Parklets are here!

Parklets are here!

Recently, the City initiated an effort in conjunction with the Downtown Improvement District, Chamber of Commerce, and Convention and Visitor’s Bureau to improve the sociability of our downtown. Due to the Center’s interest in creative placemaking in our downtown, we were invited to be part of the Promotions Group.

The Promotions Group focuses on marketing, special events, and public relations for the downtown area, focusing on making it look more inviting and appealing to the local citizens. While we have been contributing to the ongoing research about how the public uses the downtown area, we have also played a key part in the first transformation project.

Right outside of our windows, we can see the City taking its first steps towards re-imagining downtown Modesto by converting non-usable street corners into pedestrian friendly ‘parklets’. These are small urban parks created to provide a public place for citizens to relax and enjoy the atmosphere of the city around them.  Through the redistribution of city owned tree and flower planters, the addition of some decoupage painting techniques, and cafe tables and chairs, the city has in one weekend transformed the urban experience of 10th and J street.

The transformation was covered in two Modesto Bee articles, here and here.

And the Building Imagination Center was right there to help.  Come out, enjoy a sandwich,  and enjoy this transformation firsthand.

The City redistributes it’s tree and flower planters to define the borders of the new parklets.
Using decoupage painting techniques to help redefine the use of the space.
Bistro tables and chairs welcome pedestrians to stop and sit.

PARK(ing) Day

As part of the fifth annual Modesto International Architecture Festival, the Building Imagination Center hosted a PARK(ing) Day event.

PARK(ing) Day is an annual worldwide event where artists, designers, landscape architects, and citizens transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks.

Gasoline Puddles

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The gasoline puddle creates rainbows because the oil and water interface reflects. The thickness of the oil layer is less than the wave lengths of the different colours of light and reflects the different frequencies at different phases causing interference cancelling and also different angles of refraction.

In this project, a silhouetted dancer performs an interpretative dance of eloquent movements, grand swooshes and cutting arm gestures. Live video captures and mirrors the viewer, embeds them below the interpretative dancer, just as in the gasoline puddle, the water floats the gasoline atop of it. Her energetic dance is slowed to a meditative study of gracefulness. Further video manipulations shift and fragment her silhouette, as the light is refracted between the gasoline and the water, stretching out time before the viewer, inviting reflection by the viewer as they see mirrored glimpses of themselves beneath the distortions.

This project allows the viewers to become the subjects as well as co-creators, providing another path for viewers to re-contextualize environment and re-imagine themselves, like the rainbow transforms the gasoline puddle into something momentarily wonderful.

Participate in this transformation at:

SSSHHHH!! Quiet Music at the Alameda Library
May 5, 8PM-10PM 
1550 Oak Street
Alameda, CA

www.ubuibi.org/ssshhhh.html

LOVE Modesto: Dream Garden

Love Modesto started with two questions back in 2007 – Why is our city on some of the “worst cities in America” lists? What if our churches were to suddenly disappear from the Modesto area, would anyone even care or notice? With a lot of dreaming and planning came March 7, 2009. Over 1,200 people showed up to love our city in practical ways. We’ve done this six more times since adding Love Ceres, Love Escalon and Love Riverbank in 2011. Over 11,000 people have been a part…  young, old, abled, disabled, people from a church or no church at all. Over 38,500 volunteer hours have been donated – at minimum wage, this is over $308,000! At these community wide service days, volunteers engage in a variety of projects such as offering food to the hungry, visiting convalescent homes, donating blood, building a house with Habitat for Humanity and working with the city parks, among other opportunities.

The Dream Garden project allows the public to create fabric flowers from used clothing, and then write their personal dream in the flower’s center, transforming a craft piece into a collective statement about the dreams of residents in the community. The April 28, 2012 event has over 70 volunteers contributing to the project. Strolling through the completed garden gives viewers personal insight into the goals and desires of their own neighbors. The final project is created through the direct participation of Modesto residents, and most importantly, the art gives residents the opportunity to see how they could transform their community. The Dream Garden will be on display at various locations around our community.

 

Instructions to create your own Dream Garden Flower

Submerged

Submerged

Col­lab­o­rat­ing with DOUBLE-VISION, Submerged is a video response to Modesto’s water uses and issues. This video poetically explores some key benefits the Tuolumne River brings to Modesto.

The Tuolumne River begins at 13,000 feet in Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and provides 27 miles of world-class whitewater for rafters and kayakers. 150 miles downstream, thousands of Chinook salmon return each fall to spawn on the lower river. In addition to providing excellent wildlife habitat and recreational facilities, the Tuolumne River has been extensively developed to deliver water and electricity to San Francisco and other Bay Area cities, and provides water for farmers in the Central Valley.

The Tuolumne River Regional Park is a 500 acre urban park currently under development along the seven mile stretch of the Tuolumne River that falls between the cities of Ceres and Modesto, California. The park provides a setting to learn about the Tuolumne River, natural river processes, native plants, and local wildlife habitat. Group gathering areas, trails, interpretive signage, and a restored landscape provide unparalleled opportunity for outdoor study and recreation. The park provides a mixture of active and passive recreational zones, including play fields and picnic areas, outdoor performing arts, kayaking, nature interpretation, and bicycling.

The video also explores some of the water issues faced by Modesto, specifically addressing the Superfund site which contaminated Modesto city water well 11. The Modesto Ground Water Contamination site is related to a dry cleaning facility that leaked tetrachloroethylene (PCE) into the soil and ground water. The dry cleaning facility discharged wastewater containing PCE into the sewer system for approximately 50 years, and an unknown quantity of PCE was released into the subsurface. The dry cleaner was located approximately 1,200 feet from a municipal well, which was contaminated with PCE from the dry cleaner. The City of Modesto began monitoring ground water in 1984 and Municipal Well 11 was found to be contaminated with PCE above the allowable drinking water standard. Well 11 was temporarily taken out of service by the City and a wellhead granular activated carbon treatment system was installed in June 1991 to remove the PCE contamination from the ground water. Well 11 was then shut down again in October 1995 because it was found to be contaminated with low levels of naturally occurring uranium that were slightly above the allowable drinking water level. It is unknown if Well 11 will ever be used again as a source of drinking water because of the naturally occurring uranium.

 

 

 

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Submerged. Produced by JGomula. Video footage played back at 400% – actual video is 4 times slower.

Coming Soon!

Coming Soon! A new Science Museum.Col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Modesto Art Museum, //Bii: Coming Soon! is cre­ating a visual exploration of some of the rea­sons for Modesto’s low rank­ing and is re-imagining ways for the city to become a more liv­able place, or even a Utopian soci­ety. Our goal is to con­front the area’s poverty of imag­i­na­tion by using art — images, animations, and videos — to inspire cre­ativ­ity to help solve the area’s many urban problems.

 

Visions of what could be coming soon to our city, created by JGomula:

Coming Soon! A new Science Museum.Coming Soon! A new Science Museum.
McHenry and Pelendale

 

 

Coming Soon! A new home for the Modesto Art Museum.Coming Soon! A new home for the Modesto Art Museum.
10th and I Street.

 

 

Coming Soon! A new Car Museum.Coming Soon! A new Car Museum celebrating American Graffiti.
McHenry and Granger.

 

 

Coming Soon! A new Poet's Corner and Black Box Theatre.Coming Soon! A new Poet’s Corner and Black Box Theatre.
10th and I Street.

 

Show us your own visions!

Water | Wealth | Contentment | Health

Col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Modesto Art Museum, //Bii: Watch is cre­ating a four-part video response to Modesto’s rank­ing as the most unliv­able city in the coun­try. Through this video, we will explore some of the rea­sons for Modesto’s low rank­ing and re-imagine ways for the city to become a more liv­able place, or even a Utopian soci­ety. Our goal is to con­front the area’s poverty of imag­i­na­tion by using art — videos, archi­tec­ture, design, and game­play — to inspire cre­ativ­ity to help solve the area’s many urban problems.

The four videos, each about 5 min­utes in length, are struc­tured around the city’s offi­cial slo­gan “Water, Wealth, Con­tent­ment, Health” and explore the city’s liv­abil­ity issues through its archi­tec­ture and urban design. While the videos doc­u­ment the city’s archi­tec­ture and design, they are pri­mar­ily expres­sive and exper­i­men­tal in their poetic inter­pre­ta­tions of each topic, and live video is incor­po­rated into the instal­la­tions. Accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects, archi­tec­ture and urban design offer a pow­er­ful per­spec­tive for explor­ing and find­ing reme­dies for a city’s liv­abil­ity issues. We have cho­sen this per­spec­tive to high­light the arts and their unique con­tri­bu­tion to explor­ing the area’s deep seated urban prob­lems. The per­spec­tive also focuses on art and artists as agents of change, and builders of the community.

WATER

Water serves the entire project as a uni­fy­ing metaphor and visual image. It is a sym­bol for the area’s abun­dance and potential eco­nomic pros­per­ity. The Water video explores the spe­cific impor­tance of water in the econ­omy and envi­ron­ment of the Modesto area. The video includes the city’s bridges, canals, and water­ways, par­tic­u­larly the Tuolumne River run­ning through down­town Modesto, as well as a com­po­nent of live video. Water is also a way to re-imagine how Modesto can pro­tect envi­ron­men­tal resources and con­serve land­scapes, par­tic­u­larly along the Tuolumne River. The video explores how con­serv­ing land­scapes can lead to per­son­ally and com­mu­nally rewarding recre­ational and cul­tural opportunities.

Produced by JGomula
Collaborating Artists include: Julie Strong, Brittney Miller, and Alyssa Martinez.

 

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Water. Actual video footage, without live video component.

 

Water. Final piece, requires webcam for live video capture and Flash Player.

 

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Performance of Water with live video. Dancers from Deep Root Dance Company.
R.A.W. @ the Garage, San Francisco.

 

WEALTH

The Wealth video exam­ines the eco­nomic well-being of the city through its res­i­den­tial archi­tec­ture and neigh­bor­hood design. The video explores issues of liv­abil­ity, par­tic­u­larly the city’s high rates of home fore­clo­sure. The video explores ways to re-imagine Modesto neigh­bor­hoods, overlaying hopes and desires of individual Utopias on areas of blight and decay; allowing Modesto to rise as a Phoenix and return to its notoriety of the mid twentieth century. Vari­ety cre­ates vibrant, pedestrian-friendly, and diverse com­mu­ni­ties and accom­mo­dates res­i­dents in dif­fer­ent stages of their lives.

 

Produced by JGomula
Collaborating Artists include: Julie Strong, Brittney Miller, Alyssa Martinez.

 

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CONTENTMENT

The Contentment video exam­ines the perception of citizen’s of the city through their participation in the annual LOVE Modesto volunteer day. On April 2, 2010 over 5,000 people contributed to this city-wide church sponsored event. The documentary video explores practical issues of liv­abil­ity, specifically the Habitat for Humanity projects within the Modesto. The video documents concrete ways to re-imagine Modesto neigh­bor­hoods, overlaying hopes and desires of individual Utopias on areas of blight and decay.

Produced by JGomula
Collaborating Artists include: Julie Strong, John Fandl, Eric Medina, and Alexis-Kim Priela

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