Here’s a video Michelle put together from some video of installingYou Are Amazing last month.
Smash for Cash
“Only use in a real credit emergency.” See that red circle? There’s cash in there, next to the cash machine, ready for emergencies. Though there’s not much else all that interesting on Imbue’s site, this project was actually really great.
[via rebel:art]
No Office Hours This Week
We won’t be meeting this week (April 20 – 26), with school finishing up, we’re going to take the week off. We’ll be back on with weekly office hours on April 28th and throughout the summer (though we’re still determining exactly what that schedule is going to be). Stay tuned.
Turning Crisis into Opportunity
See the Opportunity developed by Leo Burnett Lisboa and Arc Lisbon is a Firefox plugin that automatically replaces the word crisis with the word opportunity throughout your internet travels.
Not unlike Steve Lambert’s Add-Art, this is another great use of the extensibility that is the Firefox plugin framework.
What are those plugins written in? Does anyone know how to do this? I think developing a Windsor-specific plugin could be a great summer project.
[via Scott Burnham]
Rare Earth Magnets + New Pulp Recipe
Our recipe from the other night produced a much stronger planter, though I think there’s still room to add a coat of wheat paste to the outside. The rare earth magnets do well if there’s two, but I think the best solution will be to adhere them to the outside of the planter, or embed them in the pulp (which would make things a bit more difficult). Ideally, we’d use one magnet per planter.
This planter is about the size of a cigarette carton, but should be perfect for a sprout of wild flowers or cat grass or something more interesting, with lots of depth for the roots to do their thing. Plus, we’re now thinking that there’s a good amount of surface area to work with for some text / stenciling / recipe, etc.
Gardens and Planters
Another cold, rainy Tuesday for Office Hours, but we were inside imagining spring. We pushed ahead on doing some more research and development on the planters, started a plant list and design ideas for the community garden, and got closer to finalizing the list of submissions from Text In-Transit.
An Update on Our Planters
The wild flower seeds from last year are still good—I planted these seeds on Thursday or Friday and they’re growing like crazy already. The paper planter shaped around the spray paint can lid and reinforced with some wheat paste is holding up, as is the magnet.
We have an idea for a better shape and some good suggestions for further reinforcement, and I placed an order for 1/2″ rare-earth magnets tonight, so we’re on track for getting this project off the ground in the next few weeks.
More research to do, but I’m excited with where this project is going!
Windsor Ward Boundary Reviews
I can’t say it much better than Chris over at Scaledown, so I’ll just reblog it here:
The time has come for the City of Windsor to investigate adjusting its ward boundaries to better reflect the redistribution of our population we’ve realized over the past thirty years. Yes, the last time this has been analyzed was 1978.
There has been a significant move to the ‘burbs over the course of the last three decades, and the boundaries of our ward representation has yet to catch up with this trend. Wards one and five have noticed the greatest amount of land use homogeneity with the vast majority of their residential poulation living in raised ranch housing. Wards two and three have been continuously bleeding residents to these new subdivisions, while our other urban ward, ward four, has only grown due to the recently annexed land by the airport.
There will be 3 ward boundary review meetings:
Wednesday, April 15, 7-9pm (Forest Glade Community Centre)
Thursday, April 16, 4-6pm (Windsor Water World)
Thursday, April 16, 7-9pm (South Windsor Recreation Complex)
This could dramatically impact the next election and the future of city council representation in Windsor, so if you have time, and especially if these review locations are in your neighbourhood, it’s definitely worth going.
Exhibition Opening at AGW
There’s an opening for two shows in which I’m participating on Friday, April 17, 2009, 7pm at the Art Gallery of Windsor.
On the first floor is the University of Windsor MFA Graduate Exhibition, Without, featuring documentation from various Broken City Lab projects alongside work by Steven Leyden Cochrane, and Henrjeta Mece, and on the second floor is the 2009 Windsor Biennial, with a large-scale graph outlining ideas and activities for re-imagining cross-border relations alongside too many other great area artists to name. As part of the Biennial, Broken City Lab will be working in Windsor and Detroit towards the realization of some of these activities throughout May and June (more details to follow).
The shows run from April 10 – June 5 and April 17 – July 5 respectively.
Office Hours
Broken City Lab office hours on Tuesday, April 14, at 7pm, LeBel, room 125. Many things to discuss—community gardens, planters, summer events, cross-border communications, etc. If anyone has anything they want on the agenda, feel free to add it in the comments!