Heartbreaking by Lois Andison
This one goes out to Josh. Heartbreaking, a kinetic sculpture by Lois Andison, is a device that gradually works its way through every possible word that can be spelled with the letters H,E,A,R,T,B,R,E,A,K,I,N,G (in that order). Terrence Dick over at Akimbo called it, “the closest thing I’ve seen that’s come to a perfect marriage of word [...]
Simon Rabyniuk on the division of practice and real life
There is no division between practice and life.
Writing Art * A ‘Critical Writing’ Group
From an email from Artcite Inc… you should consider doing this! Urge to write about art? Please check out the NEW… Writing Art * A ‘Critical Writing’ Group Sponsored by Artcite Inc. So many artists pass through our city un- or under-sung that a few folks at Artcite thought we might form a group devoted [...]
Nick Tobier on art, expectations & encounters
Wonder, puzzlement, pique, bemusement, delight–I am a big fan of all that swirling around before we pause and recognize what it is or why it is.
Pg 113 Waking Up from the Nightmare of Participation
“…the specific openness or porosity of contemporary art for instance has functioned as a weird kind of hosting system: as a kind of asylum for various cultural forms and encounters apparently impossible elsewhere.” – from Michael Hirsch’s Professional Amateurs, Outsiders, Intruders – On the Utopia of Transdisciplinary Work in the Cultural Field in “Waking up [...]
Useful Art by Kathy Noble from Frieze Magazine
KN: One of the things you hope to explore in this project is what ‘use’ might be. But why should art be useful? Arguably, an important point of art is not to have a ‘use’, in a literal sense, but to be something else in our lives. TB: All art is useful. But the Spanish word for [...]
Ephemeral Situations (fireworks & doves), Awarded
It’s always a bit strange to get so many random emails about great work, and so often there’s not enough time to really explore. Today, though, I’m glad I took a couple minutes to look this over. The Szpilman Award is awarded to works that exist only for a moment or a short period of time. [...]
Homework: Conference Schedule & Presenters
After a long wait, we’re very excited to announce the (working) schedule for our upcoming conference, Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices! We’ll be updating this page with information regarding the venues shortly. Please note that the following is subject to change, but this is what we’re planning so far: DAY 1: October 21, [...]
Josh Dickinson’s Medical Trials
While not every art school graduate has a hard time finding a way to pay the bills, some graduates find financial refuge far outside the realm of art. Josh Dickinson is one such person. He “has participated in almost 100 medical experiments in order to pay his rent. He’s been wired up with electrodes, stuck [...]
DIY: Air Quality Balloons
I found this post not too long ago and have been wanting to make one of these ever since. What’s making these balloons glow is the pollutants in the air around them, with colours ranging from green (signifying excellent air quality) to red (poor air quality).
![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")