Angelo Sotira is one of the founders of Deviant Art.í‚   He has watched an idea he helped create become the largest forum for printed art and culture online.í‚   Capital Film editor Malcolm Levy caught up recently with Angelo Sotira to explore how Deviant Art has made such a huge mark in such a short time.

Artists doní¢â‚¬â„¢t always have an intention in mind when creating art. Part of the reason is that as time passes, an artistí¢â‚¬â„¢s understanding of their work can be clarified or can change all together. This has been the case for most of the art Ií¢â‚¬â„¢ve produced. My work tends to focus on feminist questions of sexuality and includes a variety of abrasive and thought provoking images. These images include myself having sex with a raw pig heart, dancing with a dead chicken that I use as a prosthetic penis and performing a strip tease that I interrupt to binge eat cup cakes.

Labspace Studio is single-handedly changing the way artists and audiences interact. Maybe irreparably. On Saturday May 5, the studio hosted its debut show í¢â‚¬Å“The Lab Sessions 1.0: Nodes and Naught Codesí¢â‚¬  which brought together more than a dozen young and emerging artists, dancers, musicians, sculptors, and writers from the Toronto area. The show was the first in a series of í¢â‚¬Å“Interdisciplinary and Interactive Art Partiesí¢â‚¬  that combines the genres of house party, art gallery, and performance show in a free-flowing melíƒ ©e in which the artists performed their works amongst the partiers, infiltrating and surprising their audience like devious children at their parentsí¢â‚¬â„¢ dinner party.

I caní¢â‚¬â„¢t think of the last time that I wrote a letter. I mean properly put pen to paper, sealed and addressed an envelope, put on a stamp and posted a letter. Communication has understandably moved away from the painstakingly slow and sometimes unreliable postal service, but lately it seems like writing itself is going the way of the letter.

Everything below is from the Seek issue.

Each issue, capitalmag.com invites a new artist to interpret the issueí¢â‚¬â„¢s theme. This issueí¢â‚¬â„¢s theme í¢â‚¬“ SEEK í¢â‚¬“ inspired Vancouver-based artist Nathalee Paolinelli to put colourful pen to paper and create the SEEK banners you see at the top of each page. Her work can be characterized as a combination of loose drawing technique, classical illustration, and contemporary graphic design.

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The recent cancellation of Cosimo Cavallaroí¢â‚¬â„¢s art show at Lab Gallery, in New York City, which included a chocolate sculpture of a nude crucified Christ, entitled My Sweet Lord, has profound consequences for the art world. Artists who use Christian imagery to deliver their message are no strangers to controversy; in fact they seem to court it. But that may soon change because the demonstrations that closed Cavallaroí¢â‚¬â„¢s show represent a new and effective threat to artistic expression.

At the recent iCE07 conference held in Toronto, the future of entertainment was the main topic of conversation. The conference is touted as a premier event for tech savvy designers, new media artists, and interactive and television producers. With an influx of evolving technologies and a new generation of wired consumers, speculation about how people will consume and produce media ran rampant at the event.

This year was the 20th Images Festival, and it seemed like something of a coming out party for this until-recently underground scene. With great venues stretching across Toronto and all kinds of mixed media and diverse programming, it seemed like a sure fire hit. Maybe I missed out on some of the more cutting edge programming (see Jesika Joyí¢â‚¬â„¢s article in this section on her video project, which screened at the Images Festival this year), or maybe it was just bad luck. Either way, I was treated to some pretty mediocre programming.

Everything below is from the Diversions issue í¢â‚¬“ April 2007.