By Justin on December 15th, 2009, 7:00 am 1 Comments

Monday night at BCL HQ, going over plans for moving forward on our recently OAC funded project starting in January 2010, Broken City Lab: Save the City (details to follow), using good ol’ fashioned lists and future technologies—it was amazing, in every sense of the word.

Not sure how many more times we’ll be meeting over the break, but we’re all excited for what the new year has in store … so many projects, it will be excellent!

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Tagged: banner BCL google wave grants lists planning research

By Justin on December 8th, 2009, 2:21 pm 0 Comments

We spent last night watching a rough cut of some of Eric’s ongoing micro-residency project, did a lot of measuring, used Google Earth, did some math, drew some diagrams, and brainstormed a new project (because Cristina wants to sew, a lot).

With the semester basically over now, we’re hoping to wrap up a couple things before the new year before starting on some bigger new projects in the new year, which you will hear about soon!

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Tagged: banner BCL documentary math planning research sign video Windsor

By Justin on November 19th, 2009, 12:16 pm 5 Comments

Broken City Lab is heading up to Hamilton on Friday, November 20th, 2009 to run a workshop/event on communicating through intervention in urban spaces. The workshop is being held at the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre as part of their Labour Lounge series, this time in partnership with the Hamilton Youth Arts Network.

This has been the description of the workshop/event and it’s perfectly fitting: “Come on out and learn how art can interact with the urban environment leading to AWESOMENESS!” Oh, and our workshop will lead into the hip hop stylings of Lee Reed; it should be amazing fun!

The details: Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (51 Stuart Street, Hamilton), 7pm – 10:30pm.

Tagged: banner BCL Hamilton labour research workshop youth

By Justin on September 4th, 2009, 1:14 pm 0 Comments

Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen are working on a series of text banners / posters. Sometimes the banners are held between the two of them, other times they each hold smaller cards with texts that work off of one another. Sometimes they write the text on the banners, other times they invite others to compose it.

They’re fans of reading, typography, and from what I gather, lists.

Oh, the things that could be said with banners here—we should get on that.

Tagged: banner poster public text

By Justin on July 1st, 2009, 3:42 pm 8 Comments

Another day spent at 406 Pelissier. Working with these plastic bags is really time consuming, but it will be worth it. The projects we have in mind are taking longer than we may have initially aniticipated, but that’s been the case with everything we’ve ever done.

The banner is growing steadily, but we’re hoping for a final length of somewhere near 18 feet. We’ve also scouted a location, but we’re still working on the message for the banner itself.

Our continuing work with the planters is going well, as we’re about 1/3 of the way to the grand total of planters we’re hoping to make. Also, the test planter is doing well, with some wildflower seeds sprouting already. With the planter being indoors, it has certainly helped to keep the soil moist, but also (and as we had figured long ago), the first and second design iterations of the planters were drying the soil very quickly due to the use of newspapers. With the plastic bags, the soil seems to be holding moisture much better. We’ve been careful to create drainage holes, but we probably need to integrate this into the design more effectively.

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Tagged: banner BCL planters plastic bags research