WATERSHED+
This one goes out to Josh for his love of play, design, and Calgary… Innovative drinking fountains are being installed in Calgary. Linked to the drinking water system through fire hydrants and designed to have their workings exposed, the fountains have three distinct design “characters” suggesting different gathering around water: “strangers” (or the “dating fountain”), [...]
Spontaneous Bunting!
To help celebrate the recently changed water valve that will unite our neighbours water bill with ours, we thought the construction area needed some dressing up. Hopefully when the utility workers return, they will appreciate our spirit.
CAKFA.11: Reflect on Here
After months and months of work, we finally installed our project for CAFKA.11. Led by Josh, Hiba, Kevin, and myself, the project took an incredible amount of research and build time, but we were incredibly excited to see our efforts finally in place in front of Kitchener’s City Hall when we wrapped up the installation [...]
Matthew Brandt’s Lakes and Reservoirs
I have recently come across a very gorgeous set of photographs from Los Angeles, California’s Matthew Brandt. Matthew took snapshots of various lakes and reservoirs in California and soaked them in water from each corresponding location. The results are pretty random and, in my opinion, all beautiful. What he ends up with are sort of [...]
Robofish Detects Environmental Pollutants
Designed at MIT, this robotic fish can swim to detect environmental pollutants in the water and inspect oil and gas pipelines. Check Natalie Jeremijenko for interesting environmental monitoring projects that cross art and science, and imagine how good this could be for charting the flow of pollution in the Detroit River. [via Inhabitat]
Time and Tide Bell
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZkf44jysYw I like public art that does something. I like thinking about architectural works as art and about the potential for viewing city layouts as art and so, I like art that exists as something more than art. Marcus Vergette‘s Time and Tide Bell is an early-warning system of sorts for the rising tide that [...]
Floating Bikes: New Detroit River Crossing?
Make your bike floatable through this DIY solution, courtesy of Li Wieguo from Wuhan of Hubei Province, China. The bike is modified to be equipped with eight water buckets acting as pontoons and an adjustable vane wheels as driving power. Who needs the Skylink? [via Inhabitat]
Making Things Happen, Day 2
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.
The Watermarks Project
In order to highlight the possible future-effects of rising sea levels in Bristol, England, the Watermarks Project was initiated by Chris Bodle, a landscape architect. Notes and lines demarcating the rising water will be projected on buildings and infrastructure throughout the city. This project is a great example of annotating the city, relaying information to the public [...]
Guelph Rainwater Research
This concept may not be overly fitting for Windsor’s current financial hardship in terms of unit costs, but rainwater harvesting units could prove to be very cost-effective in the long-run. Research has and is being done at the University of Guelph to produce a successful rainwater harvesting system. The system was designed by two engineering [...]
![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")
![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")
![Hiba started working with the laser cut acrylic, pulling apart the excess that we won’t need when we make the cast. We’ll be creating a rubber mould from the positive of the acrylic. The excess, the negative. Hiba carefully placing some letters pulled off their base. Careful work. Then, Kiki came by to give us [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/wpid18788-IMG_0114-150x150.jpg "Laser Cut Acrylic Extraction Process & Lunch Time French Lesson")
![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")
![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")
![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. The day started off with a bit more painting and cleaning up of 410 Pelissier. As no one was moving in this [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_9860-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Official Day 1: Welcome Julie, Eric, Daragh, Andrea, Julie and Jefferson")
![So … the book we created from our research project, How to Forget the Border Completely, finally showed up!!! I’m really happy with how it looks and I can’t wait to have some time to read through it all. After this week’s activities, we should plan some kind of launch for the book. Tom’s renderings [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/IMG_5370-150x150.jpg "Guess what showed up today?")
![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")
![On Day 2 of our ATTC Calgary with Truck Gallery’s CAMPER Urban Discovery project, our ongoing work finds us asking questions about a city that we’re still just getting to know. The questions are, necessarily, basic and straight forward. We’re not conducting deep sociological or statistical research, but rather trying to tease out a series of narratives that [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/IMG_3290-150x150.jpg "ATTC Calgary Day 2: Stories of a Distanced City")
![Some of our single use cameras have been developed and placed on our Letter Library grid wall. Above are some of our favourites so far! There has been such a diverse array of captions coming in, and we’re so excited to develop the rest of the cameras to see what other captions were created, but [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/lettergrid-150x150.jpg "Check it: Captioning the City with the Letter Library")
![Last Wednesday, Justin, Michelle, Josh and I flew from Detroit, MI to Atlanta, GA and drove another two hours to Chattanooga, TN for the City Share conference put on by our friends from Create Here! Veronique picked us up from the the airport in Atlanta. We grabbed a bit of food and then headed straight [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IMG_3050-150x150.jpg "Our Arrival to Chattanooga, TN and Day One of the City Share Conference!")
![Remember Letraset? Here are some examples of what we’ve done with it in the past. Join us tonight for another edition of All Tomorrow’s Problems. We’re making a series of posters with vintage letraset. I’m not sure what else you really need to know, but for some background, ATP is a weekly design night where [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IMG_5550-150x150.jpg "All Tomorrow’s Problems: Tonight we’re Asking New Questions, making posters with vintage Letraset, and you’re invited")
![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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/KnewItWasntAlone-520-150x150.jpg "…and then the city…")
![It was a quick week, but such an excellent start to our Artist-in-Residence program at CIVIC SPACE. Sam Lefort, bee lover, excellent designer, and most generous workshop host spent the week teaching members of the Windsor-Essex (and beyond) community about a range of sustainably minded practices and interventions, hopefully many of which will be carried [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/wpid19544-IMG_0979-150x150.jpg "Exploring Urban Ecology with Sam Lefort (a look back at our week of workshops)")
![After a full night’s rest and a wholesome breakfast at The Tallest Poppy, we headed back to Martha Street Studio to formulate a game plan for our second work session and workshop later that evening. Knowing that we had an inordinate amount of work to do before our opening, we decided to spend the bulk [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_5976-150x150.jpg "Martha Street Studio Residency Day 2: Another Day in Manisnowba")
![The start of the week brought two new residents to the Storefronts: Sara Jane French and Jodi Green. There was some crazy changes in the exterior landscape due to construction today as well. Sara was only present at the start and end of the day. For the bulk of it we were joined by Norman [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0828-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 4: Working 9-5")
![Undocumented: A workshop for those without papers in Windsor and Detroit FRIDAY MARCH 15: 3 – 5 PM Art Gallery of Windsor, Border Bookmobile Public Archive and Reading Room, Gallery C, 2nd floor While it is often presumed that the Windsor-Detroit border is relatively easy to cross, many residents have been unable to visit their [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IMG_2412-150x150.jpg "March 15th: Undocumented: A workshop for those without papers in Windsor and Detroit")
![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")
