In Progress: A Set of Proposals for Living Affectively in an Open World
Today we’re working through a few poster designs for A Set of Proposals for Living Affectively in an Open World using gold vinyl on a previously hand-painted black background.
Civic Space Studio Digest for December 13: on t-shirts and white walls
A look at our little corner of Civic Space. This is where we’ve been spending the majority of our time lately. For the record, the high shelves (those really nice ones with the Letter Library letters on them) were installed by Kiki. The lower shelves were hacked together by me. They’re very shoddy, but they [...]
Fail to Meet Expectations: Vinyl on Paint Posters
We’ve been talking about picking up on some of the ideas we put together for the OPEN panel discussion from earlier in the month, and it seemed like posters were a natural fit. Given the text statements that we made to address the an idea of economies and creative practice that served as the backdrop [...]
Retroreflective Materials Test
Earlier this week we received a couple of samples of various retroreflective materials for use on our letters for CAFKA. One material, the one on the roll, is a vinyl (3M Scotchlite Reflective White Vinyl), perhaps most famously used in the Bright Bike project, while the other is an industrial substrate (3M Engineer Grade White [...]
SRSI, Day 15: Evening Projections & Conversations
Another Friday night open house gave the SRSI participants a great opportunity to show projections and engage in discussions about their experiences and feelings about working in Windsor.
SRSI, Official Day 1: Welcome Julie, Eric, Daragh, Andrea, Julie and Jefferson
Official Day 1 of SRSI kicked off, lots of new folks starting their projects, vinyl is up, rooms are painted (and almost done), floors are clean, the storefronts are open!!! Come see us.
![Yet another extremely productive weekend at BCL HQ! We’ve been finishing up the last preparations for our cardboard letters, which we hope to be unveiling them in our first chosen spot next week! On friday night, we cracked open the paint once more to paint the final coats on before we begin to add the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/IMG_0578-150x150.jpg "Prepping for Next Week- Last Coats and Beads!")
![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!")
![We spent a couple hours on Monday exploring some specific sites around the city to start planning some upcoming projects. Getting out and documenting and talking about these places really helped to solidify how important it is for some creative intervention/interaction with the city and how excited we are to do it. The clear view [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/Welcome-to-Windsor-sign-on-Dougall-just-off-the-401-150x150.jpg "BCL Report – Sept 29, 2008")
![The details: Sunday, April 11th via email & Tuesday, April 27th at 7pm, at Artspeak Gallery. As part of the Broken City Lab: Save the City project, Broken City Lab is inviting Windsorites to venture out into the city and take five photographs that showcase what makes our city “worth saving.” These photographs will be turned into [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/BCL-STC-APR-5x7-outlines-sm-150x150.jpg "Things Worth Saving")
![On Thursday, January 21st at the Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts in Toronto, we’ll be doing a projection performance that examines the language and ideas surrounding public space, intervention, urban surfaces, and city infrastructures. As part of Propeller’s Public Realm exhibition, we will curate a text-based list of ideas, statements, and questions, that address the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/propellerinvite-150x150.jpg "Public Realm at Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts")
![This week, Rosina and I spent two days in Hamilton researching for our upcoming project at Hamilton Artist’s Inc. Two Tales of a City will uncover, celebrate, and imagine a future for lost histories of Steel City. We started off on Wednesday by visiting the brand new Hamilton Artist’s Inc building on the corner of [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/IMG_5289-150x150.jpg "Two Tales of a City: Hamilton")
![We spent another Monday night at BCL HQ planning out this Windsor-Detroit hyper-local tourism idea and doing some basic research for another upcoming project. We all have some homework to do, but things are moving along nicely on a number of projects, and with the semester winding down, things should be able to push ahead [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_5412-150x150.jpg "Monday Night Research: Lightbulbs & Lists")
![After our post a few weeks ago about a new interactive window installation, we had some interesting and helpful suggestions, but one email in particular stood out. Paul Anderson wrote to us briefly with an offer to help and after a quick introduction of his incredible depth of knowledge of all things electronic shortly thereafter, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/wpid20203-IMG_1503-150x150.jpg "Interactive Window Installation, progressing beyond the Max/MSP solution")
![Armed with an algorithm from Sara, Michelle, Rosina, and I headed out on a walk on Monday night. We had decided at our last meeting to roam around some South Windsor neighbourhoods — seeing as we rarely get a chance to venture into that part of town — and we were surprised by how much [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_6686-150x150.jpg "Monday Night Drift: Volume 1, South Windsor")
![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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/IMG_8365-150x150.jpg "Early Research: Letters from Styrofoam (letter library)")
![We’re in week 3 of this LED sign project, and we now know how to finish it up. We had previously soldered all the anodes on the LEDs, but we were a bit confused about the connections of the cathodes and resistors. As we had been working off of a MAKE video, which breezed over [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/dsc_1920-150x150.jpg "We Learned Electricity!")
![Day 2 of SRSI went awesome! We are almost all settled into 406, 410 and 424 Pelissier. I started off the day by cleaning and organizing my desk in the entrance of 410. I’ll be stationed here throughout the residency so come and say hi! Over at The Breakroom in 406, Jolie had some fresh [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0714-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 2 : The People’s Museum, The Breakroom and More Painting")
![Yesterday was just lovely! Andrea Carvalho did a parking garage performance as part of her study of Non-Places, Kero set up his interactive installation, and a lot of familiar local friends rolled through The People’s Museum to contribute to the giant map. Andrea has been trying to perform in this space for a few days [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_0449-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 8: Rethinking Parking Garages")
![It was Monday night and Karlyn’s Birthday, so Hiba and Kevin brought a fun cake. Other things happened as well, and strangely, or maybe expectedly, now that the semester’s done and since we didn’t meet at the very end of the week, we had a marathon five hour meeting. It was so great!!! We had [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/IMG_9446-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: April 11, 2011 (oh, the logistics)")
![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)")
![Thursday was the Storefront Success Stories Speed Dating for Store Owners event down on Pelissier for SRSI, and Justin set up a window installation using the Arduino. Using the same format as the text on the billboards running in Windsor until July 15th as part of the conclusion of Save The City, The Arduino in [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_1618-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 28: Speed Dating for Store Owners")
![Yesterday was the second day of our Making Things Happen (For a Week Straight) show—where we worked in the gallery and travelled to Vincent Massey secondary school to start working with some physics students on another large-scale project we’re planning. We also worked a bit more on the hanging baskets and planned for Thursday’s event. Danielle [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/img_9449-150x150.jpg "Making Things Happen, Day 2")
![In what feels like the first time in months, we got together and worked on making something (that is, as opposed to planning something). We’re getting started on what is going to be an epic project, time-wise. We’re making a bunch of large 3D cardboard letters. Collaborative Apartment Studio is very fun. Danielle and I [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/DSC_07931-150x150.jpg "A New Project Begins: Cardboard, a projector, and lots of editing")
![We’re playing catchup. Between vacations, short hiatuses, and our summer schedules, we’ve been busy. However, getting back together, working together again on a more regular basis, and starting up on these projects again has been so great and incredibly rewarding. Our to-do list above is a small start to all of the projects we have on [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/IMG_0359-150x150.jpg "A Look at Process: building for CAFKA & designing for HFBC")