So far I’ve made two other crosses: Mount Pleasant Cross and Memphis Cross. I am pretty sure how to make these now and future maps of this type will be added to it’s own special category on the sidebar. The cross above was chosen out of about 8 different tessellations and within this map is the National Archives at the center of the cross (hence the name), the Federal Trade Commission, the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Navy Memorial- which features a map of the western hemisphere (below), the Winfield Scott Hancock statue, the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial, and portions of the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden and the west building of the National Gallery of Art, which make the vertical and horizontal stripe.
For reference, click here to view the outdated Google Map of downtown Washington, DC.
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Silver Spring Quilt #2
10/14/2008 || 7:43 pm
Hallway view of the first edition of the New & Arabesque Map of the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden
The other day I realized that posting maps here in digital format doesn’t show perspective well. For the image above I decided to switch it up and show the newly framed map from the perspective of looking down my hallway. Click here to read the original entry on New & Arabesque Map of the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden
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5/23/2008 || 10:43 am
A New & Arabesque Map of the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden
:: saved at 6,480 x 5,040 ::
To celebrate the new procedure I decided to get around to editing 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 map from the center and kept the decorative border similar to Nova et Accvratissima Totivs Terrarvm Orbis Tabvla, A New Map of the Terraqueous Globe : according to the the Ancient discoveries and most general Divisions of Geospatial Art, America as a Cloverleaf, and A New And Accurate Map of the World by John Speed. However, unlike the previous antique map mash-ups, which usually feature the earth laid out in two hemispheres, this map uses a rectangular space (Mercator?). The beauty of this open layout is that I can place any of my previously made maps inside of this 402-year-old template.
A common naming practice I’ve noticed in old map is the use of “New & Accurate” and since I like to play around with words, I changed Accurate to Arabesque to create a visual pun. The source map was about 6,500 pixels wide, I underlaid a rotated 9,000 x 6,000 copy of Hirshhorn Quilt to fit perfectly in the center of the new map. I think it would be fun to actually hand-color the engravings on this map to match other copies of this map which have the various figures colored in. The LOC’s copy is uncolored which means that its actually easier to add color to it than if it were already colored because pigment matching is not needed.
Below I dissect the border of the map:
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: LOLMaps - Submit
5/21/2008 || 10:22 am
Hirshhorn Quilt
Following up on my new procedural idea from last week, I made this derivative map without publishing the intermediate maps. The unseen steps involve the rendering of a pre-Hirshhorn Quilt, sampling a portion of that quilt, and projecting the imagery again to create the map above. The result, as with all derivative maps, is a more symmetrical, arabesque map. This technique will be used again.
View the Google Map of the Hirshhorn Museum on the National Mall in Ward 2 of Washington, DC.
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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
4/12/2008 || 5:42 pm
Geovisual QR Code
QR Code is a two-dimensional bar code created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The “QR” is stands for “Quick Response,” and it operates very similar to traditional bar codes, but allows for more customization. QR Codes are common in Japan where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional code. In recent weeks I’ve read about some very interesting uses of the code and decided to make something with it.
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3/31/2008 || 1:55 pm
National MSM of the American Indian on Google Maps; Why truncate the word Museum?
Last night I was using Google Maps and discovered that the label for the National Museum of the American Indian has been truncated to be “National MSM of the American Indian.” This raised alarm because the shorthand for MSM is more recognized as “MainStream Media” not museum. Native Americans have been shortchanged for hundreds of years by the American government, and I found it downright rude that the museum’s name has been cartographically shortchanged as well. So why shorten the name?
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1 Comment Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: The Masked Mapmaker
12/23/2007 || 2:19 pm
FOUND: Penis Route on the National Mall
screen grab links to google map
Lemme tell you, its one erect route. So someone recently sent me with a link to some of their GPS maps on Bicycling.com. I decided to look through their maps and upon further exploration, I stumbled on the map above. I looked at it and smiled. The author is “Jackonabike” and when you view the map with the “Points of Interest” turned on, the cameras look like little nodules [use your imagination].
It’s even more funny when you think that earlier this month I found 109 brothels just north of the shaft.
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7/12/2007 || 8:47 pm
Lincoln Memorial Quilt 2005 #2
I made a couple different tessellations of the area around the Lincoln Memorial. This map features the same imagery used for this map, but it’s tessellated differently to create a new design.
View the Google Map zoom-in of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
Related Maps:
- Lincoln Memorial Quilt 2005 #2
- Lincoln Memorial Quilt 2005
- NewOrLincoln
- Lincoln Memorial Quilt #2
- Lincoln Memorial Quilt
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7/11/2007 || 8:31 pm
Lincoln Memorial Quilt 2005
I decided to start mapping the area that Google has censored. I discovered that the Lincoln Memorial lies on the line of censorship [link to Google Map zoom-in]. The line starts right at the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial, which means that the reflection pool imagery in my map is newer than Google’s imagery. The Vietnam Memorial is also newer in my map but is censored by Google.
View the Google Map zoom-in of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
- Lincoln Memorial Quilt 2005 #2
- Lincoln Memorial Quilt 2005
- NewOrLincoln
- Lincoln Memorial Quilt #2
- Lincoln Memorial Quilt
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1/31/2006 || 8:31 am
Washington Monument Quilt
I think I am going to start a special category dedicated to only monuments. I have multiple renderings now of the Saint Louis Arch, the Lincoln Memorial, and now the Washington Monument…. I also have schools as well to add. hmmmmm.
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Dirty War
1/28/2006 || 1:15 pm
NewOrLincoln
This is one of my first maps which has it’s source imagery made beyond the scope of a normal tessellation. Back in December I was preparing the source imagery for Lincoln Memorial Quilt, I decided to try something completely new in photoshop. I used the 45 degree rotated imagery of the Lincoln Memorial as a frame around circular cutout of the first derivative of the Superdome Quilt. I liked this tile (I think I am going to use the word tile from now on) so much that I actually saved the tile as something I was going to print out as is, but now I have a derivative tiling that I will definitely print out.
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1 Comment Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: joke of the day
1/2/2006 || 3:12 pm
Lincoln Memorial Quilt #2
While I like the first Dupont Circle Quilt slightly better, I still find this one to be one of my finest. The beauty of this map lies in the preparation of the source imagery. When I set up the mosaic I rotated the Lincoln Memorial imagery 45 degrees and tessellated it so the relfection pool makes a perfect X at the center. However, when I set this scene up, I rotated the entire quilt another 45 degrees, which gives the appearance of an exquisite checkerboard. This process of rotating the source imagery and further rotating the scene is something I’d like to do more of. I look forward to printing this one out 
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Vietnam Memorial also shows up prominently in details.
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Ecounderstanding, Logan's Ovaries, Mother Earth #4
12/18/2005 || 2:02 pm
Lincoln Memorial Quilt
This is the first rendering I’ve made using the Lincoln Memorial as the subject. When creating the source imagery I took a different approach to setting up the geographic tessellation. I first rotated imagery 45 degrees and from that I cut out the Lincoln Memorial. I paid careful attention so that the refelection pool created a central X in the imagery. While the 6 seamed quilt template is not new, this method of source imagery creation is, and I am very happy with the result and will probably employ this method again in the future.
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10/22/2005 || 4:26 pm
Me, Maui, Mall Mandala
I found out this morning that it only takes about 2-4 hours to render these mandalas, so I’ve decided to make one more! So much faster than the 8-12 hours they normally take
This rendering suffers from the same problems that plagued the last mandala rendering, the poor choice of lighting. Yet due to the nature of the source imagery used in this rendering, the light gradient isn’t as a big of an issue. Being my 3rd self-portrait, I am please how it turned out, but I don’t like using my name in the title of a rendering, but “self-portrait mandala” just didn’t sound right.
rendering detail:
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10/19/2005 || 7:03 am
Jefferson Sparks
The rendering definitely falls out of line with all of my previous work…and I like it. It reminds me of two things- sparks and bacteria…. After reading this article in Salon, I wish I would have called it Jefferson Bacteria. Maybe I just might.
The interesting part of this rendering, to me, is the use of different texture perspectives. In Bryce, you have a ton of choices for different perspectives (object space, world space, parametric, etc.) and while I normally use Object Cubic, this rendering uses almost all of the different perspectives. I like the results and in the future, I’d like to mix perspectives more.
rendering details:
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: DC Lenz #2
10/17/2005 || 7:20 am
Boxes of Jefferson
This rendering took 3 tries! It’s not that I couldn’t get the boxes in the right place, but every time I tried loading a third image to the scene Bryce would crash.
The result, is my first geographically derived puzzle.
How many boxes do you see?
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10/9/2005 || 6:31 pm
Self-Portrait
Using a picture I took of myself in the Iao Valley in Maui, Hawaii on January 6th, 2005, I tessellated the picture (1200X1200) around the edges of a 4800 X 4800 pixel canvas. This allowed for a 2400X2400 square in the center to be filled with an image of my choosing.
In the spirit of my Jefferson Mandala print being at the MOCA DC/A&M Gallery, I chose to use the same source imagery, the first derivative of the Mall Quilt.
I added one extra touch in Photoshop, which I’ve never done before, I added some black glow to the picture of myself. This caused the aerial photograph to appear just below the frame. Almost as if there is a layer of the earth just below the blue sky, the aerial photography seems to float perfectly in the center of the tessellated mosaic.
I chose the quirky picture of myself because:
I liked the angle at which I took it (mountains!),
I liked the “what you lookin’ at,” half-smile, grin
I liked the color of sky (and even the two lens blemishes)
I like the contrast of the green to blue to white tones
The result, is definitely one of my favor works yet. The process of setting up the source imagery in photoshop is probably the most exciting part of it all. I can now do large mosaics with multiple aerial & satellite images. What will come next? We shall see…
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10/6/2005 || 4:47 am
Sensors Spatial Analysis of Tularemia on the National Mall
An attempt at being funny (cartographic humor) using a cute red-eyed rabbit as an icon of the locations of the sensors that found “rabbit fever.”
The other (below) is a quick & dirty spatial analysis of the area around the protests made using NASA’s World Wind (free), Google Earth (free), and Photoshop. I used the measure tool in Google Earth to measure a mile from the Lincoln Memorial, I used World Wind to acquire the USGS imagery, and Photoshop to draw the circles. The Lincoln Memorial’s circle served as the template for the other two sites.
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10/2/2005 || 3:17 am
Knot the National Mall
Knot the National Mall
more later…
grrr….
{no tyme to type}
lets just say last weekend’s festivities caused a knot in the National Mall.
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: a Great B.A.D. Day
8/23/2005 || 8:45 am
Washington Monument Zoom
I made this animation for one of the main projects I’m working on right now, Operation Ceasefire. I’m going to make sure it ends up in the right person’s hands and hopefully it will be seen on a projection screen during the concert. I think the only real error in this rendering is that most people will be expecting to see the White House as it zooms out, but the tessellation only contains the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and some of the mall. Regardless, I think it looks pretty cool. If I had more time, I’d make a few more animations using this same imagery, but I’m not in the mood right now to do so. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, and I’m not sure if I’ll have much time to render anything for the next few days. But I guess, as I tend end my postings, we’ll see
2 Comments Rendered || ||
8/9/2005 || 8:21 am
Mall Mountain
Going to foothills of the Appalachians and promoting an event on the National Mall, I felt compelled to combine the two
One of the ideas that popped in my head during the trip was having a book titled “The Legend of Nikolas ® Schiller.” Inside would be large prints of my work. The use of the word legend in a cartographic sense would be the description of my methods used to create my maps, like a legend on a map.
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6/24/2005 || 10:57 pm
DC Mandala
This rendering turned out well. I find it interesting that this rendering shares the same reflection point as the Mall Quilt second derivative. I can’t sell this one because it theoretically belongs to space imaging, but I’ll definitely keep this one around for donation/education purposes.
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6/16/2005 || 10:37 pm
Jefferson Mandala - 2nd derivative
I can’t go much further, or can I?
–probably to about 360X and then it will look like a vinyl record
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6/12/2005 || 6:15 pm
Jefferson Mandala
This rendering marks two significant pinnacles in my geographic artistry.
The biggest step is of making a complete mandala. Before my mandalas were only reflected 4 ways (north, south, east, west) , and now I am achieving reflections of over 8 ways (north-north east, east-north east, etc), which make the final products so much more intricate and in my opinion, far superior to my older maps.
Secondly, the source imagery used for this image was what I’d like to call first derivative geospatial imagery. I have coined term to signify that the source imagery is the first derivation of a previously rendered image. In the image above, I used the rendered imagery from the center of the Mall Quilt as my source imagery for this rendering.
With source imagery’s self-similar design it’s closer to the definition of a fractal. You can zoom into a fractal to infinite, and what I think I’ve created is in effect a geographic fractal where I can take derivatives of renderings and reproject them into infinity. Each derivation will be more reflected and abstract, but I will not lose the spatial resolution so long as the final rendered dimensions are not larger than the source imagery dimensions multiplied by the number of times the source imagery is completely shown.
For example, the source imagery used to make the image above was 6000X6000 pixels, however the image above was rendered at 12000X12000 pixels. I am able to reproject the imagery larger because the actual source imagery is used multiple times within the image and in essence is doubled by the way the source imagery tessellates. Notice how you see a mirror of the Jefferson Memorial (aka 2x for every reflection), the mirroring process allows for the geographic tessellation to not lose spatial resolution when the image is finally rendered. Theoretically, I could cut out the center of this rendering, and use for my next rendering, and it would technically be considered second derivative geospatial imagery…and I might just do that
If this is too confusing, I’m sorry. I too am still trying to get my mind around this concept. Regardless, expect some very beautiful renderings in the near future!
View the map’s close-up details using the interactive Flash application called Zoomify
View the Google Map of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC
This map was printed over a million times in newspapers around the world.
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6/11/2005 || 8:47 pm
Mall Quilt
love it!
…more about the first image above tomorrow…
==
So the white building near the center of rendering is the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service building. I’ve been to a few meetings there
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|| 12:15 pm
Jefferson Lenz
After having Bryce crash while I was setting up the scene, I was very excited to be able to replicate the exact positions of all the objects and to finally start the rendering of this image, albeit over an hour later. This is my first rendering where I’ve gone beyond the standard 4X & 8X reflection to 12X reflection. I am very excited about where this new discovery will take my next set of renderings. Next I am going to attempt to apply this technique to the “Quilt Project“.
As for the Jefferson Lenz itself, there is a slight error in the background where the two objects meet on the seam. Although you cannot see it in the scaled down version above, the two don’t line up perfectly symmetrical- which kinda sucks, but its because I rushed that part of the setup. I was too eager to get the rendering started because of the new central reflections I forgot to see if the background looked perfect or not.
Anyways, I’ll be making another rendering shortly with this imagery…which is actually the same imagery I used for the Washington Monument Lenz, but the way the reflections turned out, you can’t see the Washington Monument, except in the background. So it was going to called Washington Monument Lenz #2, but since you can only see the Jefferson Memorial, I named the rendering accordingly.
Yeah for the weekend!
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5/16/2005 || 11:42 am
My first corporate commission
I sold my first rendering to a local corporate entity…. I’ve already used the proceeds to get some of my older posters printed out. This is also the first time I’ve given the digital rights away as well, so now they own the full size (10,000 X 7,500) file instead of just a print. At first I was very hesitant about giving the digital rights away, but since this rendering is based off the “Lenz Project,” which essentially was the project that defined my style, I don’t mind as much because its clearly has my touch to it- even if its manipulated extensively. Also, the image doesn’t have the same abstractions I perfer to add, so while being my style, its also completely different compared to what I am making now……. its about time I made another rendering….
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3/22/2005 || 9:10 am
Washington Monument Lenz
For some reason it looks like I never posted this in my blog… I totally remember doing so, but I can’t find it! Nonetheless, I love this rendering! The shadows the Washington Monument coupled with the reflections make it fun to look at. I can’t wait to reflect it a little more 
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2/10/2005 || 10:00 pm
DC Molecule
I used the same source image as I used for my last rendering and mapped it as a texture on to the “star of..” series template and then I animated a fly-through…looks pretty good. So good that I included not one, but threee screen shots of the animation.
1 Comment Rendered || ||
The Daily Render: A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, & Future
