Tuesday, July 19, 2005
The Poetics of Cartography
Here's a This American Life episode on mapping. Not one of the better episodes, but it has its moments.
Act 1: Maps of only the pools of light cast by streetlamps. Maps of neighborhood Halloween pumpkins. "It's almost like you're writing a novel, but with pure symbol, with maps."
Act 2: "I arrived in a new job at a new office. In those sorts of situations, you are always kind of hyper aware of everything. It was quite a cold week and the heater was just humming along very loudly to the point of distraction. I started paying attention to it. It was a very musical hum. And I found myself humming in the key which the heater was playing in, essentially." Beware the augmented fourth, diabolus in musica.
Act 5 (the piece de resistance): "Somehow, thinking of Mr. Coleslaw Burger, and thinking of the other restaurants I'd eaten at on Pico, I came up with the sort of half-baked, coleslaw-inspired idea to eat at every restaurant on Pico Boulevard and create sort of a map of the senses which would be able to get me from one end to the other."
"It occurred to me that what I was looking for in the Foreign Service--the sort of adventures I was hoping to have, with the sort of people I was hoping to meet--I was already having right there in my own hometown."
Here's a This American Life episode on mapping. Not one of the better episodes, but it has its moments.
Act 1: Maps of only the pools of light cast by streetlamps. Maps of neighborhood Halloween pumpkins. "It's almost like you're writing a novel, but with pure symbol, with maps."
Act 2: "I arrived in a new job at a new office. In those sorts of situations, you are always kind of hyper aware of everything. It was quite a cold week and the heater was just humming along very loudly to the point of distraction. I started paying attention to it. It was a very musical hum. And I found myself humming in the key which the heater was playing in, essentially." Beware the augmented fourth, diabolus in musica.
Act 5 (the piece de resistance): "Somehow, thinking of Mr. Coleslaw Burger, and thinking of the other restaurants I'd eaten at on Pico, I came up with the sort of half-baked, coleslaw-inspired idea to eat at every restaurant on Pico Boulevard and create sort of a map of the senses which would be able to get me from one end to the other."
"It occurred to me that what I was looking for in the Foreign Service--the sort of adventures I was hoping to have, with the sort of people I was hoping to meet--I was already having right there in my own hometown."
Too Many Cooks
News to me. The original painting of the death of Captain Cook was discovered in 2004. It is not so noble.
News to me. The original painting of the death of Captain Cook was discovered in 2004. It is not so noble.
Nooks and Crannies
While I know it's received a fair amount of attention already, the Degree Confluence Project (compiled nicely in a world map here) is worth a look. People upload photos and sometimes a travelogue for the degree intersections of latitude and longitude around the world. At it's worst, it's like sitting through your neighbor's vacation slide show--a neighbor who's one of those GPS geeks who live to go geocaching on the weekends. At its best, it acheives an odd kind of verisimilitude; cow pastures in Brazil, the bends of a small river in Laos, episodes in a road trip from Germany to China, antipodean points.
While I know it's received a fair amount of attention already, the Degree Confluence Project (compiled nicely in a world map here) is worth a look. People upload photos and sometimes a travelogue for the degree intersections of latitude and longitude around the world. At it's worst, it's like sitting through your neighbor's vacation slide show--a neighbor who's one of those GPS geeks who live to go geocaching on the weekends. At its best, it acheives an odd kind of verisimilitude; cow pastures in Brazil, the bends of a small river in Laos, episodes in a road trip from Germany to China, antipodean points.
