Do you have a photograph of a place in Derby? Then upload it to here http://mappingderby.com/, have it geotagged, printed and added to this brilliant, low-fi, photographic map of derby.
'
FORMAT needs your help to Map Derby. Throughout FORMAT Festival we will be asking Derby visitors and residents to photograph the city streets under the theme of ‘Right Here, Right Now’. Each photograph will be uploaded and geo-tagged to create a unique map of the city. Give us your thoughts, memories and inspirations of the city.
There will be a growing installation in The Royal Insurance Buildings, 2 The Strand, Derby where a 3D map of the city will grow day by day.' http://mappingderby.com/
Ok, its not completely low fi they use a lovely printer called a poga printer that uses paper that has the ink inside it so no need to replace cartridges, apparently £8.99 for about 70 sheets (I realise I sound like I just discovered apps for the first time). But I love the pins and pictures relating to that area on a lovely a3 enalrging, hockney-joiner, A-to-Z photocopies that arent quite as smooth as google street view but I think adds to its charm and beauty with the handmade approach.
I also love that pins go off the map into unchartered terrains and only the photographs are the evidence of it. It is wierd for an exhibition to be on woodchip wallpaper I must admit and i suppose the only thing I didnt like was that the map had gaps because of the walls, couldnt orientate myself, not that i'm that familiar with Derby, but maybe i'm being picky. They have tried to adapt a space to present this project and the online digital geo-tagged images on a google map are great.
Format Festival was excellent too, with collaborations on projects with Magnum.
http://www.formatfestival.com/
Mapping Derby
Map the Psychogeography
Walk: Poem Pictures 2010 is a beautifully bound and lovely exploration/combination of words and drawings from Ian Mcmillan & Iain Nicholls.
I love these, a visual map, dialogue of their local area. very abstract, quirky collection of drawings and words combined. There are a few and suggest you try contact the creators to see if they have made any more books. Really plays with the space like Mallarme and abstract.
Concrete Poetry. They also eloquently describe their process.
Ian used to say as young lad ' "I'm going in the garden to think"
The garden didnt really help the thinking, though it was more the walking helped and still helps my creative process. Thinking somehow doesnt feel like the right word, its a kind of drifting or dreaming. Somehow the mind is going for a walk as well as the legs'
Ian Mcmillan, http://www.ian-mcmillan.co.uk
Related articles
- My back-to-front life | Ian McMillan (guardian.co.uk)
- An Anxiety-Powered Map (psfk.com)
- Mormon Concrete Poetry (motleyvision.org)
Periodic Table of Controllers
by member mike. check out the other periodic's here Periodic table of Typefaces.
There's been a recent flurry of discoveries, it can be subverted into so many forms. I quite like this Console controllers, makes me nostalgic to SNES. Check this post too, Nintendo Map.
Great to visualise the marks on a pad without the shape and just the buttons. Spotted on vi.sualise.us great sort of clipmark, image bookmarking tool. great way to compile inspiration. Saves searching through links, or places you discovered work.
Text 2 Mind Map
This is an excellant, easy to use online mind mapping tool.
Visualise your ideas, thoughts in the text editor on the left, to create a new node/level simply use TAB key and to go back a level, new main node BACKSPACE key, like you do in WORD. Honestly, you need to nothing of design, mind mapping, visualising and it creates the top map that you can view full screen with the controls on the right.
As for the quality of the visualisation, the more TAB levels you create the colours automatically create give you an excellant single tone harmony (faber birren) and it changes in its size both working together to create a very effective hierachy of information. You can change the colours.
The functionality is excellant, simple, clear and to make it transferrable from their site you can easily click Save Map and it generates a flattened jpeg that opens in a new window, so allow popups.
To make changes just tweak your text editor on left and click convert to mind map.
I shouldn't go over the top, but to find such a easy, effective, simple to use online tool is great for those who prefer the speed of digital manipulation, than that of on paper and then having to scan/photog to share digitally, very good.
I just shared some ideas of my research from particular books to test its visualisation effects.
Thanks Arnaud, again...
found here: http://as-map.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/12/1077/
Cartographic Shapes
this is a great application for facebookm, called Geo Challenge. helps you learn your countries/geography starting off with just the shape and fading in the ajoining/nearby countries to help you realise the paticularly country. they have a round for flags, and cities (usually guessing myself) placing where they are on the world map.
great game and great tool for learning. it helps me with my pathetic knowledge of world geography/cities, although i'm not that bad at flags.
also look at this noisy britain - ben terret excellant post by strange maps.
Cartographic Knowledge
Taking into account that I will eventually being able to get my teeth into Information Visualisation: Using Vision to think by card, mackinlay & shneirderman, I thought it would be a great time to post these beauties mapping (structuring) the interrelationships of some of the foremost figures in information graphics, complexity, design, visualization from knowledgecartography.org
These images are screenshots taken from ATLAS, the application that's being developed 'to explore the possibilities of the application of a cartographic metaphor to the realms of knowledge', sort of thinking with maps (cartographic cognition), a form of visual thinking.
'The concept of atlas in this context doesn’t depict as much a list of maps, but rather a system of representations of space, a communication device aimed at representing complex contexts through the use of many partial overlapping narrations: a network of maps, diagrams, texts and peritexts, combined together to describe the space of research in its multifaceted aspects'.
I like this idea of overlapping narrations such as maps (a kind of geographic terrain styled space, as with these examples), diagrams, text (words layered on top of a space), signs (ok the words are signs but I mean iconic/symbolic, those associated with isometric's/otto neurath).
These overlapping narratives fits well with Neuraths isometric's which were a 'picture language as a helping language into which statements may be from all the normal languages of the earth' and was made to highlight commonality rather than differences. There are some already nice mixtures of these narration tools created with World Wireless Map, and telegeography's work Internet Undersea Map (crow, 2006, p. isotype/section)
These narrations serve as a maps (a communication device's) language which they describe really well as these communication devices being 'a mature representation artefact, aware of its own language and its own rhetoric, equipped with it its own tools, languages, techniques and supports. A model that recovers the narrative abilities of pre-scientific maps and presents itself not as a mere mimetic artefact, but as a poetic and political tool'.
It is excellant that use the terms 'mimetic' & 'artefact' as these associate (connote) nicely by grounding it back into art/design with mimetic a term that arnheim would use describing a social biology of images with the level of detail an image would depict the object in reality, giving us levels of signs with iconic, semi-symbollic & symbollic that brings in the linguistic field associated with saussaures & pierce in Visible Signs by David Crow. Artefact really works well as these communication devices serve as 'research through art and design’, ‘where the end product is an artefact – where the thinking is, so to speak, embodied in the artefact’ (Frayling, 1993/4, p.5). Poetic brings in the wonderful calligrams and concrete poetry depicted and experimented really well here Mississippi Type Visual by andy proehl.
'The map as narration is thus the expression of a communicative purpose. Just like a text, the map makes selections on reality, distorts events, classifies and clarifies the world in order to selections better tell a particular aspect of a territory, an event, a space.' they help to simplify (clarifiy) the complexity of a particular territory, space (which could be data/stats, text
in book, geographic landscape i.e. uk, china, france, the world).
'In this context, the term ‘map’ is a synonym of visual narration of space: a cultural artefact created by an author to describe a space according to an objective.' a tool for the production of meaning that satisfies the map designer, the communication device's designer objective.
‘[O]ne important goal for map designers should be to understand the cognitive processes being used to process spatial information’ this is extremely useful and necessary for map designers in creating maps and the spatial arrangement of the knowledge (Wood & Keller, 1996, p 213).
This is known as Spatial Cognition,
‘Spatial Cognition is concerned with the acquisition, organization, utilization, and revision of knowledge about spatial environments’ (Universität Bremen, 2007, p 1).
As for the design for these visual maps, communication device examples they have a fabulous soft light blue background with a darker graduation borrowed from relief shading in geographic mapping to depict the the level of focus for the paticular area of field such as Design or Information visualisation. The person's (the iconic isotype/shape of a person) spatial position between the position of these poles/fields gives the viewer/map reader a insight/understanding as the area that that person is likely to be associated with and in turn the particular expertise/slant/view/interests that person might have in their writings when reading.
The use of a clean, un-clustered (white) space lets the user easily focus in on a name they might have a familiarity with for me card, shnierderman, mackinlay, tufte (postiontied between info vis and design, quite rightly), remo burkhard (from vizthink conference recently) who I didn't realize was also inclined towards knowledge, and martin j eppler with his joint creation of Periodic Table of Visualisation Methods.
Atlas is a great tool from knowledge cartography.
Well with this fabulous overview I look forward to some great insights/answers to my research from,
Mississippi Type Visual
I love this. real triumph to concrete poetry. mallarme or apollinaire would really applaud this visualisation, clean, informative design/map. I agree it works well as a free form poem, (as a western reading, its in english) top left to bottom right with how its composed. I love using type to represent space. type/typography as image. still a sketch... looks good.
'This is the latest map in my "Typography of Place" series... a map of the cities and towns that lie along the Mississippi River. The last two maps I did in this series (Silk Road and the Aleutian Islands) were very horizontal. So I wanted to try one with a vertical format.One of the things I am trying to achieve in these maps is to have the words that make up the map read as a sort of free-form poem.
In this one, I think that comes across particularly strong since you can "read" it from the river's source in the top left to the mouth in the bottom right.I have not color coded the place names on this map as I did in the Aleutian Islands Map but the same theme is present with many towns having Native American names (in addition to the river itself).
French names are also quite present as you travel down the river. Then there is the intriguing sequence of Egyptian-inspired names that includes Memphis, Thebes, Angola, and Cairo.This is still a sketch but I assembled the base map by drawing the river and placing the cities on the appropriate side of the river to try and stay geographically accurate. But I knew as I was building it that I was going to center the towns on the middle of the river to emphasize the meandering path the river takes as it starts in northern Minnesota and works its way all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. '
found here: http://flickr.com/photos/amapple/2546733739/in/set-72157602275753358/
check his blog: http://randomaxis.blogspot.com/2008/06/mississippi-river-typemap-this-is.html
Media Map
This is a brilliant, detailed map of business's, brands, owners featuring news corp owning BskyB, 20th century fox films, fox or that Disney own dreamworks, miramax, hollywood pictures.
It is an endless discoverey with a conveneint key to guide you through Bureau d'etudes intricate pictorgraphs.
Microsoft own Corbis, or that Viacom own ABC, MTV, CBS, Nickelodeon & Paramount Pictures.
It is done in a similar vein to my Brands Visualisation although by far more complex and spanning a greater number of brands.
The pictographs a bold black and orange runing through it connecting certain people. Its not just America through there is Silvio Berlusconi who owns AC Milan in Italy, & AGC (Autorita per le Garanzie nelle Communicazoni).
It is magnificent and this is not the only one, there is one for Military & Technology, Banques (Banks), Pharmacuticals...
found: http://utangente.free.fr/index2.html
3D CV Map
Cartographer of Complexity. This map is brilliant on so many levels. It has a timeline at the heart mapping its creator's, Arnaud Velten, career from 1992 - 2008.
In a similar vein to the previously posted Life Map by Ritwik Dey it colour codes his subject/interests & locations in to 5 colours Green, Light Green, Yellow, Orange & Red (top left). These are then used as a key to his timeline in the middle near the red circle for 'You are here' I think vous etes ici translates to, my french is limited (but you could presume to start there as it is the first, bold red graphic epicentre almost).
Under the subjects headings for Graphics/Illustration Green are Typography, Creation, & Mise en Page (I think 'read the page' similar to mise en scene). This then progresses to Communication light green, Multimedia yellow, Marketing orange & (I guess, weak french) Intelligence strategies red which is how Arnaud has arrived at Cartographer of Complexity demystifying problems (again, weak french).
In the top right it is very compact and gives extreme depth to this spatial information visualisation (infographic) not through the perception of 3d depth in the 2d form (which is executed brilliantly btw), but actual quantity of data are his competencies of software understanding, frontpage, dreamweaver, corel (similair to freehand), photoshop, flash, indesign, after effects, premiere...
The centre steming from his timeline link off to his jobs, blog interests... so much detail, wish I could read french better as i would probably understand a lot more.
I wonder if his sponsor at the bottom/center, International Bank of Art Money exists.
Absolutely Fantastic Map.
Real Pleasure, thankyou Arnaud.
Featured Here: http://visualthinkmap.ning.com/photo/photo/show?id=2168552%3APhoto%3A543
Found (sent) here: www.as-map.com/ISOMAP.html
High Res PDF here: http://www.as-map.com/ISOMAP-ARNAUD_VELTEN_2007.pdf