On August 5th, 2008 I made the first version of this mashup, East Meets West and with the newly created contraflow bicycle lane on 15th Street NWDC, I decided to make the second version, North Meets South.

The two videos were taken from one continuous video recording that I conducted while riding on my bicycle from U Street & 15th Street to Massachusetts Ave & 15th Street and back. At home I split the videos into North & South and used the crosswalks as the starting & ending points. The object of this video mashup is to find the exact time when the two recordings pass each other on opposite sides of the street.

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A few notes:

After making eight different drafts, the client liked a modified version the best. Using derivative imagery from Draft #4, I was able to create the map above. It features the area around the fountain at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The client is having this map printed at 20″ x 16″ so the final printed version will look slightly different than the version above. As always, contact me if you interested in having a custom map created for you.

View the Google Map of the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

View the rest of the details:

Last Friday, on the evening before the Taxpayer March On Washington, a large group of teabaggers, patriots, small-government conservatives, and libertarians staged a rally at CityCenterDC, the site of the old Washington, DC Convention center. Little did they know they were standing on Astroturf.

Astroturfing is a word that describes political, advertising, or public relations campaigns which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous “grassroots” behavior. Being that the Taxpayer March on Washington was promoted heavily by Fox News and other conversation media organizations, it was far from being a grassroots mobilization. So when I realized the demonstrators were actually standing on astroturf, I decided to make this short video to highlight the irony of the spectacle.

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Related Taxpayers March on Washington, DC Entries:
- Photographs of Friday’s Opening Rally of the Taxpayers March on DC at CityCenterDC
- Photographs of Friday’s Opening Rally of the Taxpayers March on DC at CityCenterDC
- Photographs of the Taxpayers March on Washington [PART ONE]
- Photographs of the Taxpayers March on Washington [PART TWO]
- Photographs of the Taxpayers March on Washington [PART THREE]

I have a quite a few framed maps hanging in my house just waiting to be purchased. In fact, I have more framed maps than I have available wall space. Usually before we have a big party I go around the house and rearrange the framed maps so our guests see different maps each time they visit. The other night when I was walking up the stairs I noticed that the two maps that I’ve had up for a months actually spelled something. The N from N Prague and the torus around Georgetown Lenz #2 kind of spell out the word NO. I wonder if guests saw this? Or if it could have been construed as a subliminal message?

Below are the maps as they appeared in their original blog entries:

Starting earlier this month those who are subscribed to my listserv were given the opportunity to purchase a map at the reasonable price of $100. I felt this was a great way to cheaply obtain the different maps I have created over the years. Since I have hundreds of maps to choose from, this monthly opportunity will last for years and ultimately become a great way to collect my maps.

Previously I used to point people to my ImageKind Store, but I wasn’t pleased with some of the cheap papers the maps were printed on, and have chosen to remove the middle man, so to speak, and have all the map purchases go directly through me. This way I can control the materials the maps are printed on, personally sign each map, and ensure the quality for each map that is produced.

For the month of August, the first Monthly Map, I chose was Washington Monument Quilt (above), which I first rendered on January 31st, 2006. Since the area around the Washington Monument was redacted in the 2005 USGS aerial photography, I felt it was a worthwhile piece to start with.

After sending out my initial e-mail about the offering, I had a friend contact me about purchasing the map and decided to document some of the steps involved in the process of ordering the maps through me….

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Step One – Payment

You can either contact me about sending cash or a check or you can quickly & easily pay the $100 by credit card on my PayPal merchant account page. After I receive the payment, I will need your mailing address if you want the map mailed to you. If you live in Washington, DC, I can either mail it to you or meet you in person and hand-deliver the map. I’ve found it easiest to go through PayPal because it’s quick and safe.

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Step Two – Printing

After I receive payment, I send the map to the printer. For the time being, my Monthly Map Sale is featuring 30″ x 20″ prints on Kodak PerfectTouch Paper. Throughout the last 5 years I’ve had the best results on this medium, both in quality of colors and durability of the paper. It’s also the same medium I used when I donated 8 maps to the Library of Congress in 2006. In about 3 days or less, I receive confirmation that the map has been printed and is in transit to me or you.

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Step Three – Shipping

I can have the map shipped directly to you as well (without signature, date, or label) for faster turnaround or I can have it shipped to my house. After the map arrives, I remove it from the shipping tube (above), carefully flip it over, label the name of the map, label the date it was originally rendered, label the date it was printed, and sign the map (below).

After this, I roll the map back up into the tube, add a little extra padding to ensure the map will not be damaged, then I bring it to the post office. Three days later it should be delivered to your mailbox. Or if the map is purchased locally, we can meet up and exchange the map in person.

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THATS IT! I think the whole process is pretty simple. In all this process takes about one or two weeks depending on the speed at which the payment is received and how long it takes for the map to be printed and shipped.

I think the hardest part of it all will be choosing which map to offer each month! Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing this month’s map or have suggestions for future Monthly Map offerings.

On Thursday I was given the opportunity to assist my friends Robin Bell, Videokillers, and Dissident Display with the setup of their VJ / DJ exhibition at The Phillips Collection After 5 exhibition: “Sensory Remix: A Video-Art Collage.”

Below are some of the photographs I took of the evening:

The other day I started on a new commissioned map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The client made it somewhat easier for me because they were interested in either a Hexagon Quilt Projection map (above) or an Octagon Quilt Projection map (below). Like the previous two drafts, today’s drafts feature a close-up view of the area around the Sculpture Garden.

View the Google Map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art

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Please contact me if you would like to have a custom map designed for your home, office, or as a gift for someone special!

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Yesterday I started on a new commissioned map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The client made it somewhat easier for me because they were interested in either a Hexagon Quilt Projection map (above) or an Octagon Quilt Projection map (below). Unlike yesterday’s two drafts, today’s drafts feature a close-up view of the area immediately around the Sculpture Garden. Tomorrow I plan on posting two more drafts featuring the close-up imagery…..

View the Google Map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art

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Please contact me if you would like to have a custom map designed for your home, office, or as a gift for someone special!

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Last month I posted the photograph above in my entry about adding some political commentary to the area around the Real World DC house in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC. This morning a friend of mine left a somewhat cryptic comment on my Facebook page telling me to check section E6 in today’s Washington Post. I ran downstairs, opened the paper up, and let out out a hearty laugh.

Transcribed near the end of Dan Zak’s article, Neighborhood Watch: MTV Is in the House, and Everyone Else Just Wants to Be, is the text of my sign:

Reality Bites

Sometime in July, a sign is posted on the base of the lamppost on the northeast corner of the intersection. In simple black lettering on a plain white background, it reads, one word per line:

IN
THE
REAL
WORLD
ALL
AMERICANS
DESERVE
FULL
REPRESENTATION
IN
CONGRESS.

In the next section of the article there is choice quote from some teenagers from Maryland:

“It’s been 23 years. . . . D.C. is a treasure. . . . They’ve been to New York, like, five times. . . . It’s the capital. . . . It’ll be a really good representation of the city. . . . I talked to the cast before and they’re really down to earth.”

(underline added for emphasis of the Congressional lack thereof)

While I was not identified as the creator of the sign, even though a simple Google Search would have brought the author to my website, and the author only mentioned that there was one sign (there are 8 still up last time I counted), I’m very pleased that my sign was mentioned in today’s article. In that respect, the ten dollars spent making those signs & purchasing the wheatpaste was completely validated— my message made it into the Washington Post. But the real question is if the message will make the cut and be mentioned in any of the episodes set to air on MTV in 2010?

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Since the sign(s) has been up now for just about a month, I figure its time to remove them and put up something new. I already have the next flyer made, but I’m debating if I should put them up or not. The flyer is a bit over the top, but well, umm, so are most of the people mentioned in the article. But unlike the ones who actually give two shits about the show, my aim is not to get in the house or hang out with the cast (I really could care less about that), but to use their presence in Washington, DC as a vehicle to get out the larger message of DC residents being second class citizens denied representation in Congress.

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Click on the screen grab below to read the last page of the article:

What’s interesting about the text on-line versus the text in the printed article is that there is extra space between lines of the poster in the on-line version captured above. These extra line breaks actually make the point of the poster appear more important on-line than it does in the print edition, which does not feature extra line breaks. But since the print edition of the Washington Post is not delivered outside of the Washington, DC area, this typographical difference carries significantly more weight on-line than in print. In that respect, I must thank the web editor at the Washington Post for giving the text of my sign a little bit more emphasis than it would otherwise have received if it were identical to the print edition.

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UPDATE – After I posted this entry, I went back to the Washington Post website and found that the poster was briefly shown at the beginning of the video portion of the article:

MTV’s show “The Real World” is currently filming their next season here in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC. There has been a lot of hoopla regarding the cast & crew being in DC; from a pop culture blogger hoping to actually get inside of the house to neighbors who started an Anti-Real World DC blog which describes in detail the comings and goings of the cast to even a Twitter user that only tweets gossip, errr, Newz about the cast. I haven’t watched the show in years, so I’m mildly amused by this type of hype.

For the last few weeks I had been brainstorming about a way that would hopefully spark a discussion about DC’s lack of congressional representation on the show. I came up with phrase: “IN THE REAL WORLD ALL AMERICANS DESERVE FULL REPRESENTATION CONGRESS.” Earlier today I went to Kinkos, printed up 10 copies, and this evening I put them all up around a one block radius of the house. I am curious how long they’ll stay up! I am even more curious if they’ll even discuss this civil rights issue on the show.

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Update: below is a TwitPic photo by Mehan Jayasuriya that taken the following day. It’s been viewed over 1,500 times!

Using this portion of West Sahara Lake Circles Quilt to make this derivative map.

Upon closer inspection of the aerial photography, I think I know where all that water from Lake Mead went. Swimming pools!

View the Google Map of the West Sahara Lake neighborhood in Las Vegas, Nevada

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View the rest of the map details:

Near the end of Moby’s DJ set at the Manifest Hope DC gallery Inauguration party, I spotted the security guard first tell another security guard to tell a dancer to calm down, then she starts getting jiggy wid it.

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I saw that the crowd was having a good time dancing to De La Soul at the DC Manifest Hope gallery and decided to record the crowd participation.

Its been awhile since I’ve made a map, so I decided to revisit Georgetown. When making this map, I tried to center the focus on the intersection of M Street & Wisconsin Ave. I was able to do this more easily because I started with a smaller piece of aerial photography than I normally work with.

View the Google Map of the Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, DC

View the rest of the details:

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.

View the rest of the details:

Friday night I went to a house party in Columbia Heights. During the party teenagers four houses down were throwing ice and eggs over the fence into the party. A couple of my friends went up to the back deck to escape the carnage. I took this picture and decided to add randomly colored circles over people heads as a way to remember the urban warfare. After all, they were all targets down there….

The video above shows Thursday night’s dinner in a gallon Ziploc® bag with the text “You are here” left outside of the “Quart Bag” group art exhibit at the Civilian Art Projects. It was supposed to compliment my piece as locationally humorous street art. I only wish I would have taken more quality video to put this together, but I overlooked that technicality myself. Woops.

Check the photos from Friday night here, here, and here.

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.

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Across the top (left to right) you have the planet gods:

• Luna guiding ships at night
• Mercury holding his Caduceus
• Venus with Cupid
• Sol riding a Quadriga
• Mars being lead by the dogs of war Phobos (Panic) and Deimos (Dread).
• Jupiter with lightening bolts in his hands
• Saturn holding a scythe

Drawn within each of these engravings are the signs of the Zodiac that the planets rule:

• Moon rules Cancer
• Mercury rules Gemini and Virgo
• Venus rules Libra and Taurus
• The Sun rules Leo
• Mars rules Aries and Scorpio
• Jupiter rules Sagittarius and Piscies
• Saturn rules Aquarius and Capricorn

Below I dissect the rest of the border of the map:

On April 19th, 2008 I met Graeme King near the Black Cat nightclub after he had just started his 24 hours on 14th Street project. His goal was to take pictures of people for 24 hours and exhibit the photographs at his Artomatic exhibit space.

I had just finished the VJ setup upstairs in the main room of the Black Cat and was about to head home to change clothes before the evening. Although I didn’t blog about it at the time, that evening I VJed alongside DJ Rekha from New York City. DJ Rehka is a London-born musician who DJs her own blend of contemporary bhangra hip-hop fusion and has been credited with pioneering bhangra music in North America. Her first album, DJ Rekha Presents Basement Bhangra, was released in October 2007 on Koch Records, fuses the South Asian genre of bhangra music with international hip-hop and drum beats. It was quite a lot of fun! Click here to download an MP3 from her CD.

Graeme’s photograph of me is unique because he caught me wearing an article of clothing that has been blogged about and even written about in the Washington Post. Look at the sidebar photograph to see another view of the shirt (the photograph was taken nearly one year earlier). Although you can only see the top of the graphic in Graeme’s photograph, it features the close-up detail from Ball of Destruction, which is a map I created in September of 2005 that features a woman textured by aerial photography of the area around White House holding a globe of Hurricane Katrina with a devastated New Orleans in the background.

For the show I wore a shirt that I had recently ordered from France that says “Jeux de mains, Jeux de vilains” which is definitely not something that says Bhangra, but I didn’t know I’d be VJing when I was getting ready for the night. The phrase literally translates to “Hand Games, Evil Hands,” but the proverb has multiple different meanings. From what I understand, the phrase was first was coined during the French Revolution by rich nobles who played Jeu de paume (the precursor to tennis) with rackets & gloves while the poor (the villains according to the nobility) played with their bare hands. Now it’s a traditional proverb adults use when children are playing too rough. It also has a sexual connotation, but I’ll let you figure that out yourself.

Enough about the clothing, check out Graeme’s time-lapse video of his Artomatic installation. His exhibit space is on the south end of the 6th floor. The picture of me above is featured about 27 seconds into the video:

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.

View the rest of the details:

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.