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.
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2 Comments Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: My first YouTube Mash-up : Scratch Slavery
4/14/2008 || 12:42 pm
Then & Now Birds-Eye Views of the Westminster Neighborhood in Washington, DC [1884 & 2005]
Detail the bicycle track before Westminster Street was created
from Adolph Sachse’s birds-eye view of the nation’s capital, 1884
Due to file format issues, only recently have I been able to open most of the maps available in the Library of Congress’ American Memory Collection. Last night I found an interesting birds-eye view map of Washington, DC by Adolph Sachse that was published in 1884. Its a massive map that appears to be composed of six separate sheets and contains a listing of many of the businesses in Washington City as well as locations of various public & government buildings. In many ways the map acts like a geovisual address book (the phone had not been invented yet) because, at a glance, one can easily find services offered by local merchants. Judging by the branding in the upper right hand corner of the original map, it appears that the map was sponsored by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company.
According to my neighborhood’s official history, Westminster Street did not exist in 1884 and the birds-eye view above supports this claim. While not labeled in the image above, Parcel 362 as it was known on the original DC maps, was called Athletic Park at that time. It had a 150-foot long grand stand along T Street, which was built in 1883 (building permit number 1047) in preparation for the fifth national convention of the League of American Wheelmen, a national organization of bicyclists. The first American bicyclist to ever ride 100 miles on an outdoor track did it on that track in 1884. As someone who uses a bicycle as their primary means of urban transportation, I can only smile knowing that 121 years ago my residence was an outdoor bicycle race track.
Below is a birds-eye view of the Westminster Neighborhood published by Microsoft, with imagery of Pictometry International. It features imagery that was taken in 2005 and when compared, you can see how much the area has changed in the last 121 years. The Athetic Park is gone and in it’s place are dozens of rowhouses that were built shortly after the map above was published. A unique and historically aware addition to the neighborhood is something you can see below in the playground on Westminster Street. No, it’s not because that is where I had my exhibit “North, South, East, Westminster“. Rather, if you look closely, you can see a small race track! A scaled reminder of what once was.
Detail of the Westminster Neighborhood by Microsoft, with imagery of Pictometry International
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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: notes on the experiment one month in..
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
5/12/2007 || 4:22 pm
Society is Enriched by Labor :: Socio Ditata Labore
“Antique Home”
Today I finally got around to looking through the David Ramsey Historical Map Collection. Like Archive.org, there was a lot to discover…
The above image is an assembled detail of a beautiful engraving on the title page of Atlas Nouveau, which was published in 1742 in Amsterdam (original cover after the flap). The detail contains the Latin phrase, “Socio ditata labore” and shows a scene of exploration. There is a slain dragon on the right side and on the left are soldiers bringing a woman to the new land. I couldn’t pass up this engraving! I do need a Latin translation, anyone know it? (A friend of mine was able to get a translation for me - below)
Behind the engraving is a tessellated detail from Home Quilt #5, which features the row house I’ve been living in for the last 3 years. The house was built around 1889, a 147 years after the Atlas was published. The source aerial photograph was taken in March of 2005, published in February of 2007, and revisted on March 29th, 2007, and finally today, a 265 year enrichment.
I also made a pop-art style tile that features the engraving in different colors.
From an e-mail:
Here is the report from my classicist friend in LA:
as for the latin, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as it stands - ’socius’ is a friend, companion, (father in law in some contexts) - so it could be some sort of dedication, as in: ‘for my father in law, with enriched labor” - which, as I say, makes no sense. if, however, ’societas’ has been mistaken for ’socio,’ then it can read, as you say, ‘society is enriched by labor.’
Title Page & Notes:
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Render A Comment || ||
4/25/2007 || 9:45 am
Vermont Avenue Sprocket
The process to make this map is a bit complex but so is the result. Very pleased.
View the Google Map of the intersection of Vermont Ave and U Street in Washington, DC.
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Rosslyn Quilt #2
3/30/2007 || 3:23 pm
Home Quilt #6
This is the 10th map of my neighborhood and I think it’s the 3rd fractal. It turned out perfectly- minus the fact that I acciddentally yanked the power plug to my external hard drive and had to start the rendering all over again… My next map should be of Charleston, South Carolina.
View the Google Map of the Shaw neighborhood in Washington, DC.
Related Maps:
• Home Quilt
• Home Quilt #2
• Home Quilt #3
• Home Quilt #4
• Home Quilt #5
• U Street, NW
• U Street, NE
• U Street, SW
• U Street, SE
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: beating them to the map, Bloomington Quilt
3/29/2007 || 3:22 pm
Home Quilt #5
It’s been well over a year since I’ve made any maps of my neighborhood and with this installment I’ll have 9 maps that feature the rowhouse I live in.
This is the first quilt projection using the 2005 imagery of Washington, DC and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. Sadly, the “NO WAR” brickwork on my rooftop is not present, but at .16 meters per pixel it’s rich with detail. Up next will be #6 based off of a derivative tessellation created from this map. Like the White House and the U.S. Capitol, I can now say that I beat google maps to my house 
View the Google Map of the Shaw neighborhood in Washington, DC.
Related Maps:
• Home Quilt
• Home Quilt #2
• Home Quilt #3
• Home Quilt #4
• U Street, NW
• U Street, NE
• U Street, SW
• U Street, SE
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Pierre Quilt #2
10/2/2006 || 11:08 pm
A Degraded Mask of Meridian Hill Park
I took a draft of an African mask design for a client and degraded it to make it look slightly older. It’s Cardozo High School to Meridian Hill Park in Northwest Washington, DC and somewhere in that map is the client’s house.
The map was completed on December 2nd, 2006. View the drafts:
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Knot the National Mall
1/20/2006 || 3:12 pm
Home Quilt #4
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Comments Off || ||
1/19/2006 || 11:30 am
Home Quilt #3
View Details:
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Comments Off || ||
1/18/2006 || 2:15 pm
Home Quilt #2
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Star of the Middle East #2
1/17/2006 || 11:47 am
Home Quilt
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1 Comment Rendered || ||
10/11/2005 || 10:22 pm
Localized Self-Portrait #2
One good rendering deserves another, right? I figured what the hell, why not make another Janus Series Self-Portrait! I’ll try not to make too many more
This one is slightly different than the first, in fact its quite a bit different. I started with a picture of myself that I took in my room last summer. I chose this picture of myself because 1) I like the way I look it (aka I think its a cute photo) 2) I love the blue fabric I have on my wall in my room, and this picture captures it’s the deep blue color with subtle touches of polyester luster.
Surrounding the picture of myself, lets call this the inner frame, is a delayed exposure photograph I took of a campfire in Colorado two summers ago. (You can view the original photograph here). I chose this photograph because the orange would contrast the blue in the fabric. I also chose it because of the contrast with the outer frame, a tessellated USGS aerial photograph of my house (which can be seen in the second detail below the fold). The idea, as cheesy as it sounds, is that I’m burnin up the neighborhood Or as a historical corollary, my neighborhood, or at least the area around my neighborhood, was burned in the 1968 riots (which took place after Martin Luther King was assassinated) and the flames are also a fitting reminder of the history.
This rendering is also different because I chose to rotate the tessellation 45 degrees, which created an interesting checkerboard effect. I also chose to only reflect the source imagery 4 times instead of the roughly 16 reflections the last self-portrait received.
Up next- an abstract for the paper presentation I am going to give at the Association of American Geographer’s Annual Meeting in March. I’ve got a bad case of writers block tho…
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Comments Off || ||
9/3/2005 || 1:43 pm
U St. SW
This is the last of the series. I’d like to place them all by each other, either digitally (most likely) or once printed out ($100+ required) to compare and contrast the role of the location of the orthographically correct imagery plays in each rendering. I’d like to continue making this comparison style of rendering but it’s 4 times as much work. I have to make 4 modified images in photoshop, then render 4 different versions of it, and well, this takes more time than I want to spend on a rendering!
However, I would like to use the quadrant system in a different context, and maybe obtain imagery of F St. NW, NE, SW, SE and have four completely different parts of the city represented in 4 different renderings title F St. NW, F St. NE, F St. SW, and F St. SE. That would be interesting, but I doubt that will be made anytime soon. I want to make some more Adams Morgan renderings, and use the Columbia Heights / Mount Pleasant imagery I have. My goal is to eventually have just about every neighborhood of Washington, DC rendered, so far so good
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3 Comments Rendered || || Posted One Year Ago: protestor at the rnc & climate change, MHz
9/2/2005 || 8:11 am
U St. SE
3/4’s done with the series. I am really itching to make a rendering using imagery from New Orleans. I found some very nice imagery from NASA and Digital Globe. I’ll porbably use the NASA imagery simply because it’s public domain imagery. Only one more left!
I really like the way the detail on my house looks. It reminds me of compass! If you don’t see it, think about the logo for the Masons…..you see it?
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: pearl earring, teaser
9/1/2005 || 8:09 am
U St. NW
Up next, U St SE. I can’t wait until I see them all together, side-by-side.
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: nice, Brussels- again, its starting to get B.A.D.
8/31/2005 || 8:25 am
U St. NE
11 hours later, the first of the series is finished. Logan Circle has made a meta-circle in the center of the rendering- it looks fabulous! I am slightly dissapointed that my house didn’t fall on or near any seams because it would look really cool to have my house bent on a reflection. Maybe the next one will! Right now, U St. NW is being made. Anyways, I really like this vernacular I’ve chosen, although it is slightly convoluted because the actual imagery is all from the U St. NW area. 1 down, 3 to go.
I really want to make a rendering using some of the imagery of flooded New Orleans, but I think that will have to wait.
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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Redefining , "I don't think you can win it", what next?
8/30/2005 || 8:15 am
my next project…
I’m beginning to make what is to be one of the most interesting series yet. I’ve taken an aerial photograph of the area I live in Washington, DC, and modified it 4 different times. Using the same vernacular of DC’s quadrant system, I have named each modified aerial photograph NW, NE, SE, SW. Each name represents the location of the orthographically correct imagery. For example, if you double the canvas size of the original imagery(ie, (4500X4500) X 2 = 9,000X9,000), you get 4 different squares or tiles. Each tile represents NW, NE, SW, and SE. The first image, rendering right now, is using the NE tile as the anchor in which the other 3 tiles are reflected around. I chose this tile to start because of the 4, it was the only one that had a geographic identifier located at the center, Logan Circle to be precise. I can’t wait to see the results!
Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: too eager
The Daily Render: A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, & Future
