Grades for public infrastructure
Has this already been done somewhere? The idea of creating grade sheets for things in the city and then a space for comments or something? Might we take it on too? This photo is of a page in the book Waking Up from the Nightmare of Participation, I think it’s a template of an evaluation form [...]
Smiley Face Visualizations from Mood Data of a City
Project Stimmungsgasometer, by Richard Wilhelmer, Julius von Bismarck and Benjamin Maus, is a giant smiley face that changes based on the mood of Berlin citizens. When they are collectively “happy” the light is a smile, and when they are not, it is a sad face. Input comes from facial recognition software (contributed by the Fraunhofer Institut) that [...]
DX Salon Nights: In Conversation
Michelle and Justin head up to Toronto on December 8th at 6:30pm at 234 Bay Street for an interview with the Department of Unusual Certainties, as part of the ongoing DX Salon Night. Not familiar with the Design Exchange? The Design Exchange (DX) is Canada’s design centre and museum with a mission to promote the [...]
Martha Street Studio Residency Day 3: Install & Exhibition
A quick three days at Martha Street Studio finished up with the opening for our exhibition, All the Stories We’re Not Telling About Winnipeg. The show features a series of posters made by participants from our workshops and created in response to the stories they collectively wrote. The exhibition runs until January 5, 2012! We have [...]
Martha Street Studio Residency Day 1: Winnipeg / Winterpeg
Arriving in Winnipeg late Sunday night, we were met with our first taste of winter for the year. It seemed like the right introduction to Winnipeg. This residency and exhibition is all about exploring the narratives that are (and are not) circulated about the city of Winnipeg, and perhaps any story of Winnipeg should indeed [...]
Homework Residency: Day 2, Voting on Rooftops & Other Endeavours
So, the report on Day 2 of our Homework Residency is going to be delayed, as we’re still gathering documentation. But, this picture seemed like a good start to introducing the day. More to come, soon. Updated: there’s lots of photos that attempt to document the day, but it’s impossible to chart together a narrative to cover it all. [...]
How We Spent Labour Day Afternoon
It was a beautiful day in Windsor yesterday. Something like 30 degrees fahrenheit cooler than it was just a couple days ago when we were installing at Forest City Gallery. We started and finished our project for this year’s Windsor Biennial. We’ll have a lot more photos soon. The show opens on September 21, 2011, [...]
MIT’s Place Pulse
Place Pulse, a sort of rating system for locations within a city, enables pedestrians to form a database of their opinions and findings. More importantly, this project allows participants to share information with those who might have a part in future urban development. Five cities are currently available to rate through Place Pulse: Vienna, Linz, [...]
ATTC Calgary: Unfolding the Cycles of a City on Billboards & in Print
On the final day of our ATTC Calgary residency, the billboards launched. We headed out in the early afternoon with Randy to document them all. Alongside highways, on the sides of buildings in the downtown core, and mixed in with other urban-fringe architecture. The billboards stood deeply embedded and clearly removed from the landscape, at [...]
City Counseling (Session #1)
Last night, in front of city hall, we had a conversation about the ways we want to shape our city. In the midst of rising tensions around existing city services and new infrastructures, there seems to be a renewed wish for not just more public dialogue with the city, but a dialogue based on transparency [...]
![As part of FAM Fest 09, we did a projection performance on the roof of Metro Cleaners accessed from Empire Lounge in downtown Windsor. For about an hour and a half, we presented our 100 Ways to Save the City and then asked for ideas from the folks on the ground, at Phog, and on the Twitterverse. After the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_1761-150x150.jpg "100 Ways to Save the City Projection")
![Yesterday was the second day of our Making Things Happen (For a Week Straight) show—where we worked in the gallery and travelled to Vincent Massey secondary school to start working with some physics students on another large-scale project we’re planning. We also worked a bit more on the hanging baskets and planned for Thursday’s event. Danielle [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/img_9449-150x150.jpg "Making Things Happen, Day 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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IMG_7336-150x150.jpg "Arduino + LCD + PHP, Part 2")
![We’ve spent the last couple of weeks settling into our new headquarters, working on applications and ideas for the fall and winter. We’ve also cleared our consultancy out of the downtown space, seeing as Visual Fringe is over and it was high on the to-do list. Having a dedicated space has been incredible so far, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_4539-150x150.jpg "The Last Couple Weeks at BCL HQ")
![After a full night’s rest and a wholesome breakfast at The Tallest Poppy, we headed back to Martha Street Studio to formulate a game plan for our second work session and workshop later that evening. Knowing that we had an inordinate amount of work to do before our opening, we decided to spend the bulk [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_5976-150x150.jpg "Martha Street Studio Residency Day 2: Another Day in Manisnowba")
![Next week, I’ll be heading over to Detroit to join a panel discussion hosted by rogueHAA entitled, Defiance: Obedient Design. They’ve been doing a lot of great programming over the last year or so, and here’s some more information: As part of the Detroit Design Festival presented by the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, rogueHAA is pleased to announce the third [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/disobedient-design_A-150x150.jpg "Defiance: Disobedient Design Panel Discussion")
![We’re in Calgary working with Truck Gallery’s CAMPER Urban Discovery project, doing a residency based on our “…and then the city…” (ATTC) research. Developed after a six-month community research project back in Windsor called, Save the City, ATTC was initially realized as two billboards in Windsor and an accompanying publication that looked at the cyclical [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/DSC26601-150x150.jpg "ATTC Calgary Day 1: Shortcuts for Urban Resistance & Algorithmic Walks")
![We’re in week 3 of this LED sign project, and we now know how to finish it up. We had previously soldered all the anodes on the LEDs, but we were a bit confused about the connections of the cathodes and resistors. As we had been working off of a MAKE video, which breezed over [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/dsc_1920-150x150.jpg "We Learned Electricity!")
![The weekend brought all of the artists together to collaborate on each other’s projects. The Imagination Lab engaged lots of young creative minds, and Thom Provost began work on his installation. Imagination Lab had open workshops for kids today. The amazing array of supplies and ingredients made for a fun and yummy smelling time in [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_07201-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 16 & 17 : Collaboration")
![We made a lot of progress tonight, not only getting a considerable way through the first coat of red paint, but also testing a variety of techniques for applying the retroreflective glass beads! We also got to spend some time talking through how we’ll be temporarily installing the letters in a variety of spaces. We [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/IMG_4441-150x150.jpg "Red Paint & Testing Glass Beads")
![To continue the progress of our cardboard letter project, I took the remaining pieces home on the weekend to finish T, E, and R. Though the first stage may be over, there’s still plenty left to work on in terms of researching and experimenting with various materials which I looked into as well. After constructing [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/IMG_3279-150x150.jpg "Fun with Cardboard Letters")
![A few hours before we were set to do the 100 Ways to Save the City project, we decided we wanted to make it interactive in some way. I had gone ahead and put all of our ideas on how we might suggest saving the city into a nice Keynote presentation that we could easily [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/maxlivetext-screenshot-150x150.jpg "Interface for our Text Projection Tool")
![The Eco-House was bumpin’ Friday night! Amongst a slew of other undergoing projects, Michelle, Rosina, Josh and I we’re all hard at work, trying to get everything organized for our upcoming event and final installment of Save The City that’s taking place this Friday at the Art Gallery of Windsor! Rosina and I tackled the Save The City [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG_4835web-150x150.jpg "Getting things done!")
![Last night Laura went out to install some PL1999 payphones, Kyle Bishop of Andand Collective arrives, and Josh does some more inventions. Kyle came down from Waterloo to start developing his Amalgamation of Windsor and Waterloo into the city of W. He will be hitting the streets campaigning with a team of recruiters later on [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/P1040651-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 23: Payphone Interventions")
![We’ll be taking over 406 Pelissier from June 8th-28th and setting up a consultancy to research, investigate, and imagine alternative uses for the entire parking structure located at the corner of Park and Pelissier. Invented studies, statistics, and illustrations will be exhibited and will result in a formal report / action plan for future initiatives in [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/aconsultancy1-150x150.jpg "Broken City Lab: A Consultancy")
![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")
![We spent Friday night in Hamilton at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre as part of their Labour Lounge series (organized by once-Windsorite, Andrew Lochhead). In a little less than two hours, we led a workshop and explosion of creativity with some amazingly great 13-year-olds. We made banners, two really great banners that will be [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_5675-150x150.jpg "Making Banners at the Labour Lounge")
![I’m excited to note that in addition to the current exhibition, Make It Work, on at SoVA Projects Gallery (nee LeBel Gallery) featuring work by Michelle, a new poster installation that I did, and a ton of other incredible local Windsor-Detroit artists, there’s a panel discussion featuring guests from across the country. If you’re remotely [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/PosterMIW-cut-150x150.jpg "Make It Work: Exhibition & Panel Discussion")
![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")
![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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/IMG_6230-150x150.jpg "Math, Markers, and Measurements + Eric’s micro-documentary")