queer Up North artist residency in Temagami, ON, in August 2024. There will be an opening reception with remarks by curators James Fowler and Pearl Van Geest on Saturday, January 11, from 7 to 9 pm, at the gallery space at 159 Main Street East, North Bay, ON.

This instalment of Wild Waysides, a series of exhibitions and symposiums addressing ideas and provocations of queer ecologies, features a selection of the artworks created in response to Queer Up North, an artist residency held in Temagami, August 2024. This project is presented in collaboration with The Throbbing Rose Collective, White Bear Artist Residency, and the Nipissing Region Curatorial Collective with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Participating artists:

Francisco Alvarez, Schem Rogerson Bader, Jackson Bailey, Kristy Boyce, Terry Dame, James Fowler, David Frazier, Atlas Gifford, Charlie Hunter, Lou Losier, John Rubino, Walt Segers, Cai Sepulis, Christian Bernard Singer, Pearl Van Geest

For a sneak peek of what’s coming with Wild Waysides, click below for a Hyper Creative POP UP. Hyper Creative is WWG’s new YouTube video series, and in this short POP UP episode Executive Director Alex Maeve Campbell joins curator/artist James Fowler to start the conversation about what’s coming up in 2025.