“I love maps, but that’s how a city is always transcribed," professes Patrick Macaulay, the Head of Visual Arts for the Harbourfront Centre. Rather than offering a simplified picture of a place—an illustrative concept distilling what's otherwise complex, what we typically think a map would be—for the Centre's new exhibition, Macauley brought together eight projects that present a collective picture that is layered and engrossing. In Plotting a City, Toronto is not simplified, but complicated, with each project revealing a different way of seeing and experiencing this place.

From James Redekop’s GPS recordings tracing his every movement for almost twelve thousand kilometres through Toronto's streets, paths, and trails on his bicycle, to the pixelated prose of Shawn Micallef's location-specific tweets, the variation of media emphasizes the distinction between the experiences, and the disparate methods chosen by each participant to present their place in the city reveal a little bit more about the individual, as well. Says Macaulay: “I didn't want just images, because how we experience is by more than just sight.”

Laura Nanni and Sorrel Muggridge's collaborative effort Space in Translation: From Here to There in 9 Directions and 15,640 Steps examines urban exploration and the idea of a journey without a destination. Nanni traced a path through Toronto, starting from the intersection of King and Queen streets and leading to the Harbourfront. Along the way, she transcribed vague directions based on landmarks and observations, the interesting and the commonplace, rather than relying on traditional wayfinding markers such as street names and bearings. Muggridge, on the other side of the Atlantic, then transposed these same enigmatic directions onto her own hometown of Norwich, UK—beginning at her own city’s intersection of King and Queen streets. The guiding principle, simply: “trust the directions as you follow them and enjoy the possibilities while interpreting them.” Without a specific destination, Muggridge was free to explore her city in a whole new way, completely unencumbered, making her own discoveries along the way.

Established projects such as [murmur] are central characters in the exhibition, exemplifying what Plotting a City is about. For years, [murmur]—conceived in 2003 by Shawn Micallef, Gabe Sawhney, and James Roussel, the direction of which is now assumed by Robin Elliott—has been collecting and recording personal stories about neighbourhoods and specific locations across Toronto, and now the world, and making these stories widely available to anyone with a mobile phone. Throughout the city, each iconic [murmur] sign, a green ear with its own site-specific telephone number on it, announces that there is a story—sometimes historical, sometimes anecdotal—to be shared. Calling in allows you to engage with the exact location in which the story is set while you listen. [murmur]’s ambitious goal is to broaden the reach of everyday, personal narratives, and in so doing helps create a greater understanding of a neighbourhood and acts as a reminder of the rich, shared history that surrounds us.

As a whole, there remains something unresolved about Plotting a City, as our natural desire for the individual projects to somehow fit together and reveal a bigger picture goes unsatisfied. There is no singular image, no definitive view that encompasses the lives of everyone in our city to be found. All we have to work with are the fractured perceptions of a handful of people, and the affirmation that their experiences are deeply different from our own.

“How I see it and understand it is very particular to me,” explains Macaulay in describing how he fits in the city. “I have stories about buildings and places that I like to share. I know other people do too. This exhibition, I hope, brings this point across.” It is a gentle reminder of the widely varying lives and experiences taking place within the city at any given time, and the impact that those experiences have on each of us. With two-and-a-half-million pieces in the puzzle that is Toronto, it remains up to you to determine how your piece will fit. As Macaulay puts it, “everyone plots the city in a different way.”

Plotting a City, curated by Patrick Macaulay, featuring works by Peter MacCallum, Shawn Micallef, [murmur] (Robin Elliott), Sorrel Muggridge & Laura Nanni, Howard Podeswa, Sandra Rechico, James Redekop, and Sandra Smirle, runs until April 3, 2011 at the Harbourfront Centre's York Quay Centre.