Rory Viner, an experimental composer from Toronto, and Japanese developer Kanoguti have created a free art game that will leave you trying to decide what this existential game actually means as the developer wanted the player to figure out the story for themselves. The game is called Lost & Found and has five mini-games set as five stages, all different in concept. You only need to use the arrow keys and the ‘z’ button. To get to the next stage, you just beat a level or you can exit the game and just select the next stage from the title splash screen. 

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We first told you about Max Zorn in July this year when his fresh tape-art works were just in Amsterdam. Tinkering with nothing more than an exacto knife, some packing tape and plastic sheets, it takes wrapping his work around street lamps to see the pieces in all their glory as the complex layers of slicing and shading formations take their full effect.

To show exactly how he does what he does, he’s just recently released this superb time-lapse video. To date, he’s spread the tape love around the globe with his stickers and full scale art pieces hanging around the likes of Toronto, Cologne, Berlin and Hamburg and is spreading the tape love with every passing week.

The Toronto Underground Market (TUM) exploded onto the scene late this summer to enormous fanfare. If “pop ups” have become the way to test the viability of a new restaurant or shop, then TUM is the newest way to experiment with a food business without emptying your savings account right away.

It’s not a food festival. It’s not a farmer’s market. It’s a “food community market” held at night four times this year – and we’re predicting more often next year – where for $10 admission you can sample treats from roughly 40 home cooks and emerging chefs. Happily, local beer and wine is also for sale to help wash down all that sampling.

Could this be an incubator for Toronto’s next hot restaurant? We think so! Toronto is recognized as one of the most ethnically diverse cities so, at the very least, we think this is an incredible place to eat yourself silly. About 1000 people attended the last TUM and though the November 19 event at Evergreen Brickworks is already sold out, tickets will be released at the door. So get there early and don’t forget to tell us about it!

This is one for all you aspiring indie bands out there: Jordan Holman and Mark LeRoy of the Toronto indie band Vas Vega sent their four song demo off to the five producers that they most wanted to work with. Remarkably, it all happened for them. Two months later they were in London recording with Chris Potter (Rolling Stones, U2, The Verve). with the first taste from that session the beautiful single above. The video was directed by Jonathan Bensimon.

I found this excellent David Bowie doll in the general store at The Drake Hotel in Toronto (which is also one of my favourite places to play at) and I had to grab it. I subsequently found out that it is one of many created by Canadian artist Suzie Smith and she’s created a whole lot of other great stuff in various media which you can see at her site. I particularly like the folded hands and the interactive comic.

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We’ve posted about artists Maya Hayuk and Jen Stark individually, but now they have a joint exhibition, Double Rainbow Rainbow, up at the Show & Tell Gallery in Toronto. I wish I could make it. From the images on the gallery site, the two artists’ styles compliment each other perfectly.

What do you get when you cross hand-drawn organic material, such as wild and domestic farm animals, interbred and placed on canvas as if pages were pulled straight out of Darwin’s Galapagos species sketches drawn during an intense peyote journey? You get the phenomenal display of artistic endeavor supplied to the world by Toronto’s own Nicholas Di Genova.

History was made on November 27 when 14 countries, six continents, 18,000 people, 50 DJs and 200+ bartenders joined forces for a never-before-seen, omnipresent, one-night only global affair across 10 time zones. And if you weren’t at one of Smirnoff’s ravishing Nightlife Exchange Project parties, then where the bloody hell were you?

I’m delighted to say that I was there. I was exceptionally fortunate to get a taste of Canada’s very chilly after dark scene at the Toronto-themed party hosted by exchanging sister-city Bangalore in India’s south. As a first-time Aussie in India, it was a real treat to learn how local Indians boogied and let their hair down to headlined sets by DJ Sultan, Zara Taylor and Max Graham while enjoying Canada’s famed specialities. Think traditional poutine (hot chips, cheese, gravy) and signature maple syrup-laced vodka concoctions at the ice bars.

Merrymakers around the globe were also partying hard. Brazilians were Aussified with Van She tunes and German techno God Marcus Schultz dropped beats in Cape Town. Peaches and South African famed Gazelle teamed-up with new song material at Berlin, while Zane Lowe played a Miami-inspired set in London. Argentina experienced the best of Dublin pubs. And as for Thailand, they hooked up with belly-dancing Lebanon. Speaking of Thailand, I enjoyed a week of Bangkok hotspots and Mumbai gems in the lead up to the big Smirnoff event, so stay tuned for all the latest trends in my next Lost At E Minor feature video highlighting my foreign adventures.

[London, Buenos Aires and Bangkok pictured below. Also see Sydney's Nightlife Exchange party]

This is Jessica Fortner’s latest installment of her ongoing My Woodland, My Nightmare series titled Deadly Sins: Sloth Meets Greed. Fortner is a sculptural illustrator who lives and works in Toronto. Her site has tons of process work, showing you step by step how she creates her wonderful illustrations.

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Nothing is hotter these days than charcuterie, which is why Marben Restaurant in downtown Toronto is rocking a farmhouse-chic dining experience for all those who find cured meats and home canning totally sexy. With an interior of brick and birch decorated with mason jars and balloon whisks, Marben Restaurant is bringing agriculture to the big city.

At this new restaurant, the head chef works next to the head butcher and French bistro fare is married with Ontario produce. The relationship between chef and farmer is taken very seriously, so expect to find most of the menu items named after the folks who had a direct hand in the cultivation. On this menu you will find such popular dishes as duck terrine with beet and cardamom chutney to braised rib burgers topped with sharp cheddar and raw turnip salads. And dessert? The best of home cooking – ice cream sandwiches smartened up with Callebaut chocolate and a crème anglaise for dunking. Country living has never seemed so seductive.

Aaron Leighton’s Spirit City Toronto isn’t unique in concept (we’ve posted before about Monsters in Real Places), but Leighton’s take is really well done, with the creatures he adds to photographs taking on the textures and colors of their surroundings.

There is something irresistible about a beautifully designed coffee shop. And Balzac’s Coffee in Toronto’s Distillery District is just such a place. Located in an antiquated warehouse, the ambience exudes an industrial-chic meets French bistro aesthetic with its worn brick walls, pressed tin coffee bar, checkerboard tiled flooring, and 20ft ceiling adorned with exposed pipes.

Considered by some to be the most spectacular coffee shop in all of Canada, an enormous old-fashioned chandelier dominates the centre of the space, while vintage coffee posters line the walls and a quiet loft rests above the café doubling as an art gallery for local talent.

And as if all that doesn’t already beg for you to idle for hours on end, the coffee is supreme too. It is carefully sourced and micro-roasted nearby for deep, rich cups of indulgence. It is a place where Honoré de Balzac himself, the café’s namesake, would fit right in.

These promotional, limited-edition movie posters, designed by Justin Erickson for Toronto-based marketing firm Phantom City Creative, are pure rulage, especially the one for Let The Right One In.

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Drawing from her experience as a printmaker (she was one half of Scotland-based printmaking duo Whitehaus), Cody Cochrane, now residing in her hometown of Toronto, makes amazingly layered and ornate paintings and murals that often incorporate Native American motifs with bizarre sexual humor.

Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller have brought their experimental art to the masses with an installation housed in a salvaged, thirty-foot Chinese junk ship in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park.

While the outside of the ship is a vision in itself, the cramped, dark cabin is where the artists’ chaotic vision is on display through moving parts and random sounds — among them, a stationary bottle spinning water, drumsticks hitting pots and pans, flashing bulbs, old radio snippets and a violin that plays itself. The installation, entitled Ship O’ Fools and part of the fourth annual Luminato arts festival, will reportedly hit Berlin later this year.

Over the years chocolate has evolved from mass-produced baking tablets in kitchens where dark chocolate was virtually unheard of, to a distinguished product coveted for its incredible complexity. However, today’s attitude towards chocolate has not so much evolved as it has returned to its pagan roots when it was revered as a wondrous, even medicinal, ingredient. Enter Soma Chocolatemaker in Toronto’s uber-hip Distillery District where you can ‘eat, drink and worship chocolate’.

At Soma, chocolate has been put on a pedestal and is explored in its deepest, darkest, and earthiest varieties. Here, the origins of chocolate are truly celebrated with their assortment of sumptuous drinking chocolate, such as their famous chili-spiced Mayan hot chocolate, or the ‘dark side of the mug’, a pure blend of fruity dark chocolate melted right into your cup. They also serve an Italian classic known as Bicerin — a small shot of melted dark chocolate, espresso, and whipped cream. A selection of these intoxicating beverages may be enjoyed in-house amongst the hub of their micro-chocolate factory or as take-home mixes to be brewed as the perfect morning pick-me-up or evening nightcap.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Beer Scream? At Toronto-based Beerbistro, ice cream is being turned into something to really scream about. Specializing in what they call ‘fresh market beer cuisine’, Beerbistro is a beer lover’s dream, with twenty beers on tap, 140 plus bottles, and a menu entirely comprised of beer flavored dishes — including dessert.

Best of all, Beerbistro has recently made their famous beer-flavored ice creams, Beer Scream, available for take-out or purchase at local boutiques. Now you can enjoy Rocky Road & Coffee Porter, Beery Berry Sorbet, or Dragon Stout & Skor Bar whenever you get that craving for beer and ice cream — and let’s face it, don’t you always? Thanks to Beer Scream, staying at home with a tub of ice cream just got a whole lot better.

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Demolition Derby, a print by Toronto photographer Finn O’Hara, reflects his fascination with environmental portraits, which play off the experiences and the personalities of those who live or inhabit the space itself. Our friends over at Feature Shoot have the print available for purchase for $50.

isn’t this the fantasy bedroom you’ve always wanted but never knew how to get out of your head and into reality? Well, Toronto interior decorator Holly Dyment has been doing just the opposite. For more than twenty-five years, she’s been taking rooms from the gritty truth of reality deep into the fantastical realm of her wickedly ornate imagination. Her work has been featured in Canadian House and Home and Style At Home magazine.

Toronto-based Solvent’s latest full-length album, Subject to Shift, is out soon on Ghostly International and is another glitchy, robotic masterpiece of pop surrealism, ‘a mix of dystopian, acid-tinged futurism and bittersweet romantic ache’, bowing gently to the beautiful template he set earlier with his radio-friendly hummer, My Radio. Check out the Mitgang Audio Remix of that track below.