Detroit Je T’aime – a new interactive documentary
Lafayette Coney Island from Detroit je t’aime on Vimeo. Nora Mandray (director/producer) and Hélène Bienvenu (co-producer) are part of a growing group of people who believe that Detroit, MI, is a laboratory for the city of tomorrow. They’re a duo of French filmmakers/journalists, and they’ve been working for over a year on an interactive documentary [...]
![Months of work and research culminated in a 3am submission to Blurb to print our How to Forget the Border Completely publication. It’s about 150 pages long. I’m really happy with this, and I can’t wait to get it back in print. Above, a screenshot of some of the pages in the PDF. In terms [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-Shot-2011-10-06-at-9.15.16-AM-150x150.png "How to Forget the Border Completely, submitted for print!")
![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")
![I’ll be spending most of the week finishing up a couple lingering parts of Save the City: assembling the maps for Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope and putting the final touches on the edit from Listen to the City that Danielle assembled. The audio documentary is going to be an overview, or maybe [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/IMG_3075-150x150.jpg "Maps + Final Cut")
![Danielle and I have been in St.Catharines at Brock University working with an Ecopsychology class on a public art project (details to follow in coming week(s). We’re only here for a few days to help get the class started, but it’s been incredibly fun working with a bunch of strangers. We’ve explored the campus and [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/IMG_0155-150x150.jpg "Field Report from St.Catharines")
![Josh Babcock starts working on his Invention Solution Hub, Robin Fitzsimons trains hard for her big trip to Caesar’s Windsor, Kids’ crafts are on display in 424 Pelissier, The Department of Unusual Certainties are holding consumer surveys, and Thom Provost talks to the community about his ideas. Daragh has been hard at work in his [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_07621-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 18 & 19: Gambling, Crafts & Plans")
![The holidays flew by, but here’s a quick look at how we spent part of it — amazingly, we almost all got together at one point or another. It’s been way too long! Right before everyone arrived home, Hiba reviews the t-shirt project … already changed again from the image above. Rosina and Hiba took [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/wpid20903-IMG_1914-150x150.jpg "Scattered Notes from the end of the year")
![A little while ago, we were trying to think through how to wrap up Save the City with a pair of billboards. We spent an evening really working through some ideas and came up with two statements that we felt articulated the end of a certain way of thinking about Windsor. Something about those statements [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2247-150x150.jpg "…and then the city, a book")
![Josh and I spent some of the day in the heat collecting some interesting flowers and plants to transplant for our magnetic planters project. Overall, it was fairly successful, as we did learn quite a lot about transplanting, but we’re still going to be looking for some more plants to finish up this stage of [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_46142-150x150.jpg "Learning to Transplant")
![As most of us were busybodies for the duration of last week, it was great to keep the momentum going at Friday’s meeting. We took no time at all in getting to the meat of our discussion- organizing the research for How to Forget the Border Completely. Before marking up the giant brown paper on the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/frday-copy-150x150.jpg "Continuing Productive Fridays: Organizing HFBC")
![Friday afternoon turned out to be more productive than I thought it would. We finished embedding all the magnets we have, which means we have 25 planters either done or drying and ended up with 3 installed on various surfaces to see if they survive the rain this weekend. If they turn out, I’ll order [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_9731-150x150.jpg "New Magnetic Planters Field Test")
![Last night out a window in the county, the new projector at night. Today, finishing our list of 100 ways to save the city. It’s going to run as a presentation in Keynote, the easiest failsafe solution. Though, we might try to open it up on Twitter somehow later tonight. And, speaking of tonight, the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_5327-150x150.jpg "Prepping for FAM Fest Projection")
![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")
![In preparation of the upcoming event, and in response to our sudden acquisition of 4 t-shirts, we spent Tuesday evening making stencils, shirts, testing Tetris 2, wheatpasting, and figuring out the logistics of a video game tournament. First thing on the list of to-do’s was to test my custom wheatpaste applicator. The results were mixed, though I [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/engage-and-disrupt-the-city-the-front-of-our-t-shirts-150x150.jpg "BCL Report – Nov 4, 2008")
![Great news! Drift v1.5 is available now on the App Store. There are some really useful changes, including a better way to navigate from step to step in your Drift, some light tidying up upon registration, longer sessions to keep you logged in, and some fixes and adjustments to the photo upload process. All of that means that it’s [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Screen-Shot-2012-06-14-at-10.58.38-AM-150x150.png "Drift v1.5 Available Now: Some Updates to Help You Get Even More Lost in Familiar Places")
![Spent last night around the table with my brother, the high school physics teacher, trying to figure out how one might calculate the resistors and type of battery that would be needed in a circuit powering 200 LEDs. I know there are some calculators online, as Mike had suggested earlier, but because I really don’t [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/img_2048-150x150.jpg "Learning Electricity")
![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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/IMG_13821-150x150.jpg "Planning (in and) For the Future")
![Leesa Bringas’ Postcards to Indian Road project is coming along nicely; some postcards with messages have been returned to her in the mail. Jodi is wrapping up her Sweater Factory with a few completed sweater vests and more to come. BCL Research Fellows Josh and Rosina have been helping the Department of Unusual Certainties with [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0761-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 14: Field Research, Sweater Vests and Postcards")
![Danielle and I spent the better part of the afternoon a couple days ago going through wheatpaste recipes, ultimately going with the simplest. We had wanted to avoid having to use a hot plate to make it, and after 4 different recipes requiring varying amounts of heat, we were successful. Flour. Flour + cold water. [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/the-setup-150x150.jpg "Wheatpaste Research")
![We’ll be visiting Philadelphia to explore the development of short- and long-term projects in collaboration with the Mural Arts Program and community organizations in the city. During our visit, Mural Arts and Philly Works will be hosting a public presentation of our work, and a stimulating conversation about how artists can engage people in conversations [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/philly-150x150.jpg "Exploring Philadelphia & Public Talk with Mural Arts & Philly Works")