Signal To Noise (think old school rotary text board randomly looking for dictionary words)
I saw this in the Globe and Mail this morning and thought it was worth reposting here given how deep we’re into thinking about text in public spaces at the moment … seems like it would be a really fun installation to see in person! The project is called S/N (Signal to Noise) and can [...]
![For our upcoming Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope event (a part of our ongoing Save the City project), we’ll be asking for your participation to help us come up with a list of those very things — the places around Windsor for which we need to apologize, and the places for which we [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IMG_7327-150x150.jpg "Our Ribbons Have Arrived")
![A Friday with everyone around the table usually translates into a lot of excellent new ideas, and yesterday was no exception! We spent the evening reviewing the progress we’ve made on some initial research and may have sparked an entirely new direction for the project. All of the excitement is after the jump! Michelle has [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IMG_8611-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: February 4, 2011 (Repairs and Reviews)")
![Lucy stopped by this morning to keep cutting. Hiba and I painted the letters. White it is. We had a lot of leftover wall paint, which means we not only have more than enough paint, but the letter faces will gain a bit of rigidity and protection since it’s epoxy paint. Hiba paints. After trying [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_9686-150x150.jpg "Tuesday Afternoon: Work continues, now with Postcards and the Library Cards")
![Back in January, we asked nearly 40 people two questions: Why did you first come to Windsor? and Why are you still here? We asked those questions at an event called, Listen to the City, which was the first part of the five-month long project, Save the City. It was an incredible night. The answers [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Listentothecity2-150x150.jpg "Listen to the City: an Overview")
![I spent the better part of the day on Saturday doing some more basic research into connecting an Arduino and LCD for this ongoing project. For the most part, it’s pretty basic and following the wiring diagrams and tutorials online is fine. I ran into a problem with getting text on two lines, which I’ll [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/IMG_6480-150x150.jpg "Getting Things to Talk: Arduino + LCDs")
![I went out to the site for our proposed community garden to take some photos yesterday. It’s looking fairly likely that this will be the site for our community garden starting this summer. This park is located at Russell and Mill near the Sandwich windmill. We’re still working out all the details, but everything has [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_4065-150x150.jpg "Community Garden Site")
![We spent part of Monday afternoon doing a site visit for an upcoming project we’ve been planning for a while. The EC Row Walkway crosses over the 6 lanes of EC Row and is a pretty incredible view. We took some measurements and did a quick visibility test. We were only up there for about [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/img_2037-150x150.jpg "EC Row Walkway Measurement")
![We’re in Calgary for 9 days as part of Truck Gallery’s CAMPER 2011 Urban Discovery Project. Here’s what’s going to be keeping us busy for the next week: July 21 (Thurs): CAMPER Day 1: Exploding Calgary (interviews & storytelling) (12pm-3pm) 222 8 Avenue SW July 22 (Fri): CAMPER Day 2: Spatial & Temporal Narratives of Calgary (public mapping) [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/camper-150x150.jpg "Urban Discovery in Calgary with Truck’s CAMPER")
![Last night was the second iteration of Cross-Border Communication where we sent a variety of messages from Windsor to Detroit. We started with “We’ve Missed You.” We’ll be doing the final iteration of this suite of Cross-Border Communication tonight (Wednesday) around the usual time (8pm). Some other folks stopped by on our side to see [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_4629-150x150.jpg "Cross-Border Communication: We’ve Missed You (and other things worth saying)")
![Kevin and Josh ventured out with a single-use camera to test what the temporary installations would look like, as we continue to prep for Thursday’s launch of the Letter Library here at CIVIC SPACE. Also, film is fun. The letters look great and the photos aren’t too bad either. They definitely have a colder tone [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/43390001-150x150.jpg "Single-Use Camera Tests: Captioning the City")
![I picked up five test panels on Friday from the printers and got a test shot of them installed on the buses. These first five panels were made up internally at BCL (we still haven’t had the chance to start going through all the submissions yet). I’ll be going back to the downtown terminal this [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/img_3773-150x150.jpg "Text In-Transit Test Panel")
![After various discussions over the break regarding the next steps in preparing our giant banner for the upcoming project in Hamilton, I went ahead and did some experimenting with image transfers onto fabric. I took direction from a handy post here, which included simple directions and very few ingredients. With a simple picture printed [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/IMG_6470-150x150.jpg "Fabric Transfers and Letter Tracing: More Preparations for Two Tales of A City")
![Tuesday night’s Broken City Lab Office Hours were successful, but as usual, all too short. Spending the majority of the time in Lebel’s wood shop, we started working on our LED sign, but still have a long ways to go with it. We cut plexiglass, drilled holes, and started soldering—I think we’ll continue next Monday [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/img_2074-150x150.jpg "LED Sign Construction")
![For 30 days, this project will call on over 25 different artists, writers, designers, restauranteurs, musicians, architects, archivists, and other interested parties to occupy a space in downtown Windsor for up to one month in June and July 2010 to attempt to intervene with the everyday realities of skyrocketing vacancy rates, failing economic strategies, and a place [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/SRSI-storefronts-520-150x150.jpg "The Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation: Launching June 11, 2010")
![This is part of an ongoing set of one-question emails sent to people we know, or would like to get to know, about things that interest us and inform our collective practice. They’ll be featured on the site weekly, usually on Fridays. These questions are more about unfolding ideas than about the people we’re asking, but we do [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/suebellyank3-150x150.jpg "Sue Bell Yank on Art and Social Practice")
![Last night Hiba, Danielle and I met to do some more prep work on the letters for the Letter Library launch on June 21st. We painted another test letter E a different shade of grey and started to populate a wall with some more of the tests. It was excellent to see more than a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_96051-150x150.jpg "Nothing like being thorough: how we make decisions, slowly")
![We had a lot of changes happen this weekend down on Pelissier Street. Eric Cheung’s Interior sod was uninstalled Saturday, Leesa Bringas’ Indian Road Postcard project launched, and Merry Ellen Scully Mosna’s pie-making was a big hit on Sunday. < Eric’s sod was picked up Saturday afternoon. He placed an ad on Kijiji for free [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0967-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 9 & 10: Berries and Pies!")
![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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/scavengethecityposter-v1-150x150.jpg "Scavenge The City")
![Tom Provost came by a couple weeks ago with an idea for a new collaboration. We’ve work with Tom before on How to Forget the Border Completely — in particular the proposals for 1,000 Pedestrian Walkways and the Windsor-Detroit Portals. In short, the new project is to take the form of a triangular sign, something [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/IMG_8460-150x150.jpg "Pop-Up Possibilities: Sketches")