Eye Toy: Graffiti with your eyeball
Graffiti Research Lab, FAT Lab, and a number of likely affiliated technologists, artists, and graffiti writers are spending the week working on an eye-tracking system attached to a pair of plastic frame glasses to write graffiti with light. From what I gather, this would allow them to avoid using those super-powerful lasers. Follow their adventures [...]
Office Hours
Broken City Lab office hours on Tuesday, March 31st, at 7pm, LeBel, room 125. You are invited! There is lots on the table, as it may be official that spring is here. If anyone has anything they want on the agenda, feel free to add it in the comments!
Text In-Transit Test Panel
I picked up five test panels on Friday from the printers and got a test shot of them installed on the buses. These first five panels were made up internally at BCL (we still haven’t had the chance to start going through all the submissions yet). I’ll be going back to the downtown terminal this [...]
Work Worth Doing
Work Worth Doing is an interdisciplinary design studio working to understand the intersection of design, society, and the environment. They’ve been working on retrofitting wartime homes with sustainable design and technologies, getting them down to zero energy use through affordable practices. This model would be a no-brainer for any city, but particular Windsor, which has a huge [...]
Futurefarmers: Cultivating Consciousness Since 1995
Amy Franceschini of San Francisco, is a contemporary American artist and designer who’s practices span from drawing, painting, sculpture, design, net art, public art and gardening. She teaches media theory and practice courses at both Stanford University and San Francisco Art Institute. In 1995, she founded Futurefarmers as a way to bring together multidisciplinary art [...]
Shapes for Planters
It’s a product made by MIO from recycled paper, and is available at Target, but I mainly wanted to post this as a note. As we’ve now “mastered” the process of making paper, we should consider different shapes for the planters we’re working on, which will likely help to guide the process of making the [...]
GROUNDWORK
I saw this on Render’s blog, and considering our work towards an artist-led community garden, I had to repost it. Not much to look at lightly dusted in snow, but the idea is incredibly great. Running from April 2009 to the following winter, GROUNDWORK will function as a community garden and creative research site. The [...]
Office Hours
Broken City Lab office hours on Tuesday, March 24, at 7pm, LeBel, room 125. We’ll be working on plans for the community garden project, some guerilla gardening things, and likely going through some of the Text In-Transit submissions! If anyone has anything else they want on the agenda, feel free to add it in the comments!
Scavenge The City
SCAVENGE THE CITY: An Algorithmic Walk with Broken City Lab is happening on Sunday, March 29th at 6pm. Starting at Phog Lounge, we’ll be handing out a custom algorithm (a set of instructions), using a fancy computer program that we write, to take you and whomever you want to walk with, around the downtownish area [...]
Magnetic Movie
This short film was shot by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, California, USA. I do not think this project needs any description from me, so I’ll present you with the link to the main site where footage can be found. The following is a summary of the goal of [...]
![Sara and I spent some time planning out some very preliminary designs for our Grades for Public Spaces project. The gist of the project is to have a series of rubrics to annotate / grade public space — or rather, use those rubrics as a tool to generate conversation and engagement in the use and rethinking [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/IMG_6597-150x150.jpg "Grades for Public Spaces (design phase)")
![This past Saturday I did my portion of the BCL collab/micro-residency with the lovely and talented wunderkind, Mr.Eric Boucher. For the collab I had Eric interview my sister’s good friend, Sam. Aside from her notable charm, I think Sam was a good candidate for the project because she is a student who came from Sarnia [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/eric_sam_dec1209-150x150.jpg "Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 6/6")
![I took a leisurely bike ride around the neighbourhood yesterday afternoon. It’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to explore, to spend time paying attention to things. I basically wanted an update on the neighbourhood that Danielle and I had lived in a couple years ago. The eastern edge of Sandwich is quieter than ever. [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2416-150x150.jpg "Getting Reacquainted with the Neighbourhood")
![As we continue to paint the letters, we’re now moving onto some exhibition design for the launch of the Letter Library. Really preliminary ideas here … but the gist of it is around wanting the work to feel open… Not sure that we’ll go with tape on top of the photos like this. 4×6 photos [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_9965-150x150.jpg "Exhibition Design (in progress)")
![The Eco-House was bumpin’ Friday night! Amongst a slew of other undergoing projects, Michelle, Rosina, Josh and I we’re all hard at work, trying to get everything organized for our upcoming event and final installment of Save The City that’s taking place this Friday at the Art Gallery of Windsor! Rosina and I tackled the Save The City [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG_4835web-150x150.jpg "Getting things done!")
![Monday night we spent a couple hours working over some new ideas with some new friends. Mostly, these ideas have been in the “meaning to do that” category, mostly opening up new collaborations in which new projects will unfold. Two main project frameworks came out of our brainstorm session—a floating sculpture project with the Green [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_5402-150x150.jpg "New Project Mondays: Week 1")
![On Monday, Norman Eberstein patrolled the alley, The Department of Unusual Certainties decorated their office and did some brainstorming, Thea Jones and Stephen Surlin moved in. Simon’s return to Windsor brought a lot of activity to the back of 410, where Chris had been sitting at his desk for a few days prior. The workspace [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0783-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 11: Norman’s Crush and Getting Organized")
![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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/img_8660-edit-150x150.jpg "Text On Ice")
![We spent the weekend in London, Ontario. We were installing for our upcoming exhibition at Forest City Gallery, while also briefly wondering about what it would be like to not do site specific work. Anyways, you should plan to come to the opening on September 9th! We’re working on an installation using our “…and then the city” [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/IMG_0548-150x150.jpg "Installing at Forest City Gallery")
![We got up early and headed down to the EC Row pedestrian overpass between the Dominion and Huron Church exits to install YOU ARE AMAZING! It’s hard to describe what it felt like to do this—taking on this project gave us all a genuine excitement about participating in changing a part of Windsor and the way [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/img_1471-150x150.jpg "Installing YOU ARE AMAZING")
![It’s been an incredible few weeks prepping for the launch of CIVIC SPACE and the Letter Library. Huge props to everyone who helped out, especially Kiki Athanassiadis & Lucy Howe! There’s a few hundred letters strewn about the space, waiting for you to takeout and caption the city. Stop by over the next few weeks — [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/wpid18599-IMG_0310-150x150.jpg "Recap of the Letter Library Opening Event!")
![Another week, some more steps forward in our attempts at a planter that can have a magnet embedded in it. While it wasn’t looking like we were making any real progress, this idea came up near the end of Office Hours—plastic cups with holes, paper pulp, and a small cup on the inside to make [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_3849-150x150.jpg "Progress on Making Paper Planters")
![The Save the City project aims to create a concentrated series of positive community-based activities facilitated by Broken City Lab in collaboration with community members. The project will address a number of issues and ideas specific to Windsor, Ontario through various collaborative community-based activities. As Windsor is situated in precarious economic, cultural, and geographic positions, the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/BCL-STC-Jan-5x7-back-website-green-150x150.jpg "Save the City: an overview")
![On Thursday night, on what was supposed to be a test run for projecting on the side of the Jackman Building (the new drama building at the University of Windsor), Broken City Lab ended up exploring a number of locations on campus armed with a projector, a laptop, and a really long extension cord. Originally, we [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/Broken-City-Lab-is-on-the-wall-of-the-new-drama-building-at-the-University-of-Windsor-150x150.jpg "BCL Report – Oct 9, 2008")
![We spent last night watching a rough cut of some of Eric’s ongoing micro-residency project, did a lot of measuring, used Google Earth, did some math, drew some diagrams, and brainstormed a new project (because Cristina wants to sew, a lot). With the semester basically over now, we’re hoping to wrap up a couple things [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/IMG_6230-150x150.jpg "Math, Markers, and Measurements + Eric’s micro-documentary")
