BCL Report: February 4, 2011 (Repairs and Reviews)
A Friday with everyone around the table usually translates into a lot of excellent new ideas, and yesterday was no exception! We spent the evening reviewing the progress we’ve made on some initial research and may have sparked an entirely new direction for the project. All of the excitement is after the jump!
First Friday of 2011: Back in Action!!!
Posted by Justin on January 8, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Our first Friday back was great. Unfortunately, Rosina couldn’t make it, but everyone else was around the table for the first time in almost a month. We’ve learned some things about how we work together over the last two and a half years, and we’re set to make more things happen this year than ever [...]
Saturday Night in Detroit
Posted by Michelle on September 19, 2010 · 4 Comments
Last night Justin, Danielle and I headed over to the Magic Stick to take part in the We Like Music Festival.
Reasons Why We Love Detroit
Posted by Michelle on September 10, 2010 · 13 Comments
In preparation for our upcoming contribution to the We Like Music Festival happening at The Magic Stick in Detroit, we are brainstorming a running list of reasons why we like Detroit. This blog post will be the spot where we can bounce ideas back and fourth through comments to use in our projection of text [...]
…and then the city…
Posted by Justin on June 18, 2010 · 5 Comments
Though we’re still very much in the middle of thinking about, beginning to write about, and generally talk about all of the amazing things that we learned as part of Save the City, these billboards are the last part of the project to be launched. These two statements are among the many, many, many that [...]
Category Blog, Save the City · Tags BCL, billboards, installation, lists, research, Save the City, summary, text, Windsor
Later Nights, since it’s summer now
Posted by Justin on May 29, 2010 · 4 Comments
Michelle and I spent hours and hours together yesterday. With everyone’s schedules fairly ridiculous at the moment, we’re trying to steal what little time we can to keep working. Lately, the time that we’ve all spent together has been framed exclusively almost exclusively by planning for Save the City or organizing the Storefront Residencies for [...]
Category Blog, Save the City · Tags BCL, billboards, drawing, lists, planning, research, Save the City, SRSI, text, words, writing
A Toolkit for Saving a City
Posted by Justin on May 27, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Though we have a lot more to say about Save the City than I’ll attempt right now, you should know that we put together a toolkit that describes the processes we figured out throughout the last five months. We put together a nice one-page fold up list of instructions, so to speak, for how one [...]
Category Blog, Save the City · Tags BCL, cut and paste, lists, paper, recipes, research, Save the City, toolkit, zine
Playing Catch Up on Save the City
So, we’ve been busy working on the final parts of some of the Save the City projects, in particular, pulling together the postcards for this month’s Things Worth Saving (April 27th, remember?!) We wound up with around 65 photographs submitted by some fellow Windsorites of the things that they think are worth saving in the [...]
Category Blog, Save the City · Tags BCL, lists, photographs, postcards, research, Save the City, Windsor
Making Lists: Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope (Part 1)
Posted by Justin on March 2, 2010 · 5 Comments
Just a quick update from Sunday’s Save the City event: Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope … Thanks to the amazing group of people who turned out, we have nearly 50 sites between the two lists (which you can see in progress, above). A part of this project involves us going around to each [...]
Category Blog, Save the City · Tags BCL, lists, research, Save the City, Windsor
Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope
Posted by Justin on February 6, 2010 · 4 Comments
The details: Sunday, February 28, 2010 (1pm) at 362 California Ave, Windsor As part of the Broken City Lab: Save the City project, and to better understand the city and its rich and failed history, Broken City Lab researchers will host an open community event on Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 1pm to map and invent two [...]
Category Events, Save the City · Tags architecture, BCL, event, geography, lists, research, Save the City, sites, Windsor
![We’re hosting an algorithmic adventure to get to know our new neighbourhood. This adventure will be a psychogeographic walk of sorts starting at Broken City Lab Headquarters, which will take participants around the campus, student ghettos, the sculpture garden, Indian Road, and all of the little things that make this area worth exploring. Everyone who shows [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/welcometotheneighbourhood-150x150.jpg "Welcome to the Neighbourhood")
![Although it’s been a while since I last worked on this project, things are continuing to move along. I finally assembled the Ladyada XBee adapters and successfully passed a message between the two XBees. So, I’m not the best solderer and the first adapter I worked on suffered from an overusing tip on my soldering [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG_9485-150x150.jpg "XBees + Arduino")
![We’re gearing up for Homework. It’s going to be fun and you should really consider attending! There’s a few spots left. If you do decide to attend, you can look forward to receiving one of these fine sketchbooks. Designed by Liisa Salonen, the sketchbooks are recovered paper sample books, rewrapped. They still need to be stamped, maybe [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/IMG_4871-150x150.jpg "Homework Prep! Resampled Notebooks")
![Part of our research for How to Forget the Border Completely is going to come from a lot of video. We’re not sure how many interviews we’ll do or exactly where we’ll be shooting, but we wanted to be prepared. I’ve had a Canon T2i for over a year now and it’s a very solid [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_8438-150x150.jpg "Tools in Forgetting the Border")
![Last night Danielle and I went to the downtown Transit Windsor terminal to install the first five test panels we had printed for Text In-Transit. The panels read: everything is possible, YOU MADE MY DAY, YOU ARE THE CITY, YOU CHANGED EVERYTHING, and changing the world starts by changing this city. We had to install [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_9143-150x150.jpg "First 5 Text In-Transit Panels Installed")
![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!")
![I’ve been thinking about Windsor – Detroit tourism lately for our How to Forget the Border Completely project and since LivingSocial did such a good job advertising to me on facebook, I signed up for weekly Detroit deals and coupons to be e-mailed to me. I’m on week 3 or 4 and so far I’ve [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/michelledetroitdeal-150x150.jpg "Detroit Deals")
![I wrote a plugin by hacking together some ideas based on the Notify on Comment plugin. Essentially, I was looking for a plugin whereby someone mentioned or tagged in a comment (using the familiar @username syntax from Twitter) would be notified. They wouldn’t have had to have made the post being commented on, nor would [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Screen-Shot-2012-01-22-at-1.17.49-PM-150x150.png "WordPress Plugin (notifying users tagged in comments)")
![We are very pleased to announce the following artists in residence for our upcoming Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices project. These artists were selected from over 120 applicants and represent an incredibly diverse range of practices, interests, and backgrounds: Andrea Carvalho Montreal, QC Brennan Broome and Chloé Womack Portland, OR Brett Randall Jones & Jack Forinash Oakland/San Francisco, CA [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/ArtistsInResidence-150x150.jpg "Artists-in-Residence Announced for Homework!")
![After various discussions over the break regarding the next steps in preparing our giant banner for the upcoming project in Hamilton, I went ahead and did some experimenting with image transfers onto fabric. I took direction from a handy post here, which included simple directions and very few ingredients. With a simple picture printed [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/IMG_6470-150x150.jpg "Fabric Transfers and Letter Tracing: More Preparations for Two Tales of A City")
![The rain held off, so today was a good day to get out and do some field tests for our magnetic planters. We just stuck around the neighbourhood, but did a general test to see what surfaces were magnetic. Unfortunately, the street signs that I had anticipated being a perfect surface for these are not [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_2255-cc-150x150.jpg "Magnetic Planters: Field Test #1")
![As we wrap up production on our upcoming installation, Two Tales of a City, at Hamilton Artists Inc., our Friday night meeting was shifted to Lebel where we set out to coat the bunting with some scotch guard and just started laying everything out. Rosina braved the quick spray The rest of the crew helped [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/IMG_70601-150x150.jpg "Wrapping up Production for Hamilton: a quick look at some recent work")
![I went out to the site for our proposed community garden to take some photos yesterday. It’s looking fairly likely that this will be the site for our community garden starting this summer. This park is located at Russell and Mill near the Sandwich windmill. We’re still working out all the details, but everything has [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_4065-150x150.jpg "Community Garden Site")
![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")
![This week’s meeting started off kind of slow. A long week had us collectively feeling strapped for good ideas, but we had a specific task list in front of us. Looking at the calendar, an idea we had talked about not all that long ago, suddenly has a pressing deadline. We’re looking to put together [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/IMG_3555-150x150.jpg "Already thinking about next summer")
![I got the needed resistors right before Christmas, though hadn’t had a chance to post this yet. As you can see, there’s a 270Ω resistor, a 9V battery, and a 10mm LED working… along with the resistors, I got a 9V power supply, so we can make signs and run them off the wall, rather [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/img_1496-150x150.jpg "LEDs, Resistors, 9V Power")
![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")
![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")
![We spent part of Monday afternoon doing a site visit for an upcoming project we’ve been planning for a while. The EC Row Walkway crosses over the 6 lanes of EC Row and is a pretty incredible view. We took some measurements and did a quick visibility test. We were only up there for about [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/img_2037-150x150.jpg "EC Row Walkway Measurement")