Stephen Walter on BBC4
As mentioned before on fromztoa, our favourite mapmaker Stephen Walter features on BBC4′s Maps series, episode 2 here
Archived entries for maps
magazines and iPad
This video summarises the thought processes involved in re-creating a magazine in a new way. That’s as in a new way since Caxton.
As an alternative, sure, to the print edition – but this is so immersive. Here’s Jack Schulze from BERG London, elucidating on the process.
Mag+ live with Popular Science+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.
By the way, it seems the 3G iPad is the one to go for… saving already for UK launch.
Catch more of Jack at the Horizonless Manhattan Project.
cloudmade and mapzen
I’ve been using OpenStreetMap for a while now, but Cloudmade and its map editor, Mapzen, are a new offering from OSM. Designed to enhance the mapping experience for more commercial users, it offers a really delightful map editor that allows you to easily create new styles from either the vanilla map or from a range of user-generated styles. Fun!
The one thing lacking in OSM – that all UK users will know about, at least – is the patchy postcode locator. For those not aware of the UK postcode system, it’s based on fairly precise house number data – and that data, although paid for by the taxpayer, is not available to the likes of OSM. The recent good news that some postcode data will be released by the government in the spring, was quickly dampened by the realisation it’s pretty widefield – Googlemaps will still be necessary for a precise street location fix, at least for the time being.
This is the style I’ve been playing with for PsyGeo Edinburgh (still too messy at the mo but sure beats customising OSM data in illustrator). And here’s a good interview (ignore the bantering hosts) with OSM founder Steve Coast.
the mathematics of place and space
I’ve just finished Michael Baxandall’s Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (a standard work that most arts students globally will have had to read). As a primer on the quattrocento, it does make plain a few home truths about the relationship between painter and patron; and of course makes some obvious and less-obvious points about the first stages in the post-mediaeval development of a euro-centric, figurative fine art.
What was most interesting about the book for me though was the exploration of mathematics – in terms of the financing of projects, essential; but also the underlying geometry of the picture frame that was carefully formulated to create the illusion, for the masses, of perspective/depth in the painted scenarios. As with Leonardo, the artist Piero della Francesca (who seems to be getting increasingly namechecked here at PsyGeo Towers) was pretty good at sums. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many musicians and artists have a fundamental understanding of maths – it’s why science and the arts often go together fruitfully.
So the renaissance put in place a practical as well as theoretical understanding of the underlying grid that shapes our daily reality – as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the virtual and the real – the representational and the factual – will become commonplace this decade, as Augmented Reality (hope somebody invents a better name) goes mainstream. For Psychogeographers the rebirth of perspective and overlaid meaning, via a handheld, will open up many new ways of being creative with urban space.
But we focus too much on the visual I think – sound can be a more subtle, more intimate method of creating a thinking and imaginative place. The people at soundwalk deserve attention, if you’re interested in audio (note: the site is a bit sluggish – that’s flash for you).
urban gridded notebook
This is a nice visual take on the wireframe underlying cityspace. Designed by John Briscella and the people at walking things.
||A blank notebook and sketchbook that is gridded with 127 cities from all around the world. Great for urbanists, architects, designers, artists,… everyone who enjoys urban areas. Each city pattern is completely different from the next. Begin to realize the possibilities of cities while taking notes ; redraw parts of a city unconsciously ; or map your travel in a city… The possibilities are open to create anything within the modern city grid.||
glasgow’s secret geometry : the devil’s plantation
Made by the respected scottish filmmaker May Miles Thomas, this website of footage and flash, venn diagram and mappa mundi glaschu, centres on two parallel personalities – Harry Bell and his investigation into glasgow ley lines from the past: and the wanderer/robinsonner placed in the present, Mary Ross.
The narrative follows the true story of Mary (befriended by Thomas), on her excursions through a Glasgow hinterland that has, unknown to her, been carefully studied by Harry in his attempt to discover the nodes of confluence that link one part of glasgow to another. It’s clear that both are seeking meaning – and resolution – via the landscape.
Thomas’ approach on the one hand is a flash-based animation – appropriately, seeing that Bell’s work was all about the context of vectors – forming the starting point of the work, providing navigation and jommetry-maker. At once inscrutably unhelpful (which I quite liked), then door-like, it steps through a non-linear, chance-based journey that perfectly encompasses the serious-yet-fun nature of what I for one is pleased to call psychogeography. This alone would be a notable achievement.
But it is the sidestepping into the present via Mary Ross; mirroring her movements in beautifully-imaged, intense, mise-en-scènes (with a nod to Patrick Keiller); that makes this work remarkable. The 66 locations – all either gratifyingly obscure, like St Convals Chariot and Cochno, or frankly disturbing, like Crookston Castle and its neighbour Leverndale mental hospital (more of which later) – merge into a matrix of lines scribed into the air, unseen above our heads. Kudos to Thomas for filming in areas that most fearty people would run a mile from – some locations are the peacetime equivalent of war reporting, even for ugly burly men like me.
Underlying all this is a sense of loss. Mary’s search for her daughter and a happier future; Harry’s obsessive search in the fathoms of the past. The unasked and unthanked exiled as surely as siberian fisheye eaters, on the fringes; maybe a little-city-glasgow-lost, dismembered after WWII and the ongoing sickness of mackintosh’s rose, a city that lost its final battle at Silverburn…
Returning to Leverndale (Mary’s hospital), anyone who knew of the Milk Crate Gang would have come here, its water tower a lighthouse for naive urbexers like me. Hawkhead Asylum, as it was known originally, was typical of those built by well-intentioned public-spirited Victorians who were affected by the moralising of Dickens but totally unqualified to re-invent Bedlam. The 80s introduction of Care in the Community was the result of this failed institutionalism – not much of an improvement. Coincidentally today I was in the museum of the cumbraes and spotted the 6th earl of glasgow – the owner of the Hawkhead lands – who was bankrupted in 1879 by building too many episcopalian churches.
There are issues. The soundtrack, a bit new-age top-40 in places, only works when it underlines, rather than overstates, the significances of the scenes (the filmmaker has stated that at some point the soundtrack will be replaced with a properly scored final version, however). The graphically well designed flash-based site is sadly poorly optimised, resulting in much jigging about with cursor and constant web access, resulting in a frustratingly sluggish interface – although the movies played reasonably well, albeit not at full resolution. Hope Thomas gets the production agency to sort that out for her. The information given at the end of each scene is illuminating, but not readily accessible – a PDF would perhaps be useful for anyone looking to follow the lines themselves.
However, as a work of ambition, researched and realised with great depth and beauty, the devil’s plantation is the first fully-formed work, I believe, of proper psychogeography ever undertaken in Glasgow. May Miles Thomas has opened Harry Bell’s much-talked-about insights with exactly the right approach, giving life that I think Harry would be delighted in, yet in awe of. It is well worth the 4 hours I sat exploring the piece from beginning to end (how many films would you devote that much time to… you can save the journey at any point and pick up later if you want though).
artists’ statement
My intention was to show how Harry was driven by a quest but Mary had no quest, yet both rely on memory, the past and their own interpretation of it. Mary lives very much in the now, and Harry lives (or lived) with a fascination with the past. I got the sense out in the field that Harry didn’t really focus on the sites themselves, only where they led to, whereas Mary is curious about the most insignificant details of place.
Screenshots from the devil’s plantation
the map is/is not/the territory
The rediscovery of Guy Debord’s 1950s definition of Psychogeography has had plenty of column inches over the past 15 years, but little meaningful broad-based practice so far.
It’s really simple why this is so – psychogeography depends completely on us being in touch with ourselves. Despite all the advances in psychology and linguistics; the world-felt wake-up calls of financial greed; and completely avoidable climate catastrophe; most people still seem to be enormously interested in shoes, cars, mobile phones and not at all interested in the difference between the map (us and all our subjectivity and limited understanding) and the territory (the real, objective, Alpha and Omega world of truth).
When the two align, we see very differently. The map and the territory make something new. The clouds part and we grow up.
But the biggest part, conversely, is about having fun, playing like children, starting from a position of ignorance – without play, there is no discovery; without mistakes, there is no wisdom. Blake says innocence is Mind Body Spirit World God Stars Sheep Trees and Laughter – its when we start formulating, planning and subverting against our true person to protect self-love that things go wrong.
PsyGeo is just this then – the few simple abilities, senses, morals, everyones brain already comes pre-installed with…
1 intuition: how we feel on the street
listening to ourselves: am I comfortable, edgy, intrigued, lost…
Physical and mental awareness: listening to the environment; being objective; being conscious of our personal boundary space
Open, not closed: our prejudices and confusions can cause misinterpretation – respect, listen, ask the Creator; slow down and be aware of the bigger context; relax and really look
2 play and explore with all the senses
Uncover meaning and context through the six subjective methods I’ve used for the PsyGeo guides: chance, rhythm, detour, sound, smell, drift
3 storytell, create, grow
Unravel your experiences through dialogue, writing, image making: learn and share; make new connections with past present future
edinburgh littoral : cammo and gogar
This is a sector that contains many surprises, and has a distinctive atmosphere. Like all places bypassed, Cammo and Gogar seem to be in a different time zone, a different era. It’s also close to the old St Margaret’s Pilgrims route to Dunfermline.
This is an “unvisited” part of Edinburgh. Ironically it’s of course the most visited – people are passing through a bottleneck (the western equivalent to the end of the A1, the Great North Road to the east, at Waterloo Place). Yet a rich mental and psychical landscape unfolds quietly, with the Pentlands a cloudshifted bluehazed backbone to the south.
So the key feature of this place is of departure and arrival – the M8 motorway at Hermiston – the runways at Edinburgh Airport – the Queen street to Waverley railway – the pilgrims route to the Queens Ferry and Dunfermline – the Forth and Clyde canal exiting city limits on its journey to the Falkirk Wheel, the Clyde and the new worlds. These are waterfall transits with tens of thousands passing through every day – yet unseeing to the old farm towns and micro-communities they pass.
Then there are the ancient remnants – pre-christian standing stones – Cammo Stane, Gogar Stane, Newhouse Stane plus the Huly Hill stone circle and cairn at Newbridge, approx 2 miles west of our starting point at Gyle and Maybury.
PsyGeo GoogleMap
Here is my PsyGeo GoogleMap with some hopefully useful notes – a route from Gyle to Cammo to Gogar to Hermiston and back to the city via Heriot-Watt university.
Jupiter Artland is a major new sculpture park, at Wilkieston to the south-west of Ratho. Opens again in May 2010.
Note: I would like to have included Kirkliston on this tour. I’ll incorporate it in a forthcoming PsyGeo map of the Cramond and Dalmeny area.
stephen walter on BBC6
That workers playtime for graphic designers had the artist Stephen Walter on the George Lamb show today – very interesting. His work, amongst other things, centres on intricately drawn pencil maps of cities, using local history sources. I found him really unassuming and the work at stephen walter a tantalising glimpse into the maps (you need a magnifying glass to see all the detail – but they are geographically correct). This is exactly how I like to see the city re-imagined, without going into all that stuff about drunk situationists yet again.
Image from www.stephenwalter.co.uk
