33 Questions Per Minute
In 2000, Rafael Lozano- Hemmer messed around with some computer programs, lcd screens and a dictionary and created ’33 Questions Per Minute’, an installation featuring 21 lcd screens set up in various places and positions that generate unique and absurd questions thirty-three times per minute. The text is sorted randomly together through a generator and [...]
Arduino, PHP, LCDs, XBees: Tactical Texting in Public Spaces
While the adventure in working on this project began months ago, I’ve finally sorted through the mess of files I made and put it all together in a nice handy zip folder. Using Arduinos, XBees, LCDs, and PHP, this project was challenging from a technical stand-point, but I think the project is now at a [...]
SRSI, Day 28: Speed Dating for Store Owners
Thursday was the Storefront Success Stories Speed Dating for Store Owners event down on Pelissier for SRSI, and Justin set up a window installation using the Arduino.
XBees, Arduinos, Serial Data
I made some huge progress over the last week or so on this ongoing Arduino / LCD project — it’s finally gone wireless! With some more silly mistakes behind me, I’m finally getting a better handle on how to break down the problems I run into and solve them a lot faster. I remember back [...]
XBees + Arduino
Although it’s been a while since I last worked on this project, things are continuing to move along. I finally assembled the Ladyada XBee adapters and successfully passed a message between the two XBees. So, I’m not the best solderer and the first adapter I worked on suffered from an overusing tip on my soldering [...]
Parsing RSS Feeds for the Arduino + LCD + PHP project
I’ve made some really great progress on this ongoing Arduino + LCD project over the last couple of weeks — some of the two larger hurdles are now out of the way, the results of which you can see in the video above. Since the video was shot, I’ve improved the PHP script some more [...]
Working on the PHP Backend of the Arduino + LCD Project
I haven’t posted for a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on the ongoing Arduino + LCD project, which is moving along towards connecting external data to be displayed on the LCD screen. The last bit of time I’ve put into the project has been focused on printing text to the LCD [...]
Arduino + LCD + PHP, Part 2
The epic adventure with Arduino, LCDs, and PHP continues. I’ve finally made some progress in terms of breaking up the words and lines appropriately. It felt like a huge achievement, since I had been trying to figure out this line-break thing for quite a while. You can check the majority of the progress in the [...]
More Arduino + LCD + PHP fun
My work on this ongoing LCD Arduino project has been continuing over the last couple of weeks, I just haven’t had the time to update appropriately. So, I switched over my plan of attack from Processing to PHP. I figured this made sense for a couple reasons: first, I’m already very well-acquainted with PHP, I’ve [...]
New LCDs and Serial Ports and some Max/MSP for good measure
I haven’t posted on this project for a little while, partially because of the preparation for the ongoing Save the City project, and partially because the little time that I’ve had to work on this has only resulted in small increments. So, I figured I would wait until I had some more significant updates to [...]
![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")
![Although it’s been a while since I last worked on this project, things are continuing to move along. I finally assembled the Ladyada XBee adapters and successfully passed a message between the two XBees. So, I’m not the best solderer and the first adapter I worked on suffered from an overusing tip on my soldering [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG_9485-150x150.jpg "XBees + Arduino")
![Another day at BCL HQ and some more progress on this ongoing magnetic planters project. Michelle and I finished putting in the remainder of our magnets into our plastic bag planters, but there are still some more planters left over. So, with more rare-earth magnets now on the way, we’ll finish up the rest when [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_4798-150x150.jpg "Magnets Installed!")
![Around the maps, we’re beginning to imagine two cities collapsing into one. As part of How to Forget the Border Completely, we’re doing and planning all sorts of things — border portals, border etiquette classes, new maps, new tourism guides, interviews, stories, and imaginary architecture. Michelle and our dear friend, Lee Rodney, spoke about HFBC [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IMG_8729-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: Feb 18, 2011 (Maps & Portals)")
![Thinking about a good collaborative weekend project, the idea of starting a reading list came up. I have a fair collection of books and blogs in my reader that touch on a number of things that seem pertinent to Broken City Lab, but I wondered what’s out there that I’m missing. I’ll make a quick [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/img_9092c-150x150.jpg "Reading List")
![424 Pelissier was a fun space for kids to be creative all day on Sunday as part of Imagination Lab. Merry Ellen set up her baking station over in that space. Later Sunday night, I accompanied Laura to do some more installations. The kids had a lot fo fun interacting with each other and learning [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/DSC_0650-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 24: Imagination Lab & Disco Balls")
![Danielle and I spent a number of hours last night going through photos of the Parking Garage and starting to imagine new treatments for the infrastructure, space, signage, walls, and streetscape. We’ll be heading down early this afternoon to start getting all of this visual research up on the walls, with the opening tonight at [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/img_2608-we-150x150.jpg "Planning for 406 Pelissier")
![We spent the better part of the evening at our new headquarters located at the edge of campus. It’s exceptionally great to be in a place that we can use as a work space / office space that we’ll be able to leave setup. Working in Lebel for the past year was good for a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/IMG_0151-150x150.jpg "Oh, Paperwork in the New HQ")
![The start of the week brought two new residents to the Storefronts: Sara Jane French and Jodi Green. There was some crazy changes in the exterior landscape due to construction today as well. Sara was only present at the start and end of the day. For the bulk of it we were joined by Norman [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0828-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 4: Working 9-5")
![Michelle and I spent hours and hours together yesterday. With everyone’s schedules fairly ridiculous at the moment, we’re trying to steal what little time we can to keep working. Lately, the time that we’ve all spent together has been framed exclusively almost exclusively by planning for Save the City or organizing the Storefront Residencies for [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG_9749-sm-150x150.jpg "Later Nights, since it’s summer now")
![Danielle and I will be heading to Montreal to speak at this year’s Canadian Association of Cultural Studies Biannual Conference at McGill University. We’re presenting in the Cultural Production panel under the theme of Social Practice and Public Space. Our presentation entitled, “Social Practice: New Models for Collaborative Cultural Production,” will frame the city of Windsor [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/montreal-150x150.jpg "Canadian Association of Cultural Studies Conference, McGill University")
![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")
![Here it is, or at least, here’s part of the physical archive, the scannable stuff anyways, from 2008-2009. It’s been hanging out in my filing cabinet for a long time, but finally with the help of Miranda Fay during her off-hours, it’s been gradually scanned in page by page. Archives are crucial for taking stock, for remembering, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2546-150x150.jpg "Keeping Track of the Archives")
![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")
![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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_4303-150x150.jpg "New Design for the Planters")
![Months of work and research culminated in a 3am submission to Blurb to print our How to Forget the Border Completely publication. It’s about 150 pages long. I’m really happy with this, and I can’t wait to get it back in print. Above, a screenshot of some of the pages in the PDF. In terms [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-Shot-2011-10-06-at-9.15.16-AM-150x150.png "How to Forget the Border Completely, submitted for print!")
![On Monday morning we set out all of the stuff that we figured we would need to start figuring out how to make an LED sign (+ some other things that aren’t really necessary for this project). We cut wires, soldered, used resistors, and mocked up a circuit on a breadboard and it was really, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/img_1974-150x150.jpg "Soldering LEDs + Other Adventures in Electricity")
![At Windsor’s riverfront, SAVE A CITY, installed this afternoon. We opted out of using monofilament to hang the blocks of ice because there was a nice snowbank already there, and probably the last thing the Detroit River needs is more garbage in it. I’ll post some photos of the process of making these soon (definitely [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/img_2536-2-150x150.jpg "Save A City")
![300′ of bright orange flagging tape, $5.97 + tax. It’s fairly thin, but should be really easy to work with. We might have to double it up to make it visible on the fence, that is, double the width of each letter. We should test at Lebel later this week, or maybe on Monday before [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/img_1697-150x150.jpg "Flagging Tape")