Walk-by Theatre: Bike Safety, the Psychology of Selling, and Leadership in the 1940s
Last night we hosted our first Walk-by Theatre screening. Featuring films pulled from the Prelinger archives, Danielle and I curated a program that touched on the aesthetics, values, and practices of 1940s/50s/60s American culture. The built-in benches on Pelissier along with some chairs from our collection were perfect seating for the hour-long program. A number [...]
MIT’s Place Pulse
Place Pulse, a sort of rating system for locations within a city, enables pedestrians to form a database of their opinions and findings. More importantly, this project allows participants to share information with those who might have a part in future urban development. Five cities are currently available to rate through Place Pulse: Vienna, Linz, [...]
Paris Street View
We’ve posted about the emerging Google Street View found photography sub-genre before. Michael Wolf is another artist using found GSV images to capture the absurd, banal, and occasionally poetic existence of modern street life. When compared with candid photography, Google Street View images present an infinitely larger database of frozen moments which were never intended [...]
Roadsworth: Painting the City
Life Support System by Roadsworth Reading about a show up at Atelier Punkt, featuring work by Roadsworth, I was interested in the gestures that transform an infrastructure that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. Working with road paint, the street artist, Roadsworth, plays with the existing roadway communication to transform straight lines into heartbeats, [...]
Drive-Thru Symphony + Border Bookmobile + Laboratory Ecologies
TODAY in Windsor, there’s an incredible amount of activity happening. The Green Corridor will host a talk / workshop from Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council grant officers, two artist performances, and one huge outdoor event to bring culture to the NAFTA freeway. Lee Rodney will launch her Border Bookmobile—a Windsor-made 1993 Plymouth Voyager stocked [...]
Google Street View’s Street Photography
“A street view image can give us a sense of what it feels like to have everything recorded, but no particular significance accorded to anything.” In a guest post over at Art Fag City, Jon Rafman presents an excellent image essay on Google’s Street View feature and the many amazingly curious images its roving cars [...]
PreFab Parks for Park(ing) Day
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBNUQsEUKlU&feature=player_embedded Every year in New York, parking spots are taken over by people wanting to transform urban space into something more useable than concrete boxed in by painted lines under the banner of, Park(ing) Day. The even was originally imaged by San Fransisco’s Rebar, an interdisciplinary studio operating at the intersection of art, design and activism. The [...]
Google Street View is Coming to Windsor
Google’s Street View service is making the rounds across Canada. There’s no schedule that I’ve been able to find yet, but they are coming to Windsor. Anyone have any ideas about when Google is coming to town? And maybe as a follow up, anyone have any ideas? There’s already a short history of artists working [...]
GOOD’s Livable Streets
GOOD recently had a Livable Streets competition where they invited readers to do some rendering and Photoshopping of holistic redesigns. The winner, Steve Price, reimagined Portsmouth, Virginia with infill development, light rail, and dedicated bike paths. We need to do this for Windsor. Anyone up for putting their skills to use? Maybe Scaledown should try to [...]
![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")
![There’s a lot of BCL-related events coming up… First off, I’ll be giving an artist talk at the University of Windsor’s School of Visual Arts tomorrow, November 16 at 12noon. I’ll be discussing Broken City Lab and how I think about collaborative social practice in general. The talk along with follow up questions should run for [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/IMG_2420-150x150.jpg "You’re Invited: Artist Talks, Conferences, and other upcoming events")
![For 30 days, this project will call on over 25 different artists, writers, designers, restauranteurs, musicians, architects, archivists, and other interested parties to occupy a space in downtown Windsor for up to one month in June and July 2010 to attempt to intervene with the everyday realities of skyrocketing vacancy rates, failing economic strategies, and a place [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/SRSI-storefronts-520-150x150.jpg "The Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation: Launching June 11, 2010")
![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 played catch up on How to Forget the Border Completely on Friday night. We invented new consultancies, planned interviews and events, and came up with new tactics for forgetting a border completely. It was much needed and so much fun!!! While Danielle hides behind her hand… She was also busy inventing these crazy contraptions [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/BORDERCONSULTANCY-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: April 1, 2011 (Forgetting the Border)")
![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” [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/IMG_0548-150x150.jpg "Installing at Forest City Gallery")
![Michelle and I headed up to Hamilton to continue the research portion of Two Tales Of A City. The three and a half hour car ride gave us plenty of time to develop a working plan of exactly what we wanted to accomplish for the next two days in Hamilton, Ontario. To get a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_5855-150x150.jpg "Two Tales Of A City: Hamilton History Hunters")
![We spent yesterday evening out around town with our projector and new power inverter, testing sight-lines and potential backup locations for the Cross-Border Communication project. We’re getting close to knowing exactly how and when we’ll get to do this project, and you can see our research and field tests after the jump. We’ve been anxious [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_3801-150x150.jpg "Projection & Battery Tests Around Downtown")
![The details: Friday, May 21 at 7pm, Art Gallery of Windsor. For the past five months, we’ve been working on a series of events aimed at unfolding the stories, experiences, images, geography, buildings, folkloric histories, people, and places that make Windsor the city that it is. Perhaps you’ve come out to one of our community events [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/BCL-STC-MAY-5x7-french-outlines-520-150x150.jpg "How to Save a City")
![Broken City Lab is launching a new micro-grant program and we need you to apply. As a part of our upcoming publication, How to Forget the Border Completely, The Windsor-Detroit Border Crossing Micro Grant gives you the opportunity to cross the Windsor-Detroit border. We’re looking for a variety of experiences gained from crossing the border, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/microgrant-v21-150x150.jpg "Windsor-Detroit Border Crossing Micro Grant")
![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")
![We had an incredible turnout for Sing to the Streets. The response was overwhelming, and despite the cold, we managed to get a great overview of some of the folkloric history of Windsor and Detroit and learn some Francophone folks songs along the way. The Save the City project is really giving us a lot of insight into [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_8029-150x150.jpg "We Sang to the Streets!")
![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")
![By some estimates (including the CBC), there were 100 people on the walk we took on Tuesday night, in the rain, throughout downtown Windsor. The attendance alone was inspiring, but what really made the experience so incredible for me was the energy that everyone brought. When we stopped and took a moment to briefly talk [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/IMG_4989-150x150.jpg "How Walking Around Your City Can Lead to Something Great")
![We’ve been lucky over the last week or so with some surprisingly agreeable weather. The had humidity lifted and with it, the temperature scaled back considerably. So, it’s been pretty much the best time all summer to do some exploring on foot (and sometimes on bicycle) at a pace that really allows for a different [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/IMG_0404-150x150.jpg "Drifting Around Downtown Windsor: Exploring the City Slowly")
![While we prepare for the launch of CIVIC SPACE on June 21st with the Letter Library project, we’re also settling into a routine of being in the space at 411 Pelissier. The idea of having a space of our own is really new to us. Four years after starting BCL by meeting in the classrooms [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_8921-150x150.jpg "A Week in the Studio: Some Documentation and Reflections on Last Week at CIVIC SPACE")