I’ve never been a fan of Flickr. I dislike how photos are lifted from Flickr all the time without proper citation. One of my biggest annoyances regarding my artwork or other people’s work is when it’s posted on-line with no link back or extra information regarding the artist or the circumstances regarding the image’s origin. Instead you get “neat huh?” “Cool photo!” “Look at this!” etc and while it’s great that more eyes are seeing the image, it undermines the artist’s visibility because the citation is not always accurately presented. A good example of this lack of information can be seen at the social image bookmarking website FFFFOUND!. This lack of citation is not the case 100% of the time, but its the main reason why I don’t upload my artwork to Flickr. Since I have ample server space and nearly unlimited bandwidth I’ve never needed another repository for my images.
I also don’t like the stalker ability that comes with having all of your photographs on-line for strangers to look at and download. I won’t name names, but I’ve looked through some Flickr photostreams of some of my friends and have found that the photos offer far too much information about their lives, activities, and friends. You can look through someone’s photos and see their exes, the interior of their homes, and basically just about anything the person decided to place out there for strangers to view. Worse is that you cannot access the information regarding where your photographs are viewed from. Since I have access to my website’s server logs I can find exactly how many times a photograph has been looked at and by what IP addresses. This information is shielded from the Flickr user and dumbed down to a lowly view counter.
With those reservations aside, I decided to play nice and upload one photograph of my Art-O-Matic 2008 exhibit taken on May 9th. I went through and tagged the photograph twelve times showcasing the content that has been placed on top of the Base Map. Since I embedded quite a few links into the notes, I’ll be able to track exactly who clicks on the image and know with a certain amount of certainty how many times the photograph has been looked at and where the photograph is being looked at from– if they click.
Related Art-O-Matic 2008 Entries: (more…)
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4/11/2008 || 6:42 pm
The Yu Ji Tu map [1137] and a map of the distribution of Moslems in China [1922] via Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr.’s trip to northwest China [1936]
Page 6 of Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr. photo album featuring the photograph of the Yu Ji Tu
Image from the Harvard University Library
Last night I came across Harvard Library’s digitized photo album of Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr.’s trip to northwest China. Of all things to have on the inside of the album cover, there was a small map showing “Moslems in China”. After flipping through a few pages I spotted a photograph of one of China’s most famous maps: the Yu Ji Tu.
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4/9/2008 || 12:30 pm
The first Artomatic prints have arrived
Federal Triangle Quilt #3 with Chinese signature
Using some of the funds from my DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities 2008 Young Artist Grant, I purchased the first set of prints that will be shown at next month’s Art-O-Matic exhibition.
One of Kodak’s newest products is their fleece blanket, which is 100% polyester, machine washable, and frankly, are a very good deal at about $45 each. I’ve been waiting a long time to print my maps on large media cost-effectively and fortunately the size of these blankets match the aspect ratio of my maps (3:2) so I can upload my 9,000 x 6,000-sized maps (one half the original rendering size) without any extra image manipulation. Or so I thought.
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3/13/2008 || 2:56 pm
White House Peace
: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
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Similar to the Shanghai Map, this map uses Chinese characters as a decorative element. The source aerial photography of the White House was censored by the government before it was released to the public. I documented this about a year ago with my Lost Series project “The White House is off-limits to the public.” Unlike the Shanghai Map, I made a tessellation using the words for PEACE instead of placing the glyphs at the bottom. I was, however, thinking of revisiting this map in the near future and adding more text. As it is now, I think it’s somewhat plain, and deserves something else. I’m not sure what that ‘else’ is yet.
View the Google Map (which shows older imagery) of the White House.
View the rest of the details: (more…)
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8/2/2007 || 10:13 am
The Shanghai Map
A little over a month ago a Chinese friend of mine moved from DC to Shanghai, China. While we were chatting on-line I asked her if she’d be able to send me some text in Chinese so I could use it on some maps. The first use of this text was the banners I made a couple weeks ago and today marks my first use of the text on an actual map.
The map was created from a Terra satellite image taken of eastern China on April 4th, 2004. The text simply says “map,” and with the location & text combined, you get the title, “The Shanghai Map.”
Unlike any of the quilt projection maps before this, I decided to use only one tessellation rotated 45 degrees. This switch-up is because I’ve never used Simplified Chinese before on a map and wanted this one to be completely unique. With the colors, text, and type of tessellation, I am quite pleased with this map and I look forward to using the text she supplied me for future maps!
View the Google Map of the area around Shanghai, China.
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7/20/2007 || 2:35 pm
random banners now greet you - continued
In March of this year I created 15 banners that are displayed randomly each time the website loads. Earlier this week a friend of mine in Shanghai, China sent me my name in Simplified Chinese. She also sent me some useful words I plan on adding to some future maps. I’ve decided to make another batch of banners using this text. There are now a total of 34 different banners.
View the new banners after the fold…
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: my internets are down
The Daily Render: A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, & Future
