Cartography » 2cultures.net(.au)

A new brand of cartographer

Mar 212013

Emily Underwood on new cartographers and the growing field:

Geographers have traditionally studied how the natural environment contributes to human society and vice versa, whereas cartographers have focused more explicitly on the art and science of mapmaking. Over the past couple of decades, a new field has emerged: geographical information systems (GIS), blending the study and expression of geographic information. Cartography and geography have overlapped and spawned innumerable subspecialties and applications. Modern geographers and cartographers are involved in diverse projects: tracking fleets of vehicles or products, helping customers locate a Dunkin' Donuts, modeling environmental scenarios such as oil spills, and studying the spread of disease.

You could substitute visualization and statistics for cartography throughout, and it'd almost all still be valid. The reoccurring theme is that although academic programs can be fine resources, most of your success has to do with what you can learn on your own, as data-related fields are changing fast.

Visualizing Geography: Maps, Space, Place, and Pedagogy

Academia, Cartography, digital humanities, geography, Mapping, maps, Visualization Comments Off

Mar 122013

Mapping technology has recently been the focus of much critical attention as evidenced by numerous efforts to develop new ways of visualizing physical and textual spaces. The proliferation of tools such as Neatline, The DM Project, Google Earth, and Walking Through Time has made mapping the stuff of both academic endeavours and everyday life.

Size Matters

Cartography, Geospatial and Temporal, GIS, map, Visualization, Visualization and Data Mining Comments Off

Mar 122013

In geography, size matters. On maps, large always wins over small. We’re human. We’re wired to quickly spot patterns and make visual comparisons. See Tufte, Edward.

Picture a map of your own state. How does it compare in size to the states next door, the largest states, the smallest, or Texas?

I recently joined with map-minded folks to build GeoTron 5000 to put the power of comparative geography and spatial literacy in hand. Choose two places and the GeoTron 5000 robot spins up two maps to show exactly how those places compare.

So what’s going on behind the scenes in GeoTron 5000 to enable these mappy comparisons?

GeoTron 5000 houses an international map library based primarily on Natural Earth, a fantastic public domain vector dataset. The Natural Earth maps were pre-processed using Quantum GIS geographic information systems software to present consistent comparisons of land area from California to Kyrgyzstan. International country lists and official land areas were harvested from the United Nations Statistics Division via their World Statistics Pocketbook and Demographic Yearbook. Domestic datasets are from the US Census.

GeoTron 5000 is free at the Apple App Store and includes all 50 US States and the District of Columbia. Additional geographies outside the USA are available for comparison via in-app purchase. The app requires no cell service, no internet connection, and no international data plan when traveling.

Travel is one of the best tests of our spatial literacy. When away from familiar territory we can use the size of places we know well to better understand places we’ve never visited. Travel guide books assume a high degree of spatial literacy when offering comparisons like “Germany is about half the size of Texas”. But spatial thinking is best served when we choose familiar frames of reference. For example, to understand the relative size of China’s Great Wall, HowBigReally.com displays the massive wall scaled and centered over any location, here Charlottesville, Virginia:

Visualizing comparative size and shape requires skill in spatial thinking. Packing a suitcase, parking a car, finding a restaurant, finding your car when leaving the restaurant…all involve visualizing spatial relationships based on size, distance, shape, and changing points of reference. Artsy infographics overlay the world on Africa and popular television explores Mercator’s map distortions. We’re all thinking spatially every day.

“Spatial literacy is the competent and confident use of maps, mapping, and spatial thinking to address ideas, situations, and problems within daily life, society, and the world around us.” – Diana Stuart Sinton, Geographer and Spatial Thinker

Universities host spatial studies centers , organize spatial studies conferences, and offer graduate level training in spatial literacy. And spatial literacy is a topic of growing academic focus beyond the higher ed classroom. Kids love maps. Using maps to illustrate comparative size promotes spatial thinking at an early age.

“Spatial thinking can be learned, and it can and should be taught at all levels in the education system.” - National Research Council

Much of Edward Tufte’s brilliant work on visual literacy is centered around maps. In Envisioning Information he writes of maps:

“No other method for the display of statistical information is so powerful.”

Scaled maps for geographic comparison using How Big Really or GeoTron 5000 inform spatial reasoning by answering the key question: compared to what?

Size matters.

[Cross-posted with johnston9494.blogspot.com]

On Mostly Cartographic Education

Academia, Cartography, design, digital humanities, Education, higher education, Mapping, teaching, Visualization Comments Off

Feb 232013

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on a few conversations that I’ve had with some friends (fellow grad students in geography) regarding cartography. The thing is, the topic of mapping is often a lowly one among my peers, and generally comes up in conversation via complaining about the mapmaking process. However, as someone who practices and enjoys map design, I’m never offended by their comments, but more curious about why they view mapmaking the way they do. Ok, I get it; we all have our likes, dislikes, and obligations.

Useful tool for map historians

Cartography, digital humanities, History, maps, open source, Software, Visualization Comments Off

Feb 172013

I’m always on the search for new cartography tools. Recently, I was visiting the webpage of a fellow cartographer (Bernhard Jenny) who often develops helpful open source software for terrain mapping, and I happily came across a new product called MapAnalyst. This application could be of particular importance to both cartographers and those in the humanities, especially map historians.

The purpose of MapAnalyst (a Java based application for all major operating systems) is to determine the accuracy of old maps, computing distortion grids and other useful information.

Denis Wood’s Dissertation – I Don’t Want To But I Will (PDF)

01 What's A Map?, 02 Why Are You Making Your Map?, 03 Mappable Data, 04 Map-Making Tools, Advocacy Maps, Cartography, Deep Map Thoughts, Denis Wood, maps, psychogeography Comments Off

Mar 282012

I Don’t Want To But I Will: Title Page of Denis Wood’s Dissertation

Throughout graduate school I heard tales of the Denis Wood’s outrageous dissertation, curiously titled I Don’t Want To But I Will. Of particular interest are the scathing Acknowledgments, where Denis took his advisors to task. A worn copy of the Acknowledgments was passed among grad students as a bit of intellectual contraband.

But the content was what was most important. It’s a crazy dissertation. It’s about maps, mental maps, getting kicked off a bus, psychogeography, single element veridicality analysis, Europe, cartography, Kevin Lynch, passed-out subjects, Peter Gould, psychogeomorphology, the Shirelles, and the invention of “Environmental” – a language for mapping. Among other things. It is driving the wrong way down the one-way-street of academia.

The dissertation was printed in a very limited number by the Clark University Cartographic Laboratory. Denis has recently made available a PDF of this never-really-in-print gem. I have reproduced Denis’ comments on the different chapters in the dissertation, along with links to the entire document and each chapter, from his web pages (here).

••••••••••

I DON’T WANT TO, BUT I WILL

By Denis Wood

1973

Download it by chapters (below) or as a single 685-page document.

The front matter, including the dedication (by the Shirelles), the notorious acknowledgements (my unhelpful faculty and the rare humans), credits (as in a movie), and Introduction (opening with Ed’s story, a night watchman on the edge of Castle Hill park, and going on to talk about psychogeography and various kinds of mental maps).

PART I: Psyching Up for the Trip (a sort of philosophy section).

Chapter 1: The Beginning of All This (“How would you like to go to Europe this summer?” Bob Beck asked me; and the design of the study).

Chapter 2: Some Relevant Ancestors (individual, consensual, and standard mental maps, Peter Gould, and Kevin Lynch; or, what passes in the trade for the “review of the literature”).

Chapter 3: The Study Tools (Bob and I invent Environmental a, a mapping language).

Chapter 4: The Study Starts Before the Trip (long-distance training in Environmental a and the “predictive morphologies” of London, Rome, and Paris).

PART II: The Trip or Denis’ Inferno (the novelesque part).

Chapter 5: What Others Have Thought of Travel (a bouquet of quotations about travel).

Chapter 6: A Terminal Wet Towel (Bob and I meet the Group L kids at Kennedy and what happens after that).

Chapter 7: A Day on a Tour (the first day: I will show you blood in a handful of data).

Chapter 8: Down and Out in London (the week in London).

Chapter 9: Parnassus in Innsbruck (and one of the kids ODs or, well, just passes out).

Chapter 10: When in Rome, Don’t Do as I Did (in which I get drunk and kicked off the bus).

Chapter 11: Kid’s Lib, or Aristocracy in Exile (in which the kids take control of the research and collect all the Paris data).

Chapter 12: Old Tours Never Die, They Just Fade Away (in which, months later, a bunch of us get together again for a weekend in New York).

PART III: After the Trip; or What’s in Klein’s Bottle (the “science” part of the dissertation).

Chapter 13: Tripping and Tracing through the Data (trace events; or the crumbs of the cookies left for Santa).

Chapter 14: The Content of the Tour (applying Lynchian content analysis to the traces left by the Group L kids).

Chapter 15: Travel Connections (or trying to wrap graph theory around the kids sketch maps).

Chapter 16: Hanging Out the Rivers to Dry (trying to read the maps through something I called single element veridicality analysis).

Chapter 17: Pagan Curves, Lincoln Variations, and Eber Aberrations (or the quest for the warped space of human experience and psychogeomorphology).

Chapter 18: Bigger is Better – Or Worse (you draw what you feel; or, the analysis of the areal and feelin overlays).

Chapter 19: You Are Where You Sit (the analysis of the bus seating charts and their relation to the maps; or, Fixers, Mixers, and Rangers).

Chapter 20: That’s the End of the Movie! ! ? ? ! ? ? (which is a whole long list of “conclusionettes” that concludes, “That the subject can have the first, last and most comprehensive word on the subject of the investigation itself, specifically that: I DIDN’T WANT TO, BUT I DID.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Stockport Narratives

abstract, Cartography, geographic, map, Narrative, Perception Comments Off

Mar 112012

Love this map made by Christian Nold.

6a8b517ae39fa019166755d551dba986 Stockport Narratives

http://stockport.emotionmap.net/background.htm

'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.

If you like this then you'll certainly want to have a read of his free pdf book of Emotional Cartography, http://emotionalcartography.net/EmotionalCartographyLow.pdf

Check out his projects here: http://www.softhook.com/

Literary and Cartographic Projections

Cartography, History, Literary Studies, Narrative, travel Comments Off

Jan 062012

The early novel was based upon and drew upon the textual traditions of descriptive travel writing, with the narrative structure of the novel mimicking the activity of travelling. The connection is so strong that travelling can be aligned with characteristics of narrative itself. As Paul Carter puts it, “voyaging and storytelling go together” (1998, p. 19). According to another critic, novels share a “spatial metaphor” with the accounts of voyages. The early novel, “more than any other genre,” is “spatial” (Freedman, 1968, p. 72). The spatial impulse is also illustrated when the protagonist takes on the role of the intrepid explorer, a position that removes the character from the familiarity of home and its known geographies and places them in unknown geographies as a discoverer.

Edinburgh Creative Map

Cartography, clean, Collaboration, constellations, creative, creativity, design, geography, information, interactive, knowledge, magazines, map, Mapping, Media, Museums, Nbsp Comments Off

Oct 292011

Edinburgh is the latest creative map to be rendered, vism.ag/edinburgh. Mapped in collaboration with creative-edinburgh.com launching Thursday 3rd November, 6 - 8pm at The Cube, 47 Leith Street, Edinburgh, EH1 3AT.

Identified as one of the 9 creative 'hotspots' in the UK by Nesta, this location has some great places on offer. From Edinburgh printmakers studio, Analogue Books, The Fruitmarket Gallery @fruitmarket to round the corner Stills photography gallery, there appears to be a lot of bustling creativity that the platform of creative-edinburgh.com @CreativeEdin will be sure to promote and keep you abreast of its output both nationally and internationally.

Creative Maps share knowledge of creative facilities in the world, or more specifically Edinburgh's area to help you in your creative and innovative endeavors.

Be it Galleries, Museums, Theaters, Bookshops, Arts Centers, Magazines, Studios, Design Companies, Craft Shops

Nearby on Thursday 3rd November, go check it out 6 - 8pm at The Cube, 47 Leith Street, Edinburgh, EH1 3AT

Check out the interactive map to see all the locations on Edinburgh's Creative Map vism.ag/edinburgh

Know any places in Edinburgh that aren't mapped? Sign up and add your own through vism.ag/sharegems

More info: @CreativeEdin

Poetry Atlas

art, Atlas, Cartography, Literature, map, Nbsp Comments Off

Oct 292011

When I started creative maps, I discussed with my colleague it would be good to show learners what poetry there was about their area to try and get them engaged with a range of creative inspiration and outlets. Behold I came across this:

2bc7fff28e18f314a1c8dca8853c7815 Poetry Atlas

Poetry has been geographically mapped with Poetry Atlas, not as clean and clear as the well presented HistoryView (Pin) those quill markers are just a bit too overpowering. But the info windows etc are equally great and like history pin it has accumulated quite a few writings about areas. They've even made a layar app or AR reality, as I would love to have ;o). They also to their credit make it really easy to explore their site searching location, browsing poems/ poets. Very Good.

http://www.poetryatlas.com/

Let the words of inspiration flow through your mind about your places, I experimented with this.

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