Psychogeography Walk in Windsor
Tomorrow night, December 28th, at 8pm, Spacing Magazine‘s Shawn Micallef (in conjunction with Scaledown.ca and InternationalMetropolis.com) will be hosting a Psychogeographic Walk through Windsor. The walk will start and end at Phog and will consist of a simple algorithm to get people moving through the city. After everyone comes back, the routes will get mapped, highlighting discovered details and [...]
Text On Ice
We’ve spent the last couple of weeks developing this project, and somehow waited until the coldest night yet to install the first successful Text On Ice (You Changed Everything) project. I’ll post some more details on the (ongoing) process later this week, but wanted to get this image up first. This first iteration of the [...]
Tools for Actions
I saw an ad for CCA‘s Actions: What You Can Do With the City exhibition in the current issue of Border Crossings and the title got the best of me. I quickly flipped through the rest of the magazine, then went about exploring the Tools for Actions website. On the site, you’ll find 99 actions, ranging from [...]
Art Shanty!
“Art Shanty Projects is an artist driven temporary community exploring the ways in which the relatively unregulated public space of the frozen lake can be used as a new and challenging artistic environment to expand notions of what art can be.” As you can see, they have experimented with ice lettering in a more permanent [...]
Tapewriter
Tapewriter is a font that uses duct tape and the grid of fences made by graphic designers. Apparently duct tape is the exact width of the grid of this type of fences, I like the pixelation effect. [via]
Neglected Energy
This work is by a New York base artist named Joshua Allen Harris, who creates characters that essentially become alive and animated once they harness unused, unrealized city energy. i.e. Air conditioning units, subway trains, fans etc. I really like this idea of trapping energy and illustrating/quantifying it and infusing it with an unnatural property [...]
Hektor, the Spray-Paint Output Device
I was looking through the book, Design and the Elastic Mind, which accompanied the eponymous exhibit, and came across Hektor. I had seen this somewhere before, or something like it anyways, on my Internet travels, but glad I was reminded of it, as it is surely worth a post. Hektor is a simple 2-motor controlled [...]
2009 Strategic Plan
We spent last night sketching out all of the repairs we could think of for the coming year (a Broken City Lab strategic plan of sorts). It took a couple of hours, 15 markers, and about 30 square feet of paper (see the whole image), but we came up with some very exciting ideas. Among [...]
Untitled Sign No. 2
This building vaguely reminded me of something on the University of Windsor campus… this could be somewhere near Leddy library or Essex Hall. It’s actually part of the Tempo Skien Annual Temporary Outdoor Exhibition, in Norway. The work is by Kasper Sonne, who regularly works with text in his gallery and public work. If the [...]
Office Hours
We’re holding Office Hours on Tuesday, December 16th, at 7pm, LeBel, room 125. Feel free to drop by to contribute, engage, ask questions, and fix this city. We’ll be discussing upcoming projects, ongoing research, and planning out a year’s worth of repairs. These will likely be the last Broken City Lab office hours for 2008.
![We had ordered these screen printing supplies in anticipation of using them for our upcoming Civic Maintenance project, but before we could embark on that large-scale production, we needed to test. We got process colours cmyk and the basics for screen printing – photo emulsion and photo emulsion remover and two screens. We haven’t screen [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/wpid19672-IMG_1253-150x150.jpg "1-Day Project: “Find Something Worthwhile”")
![I’m not sure why we didn’t start doing this earlier, but here’s the first report of our weekly activities. We’ve been meeting on Fridays for almost half the summer, trying to make, plan, and do events/projects/demos/awesome. Today involved us revisiting our seed bomb recipe, beginning the stenciling for posters for our upcoming Dance Party (details [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Broken-City-Lab-Friday-August-22-2008-Stenciling-%2B-seed-bombs-150x150.jpg "BCL Report – August 22, 2008")
![Day 3 of our Extended Field Trip #001 in Peterborough at Artspace was filled with design, math, and construction. Having decided that the general sense of the city is that “everything is OK,” we moved forward on printing posters and building some text that will be on display for the opening Friday night. We had many adventures [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_3631-150x150.jpg "Extended Field Trip Day 3: Construction")
![We spent the day in Hamilton again, this time walking around downtown as Official Hamilton History Hunters, building a timeline of Hamilton’s history with the help of city residents and visitors around Jackson Square, a multi-use complex in the downtown core. Both Hiba and I had specific tasks that we alternated during our investigation. Hiba [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_61001-150x150.jpg "Two Tales of a City: Hamilton History Hunters Day 2")
![Yesterday, Eric Boucher met with my uncle, Lou Tortola, to interview him for his Micro Residency. Lou immigrated to Windsor from Italy in the seventies, when he was about ten or eleven, and is now a successful entrepreneur, established writer, and CEO of eliquidMEDIA. Over some espresso and biscotti, he talked with Eric about his first impressions [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/DSC05858-150x150.jpg "Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 5/5")
![Not exhaustive, nor complete, this map is a work-in-progress, documenting a community in-transition. For one afternoon in February 2010, we gathered together with a group of community members to create two distinct lists: Sites of Apology and Sites of Hope. The locations identified as part of these two lists were noted as being places for which [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/IMG_3444-150x150.jpg "Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope: the Map")
![We’re gearing up for Homework. It’s going to be fun and you should really consider attending! There’s a few spots left. If you do decide to attend, you can look forward to receiving one of these fine sketchbooks. Designed by Liisa Salonen, the sketchbooks are recovered paper sample books, rewrapped. They still need to be stamped, maybe [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/IMG_4871-150x150.jpg "Homework Prep! Resampled Notebooks")
![Thursday night, our last night in North Bay as part of our residency, we did a large-scale public projection as a kind of summary of our conversations, and as a bit of a starting point for where we see the exhibition going. Almost next door to the White Water Gallery is this huge blank wall — [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/wpid19048-MG_1594-150x150.jpg "100 Emergencies for North Bay (Projections in Downtown)")
![Though we’re still very much in the middle of thinking about, beginning to write about, and generally talk about all of the amazing things that we learned as part of Save the City, these billboards are the last part of the project to be launched. These two statements are among the many, many, many that [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/KnewItWasntAlone-520-150x150.jpg "…and then the city…")
![We’re heading up to White Water Gallery next week for a weeklong residency exploring a northern locality — this work will inform an exhibition coming up in the fall! Over the course of a weeklong residency, we will engage in a series of exploratory public interventions, micro-gestures, and tactical DIY responses to North Bay. Join [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/gateway-640-150x150.jpg "Research Trip: Residency at White Water Gallery for A Northern Locality")
![Back at the end of March, we went on an Algorithmic Walk with some brave folks (who not only trusted in our custom software generated algorithm, but also ignored the weather). I had previously posted a link to where you could find a custom-assembled algorithm, should you be curious to try it on your own, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/picture-87-150x150.png "How to Make a Randomly Assembled Text")
![Yesterday morning Rosina and I went to the Art Gallery of Windsor for the install of BCL’s piece that is going in the Border Cultures: Part One (Homes, Land) along with some other great artists. The show is opening next week on January 25th. We spent the majority of the remainder of day planning for the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/wpid21140-IMG_2187-150x150.jpg "Regret/Resolve: Exhibition Planning")
![I stopped by the Ecohouse today (where our collective studio is housed) to check out one of our new neighbours — The Border Bookmobile Winter Reading Room. Collected and curated by Border Bookmobile founder, Lee Rodney, the books assembled as part of the winter reading room are going to be incredible helpful for our upcoming [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_5136-150x150.jpg "Anxious to Explore the Border Bookmobile’s Winter Reading Room")
![Over the past couple of months, we’ve been working on making blocks of ice with letters and text embedded in them to create temporary street art. I think this idea came out of working with wheat paste, realizing the enjoyment of working in public spaces, and wanting to continue to work throughout the winter. I [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/img_2448-150x150.jpg "How to: Text on Ice")
![We’re playing catchup. Between vacations, short hiatuses, and our summer schedules, we’ve been busy. However, getting back together, working together again on a more regular basis, and starting up on these projects again has been so great and incredibly rewarding. Our to-do list above is a small start to all of the projects we have on [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/IMG_0359-150x150.jpg "A Look at Process: building for CAFKA & designing for HFBC")
![Just little reminder if you’re in the Hamilton area… Vous invite à participer à : « Les Fables d’une Chronologie – L’atelier des Histoires de Hamilton » Développé de la recherche amassée des archives et de questionnaires présentés aux habitants de Hamilton, l’atelier Les Fables d’une Chronologie engagera ces participants à créer collectivement une histoire vaste [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/IMG_7103-150x150.jpg "The Tales of a Timeline / Les Fables d’une Chronologie")
![424 Pelissier was a fun space for kids to be creative all day on Sunday as part of Imagination Lab. Merry Ellen set up her baking station over in that space. Later Sunday night, I accompanied Laura to do some more installations. The kids had a lot fo fun interacting with each other and learning [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/DSC_0650-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 24: Imagination Lab & Disco Balls")
![My work on this ongoing LCD Arduino project has been continuing over the last couple of weeks, I just haven’t had the time to update appropriately. So, I switched over my plan of attack from Processing to PHP. I figured this made sense for a couple reasons: first, I’m already very well-acquainted with PHP, I’ve [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IMG_7140-150x150.jpg "More Arduino + LCD + PHP fun")
![Danielle and I will head to Portland State University this weekend to participate in Open Engagement, the conference that asks questions like, “Does socially engaged art have a responsibility to create public good? Can there be transdisciplinary approaches to contemporary art making that would contribute to issues such as urban planning and sustainability?” We’ll be [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/openengagement-150x150.jpg "Open Engagement, Group Work: The Collective Impetus")