Tagged with mapping


US Interstate system as a tube map

Posted November 12th, 2009 at 12:25 pm. There are 0 comments.

Flickr Photo Download_ Eisenhower Interstate System in the style of H.C. Beck_s London Underground Diagram-1.jpg

Senex Prime on flickr


the sea level rises and Switzerland becomes a series of islands

Posted October 22nd, 2009 at 12:42 pm. There are 0 comments.

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I don’t remember seeing this in particular at the Swiss EXPO.02 but a number of artists working together under the name Waterproof “imagined a(n) (im)possible scenario wherein the water level in Switzerland rises to 1400 meters (4600 feet), turning the landlocked, Alpine country into an island nation, its rocky peaks rising above a vast ocean.”

The series of images over at Pruned show an imaginative take on how the Swiss might deal with their new situation.

via Pruned


setting an alarm for a where rather than a when

Posted October 14th, 2009 at 7:28 pm. There is 1 comment.

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Proximity is a simple iPhone app that works as an alarm clock except the alarm is not set for a time but rather a location. It is aimed at commuters and others that end up sleeping while they are moving in some sort of transport. It is a great mobilization of two things that are usually understood as fixed: You sleeping in bed and your alarm clock on the bedside table are in a fixed location. A standard proximity sensor that is fixed in location sensing when moving things get closer than a pre-selected distance threshold.

I really like the transposition of a specific location where one would usually have a specific time, attaching an alarm to a where rather then a when. It is a bit of genius.

Proximity by Geoff Pado


Museum of the Phantom City

Posted October 1st, 2009 at 12:26 pm. There are 0 comments.

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New York City of today isn’t exactly as we had imagined it. Through history there have been many possible futures that have gone unrealized. The Museum of the Phantom City presents these Architectural and Urban Design proposals as one moves through the city to the intended locations via an iPhone app that is available no in the app store. The Van Alen Institute is holding a walking tour on Sturday October 3rd, the day the full site launches.

Get the Museum of the Phantom City: Other Futures iPhone app


mapping a complete experience

Posted July 7th, 2009 at 11:20 am. There are 2 comments.

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LEGO’s Experience Wheel shows the mapping a complete experience by surfacing the points that are critical to a good experience and where there is opportunity to improve, differentiate or optimize the delivery of the experience, in this case a fictional flight to NYC by a company executive. Bruce Temkin outlines what he like about this particular approach :

  • It’s great to have a formal approach to describing/designing experiences
  • It starts with the description of a specific customer (in the center)
  • It recognizes the life cycle of experiences: before, during, and after
  • It’s easy to use and simple to understand

the world as top level domains

Posted May 26th, 2009 at 7:15 pm. There are 0 comments.
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See a large version, or buy as a poster

map is trademark Byte Level Research


On the Grid

Posted April 30th, 2009 at 7:17 pm. There are 2 comments.

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On the Grid is a project documenting the space created by the vast nationwide network of powerlines and the land underneath them. Undeveloped except for the powerlines them selves they carve through the landscape, connected the most rural with the most urban. The shared space, buzzing with the hum of excess electricity, is at times a pristine and beautiful meadow surrounded by forest and others, the uninhabitable tract amongst suburban banality, beautiful in its own right.

On the Grid, a project by Adam Ryder and Brian Rosa, explores the landscape immediately surrounding high-tension electric transmission lines in Rhode Island. Starting near the Ocean State Power facility in Burnllville, Ryder and Rosa spent several days walking along various sites of this arterial infrastructure. Sites were chosen though surveying publicly available aerial photographs and land use maps, and all photos were geotagged with handheld GPS units. In combining the rigid technical process of digital mapping with the subjective practice of landscape photography, this project explores the state as a collection of differentiated spaces that, though seemingly isolated, are networked.

The resulting photographs showcase the topographical diversity surrounding these structures, whose own narrow terrain remains virtually unchanged throughout their straight, incisive paths. The path of the power lines functions as a rural to urban transect, cutting through farmland and commercial parks, cul-de-sacs and strip malls, used car lots and interstate highways.

As human intervention in the natural landscape sprawls to the most remote areas of the state, our lived space becomes increasingly regulated and our encounters with equivocal territories are especially rare. In more urbanized areas, we lose our relation to places which seem to exist unto themselves, where one can feel alone and unhindered. The ambiguity of the land occupied by high-tension power offers the possibility of experience outside of regulation. Despite being part of an infrastructure that is highly regulated and bureaucratized, the physical space inhabited by these power lines remains easily accessible though its sheer ubiquity. Thus, paradoxically, the realm of power lines seems to exist not only outside of regulation, but also outside of the normative properties of the native landscape. Whereas an area half of a mile away from a high tension line may be densely wooded, the space occupied by the wires will be clear-cut, devoid of trees and exhibiting, at most, low shrubbery and grass. The uniformity of this narrow swath as it cuts through the landscape reveals as much about its own spatial utility as it does of the landscape it bifurcates across the state (and beyond). It is this topographical sameness that makes the power lines amazing sites of contrast against both development and the natural landscape.

On the Grid invites reflection on the blurred relationship between networked technology, the built environment and nature through these buzzing monoliths.

- Website Text (An image on the original website)

They did a nice interview on the NPR show Living on Earth (mp3 link).
Quoting here,

Yeah absolutely, it’s a really unique tract of land that doesn’t have any development on it except for itself. So, it’s kind of, in a way its really pristine and untouched and…virginal, its kind of, kind of like, romantic and magical in that way.

-Adam Ryder

and

What’s really – I think actually awesome, is the best word I can use to say it – what’s really awesome about seeing this parade of power lines through the landscape, especially in rural areas is that we’re kind of seeing these, these tendrils connecting humanity as one large organism and it’s a cool way of looking at us, you know what I mean?

-Adam Ryder

Locate powerline grid infrastructure near you via this previous post


gateways to newark by pentagram architects

Posted April 17th, 2009 at 10:52 am. There is 1 comment.
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Newark Gateways by Pentagram Architects to create a series of gateways to the city of Newark New Jersey. Painting a series of cartographic type symbols into the Newark streetsccape, in actual physical space, with the intention that they will eventually be incorporated into google earth & google maps satellite views. There are two very interesting ideas at play here – deliberate alteration of the physical environment to affect the display of its digital representation, and the cartographication of the physical space, placing the visual language of representation into the actual.

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Map symbology has a long and storied history. The process of representing the three-dimensional world as flat and map-like requires a notational language. Our proposal places a new set of distinct symbols “on the map” by creating them for the Google Earth point of view. With paint and little else, Newark can define itself, celebrate its entry points, and address a global audience, all in one stroke. The painted “events” are visible and engaging on Google Earth, while the real locations would be signed with images from above that explain the colors and patterns on the ground.

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tokyo jogging

Posted April 15th, 2009 at 12:18 pm. There are 0 comments.


Try to run on the google street view like a jogging game of wii fit from katsuma on Vimeo.

tokyo jogging is a mashup of wiimote and google streetview. Lets you “run” in Tokyo, in your web browser.

The possibilities of this are pretty interesting. Combined with the tv screen on the treadmill or exercise bike at the gym you could run world famous marathon routes and in places where running isn’t usually feasible, say, run the length of the New York Thruway.

via @oliver76


inspiration : data as a seductive material

Posted April 5th, 2009 at 1:17 am. There is 1 comment.

Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and finding the farmers daughter

- Julius Comroe Jr.