Sao Paolo: City With No Ads
From Text-In-Transit to …And Then The City, we’ve spent a lot of time researching ways in which we can subvert some of the advertising spaces in Windsor, but what if we were to just eliminate all of the advertisements entirely? In January of this year, the mayor of Sao Paolo, Brazil decided to ban all [...]
Steve Lambert: It’s Time to Fight
Two things I can’t get enough of — Steve Lambert and huge text signs. Lambert’s latest work, It’s Time to Fight was installed recently in Pittsburgh, PA over a waffle shop. Text-based work continues to inspire me; it’s accesible, layered, timely, and tactical. It can be hidden in plain sight. If you catch it, it can [...]
Double Happiness
Here is a magnificent use of billboard space created by architect Didier Faustino. He has titled the work/installation/swing-set Double Happiness for pretty obvious reasons. Clever ideas like this usually don’t come from passivity towards the city, but an engaged, analytical, and curious attitude. I found this summary of the conceptual framework behind the project: “Double [...]
“You are Still Alive” Billboard
Steve Lambert was just one of the artists who were included in the 2010 Art Moves Billboard Festival in Torun, Poland. His work, titled “You are Still Alive” is a tongue-in-cheek interpretation of motivational imagery. The photograph is fantastic and seems to draw my attention more than the billboard itself. It seems like the outcome is [...]
Urban Interventions by OX
OX works on billboards across Paris, France to disrupt perspectives, commercial aesthetics, and daily encounters with forever-scaling urban signage. The artist has sent us a few emails in the past, so I’m happy to finally be able to post about it. You should check out OX’s site featuring a huge number of works and on [...]
Paying for Art with Billboards
Beautiful City is a new campaign based out of Toronto that is trying to persuade the city to create a tax for billboards that would do the following: A historical 53% increase to the annual municipal funding available to all artists, festivals and arts institutions, Close to $100 000.00 dollars for public realm improvement for each Toronto [...]
Billboard Text
Oh, how I cannot wait for the day that we have some money to do something as big as this. [via Heather is Watching]
Art Replaces over 120 Illegal Billboards in New York City
Late last week, over 120 illegal billboards were taken over by Jordan Seiler’s incrediblely ambitious “New York Street Advertising Takeover.” Organized as a reaction to the hundreds of billboards that are not registered with the city, and therefore are illegal (and yet not prosecuted by New York city), the NYSAT whitewashed and then over 80 artists [...]
![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")
![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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/IMG_2868-150x150.jpg "Working on a Process: Plastic Bag Banners and Such")
![Monday saw the last new residents move in to the SRSI spaces; Lee Rodney’s Bookmobile Reading Room and Emily Colombo’s friendly services. To get footage for the SRSI documentary, Daragh followed Norman around, who was on his A game all day. Norman’s logs present a personal perspective on his security guard experiences. Lee Rodney arrived [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_1470-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 25: Bookmobile & Friendly Services")
![Some of our single use cameras have been developed and placed on our Letter Library grid wall. Above are some of our favourites so far! There has been such a diverse array of captions coming in, and we’re so excited to develop the rest of the cameras to see what other captions were created, but [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/lettergrid-150x150.jpg "Check it: Captioning the City with the Letter Library")
![We’ve spent the last couple of weeks developing this project, and somehow waited until the coldest night yet to install the first successful Text On Ice (You Changed Everything) project. I’ll post some more details on the (ongoing) process later this week, but wanted to get this image up first. This first iteration of the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/img_8660-edit-150x150.jpg "Text On Ice")
![We met yesterday, but too much going on for any photos. I figure that our shared Dropbox folder says most of the important stuff anyways. We’re working towards completing our HFBC publication, which includes things like: posters of inventions on crossing an imagined border wall maps and 3D renderings of a cross-border portal system a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Screen-shot-2011-05-27-at-10.58.12-AM-150x150.png "Re: Collaborating on a big publication, Dropbox ftw")
![We’re in the middle of reviewing the submissions for Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices! Using the mail-merge function built into Word, we’re taking the csv file that our form builder wordpress plugin generated from all the Homework submissions and putting them into a readable document. It’s 212 pages long. We’re working through this [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Screen-shot-2011-05-30-at-8.51.26-AM-150x150.png "Reviewing 212 Pages of Homework Submissions")
![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")
![In case you missed any of our spontaneous posts earlier today, here’s a quick recap of all the stuff that we got done! It may look a little strange, but our jigsaw rig Kevin put together has really been a huge help today. Hiba made it through nearly 70 letters — and no wrist pain! [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_9174-150x150.jpg "Tuesday Recap: in case you missed it, super jigsaw rig, graphic design in progress & other notes")
![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, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/picture-87-150x150.png "How to Make a Randomly Assembled Text")
![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!")
![We’re back to Friday nights. Someone thought to move the tables outside. In the dimming light, we worked. Many things are on the task list. We’re starting to work on a publication of sorts for How to Forget the Border Completely. It’s been a really clarifying decision to pull the strands of research we’ve been working [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_9947-150x150.jpg "We’re outside around a table, together. It’s May. How to Forget the Border Completely.")
![Just a quick update from Sunday’s Save the City event: Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope … Thanks to the amazing group of people who turned out, we have nearly 50 sites between the two lists (which you can see in progress, above). A part of this project involves us going around to each [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_7554-150x150.jpg "Making Lists: Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope (Part 1)")
![We’re packing up and heading down to Chattanooga, Tennessee tomorrow to attend CreateHere‘s City Share Mini Conference. What the conference is all about: “City Share is a conference for seeding innovative projects.We bring great minds from across disciplines together in Chattanooga, Tennessee to teach, share, plan, and change. The result? International knowledge-sharing; a growing network [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Screen-shot-2010-02-16-at-11.50.51-AM-sm-150x150.jpg "City Share Conference in Chattanooga")
![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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/algorithm-original-used2-150x150.jpg "Scavenge the City Recap")
![Just back from an incredible week installing at Eye Level Gallery for our show, Unrest Everywhere (tools for playing with Halifax), which runs until May 12, 2012. The show features a number of multiples and interactive works, all of which are yours for the taking and borrowing. The premise for the show was to create [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/IMG_7792-150x150.jpg "New Exhibition: Unrest Everywhere (Tools for Playing with Halifax)")
![The wild flower seeds from last year are still good—I planted these seeds on Thursday or Friday and they’re growing like crazy already. The paper planter shaped around the spray paint can lid and reinforced with some wheat paste is holding up, as is the magnet. We have an idea for a better shape and [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_4085-150x150.jpg "An Update on Our Planters")