Continuing on the theme of my last map, I decided to focus on the merging of the two Metro trains for this version. To create this map I first sampled a portion of Metro Crash Quilt, then I used that portion to create an intermediate map (that I chose to not publish), which I then sampled again to create this fractal Hexagon Quilt Projection map. This process of recursive sampling allowed me to focus more and more on the portion of the map where the two train merge together. The result is a weaved pattern of train tracks and merging Metro cars; a far more intricate map than my previous version. What is lost, however, is the area around the crash site and the crash site itself, in their place are more trains and more train track. I have sampled a portion of this map and am in the process of seeing what a third iteration will look like.
View the Google Map of the crash site in upper Northeast Washington, DC.
View the rest of the map details:
(more…)
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Vacation
|| 6/27/2009 || 12:09 pm ||
Metro Crash Quilt
As I stated before, I decided to make a map of the location of where the Metro crash took place. When preparing the imagery I did my best to include both the train and the exact site of the collision, but when it came to trying out different Quilt Projection designs, I found the Square Quilt Projection to have a very interesting line of symmetry– the Metro train itself.
While this map is derived from orthophotography, which essentially flattens out the terrain, the train’s laterally merging together on a line of symmetry creates a different viewing approach to the train. Since I cannot replicate the Metro train on top of another Metro train (nor would I really want to or even have access to the aerial photos of the crash itself), this line of symmetry approach offers a stylized (albeit sad) way to show the merger of two trains.
The aim of this map was to document the location of this tragedy, but I was able to add more than I expected to the final result; a simulated merger of two trains. Had there not been a random train passing through the area on that day in March of 2005, this map would be devoid of the subject of it’s creation and only show the location of the tragedy.
I am working on a second iteration of this map which should be ready shortly.
View the Google Map of the crash site in upper Northeast Washington, DC.
View the rest of the map details:
(more…)
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: This week is the four year anniversary of my geospatial art
|| 6/23/2009 || 11:10 am ||
The aerial photography of the area around the Metro crash site contains a Metro train
Like the highway collapse of I-35 in Minneapolis, the partial collapse of the MacArthur Maze, the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, and the Columbine shootings, I’ve decided to make a map of the area around yesterday’s Metro crash site. Earlier today I downloaded the imagery of the site and found something I wasn’t expected. Not far from the actual crash site there is a Metro train on the tracks. While its not as interesting as the Ghost Cars on the I-35 bridge, I found it interesting that of all the locations for the Metro train to be when the plane flew over in March of 2005, the Metro train happens to be VERY close to the actual site of the tragedy.
Note: Google Maps currently uses the same USGS imagery that I am using.
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Definitely not Comcastic
|| 6/22/2009 || 10:29 pm ||
Dreaming of being on the Metro then one hour & seventeen minutes later a Metro train crashes
So around 3:30pm I awoke from my afternoon nap and Twittered that I had two vivid dreams at 3:45pm. About an hour and seventeen minutes after I posted that, while I was sitting on my front porch reading today’s paper, the worst train crash in the history of Metro took place. This type of dream prescience has happened before, so before the dream goes into the deep recesses of my memory, I am going to briefly transcribe what I remember. The following recollection was written at shortly after 6:05pm on June 22nd:
The dream started out inside of a train that looked and felt like a Metro train traveling at somewhat high speeds. However it seemed to be moving faster than normal, or maybe that was just the nature of the dream. Behind me was what looked like an airline pilot and a lady in a business suit. We were talking about how it was nice to be traveling on the train and then the conversation made its way to Accela. Where I turned around and said, “But it still uses the same rail lines as the regular trains.” They both laughed and then the train went completely silent as we rolled on. The silence reminded me of when I am on the Metro and the AC goes off and this audible static goes away for a brief moment. As we roll on down the track in silence this portion of the dream ends….
I then found myself floating above Nationals Stadium. A batter has hit a baseball deep into the outfield. Instead of a normal wall, there a crowd of teenagers who are in the field with baseball mitts and one of them catches the ball and then the crowd of teenagers disperses. No once can see who took the baseball. Then the crowd of the stadium starts to sing in unison to the tune of “Happy Birthday To You,” a phrase that causes those in the stadium to break out in laughter, “Where is the baseball, Where is the baseball, Where IS the baseballllll, Where is the baseball?” Shortly after this scene the dream ends.
I found it interesting that my mind had created something both funny and completely new in the context that I tend to think of dreams as a subconcious means of rehashing ideas and visions that have taken place in my waking life. Every part of the train sequence was rehashed from experiences of being on Metro and Accela trains, but the baseball portion was different. I have never created a somewhat humorous song while sleeping. However, its the train portion of the dream that is still haunting me.
UPDATE: To make matters more eerie, it turns out that two of the fatalities in the train actually resemble the two people I was talking to on the train in my dream. The pilot who died, Maj. Gen. David F. Wherley Jr., was involved in protecting Washington, DC during the whack events on 9/11, which is the source of my previous dream and he was sitting next to his wife, who also died. I got a chill down my spine after looking at their photos. However, unlike my dream, we were all sitting in the back of the train, not the front where they were actually sitting. I specifically remember turning around to speak with them because they were behind me and from my experiences on Metro trains the seats at the end of the car tend face the direction of the trains movement. Moreover, the lead cars, where the conductor is located and where they were sitting, have fewer seats than the back of the train. Regardless, I’m still a bit shaken by this synchronicity.
Render A Comment || ||
|| 6/20/2009 || 10:15 pm ||
Front Range Quilt #2
Using this portion of Front Range Quilt, I created this derivative map. I sampled that portion because I like the nature of how the shadows of the ridge presented themselves and I wanted to include the tarn at the base of Andrews Glacier. I opted for the Dodecagon Quilt Projection because I felt it that it would work nicely since I am not trying to capture any specific buildings or streets in the source imagery (there are none!).
View the Google Map of the Front Range in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.
View the rest of the map details:
(more…)
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|| 6/19/2009 || 9:40 pm ||
Front Range Quilt
So I never got around to making a map of downtown Birmingham, Alabama, but I still plan on doing so. Instead I decided to seek out a somewhat new place and try out a new style. For years I have been reticent about making a map that it not composed of an urban area. I always thought that it was the buildings and the streets that gave each map its intrinsic uniqueness, but with this map, I have branched out, tried something new, and am pleasantly surprised with the results.
Years ago I posted a topographic map of Rocky Mountain National Park featuring the first mountains I ever climbed as a child. It was also the first topographic map posted this to this blog, and to continue this line of thought, I was delighted to find that the imagery was available to create the first map of its type. Instead of the aerial photography being too dull to be worthy of a map, I found it interesting that the shadows created by the ridge line added some aerial chiaroscuro. Moreover, upon closer examination, due to the spatial resolution of the source aerial photography, you can actually make out the trails crisscrossing through the forest. While they don’t appear as well as a highway or skyscraper, the trails and shadows help make create a map that I am happy to publish here.
Another striking feature of the imagery is the color tone of the tarn at the base of Andrews Glacier. This blue/green lake adds a unique color contrast to the somewhat monotone yellow hue of the rocky terrain. I do, however, wish there was a bit more color contrast between the east side of the continental divide and the west side of the continental divide that I’ve seen when I’ve stood atop these mountains. I also kinda wish, for once, that the aerial photography wasn’t taken from nadir, rather I wish it was taken at an oblique angle because we’d be able to see more elevation contrast between the various mountain peaks. However, since I have hiked these mountains, I know the continental divide shown in this aerial photography traverses north and south and the shadows are only formed from the ridges extending west from the continental divide. This makes it slightly easier to differentiate where the ridges are, but not where the peaks are. Anyways, I’ve decided to sample a portion of this imagery and will make another iteration of this map shortly.
View the Google Map of the Front Range in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Curiously, the imagery used on Google Maps shows the area during the winter time and covered in snow.
View the rest of the map details:
(more…)
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|| 6/18/2009 || 10:34 pm ||
My Brash poem from Artomatic 2009
Inverted scan of the poem
Brash is a poet that goes around Artomatic and leaves each participating artist a poem taped on to their exhibit wall. This week I noticed that my poem had been taped up to my exhibit space, so I decided to take it home, scan it, and post it here on-line like I did with last year’s poem. However, unlike last year, where Brash wrote about my entire exhibit, this year Brash wrote specifically about my Israel / Palestine 1993 map. From my understanding, Brash will probably write a poem for EVERY artist (thats over a thousand poems!) at Artomatic 2009. Brash, if you are reading this, thank you! I sincerely enjoy your creative spirit!
Related Artomatic Entries: (more…)
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|| 6/17/2009 || 3:16 pm ||
Analyzing my Facebook friends social behavior through Google Reader
I haven’t written about Facebook since I created the group “Washington Metropolitan Area Residents for a 24 Hour Metro” back in February. Previous to that, the entries were related to my experiments using their internal advertising system (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) and prior to that, I briefly wrote about the Nexus application that shows the relationships & commonalities of my Facebook friends. Back in March of 2008, I had a little under 400 friends and since then I have gained over 600 new friends and now have a little more than 1,000 Facebook friends and they share a lot links.
A few months ago I discovered that I could subscribe to my friend’s shared links on Facebook through an RSS reader. I was attempting develop a means to synch up what I shared on Facebook with what I shared on this website and found that I could subscribe to what all my friends were sharing on Facebook. I had come to the conclusion that it was easier to share information through the Facebook platform than through this blog and I wanted to find a way that my shared links would show up here using my Daily Links concept. While I ultimately abandoned the effort (as well as the Daily Links concept), I kept my subscription active in Google Reader.
Today I decided to check out the statistics related to my Facebook friends shared link RSS feed. What I found was quite interesting….
The average links shared per week is a little over 574 “posts” (posts are technically individually shared links) and with a little over 1,000 friends, this would statistically translate to half of my friends share one link a week. However, from my experience, I would say that its probably 10% to 25% of my friends are active users who share links often and the rest are passive users or don’t use Facebook that much. To reach the number of 574 shared links per week, then in the last 30 days there was roughly 2300 links shared during the month (574 posts per week x 4 weeks = 2296.8 links per month), which translates to a little over 2 links per person per month. As far as the shape of the graph goes, like the traffic on this website, there is a seemingly up & down flow that I’ve found to correlate to how most people use the internet during the week and not using it during the weekend.
This screen grab shows something I wasn’t expecting. The time of day in which my friends share their links does not completely correlate to my initial notion that most people share links on Facebook only while at work. Instead the times in which my friends share the most links are around 10pm & 11pm at night; probably before they go to bed. However, judging by the 4pm & 5pm spikes in the number of shared links, I can deduce that people are sharing links more at the end of the work day than at the beginning. The spike at around 11am in the morning might indicate that people are using Facebook during their lunch break. In all, I think this graph is the most telling of the Facebook usage of my friends on-line social behavior.
Finally, this screen grab also shows shows the which day of the week my friends share the most links. This graph mimics the undulation shown on the Last 30 Days graphic above. Interestingly, Thursday edges out Wednesday as the most popular day and Tuesday is more popular than Friday. I personally expected Friday to be the day that the most links are share because in my experience it was the day of the week that required the least amount of work. At below 200 links, nearly half the amount for the other five days of the week, I was not surprised by the low number of links shared on the weekends. As I stated before, this mimics the traffic this website.
In summary, I find this type of information very interesting. I don’t think its that useful information for everyone because it only shows the on-line social behavior of my friends. Moreover, this information does not fully paint the entire picture of my friends Facebook usage. Status updates, uploaded photos, uploaded videos, and those stupid quizzes are not shown in these graphs; only the number of links that are being shared. However, I believe there are some general concepts that can possibly be extrapolated if you were to subscribe to your friend’s shared links.
Render A Comment || ||
|| 6/16/2009 || 1:35 pm ||
Malfunction Junction Offset
The other week I downloaded the aerial photography of downtown Birmingham, Alabama to make some maps for a friend of mine. Upon closer inspection of the geography, I found that there was a nicely formed highway interchange close to the downtown area that happened to be colloquially named “Malfunction Junction.” While other cities can also claim in having their own Malfunction Junction, this highway interchange is the first one I’ve read about.
When I started working on this map I intended to render a couple versions and recursively sample them to created a fractal map, but I wasn’t happy with the results, so I decided to go in a completely direction. This map did end up using previously sampled imagery, but it does not conform to that regular quilt projection format of a centralized kaleidoscope. Also, this map is not unlike some of my previous maps, like White House Sunrise or Minneapolis Sunset, however, I chose to name it differently based on the position of the kaleidoscope’s focal point, which is offset in the upper left hand corner. I spent a lot of time adjusting this location and as you can see in the last detail below, I was a few pixels off. Up next I’m probably going to work on the downtown area of Birmingham, but I’m really itching to start mapping Europe.
View the Google Map of Malfunction Junction in Birmingham, Alabama
View the rest of the map details:
(more…)
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|| 6/15/2009 || 4:36 pm ||
YouTube Video: “A Fly on the Wall at Artomatic”
On Saturday June 13th, 2009, I attended the Artomatic “Meet The Artist Night.” As an experiment, I decided to place my digital camera on my exhibit wall. This time-lapse video documents what it would be like to be a fly on the wall at my Artomatic 2009 exhibit.
About midway through the video, I remove the camera from the wall and a friend takes a photo of me with a couple friends and then I place the camera back on the wall for the remainder of the filming.
Music used in the video is Azul (Gianma’s Drum and Bass Remix) by Natalia Clavier from her El Arbol EP (2008).
You can also view a somewhat better quality version of the video on Facebook.
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|| 6/5/2009 || 12:51 pm ||
I am mentioned in today’s Washington Post article “Artomatic ‘09: Survival Tips From an Expert”
In today’s Weekend section of the Washington Post there is an article titled Artomatic ‘09: Survival Tips From an Expert*. In the article staff writer Michael O’Sullivan follows around Phillip Barlow, one of the DC area’s biggest art collectors, and asks him questions about how to go about exploring the 9 floors of art at Artomatic.
Near the end of the article Michael O’Sullivan writes:
Okay, spill it: So who does the collector like? Barlow wouldn’t give a Top 10 list or even a favorite floor. But he did express interest in — or lingered longingly in front of — the work of several artists. Here’s a partial list of his favorites:
Floor 9: Jessica Van Brakle.
Floor 8: Jared Davis, Nikolas R. Schiller.
Floor 7: Jeremy Arn.
Floor 6: Jen Dixon.
Floor 5: Mark Jude, Meinir Wyn Jones, Stephen Reveley, Michael Enn Sirvet, Steve Strawn.
Floor 2: Drew Graham, Kate McGovern.
Still, Barlow cautions against using his taste alone as a guide, adding that the secret to Artomatic’s success is volume, volume, volume. “There’s just so much stuff here that I can practically guarantee that something’s going to be new or interesting,” he says. “To someone.”
Read the entire article here. I plan on stopping by Artomatic this evening around 7pm. Maybe I will see you there?
* This article’s title in the print edition is different from the on-line edition. The print edition is titled Artomatic ‘09: Survival Tips From an Expert while the on-line edition is titled Annual Artomatic Show Exhibits the Works of More Than 1,000 Artists. There is also one mistake in the article. The author incorrect states that Artomatic is open at noon on Wednesdays & Thursdays, when it actually opens at 5pm on those days.
Related Artomatic Entries: (more…)
Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: My Brash Poem from Artomatic 2008
|| 6/4/2009 || 5:22 pm ||
A brief discussion about my IQ scores from 19 years ago
A couple months ago I got the wild idea to contact my old public school district and ask for a copy of my permanent records. I was curious about what files they had on me and if there was anything in my permanent records that was worthy keeping or sharing. To my surprise (and simultaneous dismay), I found that they had kept my intelligence quotient score (above) in my permanent file.
At the beginning of my 4th grade school year, my mom had suggested that I take the school administered IQ test so that I might be able to qualify for the school district’s Talented And Gifted Program (TAG). The special program was for students who had an IQ above 130 and had scored well in standardized tests so that they could be provided a more robust public school education. So two days before I turned 10 years old I took the exam with Ms. Delia, the elementary school’s counselor. She had platinum blonde hair, a perpetual suntan, and would always wear funky, multicolored dresses. I still remember her generous smile and supportive words that she’d always offer me during my six years of elementary school.
The test that I took was the revised edition of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. According to her written note in the margin of the results, I hurried through the exam. I don’t remember if it was because I was a little cocky 9-year-old who thought he knew it all or if I was nervous about how my scores would turn out or if it was some latent ADHD symptoms that were never fully addressed. My guess is that it was a combination of all three. Regardless of my possibly reckless speed, the final result was that my IQ score was 131, which was one IQ point higher than I needed in order to be allowed into the TAG program.
From fourth grade until sixth grade, one day each week I was bused out to the TAG center to take “enrichment” classes. It was here where I first learned how to program in BASIC, where I surfed the internet for the first time, created my first pinhole camera, and even where broke my right arm. I look back at this part of my public school education very fondly and believe that it helped shape me in ways that I’ll never fully comprehend.
However, I am posting this discussion today because I am curious about how much my intelligence quotient has changed over years. If I were to take the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, how would I fare? Would my IQ be very much different today than it was nearly 20 years ago? Would I be less intelligent, more intelligent, or about the same? What if I took a different IQ test like the Stanford-Binet? What good would it do for me to know this information at 28 years of age? Does it even matter???
I’ve always had some persistent issues knowing that my IQ placed me into the top 2% of the population. As in, if I was in a crowd of 100 randomly selected people, this IQ score would statistically make me the second smartest person in the crowd. But so what? Innate intellect does not automatically get you the job you want or even help you obtain friends or get you a college degree or even lead the crowd of 99 others to safety. It’s just an arbitrary number, right? I don’t have any intention of joining MENSA because I could really care less about belonging to a group of people that theoretically pride themselves enough to join an organization simply based on their score on a standardized test.
The beauty of this blog, which is now over 5 years old, is that I have a digital repository for documenting & sharing what my intellect has helped me accomplish. I take solace knowing that an IQ is not simply an arbitrary number that can differentiate someone from others, but rather, its their actions and creations that set them apart.
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: CurrentTV: Green On Green [feat. the 2008 Green Party Presidential Candidates]
|| 6/3/2009 || 7:36 pm ||
My Artomatic 2009 Opening Night Exhibit Dissected on Flickr
For my second official upload to Flickr, I continued last year’s practice, and uploaded a photo I took of my Artomatic 2009 exhibit on opening night. By adding notes over every part of the display photograph on Flickr, you can click on the embedded links and view the respective content on my website. If you are unable to make it to this year’s exhibition, I hope this dissection satiates your curiosity.
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Bicycle Freedom! [Vélib’ in DC]
|| 6/2/2009 || 1:57 pm ||
My own Coat of Arms, the Origin of the Stars & Stripes, and Hartburn, DC
Original image created in Chicago, 1894.
From the Library of Congress’ An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera.
Some time in the future I’d like to read more deeply into heraldry and come up with my own Coat of Arms. Today there is so much talk about name branding that I think it would be an interesting juxtaposition where my Coat of Arms could visually explain some subtle details about me. My motto would either be Socio Ditata Labore or Gloria Immortalis Labore Parta, but how would I go about designing the shield? That is where I am currently stuck at, but I imagine that if I were to dig deeper into the arcane traditions of heraldry, I would come up with something fitting.
About two months ago I was rummaging through the Library of Congress’ An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera and came across the image above. I knew that the DC flag was based off of George Washington’s family crest, but I didn’t know that it had been changed over the centuries prior to his family’s arrival in America. Moreover, I didn’t know that the city I currently live in, Washington, DC, might have been called something completely different…
From a New York Times’ Letter to the Editor published on April 8th, 1984:
Eberhartpence, Eberhart, Hartpence, Hart - what’s in a name? Indeed, had it not been for a change of name back in the 12th century, our nation’s capital might be Hartburn, D.C.
You see, when George Washington’s British ancestor William de Hartburn moved from Hartburn to Wessington in 1130, he changed his name to William de Wessington, which later became de Washington. The ”de” was dropped when the family arrived on these colonial shores around 1659.
Had William retained his original name, the father of our country would have been one ”George Hartburn.”
Imagine that– a gastrointestinal themed capital city. The people’s pyrosis!
I bet the George Hartburn University would have an even better medical school too! It makes me wonder if there would even be a Hart Senate office building, lest someone get the wild notion of burning it down. Or what about the lexical ramifications of when the British torched Washington in the War of 1812? Would this alternate history be called The Burning of Hartburn? I can only laugh and, of course, take some antacids.
A very long time ago, a couple weeks after the reelection of George W. Bush in November of 2004, I wrote that my most recent map looked similar to the gas mask I had purchased days prior:
Yet living in DC with 4 more years of Bush, I am expecting some acid reflux in the belly of the beast…
While there was only one case of acid reflux to hit Washington, DC during the subsequent 4 years, and a mild case at that, I can laugh again at this alternative history double entendre. Acid reflux in the belly of the beast? Only if George Washington’s ancestor didn’t change his name.
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: DC Bicycle Registration Law to be Discontinued [Yeah!]
|| 6/1/2009 || 2:41 pm ||
YouTube video of the early years of Disco in the Washington / Baltimore area from 1976
This video was created by Tom D’Antoni in 1976 for Maryland Public Broadcasting’s show “The Critic’s Place” on the Disco phenomenon when it was happening. It shows some of the nightclubs that existed in Washington, DC and Baltimore during the early years of Disco. I really enjoyed how Tom highlighted the social differences that existed between DC and Baltimore 30 years ago and how they, in some ways, still exist today. I am really curious about where the clubs that were featured in the video were located. At about 4 minutes in he mentions 20th & L streets and that area is now all office buildings. I gotta wonder if there are any nightclubs in the locations shown in the video that still exist today?
A big thanks goes to Dori Hadar, who posted this on Facebook, and is the person we can collectively thank for helping to discover Mingering Mike. You can purchase his insightful book about Mingering Mike on Amazon.
Note: while the YouTube video’s title says “Disco 1975 (74?),” upon a thorough reading of the comments posted on YouTube, audiophiles were able to accurately place the video at 1976.
Render A Comment || ||
|| 5/30/2009 || 1:43 pm ||
A Navy Yard Perspective
While on blogging hiatus, I made this map on May 12th, but didn’t post it. I don’t really have any rationale for not posting it except that I wanted to take a month off from blogging to see where my daily visitor threshold was; as in finding how many people visited my website without daily blogging. So in order to ascertain the data, I purposely withheld this entry.
Following up last year’s Artomatic maps, which also featured the area prior to development, I decided to try something a little different. When making this map I spent a lot of time working with the field of view parameters to create the depth of perspective. In the foreground (the lower half) you have a somewhat close-up view of the area around the Navy Yard Metro station in Southeast, Washington, DC and in the upper half you have a larger field of view that appears to stretch out to infinite. The aerial photography was taken in the spring of 2005 before the stadium and subsequent nearby development had been completed. Even if you look at the current Google Maps of the area, the construction of this year’s Artomatic venue had not even began.
View the Google Map of the Navy Yard in Washington, DC, which features newer imagery
View the rest of the map details:
(more…)
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: the Phoenix Mars Mission
|| 5/29/2009 || 3:10 pm ||
My maps on display at Artomatic 2009
Click on the maps to view their respective blog entries
A New & Arabesque Map of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
This antique map mashup is over 400 years in the making. It features the Library of Congress‘ copy of Willem Janszoon Blaeu’s Nova totius terrarum orbis geographica ac hydrographica tabula, which was published in Amsterdam in 1606. I removed the original Mercator-inspired map from the center and kept the highly decorative border similar to my other antique map mashups. The border contains allegorical drawings of the seven known planets, the four elements, the four seasons, and the seven wonders of the ancient world (copied from Dutch painter Maarten van Heemskerck [1498-1574]). This border was used on hundreds of subsequent maps for the next 50+ years by Blaeu and his son on a variety of maps. Interestingly, Washington, DC has a few modern replicas of the seven ancient wonders, but I’ll let you figure out which ones they are! (Anyone want to guess which two I can see from my rooftop?!?) The name of the map is a play on words based on the 18th century naming convention “A New and Accurate Map..” The central portion of the map features modified aerial photography (an arabesque) from the USGS (taken in the spring of 2005) of the circularly-shaped Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
Israel / Palestine 1993
This map is derived from a scanned map of Israel & Palestine from the “Atlas of the Middle East,” which was published in January 1993 by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and obtained from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. At the time of it’s creation I was working at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab studies and my coworker’s vacation to Lebanon had to be cancelled due to an Israeli military incursion. I chose the map because of the way the occupied Palestinian territories were shaded on the map. The CIA chose to use rather ugly black diagonal lines to say “status still undetermined” and when I modified the map something interesting happened. The stripes became the points on a hexagram or Star of David, a recognized symbol of the Jewish state of Israel. To further express my feelings toward the continued occupation & military incursion, I added the iconic image of Palestinian defiance, a cartoon character by Naji Al-Ali named Handala to the lower corner of the map. Until his assassination in 1987, Ali used this character throughout his body of work as means to convey his displeasure toward the way the issue has been handled. The aim of this map is spark dialog so that peace may prevail.
Superdome Quilt - 1st Derivative #2
The day after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sent airplanes equipped with cameras to the gulf region to assess the damage. A few days later they released these high-resolution aerial photographs of New Orleans to the public and I downloaded the two tracts that contained the flooded area around the severely damaged Superdome. Shortly thereafter I made a couple maps based on this imagery and then tried out my new procedure of recursive sampling (a quasi-fractal) to make a highly detailed tessellation of the area. As you can see in the map, the blue hues are due to flooding of the streets and the little yellow blips around the map are what is left of the roof of the Superdome. A genuine question can be asked, if I were to obtain the imagery of the Superdome today, what would it look like? This map captured a moment in time that affected the lives of millions and I can only wonder what will happen when the next category 5 hurricane hits the next urban area. Sadly, the question is not if, but when….
I am located on the 8th floor of Artomatic 2009. Hope to see you!
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: A coded message in the last article from the Washington Post's Linton Weeks
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