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Installing the sign for CIVIC SPACE, take 1

Installing some signage on the exterior wall of CIVIC SPACE (10)

Installing some signage on the exterior wall of CIVIC SPACE (13)

Last night, Hiba, Sara, and Justin tackled some initial planning for the installation of the CIVIC SPACE / Letter Library sign. The Letter Library idea came out of trying to think through how we might make our own sign for the space, so it’s really great to finally see the letters going up.

Installing some signage on the exterior wall of CIVIC SPACE (12)

Hiba got on the ladder first, installing the letters with some tape, while Sara helped to position from the vantage point across the road.

Installing some signage on the exterior wall of CIVIC SPACE (1)

Then Justin made some attempts as well.

Installing some signage on the exterior wall of CIVIC SPACE (2)

We did some photoshop mock-ups earlier, but we still wanted to be able to play a bit.

Installing some signage on the exterior wall of CIVIC SPACE (5)

The sign will read something like, “CIVIC SPACE PRESENTS THE LETTER LIBRARY.”

Installing some signage on the exterior wall of CIVIC SPACE (8)

The title might bleed down into the window where we’ll likely have our return pile of letters.

Installing some signage on the exterior wall of CIVIC SPACE (6)

We tried the letters up high and hugging the window. We’ll do some more tests later today. We used a pole to remove our well-taped letters.

Installing some signage on the exterior wall of CIVIC SPACE (7)

As an aside, this is the nicely designed new water meter cover in front of our building.

Installing some signage on the exterior wall of CIVIC SPACE (10)

Danielle came by for inspection — and approved.

Installing some signage on the exterior wall of CIVIC SPACE (11)

End of the night clean-up.

Sara demonstrating the letter removal technique.

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Exhibition Design (in progress)

Exhibition design, photographs, tape, and negatives (1)

As we continue to paint the letters, we’re now moving onto some exhibition design for the launch of the Letter Library.

Exhibition design, photographs, tape, and negatives (2)

Really preliminary ideas here … but the gist of it is around wanting the work to feel open…

Exhibition design, photographs, tape, and negatives (3)

Not sure that we’ll go with tape on top of the photos like this.

Exhibition design, photographs, tape, and negatives (4)

4×6 photos and corresponding negatives.

Exhibition design, photographs, tape, and negatives (5)

Lovely test stamp.

Exhibition design, photographs, tape, and negatives (6)

Call and response.

Exhibition design, photographs, tape, and negatives (8)

Excite, grid.

Exhibition design, photographs, tape, and negatives (7)

A proposed stamp for the backs of the letters.

Hiba and Sara are still at the space, I’m heading back later this evening. Huge shout-out to Kiki for kicking ass alongside Kevin today, painting white styrofoam white.

More tomorrow.

 

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Letter Library Card & Stamp Test, Example, etc.

From yesterday afternoon — testing the stamp that Rosina set up and the cards we just got back from the printers.

We also got a fun package from Hamilton Artist Inc. that included some of the “questionnaires” we did from the last art crawl.

These will eventually make their way into our forthcoming publication.

Detail, stamp test.

Yesterday afternoon, Kevin and I tackled painting the letters, while Hiba cut some more. Into the evening, news came that Kevin had finished cutting all the letters!

Make sure you pick some of these up on Thursday, ok?

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In Store: The Border

Another instalment of In Store, featuring Lee Rodney discussing her Border Bookmobile project, in the multi-part documentary that our exceptionally talented friend, Daragh Sankey, has been putting together. Here’s his notes on the latest:

Ed. note: Hey, it’s been a while! I did a lot of overtime and also a freelance job and had to prioritize all that cash money work over this project, but I’ve managed to get one more done. This one is about Lee Rodney and her project the Border Bookmobile. There will be two more films after this: one is a mild recut of an earlier short I did, about Andrea Carvalho. The other concerns Leesa Bringas’ Postcards To Indian Road. I have another film coming, about Broken City Lab itself, but it has ballooned in scope and length to encompass events outside of the SRSI residency, so I don’t know if it belongs as part of this series of films. Besides, who knows how long it will take me to finish!

Lee Rodney’s reputation preceded her. She’s a professor at the University of Windsor, and some of the residents of SRSI and Broken City Lab members had been her students, and spoke very highly of her. Sure enough, there were many fascinating things to document during her stay: the bookmobile itself, the tour of Windsor’s forgotten neighbourhoods, and many fascinating conversations, including the one with Justin that forms the backbone of this film.

There are a number of borders crossing through this film. One is the border between Detroit and Windsor, that divides what in many ways should be considered one city. Another is the border between city and suburb. Also there is the border you see in the final shot. Nature borders the city, but not only at the outside edge. It has a way of creeping back in.

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Tuesday Afternoon: Work continues, now with Postcards and the Library Cards

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (1)

Lucy stopped by this morning to keep cutting. Hiba and I painted the letters.

White it is.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (2)

We had a lot of leftover wall paint, which means we not only have more than enough paint, but the letter faces will gain a bit of rigidity and protection since it’s epoxy paint.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (4)

Hiba paints.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (3)

After trying to paint the letters on the wall, we shifted to a make-shift table. Easier to avoid paint running.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (5)

We made a drying rack.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (6)

Protection. Recommended originally by Jennifer Willet. We should actually have more of these on hand.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (7)

The drying rack doing it’s job.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (8)

But, of course, it didn’t fit many letters, so we just started lying them out on the table.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (9)

Two brushes — these might be leftovers from Make This Better.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (10)

Also, picked up the postcards from Dan Bombardier, while he installed for an upcoming show at Artcite.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (11)

Also, Daragh Sankey posted another section of In-Store, his documentary on SRSI … we’ll post it on here.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (12)

Stack of postcards!

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (13)

Oh, and our library cards for the Letter Library.

Printed postcards, gas masks, paint, assembly line (14)

The back of the postcards, as you can see — lots to come!

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Single-Use Camera Tests: Captioning the City

Documentation with single-use cameras: Putting letters up in city spaces (1)

Kevin and Josh ventured out with a single-use camera to test what the temporary installations would look like, as we continue to prep for Thursday’s launch of the Letter Library here at CIVIC SPACE.

Also, film is fun.

Documentation with single-use cameras: Putting letters up in city spaces (2)

The letters look great and the photos aren’t too bad either. They definitely have a colder tone to them, but it works!

Documentation with single-use cameras: Putting letters up in city spaces (3)

This shot was excellent — love how visible this is from a distance.

Documentation with single-use cameras: Putting letters up in city spaces (4)

Recycling containers = excite.

Documentation with single-use cameras: Putting letters up in city spaces (5)

Strange undulations in the wall = excite.

Documentation with single-use cameras: Putting letters up in city spaces (6)

Blank walls = excite.

Documentation with single-use cameras: Putting letters up in city spaces (7)

The conversation these texts have with other tags, signs, etc. are really interesting.

Documentation with single-use cameras: Putting letters up in city spaces (8)

The prints. 4×6. We’ll need others.

Documentation with single-use cameras: Putting letters up in city spaces (10)

Hiba starts to arrange these test photos as we figure out how we’ll design the exhibition space.

Documentation with single-use cameras: Putting letters up in city spaces (9)

Also, on the to-do list — pick up our postcards today!

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Nothing like being thorough: how we make decisions, slowly

Last night Hiba, Danielle and I met to do some more prep work on the letters for the Letter Library launch on June 21st. We painted another test letter E a different shade of grey and started to populate a wall with some more of the tests. It was excellent to see more than a few letters up at once to start to get a sense of the scale of the cluster.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (1)

Danielle tried her hand at cutting the letters for a little while, but we quickly shifted over to more tests, while also playing catch up and talking through some other projects we want to kick off later this summer.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (2)

We head out with a grey letter E and a two-tone S.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (3)

This was around 9pm or later … so we didn’t get a read of this shade of grey in the harsher sunlight. There’s something interesting about the grey — certainly it doesn’t pop like the white (or the black really for that matter), but it feels a bit more anchored.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (4)

We also put up a white letter Y. It’s no surprise it stands out the most, outside.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (5)

Danielle moves the letters around to other locations.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (7)

YES, more often.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (6)

Hiba, Lucy, and I returned earlier this morning. Hiba installed some rows of white letters to get a better sense of how they’ll look on the walls.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (8)

We also figured it might make them easier to paint and not take up every square inch of walking space while we continue to prep.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (9)

Taping the letters.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (10)

Meanwhile, Lucy takes on the jig saw.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (11)

We’re going to play a lot with the lighting.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (12)

Letters temporarily installed on a couple of the walls. We’ll end up putting them a lot closer together on the final install.

Styrofoam letters, white walls, night time guerilla art (14)

We’re still planning to paint the faces white to remove the black lines left over from tracing.

The effects are interesting — about what I expected where they feel more a part of the wall than objects to take out and distribute. Of course, getting closer to the letters easily reveals that they’re styrofoam, but we’ll have to work out a really straight-forward set of instructions to carry out the project.

The plan going forward — finish cutting the letters today and Monday, start (and hopefully finish) painting Monday, start clean-up and install Tuesday, and do all the other prep by Thursday morning, giving us the better part of the day for contingency.

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Grey Paint Test, Tattoos, and Talk of Homework II

This afternoon at CIVIC SPACE started out with a video chat with Jason Sturgill from Portland about a really awesome project we’ll be collaborating with him on in the spring of next year.

There is also talk of Homework II happening this fall…stayed tuned for more info on this.

Also, our Akimbo ad was released today! Cool.

On the production side of things, we decided to do the final letter paint test for the Letter Library. While both white and black paint tests have had their pros and cons, we agreed on a final test of the colour grey to see if we can find a happy middle.

Word of the day today is: HAVE

Pre-paint.

Before coming to the space, Hiba went to Michaels to grab some grey paint. All the grey paint was sold out (weird), so we resorted to making our own by mixing our black and white paint remnants.

Painting…

Waiting…

After the letters dried, we hung them up in the space to see how they fit.

The grey definitely pops more than the white did in the space … and we do need to decide soon …

We took to the streets shortly after to take some install shots on different wall surfaces to compare with the white and black tests we did previously.

The grey has a nice pop, even on muted walls like this one.

While white had a really great pop on brick walls, the grey letters have a very interesting presence.

Almost looks like concrete on concrete!

The shadows cast on the grey letters give them more depth, while the black letters got lost in their own shadows.

The grey as the middle ground (in every sense) might win the day. It stands well on our white walls and looks interesting among the different textures of the buildings outside. Maybe we should sleep on it.

Remember, June 21st at 7pm, you’re invited to our Letter Library launch!

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Drift v1.5 Available Now: Some Updates to Help You Get Even More Lost in Familiar Places

Drift v1.5 is available now on the iOS App Store

 

Great news! Drift v1.5 is available now on the App Store.

There are some really useful changes, including a better way to navigate from step to step in your Drift, some light tidying up upon registration, longer sessions to keep you logged in, and some fixes and adjustments to the photo upload process. All of that means that it’s easier to use and the documentation from your Drifts should look great!

The other major change is that Drift now requires iOS 5.1 or later.

And, if you haven’t already checked it out … if you mark your photos public, they’ll now appear in our sidebar with the instruction and a link to Google Maps with the location of where you took the photo, and of course credited to your name.

Drift helps you get lost in familiar places by guiding you on a walk using randomly assembled instructions. Each instruction will ask you to move in a specific direction and, using the compass, look for something normally hidden or unnoticed in our everyday experiences.

This project was generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council Media Arts Grant for Emerging Artists.