Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 3/5

Terry Marentette

In order to keep things moving with Eric Boucher’s Micro-Residency project, I invited Eric to interview my oldest (in terms of age) friend Terry Marentette yesterday afternoon. I met Terry two years ago in an Art History class at the School of Visual Arts and was immediately astonished by his immense knowledge of Windsor’s past. Eric’s interview sparked some great conversation about Windsor during the Depression, the Ambassador Bridge and its effects on Windsor, the history of Walkerville, the amount of people who leave Windsor after school, etc. Overall, Eric and I were both pleased with the amount of Windsor-related information Terry provided. I am excited to see the footage!

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Preliminary Banner Tests- Paint on Plastic

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Over the weekend, I tested out different kinds of paint to use on this shower curtain-type material for an upcoming large banner project.  

First, I tried some heavy acrylic paint and spread it evenly three times in different thicknesses. The line with the most paint peeled easier, however, the line with the lightest coat did not peel or chip.

As I waited for those to dry, I also tried cheaper, more liquid-based paint from the dollar store. At first it seemed promising, but as soon as it dried, the paint began chipping away.

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The poor excuse for creativity on the left was done with cheap paint. Some of the paint is already chipping and it wasn’t even completely dry at that point.  The letters on the right were done to confirm my first tests with the heavy acrylic. The paint seemed to hold better because the material had a bumpy texture to it.

I  definitely think the acrylic paint could be a solid choice if it’s applied lightly.  Paint would work well for this project because it can quickly cover a large area, especially for the expected  size of the banner.

How we use this site for research (in-part)

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Over the last week or so, we’ve added a few new things to our little website here. It’s funny because there’s a lot of research that goes on in the background, in terms of things we come across and don’t blog about, ideas that we email to one another, and documenting our process and posting it alongside that of other people’s works, which at times just sort of goes into the background archive.

Speaking with Tom Lucier earlier this week made us realize the distance between our blog-based practice and what we do in real space. That is, how we continually try to use the tools available to us online to communicate and network and collect information, and then the at times lo-tech initiatives we work with on an ongoing basis. Certainly there are times when these cross, but it just got me thinking about how important it is (at least from our perspective) to continue to keep the conversation going (at least amongst ourselves) online and continue to share what we’re reading and looking at during all that time in the week that we don’t get to get together.

So, I thought I’d make a quick post on some of the things I’ve added to the site as of earlier this week. In the right-most column, just past the contact information, there are now thumbnails of our most-recent posts on our research, there’s a series of links to bookmarks from my delicious page, and then there’s the links to the starred items from my Google Reader … with those kinks worked out, we’re going to try to plug-in feeds from other BCL research fellows when available.

Sometimes it’s difficult to find the time to post more than a few times a week, but I know I’m continually trying to make myself notes and links to things that might relate to an idea I had, or a note about something I should revisit when I have more time. For me, seeing all of these things in one place is helpful and to have it alongside all of the other things we’re continuing to talk about just seemed to make sense.

Spencer Finch: The River That Flows Both Ways

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIjV5yBxbLc&feature=player_embedded

Inspired by the Hudson River, The River That Flows Both Ways is a project by Spencer Finch that documents a 700-minute (11 hours, 40 minutes) journey on the river in a single day.

On June 12, 2008, from a tugboat drifting on Manhattan’s west side and past the High Line, Finch photographed the river’s surface once every minute. The color of each pane of glass was based on a single pixel point in each photograph and arranged chronologically in the tunnel’s existing steel mullions. Time is translated into a grid, reading from left to right and top to bottom, capturing the varied reflective and translucent conditions of the water’s surface.

Much of Finch’s work relies on scientific, or at least methodological process, to re-present natural occurrences or phenomenon. I really enjoy the processes involved in his work and his continuing translation of information and data, or at times, the failure thereof.

Commanding: Urban Signs

Commanding

Commanding is a group of artists/educators/students at NYU who hope to create a dialogue about the changing environments in which they live.

They post signs based on simple computer commands that relate directly to the gentrification, development and hopefully preservation of the neighborhoods that we interact with everyday.

A really basic idea, but quite effective to comment and critique, again another quiet project.

[via Make]

Little People: Tiny Street Art

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Little People is a project by Slinkachu, a street artist based out of London. The works are often (literally) little scenarios ranging between the fantastic and the banal.

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These images in particular are from a recent installation entitled, What brings us together and what keeps us apart, in Grottaglie, Italy, which was part of the Fame Festival. A lot of the work is pretty humourous and I’d imagine nearly impossible to accidentally stumble upon.

Given that we’ve been discussing some potentially quieter projects, I thought it would be worth noting this one, given just how quiet it is.

Monday Night Research: Lightbulbs & Lists

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We spent another Monday night at BCL HQ planning out this Windsor-Detroit hyper-local tourism idea and doing some basic research for another upcoming project.

We all have some homework to do, but things are moving along nicely on a number of projects, and with the semester winding down, things should be able to push ahead soon!

More pictures of research involving lightbulbs and lists after the jump.

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