The new model for our Magnetic Planters—basically just using a paper mache technique. Darren figured this one out, and after some testing, it looks like this is the strongest and easiest planter we can make! We did more research last Friday to get to this point, but we’re happy to have come up with a really workable solution.
Broken City Lab office hours on Friday, May 22, at 2:30pm in LeBel, room 125. We’ll be finishing up the planters and planning for our downtown space in June.
See you there!
GOOD recently had a Livable Streets competition where they invited readers to do some rendering and Photoshopping of holistic redesigns. The winner, Steve Price, reimagined Portsmouth, Virginia with infill development, light rail, and dedicated bike paths.
We need to do this for Windsor. Anyone up for putting their skills to use? Maybe Scaledown should try to push something like this forward.
Public Sculpture Tackle rethinks interaction with public sculpture. Performed by the Bruce High Quality Foundation, the work is pretty much what it sounds like; artists in the BHQF wear makeshift-athletic gear and attempt to tackle public sculptures in Manhattan, which is, by nature, “on the defense.”
I keep thinking about what public sculpture looks like in Windsor and wondering about what it means to have a sculpture ghetto garden. Public sculpture should be integrated into the streets.
For the month of June, Broken City Lab will have access to 406 Pelissier (pictured above) in downtown Windsor, thanks to Julie Sando and Leesa Bringas who are teaching the Contemporary Visual Culture class during Intersession at the University of Windsor.
We’re still just starting to plan what we might do in the space, but we’re thinking of running a type of consultancy for the month. Details to follow.
Huge, great exciting news!
Our project, Cross Border Communication, is a finalist for the 2010 Rhizome Commission!!!
If we’re successful in the ranking process, we could awarded the funds needed to make the project happen—that means, money to buy a projector powerful enough to make a message bright enough to be seen from downtown Detroit! This is the Rhizome Membership vote, which will award 2 commissions, while the jury will award 7 others. Winners will be announced in mid-June.
You love Windsor, don’t you? Well, show your Windsor Pride by putting this ringtone on your phone! The zip file has an iPhone-ready m4r file along with a standard mp3 file AND NOW a MIDI version for any other phone not mp3-enabled. Preview the 25 second ringtone below:
[audio:wonderfulwindsorRingtone.mp3]If we could get someone to re-compose this melody in MIDI (thank you to Derek Harrison for transcribing the tune to MIDI), I’d challenge the entire city to use this ringtone for a week. Credit goes to Steven for originally coming across this song some time ago. From what I was able to find out about this, it was a 1960s radio jingle that used to be played on CKWW. Maybe you could also use this aerial photo from Windsor / Detroit made sometime in the 1960s.
Broken City Lab met in December of last year to visualize, create, and link our goals for 2009 and created a large mind map to help with this process. One of the ideas brought up at this time was the following: create parking tickets that resemble those distributed by City of Windsor or University of Windsor Parking Service officials, but spin the ticket information in a way that compliments the owner of the vehicle instead of notifies him or her of impending fines. The first series of tickets display the message “operation of fuel efficient vehicle” in the space where “parking violation” or something similar would usually appear. I’ve posted the initial ticket design and two examples of the types of vehicles receiving these tickets. This will most likely be an ongoing process that I will complete throughout the summer, but since the City of Windsor Parking Services is currently on strike, these tickets should appear slightly confusing to the vehicle owners.
Broken City Lab office hours will continue throughout the summer, just on a different schedule. I’m teaching a section of the Green Corridor running through Intersession, and a number of other BCL members are taking other Intersession courses, which happen to fall on Tuesday and Thursday nights.
So, we won’t be holding Office Hours this week, but plan for a meeting next week. I’ll put up a post of the details on our next meeting as soon as we can figure out when to meet (though I’m thinking Fridays during the day)…
Thursday, May 14 going to be an incredible day: Urban Mediations, a one-day symposium on urban media studies is taking place in Windsor. Co-organized by the University of Windsor’s own, Dr. Michael Darroch, the symposium will involve a collection of researchers, artists, designers, and activists talking about what it means to research the urban.
I’ll be speaking on Broken City Lab, and Danielle will be talking about architecture of urban refugees, among many other fine thinkers, doers, and writers.