Emma Williams contacted me a few weeks ago about including one of my photos of Echo Park in this year’s Schmap guide to Los Angeles. It’s not one of my best photos, by far, but I am honored it was included. In July 2008, during my summer biking autopia, I snapped this photo as the LA Critical Mass finished up in Echo Park.
Learn more about Schmaps.
MIT labs and Aaron Zinman created a digital installation that creates your online genome, a visual representation of how the web sees you. Part art installation, part critique, Personas | Metropath(ologies) exploits the fact that there are likely several people in the world, living or dead, who share your name. A simple search of websites, however, cannot distinguish between you and your name.
Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity.
Try your own at http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html
A visualization of the decline of western European empires. Things get interesting around the 1960s.
Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.
Genuine vital integrity does not consist in satisfaction, in attainment, in arrival. As Cervantes said long since, “The road is always better than the inn.” The very name is a disturbing one; this time calls itself “modern,” that is to say, final, definitive, in whose presence all the rest is mere preterite, humble preparation and aspiration towards this present. That faith in modern culture was a gloomy one. It meant that to-morrow was to be in all essentials similar to to-day, that progress consisted merely in advancing, for all time to be, along a road identical to the one already under our feet. Such a road is rather a kind of elastic prison which stretches on without ever setting us free.
Nowadays we no longer know what is going to happen to-morrow in our world, and this causes us a secret joy; because that very impossibility of foresight, that horizon ever open to all contingencies, constitute authentic life, the true fullness of our existence.
– José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses
video cartography: Durham, NC from Phillip Barron on Vimeo.
6 minutes and 20 seconds of point-of-view film and video of downtown Durham, North Carolina. The video is composed of scenes from 1942, 1947, 2007, and 2008. Through the repeated capturing (on film and in byte) of locations through time, we are able to navigate a changing landscape in urban Durham.
We live in a visual culture. From advertising to gallery art to Hollywood films to documentary photography, the image has never been more powerful throughout human history than it is today. With the advent of digital mapping and point-of-view digital image products (e.g. Google Maps Streetview), the line between cartography and video is being blurred.
This video is part of the North Carolina Counter Cartographies Convergence, September — October 2008, and was made possible with a grant from the Triangle Community Foundation.
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Maps as art?
Opening Friday, September 19th, 6-9pm, the Triangle Cartography Convergence will occupy three rooms at Golden Belt. The east Durham exhibits are part of a larger event with exhibits at the UNC Global Education Center as well as the Friedl building at Duke.
The Triangle Cartography Convergence is a two-month experiment in radical cartography. On display will be maps that challenge you to think in new ways about the world we live in. For a reminder of what “radical/counter cartography” might mean, here’s the Independent’s article on this group and other experimental map-makers in the Triangle area: What Google Earth Doesn’t Show You.
At least two of the maps/installations will have bicycling-related themes, and as part of the Golden Belt’s LEED certification, there are bike racks galore around its campus.
If you don’t yet know where Golden Belt is, you can find directions here.
North Carolina Community Cartographies Convergence — September/October 2008
All events free and open to allTwo months of events exploring community cartography, radical map-making, spatial activism and their possibilities for the Triangle and larger NC, accompanied by a multi-site collaborative exhibition, and culminating in the convergence itself, a day of workshops, networking and collaboration.
Submit maps and artwork for exhibition, workshop proposals, and event ideas for the second NC Community Cartographies Convergence and exhibit, to be held September – October 2008. Please join us to plan and gather submissions on Sept. 6. Details below…
Events will run September through mid-October. Saturday, September 6 is an open gathering to plan and hang the exhibition, and close Saturday October 18 with the day-long convergence. Proposals for events between those two dates are encouraged (as are autonomously organized events!). Events already planned or in the works include:
SEPTEMBER 13: Urban Farm Tour in Chapel Hill and Carrboro
When you think agriculture, food, sustenance, do you think of huge stretches of rural farm-land? Did you know there are dozens of great places within town limits that practice sustainable farming and agriculture practices, right in our own backyard?! Join us in efforts to make these practices visible and educate folks about the immense possibilities for becoming healthier and more sustainable. For more information: http://carrborogreenspace.org/SEPTEMBER 13: DURHAM – FACE UP PROJECT BUS/BIKE MURAL TOUR
Travel together along the Face Up mural trail from CDS to Dowtown to Southwest Central Durham to see more than 14 murals that make up the Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life project series. Experience the amazing images and quotes from legendary Durhamite Pauli Murray and NEW NEW NEW the 7 mural series of Durham Community Portraits that will be installed at 1820 James Street. A collective mapping and active tracing of Durham’s community life.
The Bike Mural tour was a success drawing 40+ participants. Thanks to the Center for Documentary Studies for organizing a great ride.
SEPTEMBER 19: DURHAM
Mapping Art Opening and Latino/a Studies Reception at Friedl Building Gallery at Duke University (5:00pm-6:30pm) …and later same day…
Opening Reception for Mapping Exhibits and 3rd Friday at Golden Belt (7:00pm-10pm)SEPTEMBER 23, 7pm: CHAPEL HILL
A hugely successful international exhibition and book tour continues as An Atlas of Radical Cartography comes to North Carolina, opening at the Global Education Center, UNC-CH campus. Reception and brief welcoming speeches. For more information: http://www.an-atlas.com/OCTOBER 2: DURHAM (6:30pm-8:00pm)
Epics of Black and Brown: A Public Panel on the Representation, Culture and Experience of African American and Latino/a Migrations, in conjunction with the Jacob Lawrence exhibition, at Golden Belt
Panelists: Harry Harrison (Director, YMICC, Asheville), James H. Johnson (Director, Urban Investment Strategies Center, Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise; William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship), Pedro Lasch (Visual Artist & Duke Professor), and Claudia Milian (Cultural Theorist & Duke Professor).OCTOBER 16: DURHAM, 5:30pm-7:00pm
Talk by Berkeley-based radical cartographer Trevor Paglen at the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University in conjunction with the Visiting Artists Series of Duke’s Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, and the 2008 Conference ‘Scenes of Secrecy’OCTOBER 17: DURHAM, 7pm-10pm
Evening refreshments at Golden Belt for open studios and mapping exhibitions on Durham’s traditional ’3rd Friday of the month’ celebration.OCTOBER 18: DURHAM
North Carolina Counter Cartographies Convergence Main Event and closing. All day at the Golden Belts Arts studio building (building 3), east of downtown Durham
Also late afternoon reception in conjunction with the 2008 Conference ‘Scenes of Secrecy: Interdisciplinary Inquiries on Suspicion, Intelligence, and Security’For more information on any of the above, or to send proposals: email countercartographies@unc.edu or visit www.countercartographies.org For any Spanish inquiries or proposals contact / para preguntas o proyectos en español contacte a: Pedro Lasch – plasch@duke.edu
Images courtesy of Golden Belt Arts.
The Independent‘s cover story is a look at how digital technology is enhancing maps, and how maps have historically enhanced our understanding of and interactions with our environment. The article identifies anchors in the Triangle’s mapping community, people who share a desire to critique the world through spatially arranged lines and icons that, in sum, represent the world as we see it. Or don’t see it. Or think it should be.
It’s an excellent article, not the least of which because it features Gary’s Endangered Durham… go read it.
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When I was on Durham’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, the most frequently asked questions from the public (besides, “can you put a bike lane in front of my house?”) concerned bike maps. “Why don’t you have better bike maps?” “Is there a map that shows safe places to ride?” “Is there a bike map for Durham, you know, one that shows the bike trails and the bike shops?”
I have to confess that I have mixed feelings about bike maps per se. When someone asks “where are the bike trails in Durham,” I want to point to the nearest road and say, “right there.” North Carolina law makes it clear that neither cities nor counties can do anything to restrict cyclists from riding on roads (with the exception of Interstates and freeways, like 147). All roads, whether neighborhood cul-de-sacs or state highways, are bike-ways.
Folks ask for maps of bike trails, though, for many reasons.Some want quiet, bucolic surroundings in which they may lose themselves in thought. Some want smooth surfaces with low traffic-volume to teach children the art of balancing on two wheels. Some adults want space to gain their own confidence with shifting, braking, and pedaling before adding signaling turns to the mix. After talking with hundreds of people about cycling in Durham, I think most just want to ride in a space where bicycling is clearly sanctioned. For the same reason we go to parks to play, to rivers to canoe, or to mountains to hike, we go to greenways to ride. It’s what you do there.
My frustration with the question about bike maps is layered. It has something to do with the implied syllogism that bike maps show bike trails, that bike trails are where one rides a bike, so therefore bike maps show where one rides a bike. And since bike maps (at least ones I have seen in the past) usually highlight greenways or roadie routes though the countryside, the latent syllogism reinforces the perception that cycling is just for recreation.
Containing bicycles to linear parks, such as the American Tobacco Trail, or pastoral secondary roads on weekends is a kind of social relegation that is also reinforced every time someone sighs despondently about how dangerous the roads are. Yes, roads are dangerous places where collisions (some of which are accidents) kill and maim every day. It’s my belief, however, that drivers have an inflated sense of both their safety and cyclists’ danger. Habitually commanding with just your touch two-thousand pounds of steel and glass caging will do that, I suppose.
The perception that roads are unsafe has something to do with the fact that roads are one of the few places left in our daily lives where we do not choose, we do not even know, with whom we interact.
Riding a bike on a greenway is no doubt one of the best ways to spend a Saturday afternoon. It is also my favorite way to grocery shop, to commute to work, or to explore a new city while on vacation. Given the number of people who showed up to last week’s Bike to Work events, I’m not alone in thinking that roads exist to serve more modes of transportation than just the automotive variety.
Any bike map that’s worth its salt needs to reflect the various ways that people ride bikes. I continue to invite you, then, to help map Durham (or the other areas of the Triangle, if you’re not lucky enough to live in the Bull City) through the eyes of a cyclist. Like Gary says in the Independent article, Jack Edinger and I originally conceived of this map as something that’s community driven, something that “allow[s] for freer exchange and collaboration.” These maps (Durham’s below and the other cities’ behind the link) are currently based on Google Maps so that they can be collaborative, so that any number of people can design, edit, and create them. While I’m still not entirely convinced that bike maps are necessary, it has been fun to see what others add to the maps. And, in some small way, colluding with other Durham cyclists is a way of challenging the recreation-dominant model of cycling that the broader driving public swallows uncritically.
Portions of this also appeared at Op-Ed News. View Larger Map
