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Daniel Rozin

Daniel Rozin's Peg Mirror

“Peg Mirror comprises 650 circular wooden pieces that are cut on an angle. Casting shadows by twisting and rotating, wooden pegs forming concentric circles surround a small central camera. The mirrored image produced in this work is activated by software authored by Rozin that processes video signals and breaks up imagery geometrically, seemingly pixel by pixel. The silently moving wood components in this piece flicker like jewels or coins in the spotlight, challenging our notions about what constitutes a “digital object”.”

This blew my mind, mostly because of its complexity. Making shadows work as pixels in real time is new to me. I’d love to be a part of a project like this.

Video of the Peg Mirror in action Here.

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BCL Report – Nov 1, 2008

In preparation of our upcoming Tetris Tournament / Wheat Paste Demo / Sticker Making Party, we had made a list of supplies and had set out to find the goods at (what we thought) was an obvious choice—Value Village. At the top of our list was a hot plate, Tetris for SNES, and supplies for making a trophy. However, after nearly 4 hours of searching, those things remain on our list… instead we found other treasures…

Continue reading “BCL Report – Nov 1, 2008”

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Incomplete Manifesto For Growth

Bruce Mau, Massive Change

Bruce Mau is a Canadian industrial designer, whose book, Massive Change, is beautifully designed and has been continually holding my interest since the summer. I came across a link to his Incomplete Manifesto For Growth, and found it very fitting (for the most part) in thinking about BCL.

Here’s a few highlights…

Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you. (ha)

Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

Check out the whole list, it’s a quick read.

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Odd Windsor By-Law – No Reptiles allowed

no reptiles allowed

Since 1985, The city of Windsor has prohibited the selling, buying or keeping of reptiles/snakes in the city. Apparently LaSalle and Tecumseh don’t have this law. I came across a discussion on this topic on Windsor Users. 

Why do you think reptiles are not allowed in the city? Comment with your answer!

Here’s a Halloween inspired idea: make reptile costumes for the fire hydrants or garbages around the city.

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What Google thinks of Windsor

Google ads

I am sure we have all been a little spooked by google’s prediction power. You type a gmail to a friend about India and in the side bar you get curry recipes. You exchange thoughts on stress levels cause by final exams and you get vacation deals.

With halloween coming up, I thought there was no better time to explore this spooky phenomena than now.

I just sent a rudimentary email to Justin regarding the down trotten state of Windsor. He replied, and I examined what google predicts Windsor will need.

There were a few ads regarding social work. Google knows Windsor may need some help, and google feels for us to make Windsor better, we may need to focus on social work and the social infrastructure. Spooky… The email never said anything about said social infrastructure being the primal concern.

Google also thinks that someone who is concerned with the state of Windsor may also be interested in fitness. (M test 2) I guess good fitness does equal a happier more active populace. but again, how did google know that?? this is starting to mimick the twilight zone a little too much.

Finally the one thing that is really frightening, is that google knows we should conduct regular testing for melamine. Is this an omen? Is WIndsor crumbling because we are all experiencing the toxic effects ofmelamine?

To investigate this spooky phenomena I will creat a data base that tracks what ads google predicts we may be interested in depending on the contentI place within pseudo searches and gmails.

I have never tampered with the occult before, but I know it can get me a show on A&E.

Godspeed.

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Open Source Hardware

Team Arduino: Gianluca Martino, Massimo Banzi, and David Cuartielles Photo by James Day

There’s a really good story over at Wired about the idea, business models, and inventors behind open source hardware. Pictured above are the founders of Arduino, three pretty relaxed looking dudes, making knowledge open and free. It’s really incredible to realize that there are companies and projects that are based on open source hardware and profit from it in one way or another. We could build an exact copy of the Arduino board, call it Broken City Board and sell it, as long as we kept the same Creative Commons licensing as the original Arduino board. Walmart could also do the same, but of course, would also be subject to the same licensing requirements.

Open knowledge and the potential to make things more open, more accessible, more functional is the future. Again, it’s a great read and just goes to show how important it is for us to document and share everything we do.

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Test Signal by Phil Coy

Test Choir by Phil Coy

I promise I’m not getting lazy, I promise that I’m not just watching the RSS feed for vvork, that I do indeed visit other sites, but this project was really great, I had to post it.

Test Signal by Phil Coy uses a choir to sign to generate the colour bars that are used to calibrate televisions and video signals for broadcast. Each choir member sings one sustained note that is translated to one of the colour bars. Also check out Provincial Landscape…

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