Thursday night was a night of decisions and tests.
We’ve spent the last couple of weeks just trying to get caught up generally with projects and Thursday marked the beginning of the deciding how to start wrapping up How to Forget the Border Completely and what direction to move in to make some more progress on our CAFKA project.
Continue reading “BCL Report: April 21, 2011 (making decisions)”
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 Prismatic Sheeting) used on municipal road safety signs.
I’ve been doing a variety of tests with a flash, the one above where it appears that the Scotchlite vinyl is brighter was taken with my DSLR with the body flash, but the lens I have on there blocks the flash in the lower part of the frame. Tests with photos from my iPhone seem to favour the Prismatic Sheeting.
We’re still examining the costs of each and we still need to do some more rigourous tests, but it’s amazingly helpful to be able to see these side by side (thanks Sarah!) The vinyl has an estimated 7-year service life, the prismatic sheeting is about 10-years. Not sure on the cost difference yet.
Thursday is catch-up night, so there should be lots to talk about. I know Hiba and Karlyn were working on a budget and I think a whole bunch of the crew met up on Monday to do some work. We’ll have to plan some really well-thought-out tests for these materials, in the outdoors, etc., to see how they fare in the weather. I put up a spec-sheet for both materials to our Dropbox. Anxious to figure out the best plan forward!
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!!!
Continue reading “BCL Report: April 11, 2011 (oh, the logistics)”
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!!!
Continue reading “BCL Report: April 1, 2011 (Forgetting the Border)”
With almost a full crew we spent this Friday night testing finishes, planning ways to cross the border unnoticed, and building supports for the letter ‘R’, all while being filmed by a documentary crew from the Department of Communications, Media & Film.
Above, some notes from Danielle’s sprawling research on inventions for tactically crossing a border.
Continue reading “BCL Report: March 25, 2011 (Imaginary Portals & Ongoing Construction)”
We were a few people short of a full crew (Michelle was sick, Danielle was away, Rosina was on the line, and it was Cristina’s birthday), but Josh, Kevin, Hiba, Karlyn and I still made the most of our Friday night studio collaboration spectacular by putting some focus on our large-scale letters project for CAFKA.
With the semester wrapping up in just a few more weeks, we’re really looking forward to having a bit more time and brain space to work on all of these projects.
Once again, we gathered at Lebel for another fun Friday full of brainstorming and map making. This particular Friday we met with Mel, a jewelry designer with his BFA from Yugoslavia, to discuss the best design for the CAFKA letters.
We are currently deciding whether it would be best to stick with our original plan to build the letters out of plywood, or try a new approach with Styrofoam and stucco.
Continue reading “BCL Report: March 11, 2011 (Maps & Letters)”
Another Friday evening at Lebel with the crew in action — making letters stand up, cutting maps, interpreting law, and designing impossibilities.
Above, Michelle, Josh, and Mike Marcon discuss what materials will work best to line the extruded part of the plywood letters.
It was, in short, a great night.
Continue reading “BCL Report: March 4, 2011 (Design & Play)”
We spent Friday back at Lebel, reminding us of the meetings we used to have a couple years ago when all this was just starting up. Given the size of the school and the resources readily available (like tools, multiple desks, ample light), we split up into smaller groups to tackle some “next steps” for each project on the table.
First though, we watch parts of the interview that Michelle and Rosina did with Stephen Lynn for How to Forget the Border Completely.
Continue reading “BCL Report: February 24, 2011 (back to Lebel)”
Back in 2010 we conceptualized numerous iterations of Kitchener-Waterloo border installations for Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener + Area (CAFKA). We decided on an ambitious wooden installation which will sit in a shallow pond at the city hall nearby. Our text installation, which will read REFLECT ON HERE, will need some thorough planning. For this reason, we spent most of yesterday evening constructing the faces of a test-letter (R) from plywood sheets measuring 8’x4′ each.