Designing & Prototyping tools for intervention: Letter Library + Gif Party
Wednesday afternoon shifts into further work on testing the efficacy of the styrofoam letters being black. We’re trying to decide in anticipation of our Letter Library (A Collection of Alphabetic Interventions). Sara and Hiba painted. HELLO. Also, Kiki came by to help us paint the movable wall! And, Josh made these for a workshop [...]
Project Launch June 21st: The Letter Library (A Collection of Alphabetic Interventions)
Save the Date: June 21st, 2012 at 7pm CIVIC SPACE (411 Pelissier St, downtown Windsor) On June 21st at 7pm, we’ll be kicking things CIVIC SPACE with the Letter Library (A Collection of Alphabetic Interventions). This open community project invites anyone and everyone to come borrow from our letterset to caption the city around them. With Windsor at [...]
Early Research: Letters from Styrofoam (letter library)
These are early days for a spontaneous new project, but here’s how we’re starting. Rosina, Hiba, and I met on Friday and after going through our usual to-do list, we started discussing some new projects. These new projects are all going to be tied together, and we’ll be writing about what that tie might look [...]
Everything I Wanted Is Right Here (street installation shot)
A little preview of our exhibition, Unrest Everywhere, up now at Eye Level Gallery. More shots of the process and install soon, hopefully over the weekend.
Ephemeral Situations (fireworks & doves), Awarded
It’s always a bit strange to get so many random emails about great work, and so often there’s not enough time to really explore. Today, though, I’m glad I took a couple minutes to look this over. The Szpilman Award is awarded to works that exist only for a moment or a short period of time. [...]
Outside the Planter Boxes
At the end of last month, 30 planter interventions were created by a group of Toronto-based artists, gardeners, and concerned citizens. These individuals each took a neglected planter and adorned it, modified it, or annotated its condition. This statement is made stronger by a collective approach to highlighting the issue of urban engagement. The following [...]
REPOhistory: Lower Manhattan Sign Project
Stock Market Crashes by Jim Costanzo as part of REPOhistory’s Lower Manhattan Sign Project I’m making my way through Gregory Sholette‘s epic Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture. Writing as a participating artist and now dark matter art archivist / dare I say historian of sorts, Sholette writes on an incredible [...]
Candy Chang’s Before I Die in NOLA
Josh posted on Candy Chang‘s last project, I Wish This Was, late last year and it was really inspiring. Such a simple gesture is such a powerful tool for re-imagining a community. Today, I saw Chang’s latest project, Before I Die in NOLA — another lovely participatory public art project. Perhaps not quite as transformative [...]
Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art
Anyone who has an interest in the world of guerilla street art probably already knows about the recently published Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art. The book, published by Taschen of course, contains photographs of many ephemeral works that might have been easily lost forever. The street art movement is more than deserving of [...]
SRSI, Day 24: Imagination Lab & Disco Balls
424 Pelissier was a fun space for kids to be creative all day on Sunday as part of Imagination Lab. Merry Ellen set up her baking station over in that space. Later Sunday night, I accompanied Laura to do some more installations.
![On Friday night we played with some new things that Rosina brought over — retroreflective glass beads to be exact. We also made it through another three letters doing papier maché! And, we selected a colour for the letters, again thanks to Rosina doing some recon on paint chips. So, we now have two bags [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/IMG_3821-150x150.jpg "Retroreflective Glass Beads Have Arrived, Weeks of Work Ahead!")
![Justin has some process shots, and those will probably be posted at some point, but I figured I’d go ahead and share the product of five or so hours of ironing inside-out plastic grocery bags. So far, I’ve made some envelopes, a box, and some random swatches to see if leftover scaps can be fused [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/bags2-150x150.jpg "Fusing bags")
![We’re heading up to White Water Gallery next week for a weeklong residency exploring a northern locality — this work will inform an exhibition coming up in the fall! Over the course of a weeklong residency, we will engage in a series of exploratory public interventions, micro-gestures, and tactical DIY responses to North Bay. Join [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/gateway-640-150x150.jpg "Research Trip: Residency at White Water Gallery for A Northern Locality")
![We spent quite a while this evening trying to perfect our tea recipe and then brewing almost 20 litres of it, in preparation of the upcoming Dance Party. In the photo above, we were in the middle of trying to figure out the best way to funnel the pots of tea into our reused (and cleaned) [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/Figuring-out-how-to-make-tea-for-the-upcoming-Dance-Party-150x150.jpg "Tea Time")
![The new model for our Magnetic Planters—basically just using a paper mache technique. Darren figured this one out, and after some testing, it looks like this is the strongest and easiest planter we can make! We did more research last Friday to get to this point, but we’re happy to have come up with a really [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_4303-150x150.jpg "New Design for the Planters")
![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")
![When the Letter Library was up earlier this month at CIVIC SPACE, each participant had the option to borrow a disposable camera from us, photograph their letters, and bring the cameras back. Well, after developing nearly all the cameras (still a few more to come) here is the nearly complete archive of all the photos [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/00360010-150x150.jpg "The (Nearly Complete) Letter Library Archive")
![We were a few people short of a full crew (Michelle was sick, Danielle was away, Rosina was on the line, and it was Cristina’s birthday), but Josh, Kevin, Hiba, Karlyn and I still made the most of our Friday night studio collaboration spectacular by putting some focus on our large-scale letters project for CAFKA. [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/IMG_9079-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: March 18, 2011 (the math)")
![All Tomorrow’s Problems take a short break this week. We’ll be back on Monday, April 8th at 7pm to tackle problems big and small. Come hang out with us. Here are just a couple of examples of the things we’ve done recently in exploring how to bring people together to talk through their concerns with [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ATP-break-150x150.jpg "All Tomorrow’s Problems on Holiday for Tonight, see you on April 8th")
![Around the maps, we’re beginning to imagine two cities collapsing into one. As part of How to Forget the Border Completely, we’re doing and planning all sorts of things — border portals, border etiquette classes, new maps, new tourism guides, interviews, stories, and imaginary architecture. Michelle and our dear friend, Lee Rodney, spoke about HFBC [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IMG_8729-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: Feb 18, 2011 (Maps & Portals)")
![As we continue to paint the letters, we’re now moving onto some exhibition design for the launch of the Letter Library. Really preliminary ideas here … but the gist of it is around wanting the work to feel open… Not sure that we’ll go with tape on top of the photos like this. 4×6 photos [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_9965-150x150.jpg "Exhibition Design (in progress)")
![We’re doing some field tests of our magnetic planters with some plants in them. Basically, we want to test to make sure the soil isn’t drying out too quickly and we’re also checking to see how well some plants respond to transplants. Above, you can see there’s a wire around the planter that helps it [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_4829-150x150.jpg "Field Tests!")
![Back in January, we asked nearly 40 people two questions: Why did you first come to Windsor? and Why are you still here? We asked those questions at an event called, Listen to the City, which was the first part of the five-month long project, Save the City. It was an incredible night. The answers [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Listentothecity2-150x150.jpg "Listen to the City: an Overview")
![While the adventure in working on this project began months ago, I’ve finally sorted through the mess of files I made and put it all together in a nice handy zip folder. Using Arduinos, XBees, LCDs, and PHP, this project was challenging from a technical stand-point, but I think the project is now at a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Untitled-1-150x150.jpg "Arduino, PHP, LCDs, XBees: Tactical Texting in Public Spaces")
![From way away in Toronto, Cristina sends edits through the magic of Tracking Changes after some good old fashioned hand-written editing. I did the same while waiting for the flight back to Detroit. We’re getting so excited about this project, we’ll have to figure out a way to pull it off … funding or no [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/IMG_0203-sm-150x150.jpg "Editing Over Distances")
![Another day at BCL HQ and some more progress on this ongoing magnetic planters project. Michelle and I finished putting in the remainder of our magnets into our plastic bag planters, but there are still some more planters left over. So, with more rare-earth magnets now on the way, we’ll finish up the rest when [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_4798-150x150.jpg "Magnets Installed!")