There's an interesting installation currently showing at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. Founded in 1999, Heavyweight Art Installations is a Montreal-based collective "consisting of painter Gene Starship, graphic designer Tyler Gibney and graffiti artist Dan Buller." The trio goes around to live club and music environments and creates a series of paintings on 6 X 6 ft canvases.

This is truly a collaborative, instant art experience. All three artists work simultaneously, gleaning their inspiration from the music, the people and the disparate atmosphere at each musical event. While the art focuses largely on the immediate experience, occasionally "relevant historical or iconographic figures are incorporated into the compositions from the group's file of collected photographic, illustrated, and graphic source materials - a visual equivalent of the music technique of "sampling."

And now you can sample Phase One: Live Painting Series in Toronto, to get a feel for last year's ouevre.

The trio is currently at work on Phase Two. After a quick surf of their site, it appears that they tour North America attending as many musical experiences as they can, painting and creating while they go. This looks to be quite underground, with a lot of techno, trance, trip hop, hip hop and other dance oriented groups and DJs mentioned as their main musical hits. Okay, so maybe extreme clubbing isn't as underground as it was five years ago, but hey it's still a pretty hip idea! Heavyweight Art Installation should be a majorly happening show with a finger firmly on the pulse of the current youth culture.

Boo! Looking for something fun, scary and cultural to do on Halloween night? Why not experience some ghoulishly funny theatre? Peter Colley's When the Reaper Calls is a wacky comedy thriller that's sure to have you clutching your gut with laughter or nipping your nails in terror. The premise is promising. There are these two "madcap" university professors who go on holiday at a wilderness cottage in British Columbia with their long suffering wives.

Talk about shades of Survivor.

The catch is -- the professors have been pals since youth and have a long standing tradition of playing outrageous pranks on one another. Well one of the pranks backfires. The grim reaper arrives. And all manner of hell ensues.

Sounds terrifyingly tasty.

Dance Fest: The Vancouver International Dance Festival 2000 is currently underway. This year the festival is focusing on "the origins of the avant-garde expression of Japanese butoh dance and its contemporary transformations. Butoh is a dance aesthetic that arose in post World War II Japan. Originally called "the dance of darkness," butoh evokes and bridges images from both our subconscious and conscious thought."

Butoh involves the memories which we hold in our minds, as well as the physical memories stored within our flesh and bones. Dancers focus and concentrate on these memories, translating them wildly interpretive fascinating dance.