It’s taken a number of weeks, but we finished wiring the LED sign at tonight’s Office Hours! It was a pretty incredible moment to plug in the sign, turn off the lights, and realize that we made this come together. I’m really, really, really happy with how it turned out!!! There are still a few more things we need to do before this project is completely done, and I would like to try it on batteries, but now that we know how bright it is, I think we’ll come up with some more LED projects soon.
Made from reused / fused plastic bags, 600 plants, and used TV aerial towers for the support structure, this living wall made by Adam Harris and Parimal Gosai is currently on display at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel. The show, Come Up To My Room, is showcasing a bunch of fun and engaging design and some bad art.
[via designboom]
I went through our LED sign today and removed all the LEDs that had died in our earlier efforts to learn electricity. So now we’re ready to replace these and finish up the sign! 12 out of nearly 200 LEDs isn’t too bad.
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 liked developing and working on this project for a number of reasons—especially the durational experience of freezing a number of blocks of ice, cutting out the paper letters, then slowly covering those letters with thin layers of ice, eventually securely embedding them into the blocks.
After the jump, there are some step-by-step photos and documentation of our learning process.
Broken City Lab office hours on Tuesday, February 10th, at 7pm, LeBel, room 125. We’ll finish up some projects and brainstorm some others. If anyone has anything they want on the agenda, feel free to add it in the comments!
Broken City Lab Office Hours on Tuesday were hugely productive. We completely finished getting all the resistors on the LED sign, measured out all the letters with flagging tape for the EC Row Project, organized some logistics for the planning stages of a couple other upcoming projects, and figured out the title for our upcoming show in the Lebel Gallery.
Lots of photos after the jump.
I’m not sure if I just flat-out like the thought of massive corporations drowning on their own power, or I like water flooding small spaces. Either way, this project by Superflex provides us with both: the vision of an empire being metaphorically drowned and a lifelike commercial space being literally filled with water.
“Flooded McDonald’s is a film work by Superflex in which a convincing life-size replica of the interior of a McDonald’s burger bar, without any customers or staff present, gradually floods with water. Furniture is lifted up by the water, trays of food and drinks start to float around, electrics short circuit and eventually the space becomes completely submerged.”
Journée des barricades by Heather and Ivan Morison was installed as part of the ongoing One Day Sculpture exhibition in New Zealand. The barricade, consisting of car wrecks, discarded furniture, and other urban detritus, was installed for 24 hours back in December on a central street in Wellington.
The work is part of the Morison’s ongoing investigation of future catastrophies (and their social implications).
The One Day Sculpture project looks like it’s going to be a really interesting project, featuring 20 newly commissioned projects by its close. I’m just wondering if these sculptures / performances lasting for one day is just a function of the logistical nature of having public work in a major city centre or is an actual solid conceptual base for the entire exhibition.
At Windsor’s riverfront, SAVE A CITY, installed this afternoon. We opted out of using monofilament to hang the blocks of ice because there was a nice snowbank already there, and probably the last thing the Detroit River needs is more garbage in it. I’ll post some photos of the process of making these soon (definitely before the weather gets too warm).