Nicole Dextras’ Ice Typography
Since we’re on the cusp of real winter here in Windsor, I thought I’d share this project by fellow Canadian artist Nicole Dextras. Besides admiring her gorgeous series of photographs, we might be able to learn from her method of construction. She seems to make molds into which water is poured and frozen. Imagine if [...]
How to: Text on Ice
Over the past couple of months, we’ve been working on making blocks of ice with letters and text embedded in them to create temporary street art. I think this idea came out of working with wheat paste, realizing the enjoyment of working in public spaces, and wanting to continue to work throughout the winter. I [...]
Save A City
At Windsor’s riverfront, SAVE A CITY, installed this afternoon. We opted out of using monofilament to hang the blocks of ice because there was a nice snowbank already there, and probably the last thing the Detroit River needs is more garbage in it. I’ll post some photos of the process of making these soon (definitely [...]
Let’s Be Friends
Another iteration of our Text On Ice series, this time spelling out, “Let’s Be Friends” and mounted on a fence bordering the Forster Secondary School‘s field.
The New Year
I just got back from out of town, I’m exhausted, having spent the last few days in northern Michigan (I forgot what it’s like to have real winter, it was nice). I pulled this out of the freezer, having nearly forgotten I had finished it, I had some difficulty freezing this one, mostly because I [...]
Text On Ice
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 [...]
Art Shanty!
“Art Shanty Projects is an artist driven temporary community exploring the ways in which the relatively unregulated public space of the frozen lake can be used as a new and challenging artistic environment to expand notions of what art can be.” As you can see, they have experimented with ice lettering in a more permanent [...]
Economic Meltdown
In honour of the 79th anniversary of Black Tuesday (the day the U.S. stock market crashed), artists Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese installed this ice sculpture of the word ECONOMY in front of the New York Supreme Court building on October 29th. Over a period of several hours, the sculpture melted completely. The artists interviewed [...]
![I haven’t posted on this project for a little while, partially because of the preparation for the ongoing Save the City project, and partially because the little time that I’ve had to work on this has only resulted in small increments. So, I figured I would wait until I had some more significant updates to [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/IMG_7066-150x150.jpg "New LCDs and Serial Ports and some Max/MSP for good measure")
![My work on this ongoing LCD Arduino project has been continuing over the last couple of weeks, I just haven’t had the time to update appropriately. So, I switched over my plan of attack from Processing to PHP. I figured this made sense for a couple reasons: first, I’m already very well-acquainted with PHP, I’ve [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IMG_7140-150x150.jpg "More Arduino + LCD + PHP fun")
![For the month of June, Broken City Lab will have access to 406 Pelissier (pictured above) in downtown Windsor, thanks to Julie Sando and Leesa Bringas who are teaching the Contemporary Visual Culture class during Intersession at the University of Windsor. We’re still just starting to plan what we might do in the space, but [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_0032-150x150.jpg "Temporary Downtown Space for BCL")
![Something I meant to do a while ago, but I’m doing it now… I’ve uploaded the list of 100 ways we suggested to save the city. The list ranges from the entirely possible to completely imagined, but each one might just make this city a better place, or at least make you feel a little [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/100ways-screenshot-150x150.jpg "100 Ways to Save the City in PDF")
![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")
![Our rate of posting on here has slowed down considerably since the summer. We’re still busy, it’s just the pace of the work and projects now seems to span longer and longer time frames, and with so many ongoing and overlapping projects, it’s just a lot more challenging to find the time to keep track [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/wpid20294-IMG_1485-150x150.jpg "Calendars, Notes, Installations, Vinyl, Camouflage, Drywall, Tests, and Hearts")
![As summer rolls on, we’re continuing our work with the magnetic planters, though we now have the benefit of a front porch to enjoy the evening weather while doing so. Michelle, Josh, and I spent Monday night working on embedding the magnets into the plastic bag planters along with some more writing. We also moved [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_4671-150x150.jpg "Embedding Magnets")
![Thursday night Cristina and I were up in Toronto at Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts, participating in the Christopher Hume curated exhibition, Public Realm. We did a series of projections with short texts / fill-in-the-blanks that dealt with issues of public and private space, which were generated from the answers to the questionnaires we [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/IMG_8787-copy-150x150.jpg "Talking to Walls: A Conversation About the Public Realm")
![Day two of Create Here‘s City Share Conference was just as busy as the first, but we got tons of work accomplished, and we were even able to take a short tour of the city at lunch! After breakfast, we broke off into our groups once again. We were still trying to come up with [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IMG_0531-150x150.jpg "Day Two of the City Share Conference in Chattanooga, TN!")
![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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/IMG_0088-150x150.jpg "City Counseling (Session #1)")
![Continuing with the magnetic planters research, the wild flower seeds have begun to sprout and the development of the planter itself continues. Its strength has held up pretty well, but there are some issues with the wheat paste. So still some work to do, but there’s lots of documentation of the progress so far. This [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_2207-150x150.jpg "First Planter Almost Ready for Field Test")
![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")
![We’ve been working on paper planters for a while, but over the last couple of days I started experimenting with magnets as well. Ideally, these could work with having some rare earth magnets embedded in the paper. Still more research and development to be done, but I think it’s getting closer. The first step was [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_3950-150x150.jpg "Researching Planters")
![Last night we projected a message from Windsor to Detroit. It was a message we’ve been meaning to send for a while. We wanted Detroit to know that we know that, “We’re In This Together.” And we mean that, in every way. This message is part of a project that we started working on in [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/BCL-CBC-1-sm-520-150x150.jpg "Cross-Border Communication: We’re In This Together")
![Text In-Transit is a Broken City Lab project where we’re partnering with Transit Windsor to install a number of text-based creative works amongst the ads in the headspace on buses. We’re looking for submissions of short statements, poems, and stories from anyone in the city that will help to change the conversation about Windsor!!! *** Please send your submission(s) [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/textintransit-callforsubmissions-bg-150x150.jpg "Text In-Transit: Call For Submissions")
![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")