Manchesters creative network has been mapped with terrains for both geographically and digitally by Laura Mansfield. I think every city should adopt it accross the world. Not enough creative ecologies being devised for area's.
It has a lovely clean simplicity to it that lets you focus in on the colours / numbers for the key and even though it is large you can fold away and pocket it. Great for a creative tourist. Might be limited with its geographic landmarks to contextualises where abouts these places are but with the again organised simple, alphabetised, postcodes, addresses and websites on the back to type into your gps enabled phone it recovers in its accessibility and functional level.
'Contemporary Cartography //01 is the first in a series of unique pocket maps detailing the plethora of contemporary arts activity occurring within Manchester and Salford. Listing established organisations next to independent initiatives the pocket map gives an overview of what makes up, and contributes to, the creative ecology of Greater Manchester. It is a gesture towards documenting the abundance of activity occurring throughout the city and we are well aware that we may have missed off some people, places and events as the creative community continues to grow. If you are not listed on the map and would like to be, please visit MMDC website and get in touch'
I wonder if the cartographer Laura Mansfield did the data mining of places her self or if she had help compiling. But it is lovely with the dots, wavy lines, +++ plus marks for texture really soft with the odd geographic location in type. here is her description,
'I recently developed a pocket map of Manchester's creative economy with MA students on the Design Lab course at Manchester Metropolitan University. The intention of the map is to present the range of contemporary arts activity occurring within Manchester and the spaces and facilities that support new work - listing established organisations next to independent initiatives to give an overview of what makes up, and contributes to, the creative economy of the city. A preview of the map was distributed as part of the Manchester Weekender, a city wide event on 1st, 2nd and 3rd of October.'
She has done some more beautiful maps, I saw the one in corridor 8 paper featured at her site in collaboration witha few people notably Dust (who did a beautiful fanzine collaboration for pete mckee at A Month of Sundays gallery in sheffield) and her cycling map looks pretty good and may get blogged here too when chance.
Going to Carto Narratives in Zurich soon (11th june - 13th june) to participate in a workshop with some great people, William Cartwright, Jeremy Wood, Sebastien Caquard... loads of others I've still to have a good read of their proposals. Read mine on augmented reality/hyper real/emotion + joy
Share your views of Bachelard as I am reading up on how he perceives people can enhance their happiness from spaces... and how they engage with a space... many more other people but still getting my head around him, and how he fits with my project...
Checkout an interview of us (shift-space.co.uk) describing our practice, zines, little gems app, vb workshop and general views on education/visual practice...
Working in a collective with my colleagues, Shift-Space are very excited to be a part of the futureeverything festival taking place in Manchester in May. Natalie aka, the shrieking violet has invited us to run some workshops as part of the fanzine convention taking place on the Saturday and we also plan to have our own display of zines and other printed ephemera.
‘Alice in apps land: explore your smart phone and your environment’, presented by Visual Think Map in collaboration with Shift Space.
During this workshop you will discover the local landscape through digital stories and learn more about apps and the functionality of how your phone can enliven the world around you. Through an interactive and engaging tour of the area near Victoria Baths you will discover and digitally collate, using your phone, a variety of people’s memories and your own as we introduce you to new apps and narratives, including old photos and memorabilia of the area. We’ll finish by making an interactive map where everyone can share what they’ve made and then print a map. DON’T FORGET TO BRING YOUR PHONE AND WE’LL SEE YOU THERE!
'Whilst conventional maps show static architecture and exclude humans, this art project presents a vision of Stockport that represents the emotions, opinions and desires of local people. Over a period of two months in summer 2007, about 200 people took part in six public mapping events. This map collects together and shows the results of the two activities: Drawing Provocations & Emotion Mapping.'
The sort of tubes/pillars represent the emotions of people at particular locations using the GPS/GRS device invented by christian nold. Its no surprise that Christian has worked with looking into perceptions of an area as he had done similar when featured in http://vism.ag/vol2 and he has done other areas.
This is a very cool video. Two lives, synced, with timing/composition/speed/angles. Wow.
I wanted more. The angling for the plane is measured, the turning of the bus, the lovely jump in time zones/locations as a cyclist seemingly jumps through a crack linking these two locations.
Love it! Originally saw it on amazing films interludes on channel 5 (uk)
This is a great project on mapping the history and narratives of a journey/terrain. A sort of map that is more interesting than the territory that Houellebecq proposed.
Looking to use video and record data on a journey, much like Stephen Shore has done on his journey's across america but only through photography. Just multimedia and more forms of it. I'd like to merge the projects Poetry Atlas & History Pin and maybe this atlascine.org that I recently saw but not just Canada.
See http://artcarto.wordpress.com/cartography-narratives/ for more about Story Maps.
More about the project 'Jay Crim and Shekar Davarya spent the summer of 2002 driving across the country on Route 66, collecting interviews with the people who live, work and travel on the old road. The audio, video and images on this map are the result of that summer, and offer a glimpse into what life was like on the now-decommissioned highway and what remains for those who still travel the road. The America's Highway project was intended to create both a history lesson on America of the past as well as a travel guide for visitors on 66 today. The work was supervised by Professor Bill Leslie, History of Science Department and Mike Reese, Center for Educational Resources, The Johns Hopkins University.'
I shared this page because mapping the knowlegde, synapses in the brain and thoughts, to try represent the self in some visual and communicable level inspired me in my studies. To present them to provide understanding of my knowledge is what got me into mind mapping. Essays of just long written linear text of roughly 12 words-per-line, 500 words-per-page, just isn't enough for me. Macluhan studied the mapping of the brain and called it Pathogrpahy, and i'm sure i'll be digggin deeper into his research. Dont want to spoil the book but phew, macluhan had an interesting perspective on women... reflected by the times i suppose.
Saw his book from this brilliant documentary here, cant believe you can sit have a coffee while a chosen book is freshly printed. (smell the middle) Long live the printed book!
By the way just found this beautiful tutorial from these: here
This ad for Mercedes Benz is really intriguing how google maps vernacular infiltrates reality. Escape The Map
Its been out a while the ad and had meant to post sooner. It is intriguing because I imagine that a projection on the road with the street view would help with sat nav's as opposed to trying to glance to your right to see a sat nav. You could just stare at the street. Would be cool.
But from a mapping point of view I was interested as it mixes the hyper real through the vernacular of google maps with reality. Now from my experiences I had learnt that hyper real was associated with the postmodern and specifically baudrillard 'the map preceedes the territory'. Jean Baudrillard argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal.
Sebastien points out an interesting view of the story map, this is the fictional representation, the story map as Sébastien Caquard puts it;
‘map is more interesting than the territory because it is an idealized simplification of a complex – and often depressing – reality. This resonates with the idea that in the postmodern world most of the time the hyper-real appears joyful beside the deterioration of the environment to which it refers (Westphal, 2007).’
See now this idea of the postmodern hyerreality being joyful is what I remember with Baudrillard and simulacra's, but I wasn't aware of the map is more intersting than the territory a point illustrated by the latest novel by Michel Houllebecq entitled La Carte et le Territoire (The Map and the Territory) (2010).
I'm not sure how we're supposed to weigh between Baudrillard or Houllebecq, but like how Sebastien says they follow with this idea of the joyful presentations of reality. Many of the these joyful selections that have been crowd sourced by google maps.
'Paraphrasing Houellebecq, in other words, ‘Google Maps are more interesting than the territory’.'
This leaves me very intrigued that the story maps that Google are providing are more interesting than reality, much in the repsect that this Escape the Map ad by Mercedes Benz particularly realises well.
It makes me want to visit, or at least try to read the videos / papers that transpire from this: Cartography & Narratives
Meanwhile, read more about the different perspectives on the map and the territory here
I have been trying to get Vism.ag/Vol 4 available in print away from P.O.Demand services and got decent prices too, but still trying to find investment to do a long enough run to realistically make it viable. But... I will try to get an ebook available of it soon and the reason I bring it up is that there are a few selections of work by Denis Wood in the online sample and there's a review of his book Everthing Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas that I'm sure will be of essential reading to cross reference with the thoughts of the Story Map and fictional cartography. (the word fictional still distracts me as google maps work on a degree of truth, they arent made up).
Anyhow, happy hols everyone and will try to get more posts up. In the mean time, follow @visualthinkmap on twitter for more of what I see, just less analysis.
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