Moon River: Maps

The Naked City - Map Portraits

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 13:57:44 GMT

'Unlike what most people think psychogeography is really very simple: the moment you first step into a room you immediately, without conscious effort, have a heartfelt opinion about it. Psychogeography is the study of the 'stuff' that causes this mental reaction and the psychological and behavioural effects that are evoked by it.' more

Brian Collier Movement Patterns: Human Life as a Series of Lines
map-portraits
'Tracking an individual's regular movements can be both uncomfortably intimate and frigidly anonymous. In this project I create a series of map-portraits based on several individual people habitual weekly travels. These maps are intended as the sole description of each subject's life, paring away any additional events or behaviors.'

'The presentation of these map-portraits intentionally suggests a cold, removed observer studying an anonymous subject. This appearance of scientific objectivity works in direct opposition to the fact that I personally know all the individuals represented. Furthermore, the initial maps were made by those individuals themselves rather than an outside observer. There is an underlying intimacy, evoked only subtly, when the viewer notices the flesh-like quality of the hand-waxed paper or the use of only first names of participants.'

"One of the issues that inspired this project is the contemporary paradox of feeling both invisible and overly visible: the ever-increasing anonymity of an individual meets the ever-increasing exposure of his or her life in environments affected by high-technology tracking, surveillance, and profiling. The more information that an organization has about an individual, the more likely it is that he or she will be reinvented and renamed as a number in a database. Government agencies and businesses have developed ways to categorize and classify an individual based on data collected from a variety of sources.

From an aesthetic perspective one may consider the movement lines on the maps as representing large-scale process drawings made unconsciously by the body of each person as he or she moves through a local environment. These drawings, arguably made by people everywhere as they move through space, remain unrealized unless monitored and documented. I use a book of transparencies to compare movement patterns to one another and also to create a new pattern consisting of all the participants movements.

The issue of tracking movements has taken on new implications in the era of "The War on Terrorism." The recent increase in surveillance and the new powers given to the government to monitor citizens lives create questions about the limits of freedom and privacy. In news debates and private life, people commonly worry that their lives may be "invaded." During the creation of this work, in fact, several participants expressed discomfort, saying that the collection of data about their movements felt intrusive."

***

During the last weekend of Marchs the first session of the 'Hot Summer of Psychogeography' (2002) took place in Amsterdam. Socialfiction, the organisers, sent participants on their way from Dam Square with an algorithmic description of the route. The same experiment was repeated later in the day in the Bijlmer district.

Dérive through Utrecht last year

read this as well

Situationist Guy Debord devised the notion of psychogeography in the 1950s. It deals with the study of the exact laws and specific effects of our geographic environment. Psychogeography describes the sudden change in atmosphere a few metres further along a street, and the different characteristics of city districts. It reveals the path of least resistance a person subconsciously takes when wandering aimlessly and points out the attraction or repulsion of particular places. One of Situationism's practices is the dérive (literally: wandering or drifting), a technique of rapid passage through varied environments. Involving playful-constructive behaviour, dérive examines psychogeographical effects and is thus quite different from the classic notions of journey and routing. Dérives weren't random; they challenged the psychogeographer to use his powers of imagination to experience the urban environment anew - for example, by following scents or negotiating a route through Paris armed with a map of London. What propelled these strollers was not so much curiosity but political and theoretical motivations.>>>

***

Imagine if you were walking in an unfamiliar area of town and suddenly you realized that it was very dark and the shadows looked distinctly unfriendly. But what if you had a map, a map that clearly marked out entire sections of the city as safe, or peaceful or even scary.

Such a map would be dramatically different from normal maps, in that the data being presented is no longer merely objective, but also subjective. Welcome to the new world of psychogeography.

Psychogeography is an umbrella term used to refer to a number of different ways to explore cities and towns. This new field is still emerging and like any new genre there is still a sense of uncertainty. Most definitions hover around the issues of maps and people’s responses to urban spaces and surroundings. The most accessible one is as follows: Psychogeography is the hidden landscape of atmospheres, histories, actions and characters which charge environments.
But there is a basic thread running through all the various versions of psychogeography, and that is the generation of maps. These are maps that challenge all preconceived notions about maps. Psychogeographic maps presenting maps that may or may not be objective.

A case in point is 'mental mapping'. These are maps generated by individuals walking along areas in the city and recording emotions. The resulting map is more than a physical record of distances travelled, it is also a record of the internal state of mind of the map maker. Other kinds of mental maps include maps made from memory alone. Some maps even overlay several such mental maps and the final result is a unique perspective of hitherto familiar areas.

The newness of this field also leads to widely differing methods of map making. By far the most commonly used method is something known as "Generative algorithms". This involves the establishing of a predetermined method of walking, and the psychogeographers follow such algorithms in order to explore the city in new ways. Typically, the rules for walking would involve just a series of instructions such as turn right, and then the second left, etc etc, and soon the participants would end up in places they would never have consciously chosen to go to.

Another example of this new way of walking is using a map of, say, City A, and follow it in City B. Or by randomly following a person on the street and observing the route he/ she takes.

While these projects seem to push the boundaries of maps further, one is tempted to ask what use is it all? For this we have to wait and see. But for sure, the city will no longer be something that lies in-between their houses and offices, instead there is likely to be a renewed interest in the concept of being an urban dweller.

Dinesh Rao

New York City Walk

Sat, 09 Sep 2006 13:51:23 GMT

Caleb Smith began visiting as many neighborhoods in NY since, 'Over a Two Year Period he explored them systematically.

He bought a Hagstrom map of Manhattan, which he laminated. As he walked, he marked off the streets with a black marker. He took notes and a lots of photos along the way. After about a year, he had made much more progress than he expected, and it seemed natural to extend the walk to the entire island. Eventually he walked over 700 miles.

via plep

The fascination of maps

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 06:26:25 GMT

"The fascination of maps as humanly created documents is found not merely in the extent to which they are objective or accurate. It also lies in their inherent ambivalence and in our ability to tease out new meanings, hidden agendas, and contrasting world views from between the lines on the image"

J. B. Harley

Les sources du Nil, Ibn Hawqal, Manuel de géographie. Fin Xe siècle. Copie du XVIe siècle d'après un manuscrit de 1443-1444

La Terre au centre des sphères de l'univers, Gossuin de Metz, L'Image du monde de. Copie du XIIIe siècle

Locality in the Age of Virtual Transcendence

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 08:21:39 GMT

Romy ACHITUV from text for the exhibition 'Between Man and Place: Locality in the Age of Virtual Transcendence'

"..... Our experience of Place, i.e. of a particular locale, is intimately bound with the idea of distance. It embodies the potential of being away from and outside of a geographical, cultural, mental or emotional ‘site’. Locale as a human-centric concept reflects a spatial relationship between presence – a mobile, ever-shifting entity – and a perceivably stationary place.

Romy Achituv and Danielle Wilde-FLIES, multi-media performances

The relation to a Locale often bespeaks opposing desires – on the one hand, a longing to be absorbed into its bosom, to find solace within its boundaries; on the other, a desire to escape it, to distance oneself from its confines. ...For us limited earth-bound creatures, the ability to maintain a clear notion of Place can be said to rely upon what has until recently been considered a basic existential constraint: the inability to occupy more then one location at a time. And yet, we are living in a time when every day we undergo transition into virtual (in both senses) extensions of the physical world, and where many old rules and constraints no longer seem to apply....

Aya Ben Ron | Four Seasons (Season 4), 2002, Print on photographic paper cut and glued in layers

One global outcome of contemporary technological advance is that in various aspects of human experience, built-in temporal and spatial distances seem to have been overcome. Two subjects can occupy the same Place in sound and image irrespective of the physical distance between them; they can share a virtual space through avatars that serve and are experienced as online extensions of the self, and access physical spaces in temporally disparate and spatially remote locations through pervasive networks of live webcam and satellite broadcasts.

In a very real sense, contemporary communications have rendered the world smaller. Yet even as technology pursues speed as a means to overcome physical distance, it is casting doubt on the very need for movement.
Oh Inhwan, When a Man Meets Man in Seoul

In a wide range of disciplines - phenomenology, psychoanalysis or metaphysics, to name a few - Place and its relation to the attendant concepts of Distance, Boundaries, and Movement have been considered fundamental for the production of Meaning. Shifts in their essence - and in their relations - are bound to affect changes in whatever meaning can be culled from them.

The deception inherent in modern communication technologies is that the human subject occupies and controls the world from the center, namely that he or she experiences a transcendence of boundaries, and by being able to simultaneously "be" both outside and within, approaches a sense of omnipresence. But omnipresence has its risks. As my gaze shifts from within my room to the outskirts of the planet and back again to gaze at the gaze of my gaze from the outside-in looking out and in and out again ad infinitum, I face the threat of losing myself to my "self". Paradoxically, in the relationship between Man and Place, the desire to overcome distance and collapse the boundaries of locality may spell the loss of the ability to "leap", the loss of the possibility for transcendence."

road maps

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 19:23:05 GMT

Road maps from an earlier day were a visual celebration of life on the motor trail. Their illustrations portrayed Americans,
joy-filled and carefree, behind the wheel of a car: pushing seventy-five beneath an infinite azure sky,
downshifting through tight esses on a winding country road or simply picnicking on a verdant hillside.
Map covers were an exhilarating fresh air fiesta of the endless possibilities of motoring.

Douglas Yorke, et. al., Hitting the Road, 1996 To sell their products, the oil companies used their road maps to promote motor travel by creating powerful, mythic images. They presented the motoring life as a great adventure and the road as a place of liberation and empowerment. The oil-company road map is a tangible record of the development of a purely American fascination with the automobile. In the early teens, the oil-company road map appeared for free in gas stations across America. Soon, as more and more Americans owned cars and began driving for pleasure, the oil-company road map became the primary medium through which Americans found their way on the ever growing network of the nation’s roads and highways. The maps were designed to advertise the products and services of a company, but also to encourage the motorist to travel and discover America.

Maps in America at the turn of the century were primarily geopolitical. Mountains, rivers, major cities, and political boundaries were far more significant to cartographers than the parallel ruts in the dirt that connected village to village. The invention of the bicycle and the newfound personal mobility it provided created a need for better roads and better maps.

Historic Tours in Soconyland. New York: Standard Oil Company, 1925.

The automobile soon followed, and the maps were overprinted with a contrasting color to indicate roads appropriate for the car. By 1910, the model T had created a significant demand for maps, and guides like the Mendenhall Guide and Road Map of Connecticut began to appear. This map shows main routes, good roads, common roads and railroads. It also includes a step by step description of travel between major cities. Although many companies claim to be the first to issue promotional maps, Gulf was the most prolific producer in the early teens. By the twenties, most major oil companies had some form of promotional map program.

The covers often featured a man and a woman discovering the joy of driving through the countryside, enjoying the freedom and mobility the automobile offered. Oil companies were encouraging the automobile owner to travel and explore the country--using their gasoline.

The early means for showing the auto road tended to be descriptive in words and pictures. They seem not to have benefitted from the more graphic and comprehensive bird's eye view, of the bicycle and topographical maps that preceded them. The contemporaneous "Photographic Auto Guide" used photos to show the road as the driver would see it.

First ever 'world map of happiness.'

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 08:33:38 GMT

Adrian White, social psychologist at the University of Leicester in England, has produced the first-ever
"World Map Of Happiness".

via

According to Dr. White, happiness is found to be most closely associated with health, followed by wealth and then education.
The meta-analysis is based on the findings of over 100 different studies around the world.(The British psychologist analysed data published by the CIA, UNESCO, the WHO and several other organizations measuring data from over 80,000 people worldwide).

And the winner is... Denmark.

This comes as quite a surprise for most people, since the country in northern Europe is widely known for its high suicide rate. The other Scandinavian countries, score very well, too, though they all have a relatively mild climate and long winters. Read More

The 20 Happiest Nations In The World:

1 - Denmark
2 - Switzerland
3 - Austria
4 - Iceland
5 - The Bahamas
6 - Finland
7 - Sweden
8 - Bhutan
9 - Brunei
10 - Canada
11 - Ireland
12 - Luxembourg
13 - Costa Rica
14 - Malta
15 - The Netherlands
16 - Antigua and Barbuda
17 - Malaysia
18 - New Zealand
19 - Norway
20 - The Seychelles

Other Notable Happy Countries:

#23. USA
#35. Germany
#41. UK
#62. France

The Three Least Happy Countries:

#176. Democratic Republic of the Congo
#177. Zimbabwe
#178. Burundi

The map is not the territory

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 00:06:03 GMT

In the beginning, maps were fiction.

Inherited from the past were the fables and legends of Greece and Rome, along with tales from Celtic and Norse mythology. These were blended with information brought back by occasional mariners, who, in expanding their trade routes, ventured a bit farther than any before them, or by chance came upon an unknown island when tempestuous weather blew their vessel off course. Gradually, this mixture of legend, speculation, and travelers' tales began to be replaced by a new kind of geographic knowledge, one that was the result of direct observation.

We perceived our world as myths defined by belief not geography. Maps of these imagined worlds came in many shapes and sizes, but they all mixed the unreal with snippets of the real world. The process of mapping the real world was one of going from geographies of ideas to maps of real geography. On the Internet, we will pursue a reverse path: maps of the Internet will progress from our current maps of network topologies to maps of virtual worlds that we build, maps of ideas and thoughts.

Coined by Alfred Korzybski, The map is not the territory is a related expression meaning that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself, e.g. the pain from a stone falling on your foot is not the stone; one's opinion of a politician, favorable or unfavorable, is not that person, and so on. A specific abstraction or reaction does not capture all facets of its source and thus may limit an individual's understanding and cognitive abilities unless the two are distinguished.

Computer-based digital multimedia is made palpable within highly mutable electronic environments. The very nature of our understanding of context has been altered because of the unfixity of these technological surroundings. The potential for instant distributed connection to other computers on an international scale also adds to this complexity. All of this activity takes place in what could be called an environment of "Simulacra and Simulation."

Lawrence Wiener, NACH ALLES/AFTER ALL, 2000. Language, Dimensions variable. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG in Consultation with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin. 2006.6. © 2005 Lawrence Weiner/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

In his book Simulacra & Simulation, Baudrillard argues the following:

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hypperreal. The territory no longer preceeds the map, nor does it survive it. It is never the less the map that proceeds the territory - pressesion of simulacra- that engenders the territory. (Baudrillard, 1994) via

Surveying the landscape

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 16:58:56 GMT

"Whatever there is in the universe through essence, presence or imagination, (the painter) has it first in his mind and then in his hands, and these are of such excellence that they can generate a proportional harmony in the time equivalent to a single glance, just as real things do" Leonardo: Leonardo da Vinci

Codex Madrid II 1504

Codex Madrid manuscript contains a miscellaneous range of drawing types, including coloured maps of the Arno, relating to the Florentine project to bypass the unnavigable sections of the river.

urban heat island

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 09:54:27 GMT

As many urbanites know, summertime has its downside. The things we take for granted in cities roads, sidewalks, brick buildings, and asphalt roofs, all intensify summer heat by trapping the Sun’s energy and remaining warm long after the Sun has set. This phenomenon has a name: urban heat island. In summer 2002, Stuart Gaffin of Columbia University and his colleagues used satellite temperature data, city-wide land cover maps, and weather data, along with a regional climate model to identify the best strategies for cooling Gaffin’s hometown, New York City. By carefully examining the relationship between city surfaces, temperature, and energy use, Gaffin and his colleagues concluded that urban forestry and vegetation-covered roofs could lower city temperatures and even reduce the demand for air conditioning and the consumption of electricity. read more

As part of the study, the team used thermal infrared satellite data measured by NASA’s Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus on August 14, one of the hottest days in New York’s 2002 summer. Landsat also collected vegetation data. The top image shows temperature, ranging from blue (warm) to yellow (hot). The bottom image shows vegetation from beige (sparse) to deep green (dense). A comparison of the images shows that where vegetation is dense, temperatures are cooler. Urban heat islands are worst where there is little or no vegetation.

via the nonist

United Kingdom

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:13:52 GMT

Layla Curtis United Kingdom 1999, Collage on paper unconfirmed: 2050 x 2260 mm
on paper, unique © the artist

By imposing the details of one geographical area upon the outline of another, Curtis raises fundamental questions about place and national identity. Here she manipulates a road atlas of Great Britain, integrating Scottish and Welsh territory within the contours of England, and English and Welsh within Scotland. This intricate collage was made in Edinburgh in 1999, a year when the opening of a new Scottish Parliament in the city raised questions about Scotland's relationship to the United Kingdom.

Glass-Maps

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 19:08:40 GMT

This entry is dedicated to a special person, i admire, she is an Israeli artist, a poet, a gifted writer and an endless seeker of beauty and creation. She is telling in her Hebrew blog, about a new passion of hers, and it's about Glass beads making, she is also creating the most amazing Crystal thread, as well as many other things.

As she made few month ago a ghost map i was stroked by, and as respect for her creation paths, I somehow combined them both: her map quest and her love for Glass, as well as my feeilings towards our little planet earth and it's fragility that seem so concretely this days - here- is, some works regarding all that - all are using Glass to depict Our World and it's political and cultural boundaries that shape identity.

Robert Smithson, Map of Broken Glass (Atlantis), 1969. Lannan Foundation; long-term loan. Photo: Florian Holzherr.

samantha clark. Detail of installation Spill 1998-2002, Glass, Maps

Around 4500 small glass drops each with a tiny fragment of map set behind it, fixed directly
to walls and floor.

This work has expanded to include maps of every country it has travelled to for exhibition, and now Italy, France, Scotland, Portugal all feature. This piece originated during a residency at the British Scool at Rome as part of the Helen Chadwick Fellowship 1997-8 and has migrated and grown ever since.

WORLD MAP
The technique used in the execution of world maps with the metallic geometric shapes utilized the old fashioned solar reflective films of the kind used by jet fighter pilots on their visors in the 1950's. These films, until very recently were still readily available. Rick has also done other maps with polymer texturization to add visual interest to the paintings.

Few months ago i was deeply impressed by Mona Hatoum, “Map” an installation about the political and cultural boundaries that shape identity.

Mona Hatoum, “Map” (detail), 1999, mixed media installation, dimensions vary.

Map is made up of clear glass marbles spread across a floor, their arrangement seemingly random until the viewer gradually recognizes continents. National and political borders, though, are not marked. The marbles’ transparency and the fact that they could roll easily suggests the fluid nature of such boundaries. The marbles’ placement on the floor hints at the possibility of walking on them and shifting their arrangement--a metaphor for political instability.

Mona Hatoum

Lonely LA

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 18:57:40 GMT

Carl Cheng. Walk on L.A. Concrete roller and sand 12 x 30 feet. Courtesy of John Doe Co., photo John Doe Co. (detail of map imprint), Santa Monica Art Tool. 1988.

Guthrie Lonergan shows his Lonely Los Angeles project in which he sorted through MapQuest to find open/empty spaces in L.A. and gathered them together for display.

via http://placekraft.blogspot.com/

commentary maps on the America

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 16:05:36 GMT

In May 2005, Aleksandra Mir (whom captured me for the past few days) gathered sixteen assistants for a Sharpie drawing marathon. They produced twenty huge (190" x 120") drawings outlining the map of the USA, each with commentary on subjects such as the Civil War, space shuttles, state flowers, the Bicentennial, the draft, road tripping, love, God, and the baby boom. Read and see more

The End, marker on paper, 190 x 120".

Aleksandra Mir
Beauty Free, ink marker/paper, 120" by 190" 2005

You Are My Roadtrip, marker on paper, 190 x 120".

Disaster Map

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 11:57:12 GMT

This is not fictional:

"Several thousand litres of slightly radioactive water leaked in the second unit of nuclear power plant Temelin, southern Bohemia, on Wednesday afternoon (03/08/2006), Temelin spokesman Milan Nebesar told CTK today. Radioactive substances have not leaked to the surrounding countryside or outside the zone monitored by the plant. Neither has the leak threatened the health of Temelin staff, Nebesar said. The water leaked in two rooms which are hermetically sealed with no staff inside. "The cause was open manually operated fittings used for an occasional supply of siphons of one the auxiliary systems of one of the collecting tanks which are not part of the reactor's pressure unit," Nebesar said, stressing the accident happened outside the primary circuit. The staff was probably checking the supply system and did not fully tighten the fittings, he added. The State Authority for Nuclear Safety (SUJB) said in a preliminary statement that the incident had little significance but that it would look into it. "The frequency of the problems is quite high but it is nothing to speak about from the safety standpoint," said SUJB chairwoman Dana Drabova. The plant's second unit operates at the planned output. The first unit is due to be shut down because of fuel replacement carried out every year."

This is a part of a site that reports daily of all sort of disaster happening around the world. the site present a world map, with icons that helps understand the high risks that currently are happening, each icon, sends you to a detailed page, with the usage of google map that place the disaster right where it is, while giving a description of the disaster that happened such as Damage level, Cause of event and so on.

Visit the Alert Map Site, for an intriguing glance at what's going on around the world, you may want to give it a click.

via wohba, pruned

H A N D M A D E M A P S

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 12:08:08 GMT

H A N D M A D E M A P S (VIA)

GREECE

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 11:00:25 GMT

ABTEILUNG SDSEE. Kirsten Pieroth, 2002

[The largest islands of Greece and their coastal waters. I. The islands II. The coastal waters]

source: Global Navigation System: Palais de Tokyo: Site de Crיation Contemporaine. Paris: ֹditions Cercle d'Art, 2003. pp 174-176. via

George Eliot

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 10:56:34 GMT

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

From Daniel Deronda, bk.3, ch.24, 1876.

CITY INCOME DONUTS MAPS

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 07:22:17 GMT

While there is still War going on in Israel
I am taking a breake from it all with some escapist item such as this:

These beautiful maps show the distribution of income (per capita) around the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the US (all those with population greater than 2,000,000). The goal was to test the "donut" hypothesis -- the idea that a city will create concentric rings of wealth and poverty, with the rich both in the suburbs and in the "revitalized" downtown, and the poor stuck in between.

This does seem to have some validity in older cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago, but in newer cities it is not the case. Instead of donuts, one finds "wedges" of wealth occupying a continuous pie-slice from the center to the periphery.

Just from visual inspection, it also seems that poverty donuts all tend to have about a five-mile radius, regardless of the size of the city. Perhaps this is the practical limit for commuting without a car?

All maps are at the same scale, and all use the same color values for income. via radicalcartography

via radicalcartography

ActiveMap: Hizballah Rocket and Missile Ranges against Israeli Targets

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 09:26:28 GMT

a Link to The active Map

via debka

MERIDIANS

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:07:40 GMT

“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

A project by jeremy wood: 'The meridian lines are the edges of maps that don’t meet up. The two standards are marked on the drawing to indicate a range of agreement between local and worldwide systems. As I walked between the meridians from south to north I traced out Melville’s words amongst the streets and over parks and golf courses.
It was drawn along a 12km strip of south London where the east-west hemispheres cannot be straddled.'

MERIDIANS Cotton print (8.5 x 1.4 m)

More interesting parts of the project can be found at the artist page

This work was commissioned by the University of Minnesota Design Institute for
“ELSE/WHERE MAPPING: New Cartographies of Networks and Territories”. (A book i must add to my wishing list) Published by the Design Institute and distributed by University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

and i'll end this post as well with Jeremy wood words:

"Our personal navigation is evolving from looking up at the stars through
light-years of space to looking down at tiny handheld digital devices.
Can we find true places without looking at where we are going?"

Creative War Map

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 07:33:38 GMT

William Wiley, Creative War Map 2005 Tapestry 72 x 81 in. Edition of 6

Map War Rug

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:45:20 GMT

A Collection of War on Terror Rugs from the warrug site. History of Afghan War Rugs

Bright Blue Tora Bora War Rug with US / Afghan Flag Banner

Tora Bora Afghanistan map rug. The B-52s are nice along the top and in the map, with a symbol of an explosion from a bomb in the mountain region. The highlight of this rug is the Chinook helicopter. It is marked with the text "air plane" between the Chinook and an RPG. There is the text 'Rout of terror with help of America and Britain' as well as the names of the bordering countries.

Also included within the map itself is the phrase 'terrorism torabora'. This war rug is labeled as being made in Afghanistan. It marks the date '2001' along with 'USA' referring to the time when the US first invaded Afghanistan. There is some text in Farsi towards the top, as well.
The flags represented in this war rug are the Afghani flag and the flag right above the RPG is not clearly defined, but the experts in our office believe it is supposed to be the American flag. watch more

Contours and Colonies

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 20:44:32 GMT

Looking at the silk map dress belonging to Mrs. Jeanne Terwen-de Loos, 1945, Tailored by Jeanne Terwen-de Loos, Sewn on cast iron treadle sewing machine. Reminded me of a work by Dan Mills

After the capitulation of the Japanese in 1945, the internment camps in the Dutch East Indies were liberated. Most people returned to impoverished living conditions and had to make do with whatever was available. In need of new clothing, Jeanne van Leur-de Loos (Mrs. Terwen-de Loos), a Dutch art historian, purchased a bundle of silk RAF parachutists' maps at a flea market. From the maps, depicting parts of Burma, French Indo-China, Siam, India and China, she fashioned a silk dress.

See as well History of Fabric Map production

Dan Mills Continent, 1998 collage and mixed media

WAR ON TERROR

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:00:00 GMT

All roads lead to Iran.

Hamas and Hezbolah are backed by Syria and all of them are in turn funded and supported by Iran. It's time to end the niceties and just get to the root of the problem. read more

The US has outlined its two goals - first to shut down terrorist camps and bring terrorists to justice, and second to prevent countries that Washington says are stockpiling chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from

threatening the US and the world. Click on the map to find out more

WAR MAPS

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 14:46:08 GMT

Alarming situation in Israel and in the middle east.

what to do, the more it gos, the more i feel the Too many Arabs are not aiming for peace. and if the western world thinks for a moment it only regards Israel, the world is terribly mistaken. This Arab extremist, are Satanic forces, that will not stop with us Israelis, their appetite for killing and governing and forcing their primitive believes all over the world - this hunger is being feed by us western and risk to destroy us, if we don't wake up, gather forces and destroy all this malicious forces.

~~~

I found this maps that demonstrate the situation and hypothetical dangers. the maps via Heartland - a journal of geopolitics.

Different meanings of the War on Terror in the American, Chinese and Russian views. The logistics of transnational terrorist networks. The international routes of nuclear material trafficking. View Map »

The worst-case scenario in the Middle East region: a conflict involving Iran, Israel, Russia and the United States. Teheran’s strong and weak points, position of main Russian and American bases, US supporting countries in the region, Israel’s retaliation power (including air strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites) and geo-strategic weaknesses. View Map »

New York chocolate map

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:16:28 GMT

Chocolate and Maps, 2 great passion of mine. from large to tiny.
Maps, what can I say, I chase them, map them truly love them, making many of my virtual most passionate journeys with.
Chocolate, The sin sublime, Food For The Goddesses.

Soleil Noir - Dark

So i was trying to see how can one connect them both:
So it has come to this. Chocolate, a comfortable world that for many people exists between the downscale joy of a Kit Kat bar and the exhilaration of a well-made ganache, now requires a sommelier.

Chocolate map by Bill Yosses; photographs by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Grignotine - Dark

New York chocolate map

Now it is time for me to dive into a Dark Pacifique

message in a bottle

Sun, 09 Jul 2006 10:52:05 GMT

A romantic idea translated into an interesting modern with cutting edge technology:

British artist Layla Curtis defamiliarizes maps, reflecting on our wishful attempts to chart the world.

On 25th May 2004, fifty bottles containing messages were released into the sea off the south-east coast of England near Ramsgate Maritime Museum, Kent. The intended destination of the bottles is The Chatham Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. The islands, which are 800km east of mainland New Zealand, are the nearest inhabited land to the precise location on the opposite side of the world to Ramsgate Maritime Museum. It is anticipated that the bottles may be found several times before reaching the Chatham Islands.

Several of the bottles are being tracked using GPS technology and are programmed to send
their longitude and latitude coordinates back to Ramsgate every hour. The information they transmit is used to create a real time drawing of their progress.

Live GPS Drawing, installation view

Each non-GPS bottle contains a message from residents of Ramsgate to the residents of The Chatham Islands, a pencil and an instruction leaflet which requests anyone finding a bottle to report to this website and record where and when the bottle was found. In addition they are requested to document their find on
a form inside the bottle before returning the bottle to the sea to continue its journey. Details of found bottles may be viewed on the view found bottles page.

via the promissing book Else/Where: Mapping — New Cartographies of Networks and Territories

Mapping sound

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 17:34:14 GMT

Simon Elvins is a student of Communication Art and Design. He is concerned with sound as an ubiquitous force. Through a series of projects he has been documenting how sound is an often ignored dimension of our physical environment.

Silent London (image below) plots quiet spaces in the English capitol using noise level data. An embossed print shows quiet areas raised up from the paper, bringing them to the attention of the viewer, while noise areas become blanked out valleys.

His FM Radio Map plots the location of FM commercial and pirate radio stations within London. The poster serves a dual purpose. On the one hand it plots the physical locations of commercial and pirate FM radio stations broadcasting in London. But circuits conductive pencil lines placed on the back of the map also turns it into a physical interface. Using a modified radio the map can be aurally “navigated” by placing metail contacts on points on the map.

Each map is made site specific by connecting only the stations that can be received in that location. This is done by drawing power lines in pencil on the back of the map, which conducts electricity from the radio to the front of the poster.Placing a metal contact onto each point enables us to listen to the sound broadcast live from that location. At his site more interesting projects

via we-make-money-not-art, and via generatorx

how we live within maps

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 11:35:48 GMT

Esther Dyson is talking about the mapping new horizons " I'm sitting at Where 2.0, the O'Reilly conference, hearing about all the great things that are finally happening around maps and all things geo...

So the *new* news, I'd venture, is thinking about how we live within maps: What are the links between the virtual representations of the real world such as Google Earth, and the virtual worlds we build and then represent, such as Second Life? ..

In the end, they are linked by the people who use them, who persist from place to place, whether real, virtual representation of real or totally virtual...

One company featured is Plazes.com, which allows a user to create an identity/profile built around all the "plazes" (events and locations, including virtual ones) he has been to. ..

plazes

There is of caurse Mappr(only USA) map here below, an interactive environment for exploring place, based on the photos people take.

The pininthemap - is a service that allows you to easily send links to maps with your own info attached

Most known probably is Frappr (Friend Mapper) lets you see the zip code where your friends live or work, letting you find out who works in the office building next door and who lives in the apartment complex across the street. Blogers can create for example a map at frappr - letting their visitors to place them selves with in this map, and create a visual community of interests that is spread also geographically

image of gravitylens blog's in Frappr. each pin represent a visitor of the blog.

An other project is "MapBuilder lets you tag locations on a map and publish it on your own site.

The are many project similar and i bet in this very moments new project are being worked on, with the mapping concept as a stucture them in it, in future i believe mapping will be assimilated in our every day usadge of interent. "But creating an identity and earning a reputation is real work, and why do it over and over? Why not be able to take it with you?" - sais Esther Dyson, and i tend to agree with her and can't wait to see the future ahead.

Native American Mapping Traditions

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 07:47:51 GMT

Native Americans had different mapping traditions. Their traditions were not based on the precise measuring of physical space. They were based on how much time it took to travel, what happened along the way, and what was important to remember about places. The maps were narratives that reflected the seasons of the year and events. Some of the maps were histories of the people.

Bia, untitled drawing 1970s. from beyond the milky way: Hallucinatory Imagery of the Tukano Indians.

G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, an Anthropologist who lived among the Turkano Indians of the Amazon, asked some of them - to convey what they had experienced after using narcotic plants and being guided by thier Shamans into ritualistic visions the rusulting in vision maps such as the one above.

via the book: You are Here by Katharine Harmon

Transport maps

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 10:05:28 GMT

Transport maps and timetables help people work out how to get from A to B using buses, trains and other forms of public transport. But what if you don't yet know what journey you want to make? How can maps help then?

This may seem a strange question to ask, but it is one we all face in several situations:

Where would I like to work? , Where would I like to live? , Where would I like to go on holiday?

These are much more complicated questions than those about individual journeys, but one thing they all have in common is transport: can I get to and from the places I'm considering quickly and easily?

This maps show one way of answering that question. Using colours and contour lines they show how long it takes to travel between one particular place and every other place in the area, using public transport. They also show the areas from which no such journey is possible, because the services are not good enough.

via thingsmagazine

Michael the Cartographer

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 10:20:52 GMT

Michael the Cartographer's date of birth is unknown. He lived in isolation and spent long periods of time making invented maps which he always eventually destroyed. These maps were inspired by the imagination and bore no relation to geography.

Michael the Cartographer. Untitled undated, Musgrave Kinley Outsider Collection
Felt tip on paper

From Inner Worlds Outside - an Exhibition taking place till July

global evolutionary map

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 07:45:55 GMT

A global evolutionary map reveals new insights into our last common ancestor

In 1870 Ernst Haeckel mapped the evolutionary relationships of plants and animals in the first 'tree of life'. Since then scientists have continuously redrawn and expanded the tree adding microorganisms and using modern molecular data, yet, many parts of the tree have remained unclear. Now a group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] in Heidelberg has developed a computational method that resolves many of the open questions and produced what is likely the most accurate tree ever. The study gives some intriguing insights into the origins of bacteria and the last common universal ancestor of all life on earth today.

via

The Mannahatta Project

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 07:23:15 GMT

I will not be surprise if Manhattan is the most popular city for modern mapping depictions(artistic as well as others - like demographic and such..), though, i haven't visited it, i can understand why.

here is an other Mannhattan project: The Mannahatta Project is constructing maps of what Manhattan was like in 1609, before its "discovery" by Henry Hudson. "The Mannahatta Project will help us to understand, down to the level of one city block, where in Manhattan streams once flowed or where American Chestnuts may have grown, where black bears once marked territories, and where the Lenape fished and hunted."

The Pentagon's New Map

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 07:15:38 GMT

From the book, The Pentagon's New Map, the digital version of the map by Thomas P.M. Barnett. The map illustrates his cutting-edge approach to globalization, which combines security, economic, political, and cultural factors to do no less than predict and explain the nature of war and peace in the twenty-first century.

The map divides the world into two parts: “the functioning core” and the “non-integrated gap.”

The core consists of economically advanced or growing countries that are linked to the global economy and bound to the rule-sets of international trade. The rest of the world is the non-integrated gap – outside the global economy, not bound to the rule-sets of international trade.

via

Ocean-Chart

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 12:16:41 GMT

via you are here