I was contacted by Daniel Tucker in January of this year to participate in his map archive. I thought it was a great idea so I offered my Pentagon Quilt #3 map. I received notification this week that the map archive starts its tour for the next two years with the exhibit called Experimental Geography. Here’s the blurb from the website:
EXPERIMENTAL GEOGRAPHY
Geography benefits from the study of specific histories, sites, and memories. Every estuary, land fill, and cul-de-sac has a story to tell. The task of the geographer is to alert us to what is directly in front of us, while the task of the experimental geographer—an amalgam of scientist, artist, and explorer—is to do so in a manner that deploys aesthetics, ambiguity, poetry, and a dash of empiricism. This exhibition explores the distinctions between geographical study and artistic experience of the earth, as well as the juncture where the two realms collide (and possibly make a new field altogether).The manifestations of “experimental geography” (a term coined by geographer Trevor Paglen in 2002) run the gamut of contemporary art practice today: sewn cloth cities that spill out of suitcases, bus tours through water-treatment centers, performers climbing up the sides of buildings, and sound works capturing the buzz of electric waves on the power grid. In the hands of contemporary artists, the study of humanity’s engagement with the earth’s surface becomes a riddle best solved in experimental fashion. The exhibition presents a panoptic view of this new practice, through a wide range of mediums including interactive computer kiosks, sound and video installations, photography, sculpture, and experimental cartography.
The approaches used by the artists featured in Experimental Geography range from a poetic conflation of humanity and the earth to more empirical studies of our planet. For example, Ilana Halperin explores the intersection of personal, historic, and geologic time, as may be seen in the photograph of her stooping at the edge of natural hot springs to boil a small cup of milk. Creating projects that are more empirically minded, the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), a research organization, examines the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface, embracing a multidisciplinary approach to fulfilling its mission. Using pragmatic skill sets culled from the toolbox of geography, CLUI forces a reading of the American landscape (which includes traffic in Los Angeles, submerged cities, and the broadcast towers in the San Gabriel Mountains) that refamiliarizes the viewer with the overlooked details of their everyday experience.
Experimental Geography is curated by Nato Thompson, curator and producer at Creative Time in New York, and is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.
Featuring:
Francis Alÿs
AREA Chicago
The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI)
the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)
kanarinka (Catherine D’lgnazio)
e-Xplo
Ilana Halperin
Lize Mogel
Multiplicity
Trevor Paglen
Raqs Media Collective
Ellen Rothenberg
Julia Meltzer and David Thorne
Spurse
Deborah Stratman
Daniel Tucker, Organizer, The We are Here Map Archive < --- Hi!
Alex Villar
Yin Xiuzhen
Featured in Daniel Tucker’s We are Here Map Archive:
1. Bill Rankin “My cities” 1978–2004
2. Bill Rankin “The United States?” 2003–2007
3. Counter Cartography Collective “Disorientation Guide” 2006
4. Nikolas R. Schiller “Pentagon Quilt #3″ 2007
5. Ashley Hunt “Prison Map” 2003
6. Friends of William Blake “The People’s Guide to the RNC” 2004
7. Subrosa “Biopower Unlimited” 2002
8. Ecotrust Canada “Statement of Intent Boundaries” 2008
9. NYC Indypendent “Threat to Peace”
10. Repohistory “Circulation” 2000
11. Lize Mogel and Dario Azzellini “The Privatization of War: Colombia as Laboratory and Iraq as Large-Scale Application” 2007/2008
12. Beehive Design Collective “FTAA” 2003
13. Jeffrey Warren “Armsflow” 2006
14. Center for Urban Pedagogy “Cargo Chain” 2008
15. Temporary Travel Office “Contaminating the Preserve” 2008
16. Hackitectura (Pablo de Soto, Jose Perez de Lama osfa, Marta Paz sweena), Indymedia Estrecho and collaborators “Tactical Cartography of the Straits” 2004
17. Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri “Fear is Somehow Our For Whom? For What? and Proximity to Everything Far Away” 2006
18. The Los Angeles Urban Rangers “Malibu Public Beaches” 2007
19. The Los Angeles Urban Rangers “Los Angeles Urban Rangers Official Map and Guide” 2004
20. The Los Angeles Urban Rangers “LA County Fair” 2006
21. The Institute for Infinitely Small Things “City Formerly Known As Cambridge”
22. Amy Franceschini “Silicon Valley Superfund Sites” 2006
23. Amy Franceschini “Intentional Communities in Silicon Valley” 2008
24. Adriane Colburn “Whose On Top (race to the pole, part two)” 2008
25. Bureau d’études “World Government” 2005
26. Grupo de Arte Callejero “Aqui Viven Genocidas”
There will be a catalog for the exhibition that will be published by Melville House Books. I look forward to getting a copy when it comes out.
The tour starts next month and has dates that are still available. I would like for it to come to Washington, DC! 
Exhibition Itinerary
Richard E. Peeler Art Center , DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana
September 19 – December 2, 2008Rochester Art Center, Rochester, Minnesota
February 7 – April 18, 2009The Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico
June 28 – September 20, 2009AVAILABLE
October 2009 - January 2010Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine
February 21 - May 30, 2010AVAILABLE
June - August 2010
Click on the detail of Pentagon Quilt #3 below to view the rest of the map:
Related Virginia Entries: (more…)
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Interchangable Earth
8/6/2008 || 2:11 pm
The Organization For Security And Cooperation In Europe Continues To Press The US Goverment on Full Congressional Representation for D.C. Residents
Last night the graphic above was forward to me by my friend and fellow activist, Timothy Cooper of World Rights, an NGO that works to promote and protect human rights under principles of international law.
I have worked with Timothy on many different human rights demonstrations in the past involving the OSCE. He was quoted in David Montgomery’s article about me as saying “Nikolas looks better in a Colonial outfit and a tricorner hat than practically anyone I know.” Timothy Cooper is also one heck of a piano player, but what I respect him for most is his ongoing work on behalf of the disenfranchised residents of America’s capital city.
As one of the few activists who have succeeded in placing the international spotlight on Washington, DC’s lack of voting representation, this press release below shows that he’s been continuing the fight. In the Needs Assessment Mission Report[pdf] published by Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights there is a specific paragraph that I don’t think would have been included without his diligence. It references the 2006 OSCE Declaration that we helped lobby for; both on land and water.
W O R L D R I G H T S
Human Rights Advocacy WorldwideFor Immediate Release
Date: August 4, 2008
Contact: Timothy Cooper
Tel: 202.361.0989ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE (OSCE) PRESSES UNITED STATES ON GRANTING D.C. RESIDENTS FULL CONGRESSIONAL VOTING RIGHTS
Washington, DC—In a “Needs Assessment Mission Report [pdf]” issued by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on July 28, 2008, the OSCE concluded that “[w]hile the United States of America has a long-standing tradition of democratic elections, several issues raised in previous OSCE/ODIHR reports, and those highlighted by OSCE/ODIHR NAM interlocutors, merit further attention.” Among those issues raised in previous OSCE reports is the continuing denial of full congressional representation to the nearly 600,000 residents of Washington, D.C. In its last election observation report issued in 2006, the OSCE called on the U.S. government to grant D.C. residents full congressional voting rights. The United States is obligated to guarantee full representation in Congress to the residents of the District of Columbia under the 1990 OSCE Copenhagen Document, to which it is party.
The new report’s Executive Summary notes that “only citizens of states are entitled to vote for congressional representation with full voting rights, leaving approximately 600,000 US citizens in Washington DC alone without full representation in Congress….”
The latest report’s findings also state that “[a]ccording to the Constitution, United States citizens who are not citizens of one of the 50 states are not able to vote for members of Congress who have full voting rights in Congress. It is estimated that up to 600,000 citizens in Washington DC alone, without including citizens in US territories, are subject to US laws including taxation and permitted to vote in the presidential election, but cannot fully exercise their voting rights for Congressional representation.”
Worldrights lobbied the OSCE/ODIHR for many years to draw its attention to the willful disenfranchisement of D.C. residents by Congress and the Executive Branch.
The report may be found at: http://www.osce.org/odihr/ or by clicking here[pdf]
The current Democratic Party leadership mentioned in the graphic above have been advocating 1/3 representation for the residents of Washington, DC for far too long. What is funny about the graphic to me is it uses the 1/3 meme that I’ve been pressing for the last few years:
First with the license plate:
Which received mention in the Washington Times
Then the D.C. Flag
….and now the graphic above employs the concept of being begging to the 1/3 meme. I wonder what meme will be next? I can only hope the Democratic Party leadership changes their direction in favor of what Washington, DC residents voted for: statehood or at least full representation in Congress (not one token vote in the House of Representatives and no Senators).
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: upcoming: Lenz Quilt Animation
7/30/2008 || 10:42 pm
Quart Bag: A Community Art Show at the Civilian Art Projects
Screen grab of the front page of Civilian Art Projects website
Features a piece I created called “Without You I am Lost”
On July 21st, 2008 I received an invitation e-mail from the owner of Civilian Art Projects, a Washington, DC-based fine art gallery. The e-mail outlined the concept behind their upcoming group show called “Quart Bag,” which invited local artists to submit a Ziploc® that has been decorated, converted, or redesigned. The uniqueness behind the concept, one that I’ve always enjoyed since I was a kid, is everyone is essentially given a prop and its up to the artist to get creative with it and transform it into something new & unique.
After reading the e-mail a few times over I immediately thought of using some of the maps that I had saved from my Artomatic exhibit. The map scraps were originally a bunch of cut up maps that I used for my Base Map Installation (see below). These maps were originally purchased using DC government grant money that was given to me in conjunction with the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities 2008 Young Emerging Artist Award and I realized that I wasn’t about to throw all those maps away when Artomatic finished. So when I was dismantling the exhibit I saved as many of the maps as I could so that I could recycle them (like last night’s leftovers!) in a to-be-identified project.
With the recycling theme running through my head, I went downstairs to my kitchen, found an unused Ziploc® bag in my pantry (gallon-sized not quart!), and proceeded to my basement to create this unique piece of art. The original idea was to fill the bag up with scraps of maps but after filling it up, I realized that there was something missing. Essentially, there was no message being conveyed and frankly I wouldn’t say a bag filled with scraps of maps means much to anyone, or worth $50/$100 unless of course, you were a collector of discarded maps and/or the maps were really old.
Upon further contemplation, I decided to empty out the bag and add a bit of text to the inside of the bag to give it some depth of meaning through an abstract message. I chose a phrase that combines the unique nature of maps with a subtle, but concise, message of longing: Without You I am Lost. This simple message speaks volumes (about a gallon) about who I am, where I am going, and how I’ve been feeling as of late. There were a few other phrases that I bounced around in my head like show me the way, you are not here, and get lost, but I felt that Without You I am Lost really captured the essence of how I was feeling at the time of it’s creation.
I went back upstairs to my room and printed out the text using the same font that I used in the bloody self-portrait taken after my recent mugging and had the text printed archival matte photographic paper. I then cut the paper down to size and found some clear packing tape to affix the printed text to. To give the clear tape some subtle flair, I used my lighter to burn the edges of the tape and then affixed it to the inside of the bag and filled it back up again with the maps.
This time around I was more precise in how I arranged the maps and placed on one side of the text a detail of the National Mall explicitly featuring the United States Capitol. I chose this location to add a secondary depth of meaning because as a resident of Washington, DC I’m denied representation in Congress. Thus the You could be implied to mean congressional representation and the I implied to mean the residents of Washington, DC and so it could then indirectly be read as “Without congressional representation the people of Washington, DC are Lost.”
Adding to this inferential geographic juxtaposition motif, the other side of the text features an upside-down portion of the Middle East and Africa to imply concept of being lost in the global context. Or more specifically, I am implying that American democracy has lost its way and the world has become lost. After all, the opposite of progress is congress, right? By placing the two locations on opposing sides of the central text, my message expands from a sincere message of longing to a subtle critique on American foreign policy and the disenfranchisement of Americans living in the capital city of the world’s most powerful nation.
A couple days ago I e-mailed the gallery director back indicating that I was interested in participating in the exhibition and attached the photograph of the bag. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to participate because I was using a gallon-sized bag instead of a quart bag. Her response was that she thought it was perfect
Earlier this afternoon, about 30 minutes before I was going to leave my house and drop off the bag at the gallery, I received an e-mail notifying me that the photograph I had sent was currently on the front page of the gallery’s website. Grinning, I checked it out and took the screen grab above. I’m really looking forward to seeing the variety of submissions that will be on display. If you are in the Washington, DC area, you should come & check out the exhibition:
The Quart Bag Exhibition opens on Friday, August 6th from 7pm to 9pm @ the Civilian Art Projects, which is located on the 3rd floor of 406 7th Street NW, Washington, DC
In case you are interested in seeing what the maps were used for before they ended up in the bag in the photo above, in April of this year I produced the YouTube video below for promotion of my Artomatic 2008 exhibit:
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Jacksonville Quilt
7/27/2008 || 11:48 am
Taco Bell Overcharges Vegetarians
My second official job when I was in high school was at my neighborhood Taco Bell in Ballwin, Missouri. Starting when I was 17, my friends and I would work evenings & weekends and, generally speaking, had a great time at “Taco Smell.” I’m not going overshare the details of why we had so much fun, but it was the first and only time since that I’ve worked side by side with my best friends.
My specialty was customer service, which was really my rationale for not having to make the food. Instead of being a slave to the food assembly line, I worked the front counter and the drive-through and was able to bypass having to learn how to prepare the food and getting dirty. In our heyday, our Taco Bell was the fastest in the region because we were treated fairly, paid decently, and everyone was friends. We also had a clock above the drive through that showed our average time so we could work against the morning shift to prove that evening shift did their orders faster.
In many respects it was kind of like a Utopian factory in which we diligently did our job at just above minimum wage (I was making $6.40 an hour) and in the process generated some very fond memories while in high school. From climbing up to the rooftop and throwing hot sauce packets on the busy street & watching them pop to bribing the police officers with free food so they wouldn’t smell the marijuana smoke wafting from my coworkers inside the restaurant, in essence, our Taco Bell was composed of a small army of teenagers who worked hard and played harder.
As the customer service specialist, I knew my way around the menu forwards & backwards and could blindly take someone’s order using the touch-screen register. Every once in awhile we’d get an Indian family who’d request their food to be completely vegetarian and we’d adjust their order accordingly.
There was a specific button on the register that we’d use to reflect this dietary adjustment and we could always tell the new employees apart from the older employees based on whether they’d use this button or not. The cryptic text on the button was simply SBBN and it stood for Substitute Beans, which meant that for any food item that was ordered, the meat would be substituted with beans. The new employees would always type in “-MEAT +BEANS” and we’d always have to correct them because the “+BEANS” would mean that the customer would be charged extra because they would be getting extra beans added to their order and not a substitution. This simple button is the why I am writing this entry today.
Since I switched up my diet about 6 years and removed meat from my daily intake, I’ve stopped going to 95% of fast food restaurants. Their combo meals are based on a meat-centric diet and without the desire to consume most of what is for sale, I’ve simply found no reason to go to most fast food restaurants. However, sometimes when I am traveling fast food is the only option, or sometimes when I’m out with a group of friends I get suckered into coming into a fast food restaurant with the group. I’m not one to proselytize my dietary beliefs, so I will just order French fries (which are usually fried with the chicken strips) and whatever is not a product that explicitly contains meat. Over the years I’ve learned how difficult it can be to go through the menus and find a full meal that does not contain meat. However, there is still one fast food chain that a vegetarian can get a full meal with little effort- Taco Bell.
The other week I was hungry, bored, and hadn’t purchased groceries in awhile, so I decided to make a visit to my nearest Taco Bell. Located near the intersection of 14th & U streets in Washington, DC, at the heart of the U Street Corridor, this Taco Bell is a Yum! Brand Inc. dual restaurant franchise, which contains a KFC and a Taco Bell (see photo above). This allows customers the opportunity to purchase chicken wings and a burrito. In other cities Yum! Brand Inc. has paired Taco Bell with Pizza Hut or A&W Root Beer or Long John Silvers (or different combinations therein), all with the notion that more sales can be generated when there are more culinary options available. In fact, Yum! Brands Inc., based in Louisville, Kentucky, is the world’s largest restaurant company in terms of system units, with approximately 33,000 restaurants around the world.
However, the Taco Bell nearest to my residence does not operate like the Taco Bell of my youth. There is no SBBN option on the cash register and when I purchased a burrito sans beef filling, I was charged 30 cents extra for the beans. When I approached the manager about this discrepancy, he simply told me that this Taco Bell doesn’t do free substitutions.
On the surface, I can understand why they’d not want to deal with substitutions because it causes the food preparers to do slightly more work. But below the surface, vegetarians are being charged more for less. The environmental aspects of choosing a burrito without beef is akin to a dietary carbon offset. The amount of water and grain used to feed the cows prior to their slaughter is greatly reduced by lowering the demand for beef. Thus its actually cheaper for Taco Bell to serve their customers beans instead of meat because the beans only require space, sun, water, and probably pesticides to mature & be harvested, while the cows require space, sun, water, grain (which in itself requires the same farming protocols as the beans), antibiotics, and a slaughterhouse before arriving in your burrito. So why charge customers more for something that is better for the environment and costs less to produce?
I called up Taco Bell’s 1800 number (1-800-TACO-BELL) to inquire about the discrepancy between the Taco Bell of my youth and the Taco Bell near my house. The official response is that Taco Bell does not have an authoritative position and its up to the individual franchises to give the substitution option to their customers. Thus you can go to one Taco Bell and get beans instead of meat on all your items free of charge, or go to the Taco Bell nearest to my house and be charged 30 cents for each substitution, and in the eyes of Yum! Brand Inc. there is no problem with that.
Frankly, I wholeheartedly disagree with this concept. If the customers is always right, then being charged extra for less is fundamentally wrong. I will be boycotting this Taco Bell until they’ve changed their position and I urge my neighbors to do the same. For those reading this outside of Washington, DC, I urge you to ask the customer service specialist if you are charged extra for the substitution of meat for beans and if you are, kindly state your issue with the practice and leave the establishment.
At the end of the day, its the profits that Yum! Brand cares about, not the environment or even what an annoyed vegetarian thinks. Yet I strongly believe that it would be in their best interest to make an authoritative position on the matter. Until then, I’ll be making my own burritos, buying burritos from other establishments, and when I happen to visit a Taco Bell that overcharges me for less, I’ll raise my voice within the restaurant and make a scene, so that all customers present will know that Taco Bell is ripping off vegetarians. I urge you to do the same.
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Racine Quilt #2
7/19/2008 || 3:29 pm
First Amendment Violation in Lafayette Park yesterday; ACLU contacted
Youth poets from around the country pose for a group picture at Lafayette Park
A couple weeks ago I was contacted by my friend who owns a sound system that is frequently used for outdoor demonstrations, rallies, and press conferences. Since he has a couple of businesses that siphon much of his time, he normally contacts me about doing the sound for these events. Over the years I’ve helped a wide array of disparate groups amplify their voices and help facilitate their freedom of speech through my sound engineering skills.
Yesterday’s event was organized by a DC non-profit Sol y Soul in conjunction with Youth Speaks’s 2008 Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam. Throughout last week over 450 different youths between the ages of 13 & 19 from around the world came to DC to compete, learn, and forge new friendships through spoken word poetry. This competition culminated into a final competition tonight in Lincoln Theater that will be recorded by HBO for a future episode of their Def Poetry series.
Friday afternoon’s event was called “Hear the Children Speak” and the theme of the poetry was about No Child Left Behind and America’s educational system. The permits allowed the organizers to construct a stage on the west side of Lafayette Park and have me setup a sound system that allowed each student the ability to recite their poetry on the microphone.
For the first two hours everything went superb, then a National Park Police Officer decided that their poetry, their 1st amendment, was too much and told one of the organizers we need to turn off the sound system.
I have done sound at Lafayette Park (also known as President’s Park, which is located just north of the White House) over a dozen times in the last few years and never before I have been told to turn off the sound system. I’ve been told to turn it down, but never off. After consulting with the organizers, I decided to contact the ACLU about what transpired and below is my initial e-mail which lays out exactly what happened:
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: 10 & 405 Quilt, Socio Ditata Labore - Revisited
6/28/2008 || 5:55 pm
YouTube Has Chosen For You! - Digital Scrapbooking Explicit Bipartisanship
Last month I snail mailed a letter to YouTube citing the fact that their political page was being explicitly partisan and did not include any third party politicians running for president. I have yet to receive a written reply. Instead YouTube gave the page’s layout a makeover, but still left out 3rd party presidential candidates. To document this flagrant bipartisanship, I decided to take a screen shot every day I was on-line this month.
Below you’ll see the candidates YouTube has tacitly endorsed during the month of June:
(more…)
Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Queen Anne Quilt
6/9/2008 || 9:00 pm
The Dr. Bill Show!
I’ve been at odds with DC Vote for years. While we are on the same side regarding the importance of congressional representation for DC residents, I’ve been quite dissatisfied with their approach toward bringing true equality. As an ardent supporter of statehood, I’ve been annoyed that DC Vote has been a puppet of the Democratic Party and has wantonly gone after partial representation instead of full representation.
Last year I modified their logo to create a 1/3 fraction because of their support for the constitutionally dubious Norton-Davis bill that would give DC a token vote in the House of Representatives, but no representation in the Senate, or 1/3 representation. This was followed up by a nice phone call from the executive director of the organization asking me nicely to not screw around with their copyrighted logo (free speech rules!). I even created multiple designs of the DC Flag that had only one out of the three stars filled in to show my fractional contempt. However, my best creation was the modified DC license plate that said “TAXATION WITH 1/3 REPRESENTATION,” which was ultimately mentioned in the Washington Times.
Worse is that DC Vote has been able to conflate “voting rights” with “statehood” in public discourse to the point that people use the words “voting rights” incorrectly. The inherent irony is that they’ve been advocating for a voting right (singular) because they are staunchly in favor of giving Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton *a* vote in the House. In my opinion, “voting rights” (plural) involves DC residents having Congressional representation in both the House and the Senate. I remember when we marched at last year’s rally, I had to stop people from chanting “Give us the vote” because they were naively advocating for partial representation when we were holding a large flag that said “DC STATEHOOD NOW!”
Earlier this afternoon I noticed an advertisement on Wonkette for “Dr. Bill” and after clicking on it I was brought to DC Vote’s website to watch a flash version of the video above.
Frankly, I really like the video and that’s why I am posting it here today. With my reservations about DC Vote aside, I actually like this video as a means for explaining the disenfranchisement of DC residents. There is no mention of any constitutionally dubious legislation, rather its a simple & straightforward video that makes a strong case for giving DC residents representation in Congress while making fun of America’s worst president.
If you are reading/watching this from outside of Washington, DC, please share this video with your friends. If you think “change” is coming to Washington, maybe it should start with the enfranchisement of DC residents.
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Pearl Street Quilt #2
5/28/2008 || 1:54 pm
Face the (Corporate) Candidates on YouTube
Today I wrote YouTube, LLC (owned by Google, Inc) the following letter:
Dear YouTube, LLC,
Your “Face the Candidates” section ( http://youtube.com/youchoose ) needs to be updated to include all presidential candidates. Currently American voters are not being shown all the candidates for president of the United States of America and this prevents your users from making an informed decision on what presidential candidate to vote for in November.
As a member of the Green Party of the United States, I find your explicit bipartisanship to be counter to your parent company’s corporate philosophy. The link to the “Face the Candidates” page is titled “YouChoose” but in reality it could be written “We’ve chosen for you,” because the web editors have unfairly excluded a presidential candidate.
Please include Cynthia McKinney’s campaign channel ( http://www.youtube.com/runcynthiarun ) to your “Face the Candidates” page because she is running for president and deserves the same placement as her democratic & republican party counterparts.
Sincerely,
Nikolas R. Schiller
I wrote this out of general frustration regarding how controlled the American political system is. Even though I voted for Cynthia McKinney in the Washington, DC primary and she’s now acquired the majority of Green Party delegates, there has been absolutely no national media coverage of her campaign (don’t believe me, check the Washington Post & New York Times websites). This type of American Blackout is unpatriotic, nondemocratic, and downright wrong and with Google’s “do no evil” corporate philosophy in place, this letter is an attempt to challenge their web editors to do the right thing and include all presidential candidates regardless of political affiliation. Will they change the page? I doubt it, but I know that I’ve made an effort, albeit a small one.
Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: TV Kultura mentions the last 4 years of my cartographic activities
5/26/2008 || 1:26 pm
DC Residents say they want full democracy, like New Delhi.
This article is a great primer on the disenfranchisement of Washington, DC residents. However well-crafted or edited, I genuinely have issue with this one statement– the only place where the word STATEHOOD is mentioned in the entire article:
While many Congress members support a vote in the House for Washington residents, statehood is less popular because it would mean adding two senators from one city in an upper chamber that has only 100 members for the entire nation. And although the population of D.C. is greater than the state of Wyoming, the District lacks characteristics normally associated with states such as diverse geography with both urban and rural areas. Yet, these definitions of what constitutes a state are not written in the Constitution.
Statehood is the easiest answer, but the hardest solution to obtain. The League of Women Voters gave up on Statehood in the 90’s and were most recently in favor of the constitutionally dubious 1/3 representation bill. What I find sad is that the words “An Equal Constitutional Rights Amendment” are used in place of an actual bill. So instead of working for statehood- a singular goal- they are currently advocating what? A to-be-drafted bill that will probably only give partial equality? It’s rather sad. I mean, come on. The Democratic Party, DC Vote, the League of Women Voters, and the ilk are not able to change anything because they gave up on what DC residents voted for. Instead of not wavering and clearly stating one precise goal: statehood, they have sought “incremental” answers that have missed the mark. Its just so happens that most of these incremental steps are unconstitutional. Politics might be the art of compromise, but equal representation is the basis for politics. Statehood might be the most difficult solution to the DC Dilemma, but it provides the residents with full equality that no “voting rights bill” can match.
Below is the article:
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: FlickrVision 3D
5/17/2008 || 4:45 pm
Experimenting with Facebook’s advertisement system [part 3 - Twenty Phantom Women]
Who would have thought that there were 20 phantom women who are between 26 & 28 that exist somewhere between Washington, DC and the District of Columbia?
I’d sure like to meet one of those ladies.
It should be noted that the Facebook entry for DC is missing the definite article, as in “the District of Columbia.” Currently it dsnt reed rite.
Related Facebook: (more…)
Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Darfur was on the map in 1858...
4/22/2008 || 1:41 pm
NBC Universal is co-opting the Green Party of the United States this Earth Day
This Earth Day I am calling out corporate greenwashing being employed by NBC Universal . The calculated lie (below) is that they are not forming a new “Green Party,” rather they are subverting the existence of one of the few 3rd parties in American politics.
When this week is over, I sincerely wonder how many times will NBC Universal feature the Green Party’s presidential candidate on any of it’s stations? That is less of a question and more of a challenge. My null hypothesis is that there will be no mention of the Green Party of the United States, rather lots of tips on living green instead of empowering people that they have the option to vote Green in November.
NBC Universal is 80% owned by General Electric and this type of greenwashing is designed to help distance people’s concerns about General Electric’s nuclear reactor business operations. It’s ironic that it was protests against nuclear energy that helped propel the German Green Party into the political spotlight.
View the modified screen grab:
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: San Antonio Sprocket #2
4/17/2008 || 4:50 pm
Libertarians make a misguided political statement at the Jefferson Memorial
I’ve been reading some of the coverage about a group of DC Libertarians who tried to stage a flash mob at the Jefferson Memorial last weekend.
The plan was simple: show up at the Jefferson Memorial at a set time and dance with their iPods for 10 minutes to celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s birthday and leave. But all did not go as planned:
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2 Comments Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: Voting Rights March Recap
4/8/2008 || 4:52 pm
ABSOLUT STATEHOOD
Screen grab links to .kmz file for Google Earth
A geovisual response to an LA Times blog entry showing mostly isolationist responses to an alternative history map of North America by Absolut Vodka.
This interactive map for Google Earth shows the familiar Absolut Vodka bottle labeled “Absolut Statehood” and placed inside of the original boundaries of the District of Columbia. These boundaries existed until 1847 when the residents of Virginia voted to cede back the portion of the District of Columbia that was west of the Potomac River.
Absolut Statehood represents the cartographic notion that the nation’s capital can become America’s 51st state*. Today there are over 550,000 American citizens living in the nation’s capital that are being denied the fundamental right of represenation in Congress. This ongoing human rights violation currently practiced by the government of the United States has been denounced by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The United States is the only country in the industrialized world that forbids the residents of it’s capital city the right to elect representatives to their national legislature.
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4/7/2008 || 10:29 pm
World Vision : You can’t ignore child labor
While I am not a big fan of pervasive advertisements, I found this guerrilla marketing campaign designed by Ogilvy to be highly effective. It comes directly from the same vein as Amnesty International’s award-winning campaign “It’s Not Happening Here But It’s Happening Now.” However, instead of being merely a billboard campaign, this iteration is interactive. As one pushes the revolving door, they are trapped between two photographs of child laborers also pushing the door. Above each the child is the text “You can’t ignore child labor - www.kinderarbeid.nl” [kinderarbeid= child labor]
Watch the video to get the idea:
Related Activism Entries: (more…)
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4/4/2008 || 12:58 pm
The maps on Google Analytics suffer from Washington, DC’s exclusion
The other day I mentioned how Google Charts API includes small maps but leaves Washington, DC off the map. Last night when I was looking at my newly installed Google Analytics interface (above) and I discovered another reason why Washington, DC should be included: without including Washington, DC, the map on the Google Analytics page is lacking a means to show visitors from the nation’s capital. This means all webmasters around the world who use Google’s Analytics are not being able to effectively analyze their data on the map of the United States because not every country/territory/region on the continental mainland is being shown.
From the screen grab above:
A. There is 61.4 square miles of Country/Territory missing here
B. If Regions are being listed, why is one being excluded from the map above?
C. District of Columbia is not a Region nor are any of the States listed below it
As I wrote before, Google can add Washington, DC to the lower portion of their maps in the area where Alaska and Hawaii are not shown to scale. While Washington, DC may be denied statehood, it has more inhabitants than the state of Wyoming and should be given the same opportunity to be shown on the map of the United States. Otherwise, like the Google Analytics screen grab above, the maps will continue to be incomplete and inaccurate.
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3/24/2008 || 11:53 am
Google Charts API now includes small maps, but leaves out Washington, DC.
Since DC is not a state, Google decided to completely leave out the nation’s capital from it’s new Google Docs feature that allows the creation of small, static maps. This cartographic error could have easily been fixed by simply adding a small arrow to the DC diamond and labeling it in the Atlantic Ocean as “Washington, DC” in the USA map.
(more…)
1 Comment Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: On the map, off the wall
3/19/2008 || 9:38 am
Youtube video of yesterday’s freeze-in at Union Station
You might have seen Improv Everywhere’s Grand Central Station Freeze-in a few months ago. This Youtube video is from yesterday’s anti-war freeze-in that took place in Washington, DC’s Union Station. For being less than 24 hours old, my friend did a great job editing the video.
Related Activism: (more…)
1 Comment Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: Interactive Inequality #2, "Here Be Dragons" syndicated
1/12/2008 || 1:43 pm
6 Years of the Guantanamo Gulag
Screen Grab from the AFP via Google News
I was contracted by Pax Christi, a catholic workers group, to provide sound for a demonstration at the Supreme Court on Friday. It was the 6th anniversary of America’s illegal detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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8/5/2007 || 2:11 am
My first YouTube Mash-up : Scratch Slavery
Political Activism + Turntablism
Taking congressional testimony stating that your country is still engaged in slavery and mashing it up with a scratch demo video by DJ Loomy showing off the new Vestax Controller One.
Press the play button on both videos:
The scratch video ends first, but you know it deserves a rewind, because history is repeating.
(sometimes the videos do not show up in Firefox!)
Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Infinite Delmar Loop
6/20/2007 || 6:57 pm
LOLpoverty
While this meme is rather old, the other week I thought of a meme morph and decided to make it a reality today. Using the same php script that powers the Lost Series, I decided to take an image that represented poverty and add the LOLtext. Originally it was only going to say “I CAN HAS A CHEESEBURGER?” and when the user clicks on the kid, the background would change. This was to represent that while the mesage stays the same, the American people represented behind the kid would change, and thus the message would continue to be the elephant in the room. I decided to modify the original plan slightly and incorporate an animated gif (I am not aware of any LOLmeme that has used an animated gif) that represents the child speaking to you the viewer. Not only asking for the cheeseburger, but telling you why, and hopefully making you desire to do something about it.
(photo from a google image search result for “poverty”)
Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: new layout needed
