The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller

The map above is from the Wall Street Journal’s on-line article about the paper A Theory of the Emergence, Persistence, and Expression of Geographic Variation in Psychological Characteristics[pdf]. The researchers poured through 600,000 surveys and came up with some interesting results on the spatial distribution of the big 5 personality traits in America. I found it interesting that Washington, DC leads the United States of America in Openness, is third in Extraversion, and is second to last in Agreeableness.

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8/5/2008 || 2:28 pm
You Street on YouTube || East Meets West || A Game of Locational Awareness

The other day after I watched the interview conducted on a bicycle the idea that had been swimming in the back of my head resurfaced. Originally it was going to be something simple, as in, one YouTube video for U Street (sometimes written out as You Street) in Washington, DC that featured me riding down the street at night and another video that would be filmed on the exact same stretch of road, but filmed during the day. By using the YouTube Doubler, the on-line mashup helper, the viewer would be able to simultaneously see the same stretch of road at two different times of the day.

After thinking about the concept more thoroughly, I literally went in a different direction (actually two) and came up with a game of sorts. Last Saturday I filmed myself riding on the same stretch of U Street going to one end of the street and then filmed myself going back to the same point where I started. I then edited the videos so they start where the other on ends and then I placed the two videos side-by-side using YouTube Doubler.

The object of the game is to find the exact location where the videos cross paths. As in, the video on the right features me riding my bike on U Street going due East and the video on the left features me riding my bike due West and somewhere in the videos there is a specific point where the two videos cross paths.

Since they were filmed at different times you won’t actually see me riding down the street, but there is an exact point on the street where the two videos intersect and its up to the viewer to figure out where East meets West or West meets East.

Since I had more traffic going West than I did going East, the West video is slightly longer, but the spot where the two videos cross paths does not change. It might take a couple tries, but eventually you’ll be able to figure out the spot in question. If you need help with a map or two, I created a special Google Map that shows the starting locations of the two videos.

I’ve already found the location, but do you think you can find it? If you do, leave the estimated time in the comment section!! The answer is quite easy.

Click the screen grab below to try it out:

One disappointment with this game is that YouTube’s compression still stinks. I uploaded the videos at 640×480 in size with minimal compression with the hopes that they’d show up less pixilated, but alas the option to view the videos in high-quality was not there when I checked last. I still don’t know why either. The unfortunate result is that you are unable to see as much detail in the videos, which means the game is slightly harder to “win.” Currently Vimeo does not have an autoplay option which makes this mashup impossible on their platform, so there really isn’t much I can do to fix the compression issue.

One idea is to remove the YouTube Doubler component and redesign the videos in Final Cut Pro. By adjusting the size of the final video, I can place both East & West into one video and release the game without compression. This will take me longer to complete, but I think it might be a worthy effort. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy this game.

Related Interactive Entries: (more…)

2 Comments Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: My first YouTube Mash-up : Scratch Slavery

7/22/2008 || 1:23 pm
FLIK International Movie Festival & Interactive Exhibit

Tomorrow I am going to be dropping off some of my artwork at Art Whino for this exhibit.

Art Outlet and Art Whino are proud to announce their partnership in presenting the 2nd annual FLIK International Movie Festival and FLIK Interactive exhibition to be held at Art Whino Gallery at the new National Harbor, July 25th thru July 27th, 2008.

FLIK is a multi faceted event that features not only the best in contemporary animation, experimental films, as well as multi-disciplinary and interactive new media art, but it also reaches out to the public at large with a call out for socially relevant expression and person storytelling thru its I CINEMA and VOX POPULI programs, which will continue beyond the festival itself.

FLIK interactive art will explore or reflect on how new and old technology and technique influence how we hook up and how we view the world. Is change or lack thereof good, bad, sublime, dystopic, utopic or irrelevant? How do these tools matter, if at all?

Curator Joshua Barlow, founder of www.flikfestival.com, selected the following FLIK artists for the FLIK International Film Festival and interactive exhibition:

Emmanuel Blessed Aisabokhae, Rodney Ascher , David Butler, Kim Collmer, Tomoska Constantina, Ben Drewry, Casey Drogin, Shawn Lawson, Rudy Lemcke, Samantha, Leriche-Gionet, Bruce McKraig, Tewodross Melchishua, Rob Parrish, Serena Rodgers, Daniel Rolli, Renee Shaw, Fatouros Thanos, Vidlits (Liz Dubelman & Paca Thomas), Filip Walgraef, Millie Wissar

Curator Andrea Collins, selected the following FLIK interactive artists for the FLIK International Film Festival and interactive exhibition:

Eric Celarier, Guthery Duncan , Rita Elsner, Roman Gershkovich , Michael Gordon, Sean Hennessy, Shawn Lawson, Rob Lindsay, David London, James Mallos, Bono Mitchell, Bill Mould, Chris Peloso, Meek Phelan, Tarik Rafiq, Joe Reinsel, Nikolas Schiller, Pindar Van Arman, Andrew Wodzianski

The exhibit and screenings will be held at Art Whino @ National Harbor, 173 Waterfront Street, National Harbor, MD 20745, July 25th through 27th. Admission will be a suggested donation of $10, which will also get you a free beverage and a bag of popcorn. For directions or the complete program listing, visit www.artoutlet.org , www.artwhino.com or www.flikfestival.com.

Try to come out on Friday or Saturday to check out the videos and artwork!

I was not able to get my artwork driven out there, so it looks like they’ll only feature my QTVR map of National Harbor and no printed maps. [damn!!!]

Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Google's View of D.C. Melds New and Sharp, Old and Fuzzy - Washington Post

7/20/2008 || 4:42 pm
National Harbor 2006 - A Quicktime Virtual Reality Environment

76.5mb QTVR showing a 6,000 x 6,000 tessellation of aerial photography featuring the construction site of National Harbor in 2006

This interactive environment was created in late June, but I had forgotten to put it on-line!

On June 21st I was invited to come and check out the new Art Whino gallery in the newly developed plot of land called National Harbor. There is an upcoming new media exhibit and I decided to make this interactive map. More details on the exhibit forthcoming.

There are three different ways to view this map:
1) You can click on the image above and have it load in your browser
2) You can right click on the image above and save the file to your computer
3) Copying the URL above, opening up Quicktime, and pasting the URL into the “Open Url..”

I recommend going with option #2 or #3 because it allows you to resize the window and view more of the map on your computer screen. By going with route #1 you are forced to view it at roughly 320×240 in size (at least using FireFox) which does not full show the size of the map as easily and it also increases the risk of having your browser crash. Route #3 does not permanently save the file on to your hard drive like route #2, but it gives you the same control over the size of the viewing environment.

Since these types of maps are easy to make I think I should start making more of them. I wonder what the largest size I can render is? I shall find out in due time.

Related QTVR:

Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: random banners now greet you - continued, 90 & 405 Quilt

5/27/2008 || 2:50 pm
My Art-O-Matic 2008 Opening Night Exhibit Dissected on Flickr

Nikolas Schiller's Art-O-Matic 2008 Exhibit Dissected

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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4/8/2008 || 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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3/30/2008 || 1:37 pm
Hello Cherubs - A New Splash Page Graphic Added

With the addition of this graphic, my website’s splash page now contains over 18,675 different visual combinations. I’ve been working on a new lost series project called “The Grand Juxtaposition,” which uses all the images of my website. It should be ready in a week or two. This new splash page graphic was created using the letter z from the Oktober 98 font collection. I colored in the image and removed the color on the book’s page to create a transparency illusion that the book has been opened to one page somewhere on my website. Just hit reload to cycle through the different visual combinations.

Above the cherubs are showing a zoom-in detail of Washington Circle Quilt

Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Home Quilt #6

3/22/2008 || 7:46 pm
Flight & Expulsion - An Interactive Flash Map by Christian Behrens

Every year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issues a report concerning the number of approximately 21,000,000 people worldwide falling under its mandate: as refugees who were forced to leave their countries due to war, political, racial or religious persecution, as internally displaced persons, or as repatriates on their way back home.

This interactive visualization attempts to give an insight into the phenomenon of global flight and expulsion, based on the annual UNHCR statistics between the years of 1995 and 2004.

Last year Christian Behrens, a new media designer based in Berlin made this interactive Flash map. While I *really* like the map’s concept, coding, and visualization method, I have some issues with the cartographic layout. Specifically, it’s hard to accurately locate some countries with my mouse and since there is no scaling on the text or basemap, its hard to find countries that are typographically overlapping. Moreover, the country’s dot is the only hotspot that triggers the UNHCR data, so if you are hovering over the words, you are literally missing the point. For example, I wanted to find the Gaza Strip and realized the point where my mouse is located is not on Gaza. This also happened with Sri Lanka, whereas the dot is over water. Just south of Sri Lanka, not far from the Maldives. My favorite country on the map is Stateless (below). With that aside, I found this map to be very informative.
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: THE GEOCOLONIAL SLOTS - Match 3 for Statehood!, 4 years ago today...

2/27/2008 || 7:17 am
Featured on-line with the Maps exhibition at the Walters Museum

Screen grab showing a small detail of a Concentric Quilt

Starting in mid-November I’ve been volunteering my time with the Walters Museum’s upcoming exhibition. They have a small technology center (4 iMacs) in their cafeteria which I was given the opportunity to review. I look forward to going to the opening later this month!!

The Walters Museum has also included a layer for Google Earth that I produced for the exhibit. You can download the layer here or here.

Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Philly Mandala #2

1/6/2008 || 2:09 pm
Oil Wells in Los Angeles 103 years ago [One Slick Overlay]

Links to 2.5mb KMZ file for Google Earth
Were the fingerprints dipped in oil too?

The other day I was hunting for maps of Baltimore and stumbled on to the map above (published in Baltimore). It was last prominently featured in the Library of Congress’ “Los Angeles Mapped” on-line exhibition. The map shows downtown Los Angeles with little black dots showing the locations of all the oil wells that existed in 1905.

I wonder how many of the old oil derricks still exist today? I also wonder if people living where the oil wells were constructed own the mineral rights for their property? A few years back I remember looking into purchasing cheap land in Wyoming and one of the stipulations on the land was that the owner would not own the mineral rights below the surface of the earth. Does this exist in present day Los Angeles? Could someone living in Los Angeles today dig a little deeper and find a new source of oil in their backyard?

For more information visit the Library of Congress website. Below is a secondary screen grab showing the area around Dodgers Stadium. It should be noted that the overlay does line up 100% on Google Earth, but close enough to show a change in the built environment.
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12/9/2007 || 2:30 am
Within Sight of the White House [Overlay of Hooker’s Division]

[image links to .kmz file]
Google Earth Screen Shot of the Antique Overlay

One of the maps I recently downloaded was from a newspaper clipping showing the area near the White House. With 50 Saloons and 109 Bawdy-Houses the map was drawn to highlight business owners who were paying Federal taxes but not DC taxes. Of importance is how nearly all but four of the business owners were female. Were they not paying taxes because they were disenfranchised? Women’s suffrage didn’t come for another 30 years with the passage of the 19th Amendment. By taking the map and importing it into Google Earth, I was able to arrange it so that the buildings line up with minimal distortion. It’s not a perfect map, but it is truly an interesting glimpse into downtown Washington, DC in the 1890’s.

Today most of the buildings are all gone. There are some exceptions, like City Hall (Central Powerhouse) and the Old Post Office, which is written as the “New Post Office” on the map. In the place of the 109 Bawdy-Houses and 50 Saloons was the creation of Federal Triangle. Ohio Ave- gone, DC’s entertainment center, gone as well. Later built, on the year of my birth, was Freedom Plaza which was designed to look like L’Enfant’s map no less. By adjusting the antique map’s transparency you can see a approximately 117 years of development. From brothel to federal, what a strange entity time is.

Transcription:
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1 Comment Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: Park La Brea Quilt #2

11/29/2007 || 7:20 am
French parodies in parallax

“Confessions Nocturnes” by Diam’s Feat Vitaa.

“Mauvaise Foi Nocturne” by Fatal Bazooka feat Vitoo

Over the summer I created my first YouTube mash-up “Scratch Slavery,” which allows you to create a beat track to congressional hearing about slavery being used in the construction the American embassy in Baghdad.

Today I am posting something a little different- French Youtube videos.
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Icositetragon of Northwestern Station in Chicago, Temporal Diptych of Schiller Park, Illinois - 2002

10/3/2007 || 12:50 pm
Found Celestial Cartography

As I mentioned before, lately I’ve been dabbling in the confluence of astrology & astromony. Last night when I was playing with the Interactive Astrological Calendar from 1544 for Google Earth, I discovered that when I switched to sky mode I am presented with an interactive star atlas that juxtaposes the antique Zodiac with the constellations it’s named after. Granted the constellations *do not* line up correctly on the Zodiac, its a really interesting experience that deserves more work. Can the zodiac wrap around the envrionment if done correctly? If you have Google Earth installed on your computer, click on the image above to check it out! Please remix.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Dennis Hastert's Office 3 Years ago... yesterday

9/14/2007 || 4:28 pm
1880 Street Railway Map of the City of Washington

Using map #10 from 1880 Statistical Map of the City of Washington, I was able to make this unique, interactive, antique map mashup.

View the Google Maplet

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8/15/2007 || 2:27 pm
Interchangable Earth

Click the image below to download the .kmz file [7.8 mb] for Google Earth:

Using the center of i-710 & i-405 Quilt, which is in the Los Angeles Interchanges series, I constructed this beautiful globe.

Continue reading:
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Portsmouth Quilt

8/14/2007 || 7:13 am
Terra Fermi

Click the image below to download the .kmz file [14.3 mb] for Google Earth:

Terra Ferma means “firm land” or “solid ground” and has been used to describe the conquest of new lands since antiquity.
Terra Fermi is the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Reactor Quilt mapped on to the surface of the earth.
A fitting name for a dangerously beautiful new world.

Continue reading:
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: UCLA Quilt #5

8/13/2007 || 2:31 pm
Adams Morgan Earth

Click on the image below to download the .kmz file [11 mb] for Google Earth:

I am quite impressed with this creation. I believe it’s the first ever geographic tessellation created for Google Earth.

Continue reading:
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: UCLA Quilt #4

8/11/2007 || 11:49 pm
An Interactive Astrological Calendar from 1544 for Google Earth

Right click on the image below to download the .kmz file [3 mb] for Google Earth:

The other day when I was developing the Eastern Hemisphere version, I thought it would be neat to see what the calendar would look like in Google Earth. By using the image overlay function I was able to wrap the entire calendar over the surface of the earth. The result is a very unique way to interactively view the calendar in 3D.

Continue reading:
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: UCLA Quilt #2

8/10/2007 || 10:31 pm
An Updated Astrological Calendar from 1544 - Eastern Hemisphere

About a month ago I made the first version of the map using the Western Hemisphere. At the time I didn’t even think about making a secondary map for the Eastern Hemisphere.

Continue reading:
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: UCLA Quilt

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

7/19/2007 || 4:40 pm
Socio Ditata Labore - Revisited

Discovered & translated in May, this engraving is now on the splash page of my website- an interactive Atlas Nouveau so to speak.

There are now over 1600 different images that randomly showcase the cartographic labor involved in the creation of this website. Just hit reload to cycle through them.

from the Lost Series

Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: San Juan Quilt #2

7/9/2007 || 2:15 pm
NOVA ET ACCVRATISSIMA TOTIVS TERRARVM ORBIS TABVLA [2007 Remix]

I updated the Library of Congress‘ version of Joan Blaeu’s “A New and Accurate Map of the Entire World” (1664?) with NASA’s Blue Marble satellite images. Unlike the previous version, I decided to use a different satellite image for the eastern hemisphere so that the tip of Brazil does not overlap.

View the Interactive & Original version:
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Park City Quilt

7/8/2007 || 12:40 pm
An Updated Astrological Calendar from 1544 - Western Hemisphere

This morning I was looking through the digital collection of maps at the Geography & Mapping Division of the Library of Congress and found this astrological calendar on the 4th page of a Battista Agnese atlas published in 1544 (citation after the fold).

The calendar is built on two concentric circles; the inner circle depicts the Gregorian calendar and the outer circle shows the Zodiac calendar. According to the Wikipedia entry, the Gregorian calendar was not adopted for another 38 years after the atlas was published.

In the original drawing (below) the center of the astrological calendar was a very tiny earth. I believe it was drawn to show the earth’s celestial relationship to the seasons, and while the scale is off, the coloring is surprisingly accurate. By adding the satellite image over top of the original I gave it an update 463 years in the making.

View the Interactive & Original version:
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6/25/2007 || 6:46 pm
A New And Accurate Map of the World by John Speed [2007 Remix]

In honor of the cartographic activities over the last three years, today I made what I feel to be one of my best historic map mashups yet. Using a map by John Speed (published in London in 1651) obtained from the Yale University Library, I overlaid two NASA Blue Marble satellite images over the known world. Aside from that, I didn’t do anything else to this map (like cryptic seventeenth century typography) except to add my name in the lower left hand corner.

Text from the top:
“A NEW AND ACCURATE MAP OF THE WORLD - Drawn according to the truest descriptions, latest discoveries, & best observations that have been made by English or Strangers. 1651″

The original engraving includes:
• the 4 basic elements: Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire
• the constellations for both the southern & northern hemisphere
• portraits 4 of the most important explorers up until 1651
• the science behind eclipses

The original map was made in 1651, the NASA Blue Marble images were released in 2002, and the two combined today; a 356 year enrichment.

If I want to sell this map I’ll need to first obtain the copyright from the Yale University Library, which is $500! Bleh. It’s too bad that the Library of Congress does not have this map available.

View the Interactive Version:
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6/18/2007 || 8:09 pm
America as a Cloverleaf

View the original, interactive version, and legend:
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Animations for Starscape

6/11/2007 || 12:40 pm
Google StreetView I.E.D. - Blowing Up The Spot

So the other day I mentioned I was working on a mash-up for Google’s new Street View feature.

The result is the first google bomb for Street View— an improvised explosive device, with a message called Street View I.E.D..

Check it out: www.StreetViewIED.com
Tune up the volume!

Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Meet SloMo the Statehood Snail

5/24/2007 || 9:42 am
LOLmaps

So last week I mentioned I was working on a new project and after working on it for the last 4 days or so I have nearly completed my latest cartographic creation: LOLmaps

There is still some work to do on the project, but I am quite pleased with how it has turned out thus far. It currently uses the same design as the Lost Series, and I’d ultimately like to code a sequential version, but for now I am enjoying the randomness. After the first revision of the project, I now have a handy-dandy legend for the maps (aka I added numbers to corresponding maps) which explains the background of the project, gives the translations, and locates the maps I have created thus far. But there is still a few more tasks to do before I’d say it’s a completed project (like a Google Map Mashup). Regardless, I am curious as to how the project will be received.

View the Legend for LOLmaps

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4/26/2007 || 12:28 pm
Park Circle Quilt - Interactive

I took the 9,000 x 6,000 version (one half the original) of Park Circle Quilt reduced it in size one half (to 4,500 x 3,000), then doubled the width by copying the quilt (final dimensions: 9,000 x 3,000). Using the program Make Cubic I made a Quicktime Virtual Reality environment of the location. It’s about 20 megabytes so be patient while it downloads.