SRSI, Day 6: Arrival of Department of Unusual Certainties, Playing Badminton Games
We had a very productive day over here on Pelissier Street. Chris Pandolfi joined Simon Rabynuik to form the Department of Unusual Certainties and began setting up shop in 410. Jodi Green’s knitting machine was in motion for most of the day, and Andrea Carvalho arranged a game of Badminton on Eric Cheung’s interior sod.
Better Uses for an LCD Screen
We’ve been doing this for the last week or so on a fairly irregular basis (mostly because I never seem to get into the school before noon). Pictured above is Danielle’s 9/11 video. This TV was originally installed (as legend has it) to screen advertising from Xerox, as they had offered free photocopying to the [...]
BCL Report – Nov 6, 2008
Our Tetris Tournament / Wheatpaste Demo / Sticker-Making Party went amazingly well—we successfully hijacked that big TV in the Lebel hallway, the tournament was filled with high-stakes Tetris 2 action (you can see Susan and Craig battling it out above), we demoed our wheatpaste recipe (hot water + flour until its a smoothie-like consistency) and [...]
TV-B-Gone in a Hoodie
Rebecca Stern from FAT Labs and Sternlab made a hoodie function as a TV-B-Gone. I think we had tossed around the idea of doing this, though her execution is really slick—you just have to zip or unzip the zipper to turn the targeted TV off.
Energy
“Could it be that we are connected to all things in the universe and not the centre of it?” Last night I saw two episodes of E2 Design on TVO. The shows are incredibly well-done, the cinematography style alone would have been enough to have me watch an hour worth of television on nearly any topic, but the fact [...]
![Meeting twice in a week can make such a difference in terms of how much we can get done. We’re still in the thick of planning for the first event of Save the City. We met earlier last week to go over the basics of finalizing our adjusted budget, put together the first round of [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/IMG_6407-150x150.jpg "How We Spend Friday Nights: Planning, Writing, and Mapping")
![We met last night and started our list of 100 Ways to Save the City for our projection on Saturday night as part of FAM Fest. We’re also spent some time putting together a rough schedule for 2009 Micro-Residencies, which will likely start in November. If you’ve thought about applying, but haven’t yet, now would [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/IMG_5311-sm-150x150.jpg "Planning Our Projection for FAM Fest")
![Read Tom Lucier’s recent blog post. He spells out nearly everything he does in this city, for free. He draws on examples of other talented people in this city who continue to try to stick it out for who knows what reasons. He makes a compelling case for having to give up some of these [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/realisticExpectations-150x150.jpg "For Windsor, Realistic Expectations and Imaginative Solutions")
![Friday night was especially fun. With next week being our first research report for How to Forget the Border Completely, we basically spent the evening casually going over some preliminary research, planning out some new directions, and getting more acquainted with the collection of border books next door. Michelle brought a tourism Detroit magazine she [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_8505-150x150.jpg "Quality Time with Books & Imaginary Spaces")
![SRSI participants hit the street today in the blistering heat to interact with passersby. Lee Rodney’s Border Bookmobile gets re-routed, Emily Colombo serves up some lunch and fixes a few bikes. The Department of Unusual Certainties is working hard planning their Speed Dating for Store Owners event on Thursday, July 8 7pm inside of 406 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/DSC_0663-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 26 & 27: Hot Days Outside")
![Here it is, or at least, here’s part of the physical archive, the scannable stuff anyways, from 2008-2009. It’s been hanging out in my filing cabinet for a long time, but finally with the help of Miranda Fay during her off-hours, it’s been gradually scanned in page by page. Archives are crucial for taking stock, for remembering, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2546-150x150.jpg "Keeping Track of the Archives")
![We want to invite you to participate in our new residency program, 1W3KND aimed at developing essays, interviews, manifestos, critiques, reviews, and other texts around ideas of collaboration, socially engaged works, artist-run culture, and public practices. We’re hoping to publish these in one form or another some time next year. There have been a number [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/IMG_2759-640-150x150.jpg "1W3KND: Call for Submissions for a New Writing Residency")
![This past Saturday I did my portion of the BCL collab/micro-residency with the lovely and talented wunderkind, Mr.Eric Boucher. For the collab I had Eric interview my sister’s good friend, Sam. Aside from her notable charm, I think Sam was a good candidate for the project because she is a student who came from Sarnia [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/eric_sam_dec1209-150x150.jpg "Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 6/6")
![Friday was the last open house for SRSI. Norman Eberstein read some of his log entries written during his job, Emily made some amazing snacks for us, Kero busted out his Lemur, and Laura did another payphone intervention. Norman was feeling not quite himself on Friday morning when he came in. He got his nose [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/DSC_0873-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 29: It’s The Last Friday")
![The Magnetic Planters project continues. With Michelle and Danielle away this week, the rest of Broken City Lab had to relearn the process of making paper pulp. It was a good night, though we’re hoping to get this project finished in the next week or so. As Intersession begins, we’ll be shifting our Office Hours [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_5161-150x150.jpg "Planters Nearing Completion")
![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")
![Not exhaustive, nor complete, this map is a work-in-progress, documenting a community in-transition. For one afternoon in February 2010, we gathered together with a group of community members to create two distinct lists: Sites of Apology and Sites of Hope. The locations identified as part of these two lists were noted as being places for which [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/IMG_3444-150x150.jpg "Sites of Apology / Sites of Hope: the Map")
![We’ve updated our imaginary campaign post to reflect some recent (positive) changes: Our projects try to work around the realities that we encounter in Windsor on a daily basis. We address these realities creatively, and so the ways in which we address them don’t always translate to solutions. We usually try to suggest the change [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/IMG_2877-3-150x150.jpg "An Imaginary Platform: 2010 Municipal Elections in Windsor")
![We were only about half strong this week, but Josh, Rosina and I plowed ahead on the letters, this time focusing on just the front and back faces of the letters K, A, E, T, and I. We figured that since we had the projector set up anyways, it was worth doing as many faces as we [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/IMG_2985-150x150.jpg "Cardboard Letters Continued")
![It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts — a kind of summary of some of the things I’ve been working on. It seemed about time. I like posting as a sort of summary for myself, but maybe it’s interesting for my dearest BCL colleagues to see what I’ve been up to [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/IMG_6450-150x150.jpg "Research Update (some things I’ve been working on the last couple of days)")
![I’m not sure why we didn’t start doing this earlier, but here’s the first report of our weekly activities. We’ve been meeting on Fridays for almost half the summer, trying to make, plan, and do events/projects/demos/awesome. Today involved us revisiting our seed bomb recipe, beginning the stenciling for posters for our upcoming Dance Party (details [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Broken-City-Lab-Friday-August-22-2008-Stenciling-%2B-seed-bombs-150x150.jpg "BCL Report – August 22, 2008")
![On Thursday, Justin heads up the 401 for WHAT IS OUR URBAN IMAGINARY? Thursday | December 6 | 7 – 9pm at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery Join the conversation as we consider how building design, urban spaces, and creative interventions in the city shape our collective experiences and imagination. Guest panelists include artist Justin Langlois, co-founder [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/KWAG-invite-Urban-Imaginary-150x150.jpg "Panel Discussion: What is our Urban Imaginary?")
![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")