By Justin on October 31st, 2008, 11:57 am 0 Comments

Just a quick note… Walker Art Center has made available many, many podcasts on their iTunes channel, Walker Channel. There’s a lot worth looking into, I plan to spend a good part of the weekend digging around. It looks like that until this point, most of these lectures, artist talks, etc, were only available to watch with Real Media Player.

Happy Halloween, play safe!

[via]

Tagged: art itunes media podcast

By Justin on October 30th, 2008, 6:02 pm 0 Comments

I thought this was kinda cool, because a few of the shots in the video resemble ones i’ve taken myself. I do think it’s strange that Sam Roberts wrote a song about Detroit though, seeing how he’s not from this area.

Nice shout out to the Ambassador Bridge!

Tagged: Ambassador Bridge Detroit music Sam Roberts video

By Justin on October 29th, 2008, 11:41 pm 0 Comments

Bruce Mau is a Canadian industrial designer, whose book, Massive Change, is beautifully designed and has been continually holding my interest since the summer. I came across a link to his Incomplete Manifesto For Growth, and found it very fitting (for the most part) in thinking about BCL.

Here’s a few highlights…

Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you. (ha)

Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

Check out the whole list, it’s a quick read.

Tagged: Bruce Mau design list manifesto

By Justin on October 29th, 2008, 9:51 am 0 Comments

Thursday, November 6 @ 7pm, Broken City Lab is hosting a Tetris Tournament in the halls of LeBel. We’ll also be holding a wheat paste demo / sticker making party.

If you want to play Tetris, sign up in the comments below!

And, if you have a copy of Tetris for Super Nintendo we could use, please get in touch with us!!!

Tagged: BCL demo event stickers tetris wheat paste

By Michelle on October 28th, 2008, 10:36 pm 1 Comments

Since 1985, The city of Windsor has prohibited the selling, buying or keeping of reptiles/snakes in the city. Apparently LaSalle and Tecumseh don’t have this law. I came across a discussion on this topic on Windsor Users. 

Why do you think reptiles are not allowed in the city? Comment with your answer!

Here’s a Halloween inspired idea: make reptile costumes for the fire hydrants or garbages around the city.

Tagged: bylaw costume reptiles Windsor

By Danielle on October 28th, 2008, 3:02 pm 2 Comments

I am sure we have all been a little spooked by google’s prediction power. You type a gmail to a friend about India and in the side bar you get curry recipes. You exchange thoughts on stress levels cause by final exams and you get vacation deals.

With halloween coming up, I thought there was no better time to explore this spooky phenomena than now.

I just sent a rudimentary email to Justin regarding the down trotten state of Windsor. He replied, and I examined what google predicts Windsor will need.

There were a few ads regarding social work. Google knows Windsor may need some help, and google feels for us to make Windsor better, we may need to focus on social work and the social infrastructure. Spooky… The email never said anything about said social infrastructure being the primal concern.

Google also thinks that someone who is concerned with the state of Windsor may also be interested in fitness. (M test 2) I guess good fitness does equal a happier more active populace. but again, how did google know that?? this is starting to mimick the twilight zone a little too much.

Finally the one thing that is really frightening, is that google knows we should conduct regular testing for melamine. Is this an omen? Is WIndsor crumbling because we are all experiencing the toxic effects ofmelamine?

To investigate this spooky phenomena I will creat a data base that tracks what ads google predicts we may be interested in depending on the contentI place within pseudo searches and gmails.

I have never tampered with the occult before, but I know it can get me a show on A&E.

Godspeed.

Tagged: database google Windsor

By Justin on October 28th, 2008, 11:23 am 1 Comments

Introduction to Add-Art from Steve Lambert on Vimeo.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, I had it on my desktop for the longest time, but for whatever reason, never got around to posting it until now. A project by the always interesting Steve Lambert (among others), funded by Rhizome and Eyebeam—how could it not be awesome?

Tagged: art firefox internet open source

By Justin on October 27th, 2008, 11:53 am 0 Comments

There’s a really good story over at Wired about the idea, business models, and inventors behind open source hardware. Pictured above are the founders of Arduino, three pretty relaxed looking dudes, making knowledge open and free. It’s really incredible to realize that there are companies and projects that are based on open source hardware and profit from it in one way or another. We could build an exact copy of the Arduino board, call it Broken City Board and sell it, as long as we kept the same Creative Commons licensing as the original Arduino board. Walmart could also do the same, but of course, would also be subject to the same licensing requirements.

Open knowledge and the potential to make things more open, more accessible, more functional is the future. Again, it’s a great read and just goes to show how important it is for us to document and share everything we do.

Tagged: arduino hardware open source reblog

By Justin on October 26th, 2008, 10:25 am 0 Comments

I promise I’m not getting lazy, I promise that I’m not just watching the RSS feed for vvork, that I do indeed visit other sites, but this project was really great, I had to post it.

Test Signal by Phil Coy uses a choir to sign to generate the colour bars that are used to calibrate televisions and video signals for broadcast. Each choir member sings one sustained note that is translated to one of the colour bars. Also check out Provincial Landscape…

[via]

Tagged: interactive reblog sound video

By Justin on October 24th, 2008, 9:53 am 0 Comments

While the humour of this article from the Windsor Star is not lost on me, my immediate reaction is: How do we do that? Apparently, one driver’s rear-view car monitor is picking up porn when he drives past Esplanade Drive on Forest Glade Drive. The article goes on to quote someone from a local car-audio shop, who suggests that the person watching porn must be broadcasting on a low-frequency to wirelessly distribute his television signal throughout the house. The driver’s wireless camera and monitor is operating on the same frequency and thereby picking up the signal.

Targeting these screens in people’s cars is a really fun idea, just not sure how many people actually have them. Maybe we can consider the technology for some other project.

Tagged: driving porn Windsor wireless