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Urban Mediations

urban mediations

Thursday, May 14 going to be an incredible day: Urban Mediations, a one-day symposium on urban media studies is taking place in Windsor. Co-organized by the University of Windsor’s own, Dr. Michael Darroch, the symposium will involve a collection of researchers, artists, designers, and activists talking about what it means to research the urban.

I’ll be speaking on Broken City Lab, and Danielle will be talking about architecture of urban refugees, among many other fine thinkers, doers, and writers.

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Planters Nearing Completion

making planters

The Magnetic Planters project continues. With Michelle and Danielle away this week, the rest of Broken City Lab had to relearn the process of making paper pulp. It was a good night, though we’re hoping to get this project finished in the next week or so. As Intersession begins, we’ll be shifting our Office Hours to another yet-to-be-determined day, and it might even be biweekly until July. We’ll keep you posted.

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Office Hours

Broken City Lab Office Hours

Broken City Lab office hours on Tuesday, May 5th, at 7pm, LeBel, room 125. We’ll continue work on our magnetic planters and planning for the summer! If anyone has anything they want on the agenda, feel free to add it in the comments…

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Magnetic Planters: Field Test #1

The rain held off, so today was a good day to get out and do some field tests for our magnetic planters. We just stuck around the neighbourhood, but did a general test to see what surfaces were magnetic. Unfortunately, the street signs that I had anticipated being a perfect surface for these are not magnetic, but chain link fences are, along with some other random surfaces.

We’ll continue with research on making these planters this week, but also start to think of what we can stamp / stencil / draw onto the flat surface of these.

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Office Hours

Office Hours

Broken City Lab office hours are back on for Tuesday, April 28, at 7pm, LeBel, room 125. There’s lots to talk about and brainstorm since summer has now officially begun … If anyone has anything they want on the agenda, feel free to add it in the comments!

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No Office Hours This Week

No Office Hours This Week

We won’t be meeting this week (April 20 – 26), with school finishing up, we’re going to take the week off. We’ll be back on with weekly office hours on April 28th and throughout the summer (though we’re still determining exactly what that schedule is going to be). Stay tuned.

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Rare Earth Magnets + New Pulp Recipe

stronger new planter with rare earth magnets

Our recipe from the other night produced a much stronger planter, though I think there’s still room to add a coat of wheat paste to the outside. The rare earth magnets do well if there’s two, but I think the best solution will be to adhere them to the outside of the planter, or embed them in the pulp (which would make things a bit more difficult). Ideally, we’d use one magnet per planter.

This planter is about the size of a cigarette carton, but should be perfect for a sprout of wild flowers or cat grass or something more interesting, with lots of depth for the roots to do their thing. Plus, we’re now thinking that there’s a good amount of surface area to work with for some text / stenciling / recipe, etc.