How to Forget the Border Completely, continued: 707PX
Following up on our How to Forget the Border Completely project from last year, collaborator Tom Provost continues to work on ideas around pedestrian border crossings (which you can read all about in the HFBC book!) Photos and text by Tom Provost In the summer of 2011, I was in dialogue with Broken City Lab [...]
Creative Mornings
Creative Mornings is a monthly morning gathering of creative people and brainchild of my girl crush the ever fantastic Tina Roth Eisenburg (of Swisssiss and TeuxDeux fame). Each event has a 10 minute lecture, a 20 minute discussion, and is done before 10am. They’re also all free of charge and include coffee. The video above [...]
Collaboration in Caribou
I saw this in a newsletter from Ableton. Being a fan and user of the software, I watched this video on how Caribou uses the program live, and it struck me as an interesting view on collaboration. While there’s a given song structure, at any time, anyone on stage can trigger loops, restructure the song, [...]
Homework Residency: Day 4, by chance
The report for Day 4 of our Homework Residency has arrived with photos and notes from the residents themselves. Be sure to check out more on our Artists-in-Residence. This post marks the final instalment of documentation from our residency — at least in this form. There’s more ahead that you can anticipate from the Homework publication, [...]
Homework Residency: Day 3, Collaborations Under Umbrellas
Day 3′s report of our Homework Residency comes courtesy of the residents themselves!!! Be sure to check out more on our Artists-in-Residence. From Artist-in-Residence, Simon Rabyniuk: Its overwhelming to try and write a blog post about what’s happening… it’s messy to try and recount exactly how things unfold and I mostly don’t remember… There are reflections to be made [...]
Homework Residency: Day 1, Terms of Reference
Any report on Day 1 of our Homework Residency needs to begin with a huge welcome to all of our Artists-in-Residence. Get acquainted with everyone here! As a preface, it’s important to note the difficulty in trying to document such an involved process with any meaningful artifacts and with such little time for reflection. Photos [...]
Homework: Folder Frenzy
As I promised on Friday’s meeting, I went out in search for the perfect folder to distribute to our guests, who will be attending Homework: Infrastructures and Collaboration at the end of this month. My first stop was Dollarama. There, I arguably found the worst selection of folders I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t even worth taking pictures. [...]
Installing at Forest City Gallery
We spent the weekend in London, Ontario. We were installing for our upcoming exhibition at Forest City Gallery, while also briefly wondering about what it would be like to not do site specific work. Anyways, you should plan to come to the opening on September 9th! We’re working on an installation using our “…and then the city” [...]
Re: Collaborating on a big publication, Dropbox ftw
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 [...]
BCL Report: End of April, 2011 (the Art of Planning & Collaboration)
Over three days this week, we got a lot done. And, as I write this, stuff is still getting done. This is why collaboration is such a valuable model for art practice. But, it’s not just about getting stuff done, it’s the challenges, the insights, the novel perspectives that can be brought up around a [...]
![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")