By Justin on March 11th, 2010, 1:35 pm 0 Comments

72 Hours is an audiovisual intervention comprised of a series of video projections evoking the personal histories of neighborhood residents, which will be seen through the building’s windows, and one unit will be opened to the public for a walk-through sound installation that evokes lives of former owners. You can see some of the projections above, as installed in a gallery.

The houses in question, clustered together in the space of a city block, are owned by Deutsche Bank and other international banks. During the Block Rebellion, demands will be made to immediately cease all no-fault post-foreclosure evictions and begin negotiations to sell back the vacant units at real value.

According to the artist, John Hulsey, “the projections serve as injunctions, insertions into contested areas of the city. Transforming private neighborhoods into public arenas for debate, the projections may create spaces in which dialogue can be breached.”

It’s an interesting project, makes me wonder about the possibilities for Grace Hospital – certainly, a different set of issues, but at the very least, this is an interesting example of highlighting contentious spaces.

[via Groundswell Collective]

Tagged: Boston context homes neighbourhood projection rebellion

By Justin on March 10th, 2010, 10:55 pm 0 Comments

Danielle first wrote about the Gmail ad phenomenon a while ago — that is, how Google tries to place relevant ads by reading your emails and the curiosities that can arise from that technique.

So, the screenshot above is what Google thinks about an email regarding Broken City Lab, Bruce Mau, a revisited idea, and our new upcoming residency project.

Tagged: ads BCL google research summer zombie

By Justin on March 9th, 2010, 10:57 pm 2 Comments

Drawdio is a DIY music project by designer jay silver that let’s users draw the instrument of their choice on a piece of paper and play it with their finger.

While possible to use in a variety of  objects, when used with a pencil, the graphite acts as a circuit on the paper, transmitting the electric signal across the drawing to produce a different sound based on the specific form.

If you can get past the sort of hilarious / awkward editing in the video, it’s a very cool and simple design. It makes me curious about the potential for creating some kind of traceable sound-map, what sounds would Detroit’s streets make versus Windsor’s streets? What would happen if you added new roads or buildings — what sound could that make?

[via Designboom]

Tagged: audio context design DIY drawing paper sound Soundart

By Justin on March 8th, 2010, 8:00 am 0 Comments

The details: Saturday, March 20th at 3pm, meet at the corner of University and Pelissier.

As part of the Broken City Lab: Save the City project, and to better understand the city and its rich and failed history, Broken City Lab researchers will invite the community to learn the Francophone history of Windsor through a collective performance and storytelling of traditional French Folk Songs native to the Detroit River region on Saturday, March 20th at 3pm.

Led by Dr Marcel Beneteau, a professor in the Department of Folklore and Ethnology at the University of Sudbury, participants will meet at University Avenue and Pelissier Street to take part in a walking oral history tour and performance, which will stop at the streets along Riverside Drive named after Windsor’s French settlers such as Goyeau, Langlois, Marentette, Louis, Parent and Pierre.

The retelling of the brief oral history at each street will be followed by a collective open performance of the French Folk song led by the local Francophone musician. Video and audio documentation of the performances will subsequently be made available on the Broken City Lab / Save the City website.

Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

Tagged: BCL folklore Francophone history parade research Save the City songs Windsor

By Justin on March 5th, 2010, 9:45 pm 0 Comments

I’ve been collecting a bunch of great ideas lately, but haven’t had the time to post them, so I thought it was about time to get them up here, again as reference points, context, and markers for projects we’re hoping to do and general inspiration.

First off, an idea that Josh once imagined, in some fashion anyways, a green house made from recovered windshields.

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Tagged: architecture context design plant plastic bags recycle windshield

By Justin on March 2nd, 2010, 9:38 am 5 Comments

Just a quick update from Sunday’s Save the City event: Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope … Thanks to the amazing group of people who turned out, we have nearly 50 sites between the two lists (which you can see in progress, above).

A part of this project involves us going around to each and every site on these lists and officially recognizing it as either a site of apology or a site of hope. Since we have 50 sites on our lists, we were beginning to run out of daylight on Sunday afternoon. That means that we only managed to visit about half of those sites, so we’re trying to find a second day to continue with our adventure.

We’ll post all of the photos from the event and a photo of every site we visit as soon as we finish!

The next Save the City event happens on March 20th, 2010 — more details soon.

Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

Tagged: BCL lists research Save the City Windsor

By Justin on February 27th, 2010, 1:10 pm 0 Comments

Not that we don’t already have our hands full, but seeing as it’s nearly March, we’re starting to look ahead to summer time activities. These activities might be somewhat related to this ongoing conversation we’ve been having on the blog.

We’ll be posting more information soon, but for now, just know that if you’ve been planning on visiting Windsor, you should try to keep your calendars open in July.

And, hope to see you SUNDAY, February 28th – 1pm at 362 California!

Tagged: BCL design inDesign plans poster projects research summer Windsor

By Justin on February 26th, 2010, 7:29 pm 0 Comments

The epic adventure with Arduino, LCDs, and PHP continues. I’ve finally made some progress in terms of breaking up the words and lines appropriately. It felt like a huge achievement, since I had been trying to figure out this line-break thing for quite a while.

You can check the majority of the progress in the video below, and all of the steps along the way are below! Don’t mind the nonsensical example texts. So first off, I figured out I needed to send Arduino very specific information to know where to line break.

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Tagged: arduino BCL LCD PHP research text

By Cristina on February 25th, 2010, 12:34 am 5 Comments

Day two of Create Here’s City Share Conference was just as busy as the first, but we got tons of work accomplished, and we were even able to take a short tour of the city at lunch!

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Tagged: Chattanooga city share conference create here tennessee

By Cristina on February 23rd, 2010, 9:30 am 0 Comments

Last Wednesday, Justin, Michelle, Josh and I flew from Detroit, MI to Atlanta, GA and drove another two hours to Chattanooga, TN for the City Share conference put on by our friends from Create Here!

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Tagged: Chattanooga city share conference create here windsor/detroit relationship