atlas(t)

map animation i

i guess it's what all the cool kids are doing these days: map animations. Anyway, I found a bunch of 'em on YouTube and will post them here over the next few days, probably with little commentary, unless needed. Please feel free to supply your own commentary below.

the mapping project

ah, the zeitgeist! Conceptual art, digital tools, mapping, and urbanism.

Quick, think of an undergraduate project you can put on YouTube that involves all of the above, but doesn't actually require a lot of thought or work! Make sure it's not very interesting, can be done in a single morning (as long as you have a boyfriend with a car -- or at least, a guy who wants to be your boyfriend with a car), and gets your face on YouTube. Extra points if you and the boyfriend/not-boyfriend have a conversation in the car about YouTube celebrity and you totally shut down his potential/not-quite insight about your reasons for doing this project on YouTube. Double extra points if you shut down his questioning of your method (even if it comes a bit late in the game.)

And the winner is ... Steph of Chicago, who google-mapped "Steph Chicago," took the first page of listings, printed out each letter and description individually, and then drove around Chicago taping the letters and descriptions to the actual buildings.

Yup. That's what she did.

Nope, she didn't do any research on the buildings. No, she didn't try to find out who the Stephs were that had made these buildings turn up on her google search (two of them might have been her.) No, she didn't go into the buildings looking for Steph. No, she didn't go into the buildings to try to connect with someone there and humanize the experience of traveling to the building. No, she didn't even think to improve the project by sheer volume (going through this process with twenty or thirty locations would somehow have made it more valid to me -- I dunno, maybe the persistence would have impressed me.) No, she didn't then show us a map of all the locations on the video (duh, why not?) No, she didn't take a picture of or videotape the building -- only of her print outs taped TO the building. The self-referentiality of this project would be sublime if it only went deeper. But the project is not only blindingly self-referential, it's also shallow.

Sigh, this is my first foray into YouTube mapping vids this year and I'm (clearly) disappointed. But I present this project anyway, in the hopes that some other, more deep-thinking -- or simply more enthusiastic -- student will see this, decide to answer some of the questions Steph was so assiduously avoiding, and then post an interesting project.

Drop a URL in comments if you do.

dave matthews gps

somehow, this just works for me. Except the part at the end where Dave Matthews actually shows up.

after sesshu foster

sad America, who will hold your Entropy Hand?

I will hold your Entropy Hand with Old World Simulacrum nestling your Adolescent Limbs.

I will hold your Entropy Hand with Airport Plaque sacred on your Haunted Asphalt.

I will hold your Entropy Hand with Jeepney Triumph remaking your Guilty Garbage.

I will hold your Entropy Hand with Crisp Canal Map logging your Lovely Bleeds.

 

I will hold your Entropy Hand with New World Simulacrum, spice for your Sand Foundation.

I will hold your Entropy Hand with Dried Tears Windshield for your Mourning Horizons.

your entropy hand

i think I've found my new favorite blog (sorry Pruned!):

I've been working with Kaya Press (I'm doing publicity for them, freelance) an awesome, high-quality indie book press for Asian/Pacific Islander/API diaspora books. They published poet/novelist Sesshu Foster's first collection of poems, City Terrace Field Manual, an amazing work of landscape writing about the people and stories that inhabit a particular piece of L.A.

Sesshu's also been on my hit list for a long time because his second book was the novel Atomik Aztex, an alternate history which switched a Latino L.A. meatpacker back and forth between two parallel universes: this one, and one in which he was an Aztec prince in a world in which the Aztecs had beaten the conquistadores and ended up an atomic power. So up my alley.

Anyway, I didn't know Sesshu had a blog, but someone pointed it out to me recently. There I found this wonderful photo-poem of infrastructure entropy and imagination, titled "Sad America, who will hold your Entropy Hand?" Lovely.

I supposed someone could make a book or zine out of this, but then you'd have to fuss with permissions, and expenses, and stuff. I think this is exactly the sort of art/writing that blogs enable, and I want to see more more more! I kiss it!

Enjoy.

atlas(t) is on twitter!

yes, it's finally happened. I've joined the internet age and started a twitter feed!

It's an experiment, obviously. I'll probably just be posting links to stuff I find on the internet that I somehow don't have the wherewithal to post about. If it works, the feed might be where I do most of my work. Or not. Who knows.

Ennyway, I make no promisses, and if it doesn't work out, no skin off.

By the way, you can find me at: atlastweet.

And the image above is a twitter map of somebody's social networks. It's an interactive map, so go there and double-click on any of the feeds and that feed will show up in the lower window. Cool, huh?

michelle obama relationship map

i don't know why I didn't post this back in February when I found it. Probably had some grand plans for commentary which collapsed in the face of actual paying work. I have, of course, also lost track of the source of this link.

The site it's on is Muckety.com, a place to go to look up just such networks and relationships of power. You can find maps there for Chelsea Clinton, George Clinton, and, of course, Kevin Bacon.

The Kevin Bacon one isn't very satisfying. Despite what everyone says, it seems there's not a lot of power in movies.

shoe map

via a tip from my new best friend, Rob Duncan, comes this map from online shoe seller Zappos.

The picture doesn't look like much. That's because the map isn't static.

You're watching orders placed on the Zappos website, from all over the United States, coming in and being mapped to the location the order is being shipped to, in real time.

That's right, it's a hack that shows you where someone has just ordered an item from Zappos. It's weird, and weirdly cool, and as my new BFF puts it "weirdly compelling."

Go to it (during the day, when people are actually buying) and let it sit there for a while and watch the commerce happen right before your eyes. I can't exactly articulate what it tells you -- certainly nothing you can say in words. But it gives you a perspective I haven't seen anywhere else ... something about the velocity of internet commerce ... or the quiet incidence of consumption ... or how people nearly pass like ships in the night, on an ocean of pixels and electrical impulses, their bodies far away from each other and all unaware of what they, in that instant, have in common.

A Tale of Two Koreatowns

there's a fight going on between LA's Koreans and Bangladeshis over district naming. In the area known (and mapped), but unofficially, as "Koreatown," the growing Bangladeshi community has asked for a portion in the center of Koreatown to be named, officially, "Little Bangladesh."

The proposal has angered longtime residents who have worked hard to promote the district as a Korean cultural destination and economic hub. City officials, meanwhile, worry that neither side is taking into account the full diversity of an area that is also home to many Latinos and Thai Americans, among others.

More than a name is at stake. Although largely symbolic, the recognition afforded by a special district designation can help establish a community within the cultural mosaic of Southern California, said Hamid Khan, executive director of the nonprofit South Asian Network. When noted on maps and street signs, it can also attract visitors and help local business.

I remember visiting Koreatown throughout the 90s, and all anyone ever said was that there were more Latinos than Koreans in Koreatown.

I think such district naming has less to do with who actually lives there, and more to do with recognizing a particular minority that is (supposedly) only found there. There are no efforts to name Koreatown anything Latino because all of LA is considered Latino.

Two things may be happening here: the first is that Koreans are no longer perceived as being restricted to Koreatown. Perhaps Korean businesses and residents have become so ubiquitous, that they're now perceived to be a universal LA minority, rather than one contained within their enclave. The second is that, in the past decade, Bangladeshis have become a substantial minority.

Although the 2000 census counted just 157 Bangladeshis in Koreatown, a survey conducted five years later by the South Asian Network and the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research suggested a population of 6,000 to 8,000, Khan said. Since then, the Bangladeshi American community says that its numbers have swelled to more than 10,000.

I'm not commenting on what's right here, just on how demographics are changing. Used to be, immigrants of color took over enclaves from European immigrant groups; now they're taking them over from each other. So much for API solidarity.

In other news, the owner of my local cafe just informed me that I live in Koreatown, Oakland. I didn't know that. Turns out, a Korean business owners association voted to create a Koreatown Northgate Oakland Community Benefit Association in 2007, and have been active for the past half-year in doing stuff like getting the Koreatown designation for Telegraph between 20th and 35th approved, buying banners for the street, and starting a blog, which has, so far, only reported on a stolen trash can (but here's hoping.)

Sure there are a lot of Korean businesses and community centers in this area. But the area is still mostly black. And the Korean businesses aren't concentrated. Some of the best restaurants are above 35th, and there's a strip mall around 40th. Also, ground zero for the primarily white gallery center of Oakland's monthly Art Murmur event, is between Grand and 26th along Telegraph. So an argument could be made for this area being designated some sort of artist game preserve.

I don't really care what it's called, but I see the issues, is what I'm saying. I guess they need to designate someplace Koreatown -- if they need to do it at all -- but the area chosen seems somewhat random ... or maybe simply chosen so as not to step on toes. Get much above 40th and you're into the "Temescal" shopping district. They already have banners. Get much below Grand and you're into the new condos-and-entertainment district called "Uptown." They've already sunk a lot of money into bringing the downtown "Uptown" back ... money that's looking like thrown away since the subprime mortgage crisis.

I wonder if it will make a whit of difference, is what I'm wondering.

History of the Ordnance Survey

i'm genuinely uncertain of the purpose of the article, but the BBC News reported recently on a nonfiction prize given to a Brit research fellow for a book she's writing on the history of the UK's Ordnance Survey, the body that mapped the Isles. The article is actually the fellow's (Rachel Hewitt's) thoughts on the book and why she wrote it.

Founded in 1791, it was the product of a very different type of revolution: the French Revolution and its threat to English's south coast.

A military survey became essential, and the Ordnance Survey was born.

It was also a revolution in itself. The OS was the very first complete, accurate map of the British Isles conducted on a uniform scale. The story of its birth and progress is therefore a story of the history and identity of the United Kingdom and its landscape.

... British writers found themselves enamoured with Ordnance Survey maps from the start. William Wordsworth befriended the early surveyors; Jane Austen adored the sense of order that the maps gave to the nation in an otherwise disorderly, revolutionary period; and, more recently, Brian Friel has considered the OS's Irish map to encapsulate the brutal, imperial nature of England's rule.

I am writing a 'biography' of this iconic national institution.

Her whole article is weirdly fragmented and nonlinear, and it's hard to figure out why they asked her to publish the piece, rather than just interviewing her and writing a more coherent -- and cohesive -- article.

But I'm still interested in the book, and may request a review copy when it comes out next year.

Speaking of reviews, up next is a review of Experimental Geography as soon as I get some room in my schedule to breathe.