Monday Night Drift: Volume 1, South Windsor
Armed with an algorithm from Sara, Michelle, Rosina, and I headed out on a walk on Monday night. We had decided at our last meeting to roam around some South Windsor neighbourhoods — seeing as we rarely get a chance to venture into that part of town — and we were surprised by how much [...]
Reflections on Circulations
Last Wednesday I hosted an algorithmic walk around downtown Windsor with some University of Windsor Communications Studies and History grad students. The class, led by Drs. Mike Darroch and Rob Nelson, spent about an hour exploring the city, as per the algorithm, in an area between Park and Pelissier and McDougall and Tuscarora. Groups of [...]
Circulation: an algorithmic walk in downtown Windsor with students from the University of Windsor
On Wednesday, February 1st, I’ll be guiding an algorithmic walk for Dr. Mike Darroch and Dr. Rob Nelson’s history / communication studies grad seminar. I spent part of the afternoon playing around with some ideas to have the instructions, or algorithms, distributed to the class. We’ve done walks before, they’ve often been quite ambitious and [...]
Conflux Day 3 – Algorithmic Subway Adventure Recap
Day 3 of our New York excursion and finally the day we’ve been waiting patiently for…the day of our Algorithmic Subway Adventure for ConfluxCity! In case you need a recap, The Algorithmic Subway Adventure was our attempt to psychogeographically explore, and engage with passengers of the New York City subway system. We woke up fairly [...]
How to Make a Randomly Assembled Text
Back at the end of March, we went on an Algorithmic Walk with some brave folks (who not only trusted in our custom software generated algorithm, but also ignored the weather). I had previously posted a link to where you could find a custom-assembled algorithm, should you be curious to try it on your own, [...]
Scavenge the City Recap
A week ago, on an incredibly cold, rainy, snowy evening, we headed out on an exploration of Windsor’s downtown guided by a randomly assembled algorithm for Scavenge The City. We only made it through the first 20 steps (we stopped checking them off though), plus a couple others we skipped to by the end, but for [...]
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 [...]
Algorithmic Walk
Last Thursday in Lee Rodney’s Border Culture class, we went out on an algorithmic walk to explore Wyandotte from Glengarry to Gladstone. The students were given the algorithm and map I made that you see above, but with varying order, and then sent out. As the goal was to have the students become familiar with the [...]
![We spent a couple hours on Monday exploring some specific sites around the city to start planning some upcoming projects. Getting out and documenting and talking about these places really helped to solidify how important it is for some creative intervention/interaction with the city and how excited we are to do it. The clear view [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/Welcome-to-Windsor-sign-on-Dougall-just-off-the-401-150x150.jpg "BCL Report – Sept 29, 2008")
![We spent the better part of Day 2 of our Extended Field Trip #001 in Peterborough at the wonderful Artspace talking to some new people, synthesizing some questions from our broad understanding of the city so far, and trying to get a sense of what if anything there is to change about this place. We [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_3499-150x150.jpg "Extended Field Trip Day 2: Mapping")
![We are already nearing the end of our priming process for our letters after only beginning last week! While we got to painting the rest of the letters on Friday, I prepared a few things earlier in the week for our next step, painting the letters in a fabulous bright red. After deciding on a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/leadRosinaPic-150x150.jpg "Finishing Phase Three and Experimenting with Colour")
![This week, Rosina and I spent two days in Hamilton researching for our upcoming project at Hamilton Artist’s Inc. Two Tales of a City will uncover, celebrate, and imagine a future for lost histories of Steel City. We started off on Wednesday by visiting the brand new Hamilton Artist’s Inc building on the corner of [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/IMG_5289-150x150.jpg "Two Tales of a City: Hamilton")
![Josh and I spent some of the day in the heat collecting some interesting flowers and plants to transplant for our magnetic planters project. Overall, it was fairly successful, as we did learn quite a lot about transplanting, but we’re still going to be looking for some more plants to finish up this stage of [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_46142-150x150.jpg "Learning to Transplant")
![On Day 2 of our ATTC Calgary with Truck Gallery’s CAMPER Urban Discovery project, our ongoing work finds us asking questions about a city that we’re still just getting to know. The questions are, necessarily, basic and straight forward. We’re not conducting deep sociological or statistical research, but rather trying to tease out a series of narratives that [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/IMG_3290-150x150.jpg "ATTC Calgary Day 2: Stories of a Distanced City")
![It would be great if you could come. We’ll be at 350 City Hall Sq West, across the street from Charles Clark Square at 9:30pm. We’ll have a projector and a bunch of bristol board. We want to look at what public consultation could look like and how we might imagine the changes we want [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/bcl-citycounsel-150x150.jpg "9:30pm tonight, an open conversation on the walls of city hall, you’re invited")
![As part of our Extended Field Trip #001, we’re in Peterborough staying at the artist-run-centre, Artspace. We’re hoping to conduct some intercity research where we’ll attempt to understand the similarities and differences between Peterborough and Windsor and hopefully find some intersection thereof to which we can respond. We arrived in Peterborough in the late afternoon [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_2617-150x150.jpg "Extended Field Trip Day 1: Stable City")
![I wrote a plugin by hacking together some ideas based on the Notify on Comment plugin. Essentially, I was looking for a plugin whereby someone mentioned or tagged in a comment (using the familiar @username syntax from Twitter) would be notified. They wouldn’t have had to have made the post being commented on, nor would [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Screen-Shot-2012-01-22-at-1.17.49-PM-150x150.png "WordPress Plugin (notifying users tagged in comments)")
![Danielle and I have been in St.Catharines at Brock University working with an Ecopsychology class on a public art project (details to follow in coming week(s). We’re only here for a few days to help get the class started, but it’s been incredibly fun working with a bunch of strangers. We’ve explored the campus and [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/IMG_0155-150x150.jpg "Field Report from St.Catharines")
![I’ll be spending most of the week finishing up a couple lingering parts of Save the City: assembling the maps for Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope and putting the final touches on the edit from Listen to the City that Danielle assembled. The audio documentary is going to be an overview, or maybe [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/IMG_3075-150x150.jpg "Maps + Final Cut")
![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")
![Michelle and I headed up to Hamilton to continue the research portion of Two Tales Of A City. The three and a half hour car ride gave us plenty of time to develop a working plan of exactly what we wanted to accomplish for the next two days in Hamilton, Ontario. To get a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_5855-150x150.jpg "Two Tales Of A City: Hamilton History Hunters")
![We spent the day in Hamilton again, this time walking around downtown as Official Hamilton History Hunters, building a timeline of Hamilton’s history with the help of city residents and visitors around Jackson Square, a multi-use complex in the downtown core. Both Hiba and I had specific tasks that we alternated during our investigation. Hiba [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_61001-150x150.jpg "Two Tales of a City: Hamilton History Hunters Day 2")
![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")
![This week’s Office Hours were busy, hectic, and (I think) productive. There we some new faces around the table, which is always great, and lots to do in terms of planning and organizing. Breaking into groups made sense and we pushed forward on a bunch of things in parallel, but I’m looking forward to the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/3308590586_1efbff37ed_o-150x150.jpg "Group Work")
![Last Wednesday, Justin, Michelle, Josh and I flew from Detroit, MI to Atlanta, GA and drove another two hours to Chattanooga, TN for the City Share conference put on by our friends from Create Here! Veronique picked us up from the the airport in Atlanta. We grabbed a bit of food and then headed straight [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IMG_3050-150x150.jpg "Our Arrival to Chattanooga, TN and Day One of the City Share Conference!")
![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. [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/042-150x150.jpg "Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 3/5")
![Despite the snow, the lethargy onset by exam schedules and year-end assignments, and a few core BCL folk leaving town for the summer, we had a great and productive meeting. We started going through the Text In-Transit submissions, continued working on our magnetic planters, worked on our Rhizome commission, brainstormed the idea of a book, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_3992-150x150.jpg "Planning for Spring")