The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller

Metro Crash Quilt #2

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:23:25 +0000

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

Continuing on the theme of my last map, I decided to focus on the merging of the two Metro trains for this version. To create this map I first sampled a portion of Metro Crash Quilt, then I used that portion to create an intermediate map (that I chose to not publish), which I then sampled again to create this fractal Hexagon Quilt Projection map. This process of recursive sampling allowed me to focus more and more on the portion of the map where the two train merge together. The result is a weaved pattern of train tracks and merging Metro cars; a far more intricate map than my previous version. What is lost, however, is the area around the crash site and the crash site itself, in their place are more trains and more train track. I have sampled a portion of this map and am in the process of seeing what a third iteration will look like.

View the Google Map of the crash site in upper Northeast Washington, DC.

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View the rest of the map details:

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: zoom out from center :

: zoom to center :

Related Ward 4 of Washington, DC Entries:

Related Hexagon Quilt Projection Maps:

Related Fractal Maps:

Metro Crash Quilt

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:09:23 +0000

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

As I stated before, I decided to make a map of the location of where the Metro crash took place. When preparing the imagery I did my best to include both the train and the exact site of the collision, but when it came to trying out different Quilt Projection designs, I found the Square Quilt Projection to have a very interesting line of symmetry– the Metro train itself.

While this map is derived from orthophotography, which essentially flattens out the terrain, the train’s laterally merging together on a line of symmetry creates a different viewing approach to the train. Since I cannot replicate the Metro train on top of another Metro train (nor would I really want to or even have access to the aerial photos of the crash itself), this line of symmetry approach offers a stylized (albeit sad) way to show the merger of two trains.

The aim of this map was to document the location of this tragedy, but I was able to add more than I expected to the final result; a simulated merger of two trains. Had there not been a random train passing through the area on that day in March of 2005, this map would be devoid of the subject of it’s creation and only show the location of the tragedy.

I am working on a second iteration of this map which should be ready shortly.

View the Google Map of the crash site in upper Northeast Washington, DC.

: detail of the crash site with two Metro trains merging together :

View the rest of the map details:

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: zoom out from center :

: zoom to center :

Related Ward 4 of Washington, DC Entries:

Related Square Quilt Projection Maps:

The aerial photography of the area around the Metro crash site contains a Metro train

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:10:11 +0000

Like the highway collapse of I-35 in Minneapolis, the partial collapse of the MacArthur Maze, the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, and the Columbine shootings, I’ve decided to make a map of the area around yesterday’s Metro crash site. Earlier today I downloaded the imagery of the site and found something I wasn’t expected. Not far from the actual crash site there is a Metro train on the tracks. While its not as interesting as the Ghost Cars on the I-35 bridge, I found it interesting that of all the locations for the Metro train to be when the plane flew over in March of 2005, the Metro train happens to be VERY close to the actual site of the tragedy.

Note: Google Maps currently uses the same USGS imagery that I am using.

Dreaming of being on the Metro then one hour & seventeen minutes later a Metro train crashes

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:29:42 +0000

So around 3:30pm I awoke from my afternoon nap and Twittered that I had two vivid dreams at 3:45pm. About an hour and seventeen minutes after I posted that, while I was sitting on my front porch reading today’s paper, the worst train crash in the history of Metro took place. This type of dream prescience has happened before, so before the dream goes into the deep recesses of my memory, I am going to briefly transcribe what I remember. The following recollection was written at shortly after 6:05pm on June 22nd:

The dream started out inside of a train that looked and felt like a Metro train traveling at somewhat high speeds. However it seemed to be moving faster than normal, or maybe that was just the nature of the dream. Behind me was what looked like an airline pilot and a lady in a business suit. We were talking about how it was nice to be traveling on the train and then the conversation made its way to Accela. Where I turned around and said, “But it still uses the same rail lines as the regular trains.” They both laughed and then the train went completely silent as we rolled on. The silence reminded me of when I am on the Metro and the AC goes off and this audible static goes away for a brief moment. As we roll on down the track in silence this portion of the dream ends….

I then found myself floating above Nationals Stadium. A batter has hit a baseball deep into the outfield. Instead of a normal wall, there a crowd of teenagers who are in the field with baseball mitts and one of them catches the ball and then the crowd of teenagers disperses. No once can see who took the baseball. Then the crowd of the stadium starts to sing in unison to the tune of “Happy Birthday To You,” a phrase that causes those in the stadium to break out in laughter, “Where is the baseball, Where is the baseball, Where IS the baseballllll, Where is the baseball?” Shortly after this scene the dream ends.

I found it interesting that my mind had created something both funny and completely new in the context that I tend to think of dreams as a subconcious means of rehashing ideas and visions that have taken place in my waking life. Every part of the train sequence was rehashed from experiences of being on Metro and Accela trains, but the baseball portion was different. I have never created a somewhat humorous song while sleeping. However, its the train portion of the dream that is still haunting me.

UPDATE: To make matters more eerie, it turns out that two of the fatalities in the train actually resemble the two people I was talking to on the train in my dream. The pilot who died, Maj. Gen. David F. Wherley Jr., was involved in protecting Washington, DC during the whack events on 9/11, which is the source of my previous dream and he was sitting next to his wife, who also died. I got a chill down my spine after looking at their photos. However, unlike my dream, we were all sitting in the back of the train, not the front where they were actually sitting. I specifically remember turning around to speak with them because they were behind me and from my experiences on Metro trains the seats at the end of the car tend face the direction of the trains movement. Moreover, the lead cars, where the conductor is located and where they were sitting, have fewer seats than the back of the train. Regardless, I’m still a bit shaken by this synchronicity.

Front Range Quilt #2

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 03:15:41 +0000

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

Using this portion of Front Range Quilt, I created this derivative map. I sampled that portion because I like the nature of how the shadows of the ridge presented themselves and I wanted to include the tarn at the base of Andrews Glacier. I opted for the Dodecagon Quilt Projection because I felt it that it would work nicely since I am not trying to capture any specific buildings or streets in the source imagery (there are none!).

View the Google Map of the Front Range in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

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View the rest of the map details:

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: zoom out from center :

: zoom to center :

Related Colorado Entries:

Related Dodecagon Quilt Projection Maps:

Front Range Quilt

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:40:38 +0000

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So I never got around to making a map of downtown Birmingham, Alabama, but I still plan on doing so. Instead I decided to seek out a somewhat new place and try out a new style. For years I have been reticent about making a map that it not composed of an urban area. I always thought that it was the buildings and the streets that gave each map its intrinsic uniqueness, but with this map, I have branched out, tried something new, and am pleasantly surprised with the results.

Years ago I posted a topographic map of Rocky Mountain National Park featuring the first mountains I ever climbed as a child. It was also the first topographic map posted this to this blog, and to continue this line of thought, I was delighted to find that the imagery was available to create the first map of its type. Instead of the aerial photography being too dull to be worthy of a map, I found it interesting that the shadows created by the ridge line added some aerial chiaroscuro. Moreover, upon closer examination, due to the spatial resolution of the source aerial photography, you can actually make out the trails crisscrossing through the forest. While they don’t appear as well as a highway or skyscraper, the trails and shadows help make create a map that I am happy to publish here.

Another striking feature of the imagery is the color tone of the tarn at the base of Andrews Glacier. This blue/green lake adds a unique color contrast to the somewhat monotone yellow hue of the rocky terrain. I do, however, wish there was a bit more color contrast between the east side of the continental divide and the west side of the continental divide that I’ve seen when I’ve stood atop these mountains. I also kinda wish, for once, that the aerial photography wasn’t taken from nadir, rather I wish it was taken at an oblique angle because we’d be able to see more elevation contrast between the various mountain peaks. However, since I have hiked these mountains, I know the continental divide shown in this aerial photography traverses north and south and the shadows are only formed from the ridges extending west from the continental divide. This makes it slightly easier to differentiate where the ridges are, but not where the peaks are. Anyways, I’ve decided to sample a portion of this imagery and will make another iteration of this map shortly.

View the Google Map of the Front Range in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Curiously, the imagery used on Google Maps shows the area during the winter time and covered in snow.

: detail of Andrews Glacier :

View the rest of the map details:

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: zoom out from center :

: zoom to center :

Related Colorado Entries:

Related Hexagon Quilt Projection Maps:

My Brash poem from Artomatic 2009

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:34:01 +0000

Inverted scan of the poem

Brash is a poet that goes around Artomatic and leaves each participating artist a poem taped on to their exhibit wall. This week I noticed that my poem had been taped up to my exhibit space, so I decided to take it home, scan it, and post it here on-line like I did with last year’s poem. However, unlike last year, where Brash wrote about my entire exhibit, this year Brash wrote specifically about my Israel / Palestine 1993 map. From my understanding, Brash will probably write a poem for EVERY artist (thats over a thousand poems!) at Artomatic 2009. Brash, if you are reading this, thank you! I sincerely enjoy your creative spirit!

Related Artomatic Entries:

Analyzing my Facebook friends social behavior through Google Reader

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:16:32 +0000

I haven’t written about Facebook since I created the group “Washington Metropolitan Area Residents for a 24 Hour Metro” back in February. Previous to that, the entries were related to my experiments using their internal advertising system (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) and prior to that, I briefly wrote about the Nexus application that shows the relationships & commonalities of my Facebook friends. Back in March of 2008, I had a little under 400 friends and since then I have gained over 600 new friends and now have a little more than 1,000 Facebook friends and they share a lot links.

A few months ago I discovered that I could subscribe to my friend’s shared links on Facebook through an RSS reader. I was attempting develop a means to synch up what I shared on Facebook with what I shared on this website and found that I could subscribe to what all my friends were sharing on Facebook. I had come to the conclusion that it was easier to share information through the Facebook platform than through this blog and I wanted to find a way that my shared links would show up here using my Daily Links concept. While I ultimately abandoned the effort (as well as the Daily Links concept), I kept my subscription active in Google Reader.

Today I decided to check out the statistics related to my Facebook friends shared link RSS feed. What I found was quite interesting….

The average links shared per week is a little over 574 “posts” (posts are technically individually shared links) and with a little over 1,000 friends, this would statistically translate to half of my friends share one link a week. However, from my experience, I would say that its probably 10% to 25% of my friends are active users who share links often and the rest are passive users or don’t use Facebook that much. To reach the number of 574 shared links per week, then in the last 30 days there was roughly 2300 links shared during the month (574 posts per week x 4 weeks = 2296.8 links per month), which translates to a little over 2 links per person per month. As far as the shape of the graph goes, like the traffic on this website, there is a seemingly up & down flow that I’ve found to correlate to how most people use the internet during the week and not using it during the weekend.

This screen grab shows something I wasn’t expecting. The time of day in which my friends share their links does not completely correlate to my initial notion that most people share links on Facebook only while at work. Instead the times in which my friends share the most links are around 10pm & 11pm at night; probably before they go to bed. However, judging by the 4pm & 5pm spikes in the number of shared links, I can deduce that people are sharing links more at the end of the work day than at the beginning. The spike at around 11am in the morning might indicate that people are using Facebook during their lunch break. In all, I think this graph is the most telling of the Facebook usage of my friends on-line social behavior.

Finally, this screen grab also shows shows the which day of the week my friends share the most links. This graph mimics the undulation shown on the Last 30 Days graphic above. Interestingly, Thursday edges out Wednesday as the most popular day and Tuesday is more popular than Friday. I personally expected Friday to be the day that the most links are share because in my experience it was the day of the week that required the least amount of work. At below 200 links, nearly half the amount for the other five days of the week, I was not surprised by the low number of links shared on the weekends. As I stated before, this mimics the traffic this website.

In summary, I find this type of information very interesting. I don’t think its that useful information for everyone because it only shows the on-line social behavior of my friends. Moreover, this information does not fully paint the entire picture of my friends Facebook usage. Status updates, uploaded photos, uploaded videos, and those stupid quizzes are not shown in these graphs; only the number of links that are being shared. However, I believe there are some general concepts that can possibly be extrapolated if you were to subscribe to your friend’s shared links.

Malfunction Junction Offset

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:35:24 +0000

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

The other week I downloaded the aerial photography of downtown Birmingham, Alabama to make some maps for a friend of mine. Upon closer inspection of the geography, I found that there was a nicely formed highway interchange close to the downtown area that happened to be colloquially named “Malfunction Junction.” While other cities can also claim in having their own Malfunction Junction, this highway interchange is the first one I’ve read about.

When I started working on this map I intended to render a couple versions and recursively sample them to created a fractal map, but I wasn’t happy with the results, so I decided to go in a completely direction. This map did end up using previously sampled imagery, but it does not conform to that regular quilt projection format of a centralized kaleidoscope. Also, this map is not unlike some of my previous maps, like White House Sunrise or Minneapolis Sunset, however, I chose to name it differently based on the position of the kaleidoscope’s focal point, which is offset in the upper left hand corner. I spent a lot of time adjusting this location and as you can see in the last detail below, I was a few pixels off. Up next I’m probably going to work on the downtown area of Birmingham, but I’m really itching to start mapping Europe.

View the Google Map of Malfunction Junction in Birmingham, Alabama

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View the rest of the map details:

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: zoom out from center :

: zoom to center :

: upper corner of the map :

Notice that its not perfectly in the corner, but a few pixels off (oh well!)

Related Alabama Entries:

Related Miscellaneous Projection Maps:

YouTube Video: “A Fly on the Wall at Artomatic”

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:36:09 +0000

On Saturday June 13th, 2009, I attended the Artomatic “Meet The Artist Night.” As an experiment, I decided to place my digital camera on my exhibit wall. This time-lapse video documents what it would be like to be a fly on the wall at my Artomatic 2009 exhibit.

About midway through the video, I remove the camera from the wall and a friend takes a photo of me with a couple friends and then I place the camera back on the wall for the remainder of the filming.

Music used in the video is Azul (Gianma’s Drum and Bass Remix) by Natalia Clavier from her El Arbol EP (2008).

You can also view a somewhat better quality version of the video on Facebook.

I am mentioned in today’s Washington Post article “Artomatic ‘09: Survival Tips From an Expert”

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:51:52 +0000

In today’s Weekend section of the Washington Post there is an article titled Artomatic ‘09: Survival Tips From an Expert*. In the article staff writer Michael O’Sullivan follows around Phillip Barlow, one of the DC area’s biggest art collectors, and asks him questions about how to go about exploring the 9 floors of art at Artomatic.

Near the end of the article Michael O’Sullivan writes:

Okay, spill it: So who does the collector like? Barlow wouldn’t give a Top 10 list or even a favorite floor. But he did express interest in — or lingered longingly in front of — the work of several artists. Here’s a partial list of his favorites:

Floor 9: Jessica Van Brakle.

Floor 8: Jared Davis, Nikolas R. Schiller.

Floor 7: Jeremy Arn.

Floor 6: Jen Dixon.

Floor 5: Mark Jude, Meinir Wyn Jones, Stephen Reveley, Michael Enn Sirvet, Steve Strawn.

Floor 2: Drew Graham, Kate McGovern.

Still, Barlow cautions against using his taste alone as a guide, adding that the secret to Artomatic’s success is volume, volume, volume. “There’s just so much stuff here that I can practically guarantee that something’s going to be new or interesting,” he says. “To someone.”

Read the entire article here. I plan on stopping by Artomatic this evening around 7pm. Maybe I will see you there?

* This article’s title in the print edition is different from the on-line edition. The print edition is titled Artomatic ‘09: Survival Tips From an Expert while the on-line edition is titled Annual Artomatic Show Exhibits the Works of More Than 1,000 Artists. There is also one mistake in the article. The author incorrect states that Artomatic is open at noon on Wednesdays & Thursdays, when it actually opens at 5pm on those days.

Related Artomatic Entries:

A brief discussion about my IQ scores from 19 years ago

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:22:13 +0000

A couple months ago I got the wild idea to contact my old public school district and ask for a copy of my permanent records. I was curious about what files they had on me and if there was anything in my permanent records that was worthy keeping or sharing. To my surprise (and simultaneous dismay), I found that they had kept my intelligence quotient score (above) in my permanent file.

At the beginning of my 4th grade school year, my mom had suggested that I take the school administered IQ test so that I might be able to qualify for the school district’s Talented And Gifted Program (TAG). The special program was for students who had an IQ above 130 and had scored well in standardized tests so that they could be provided a more robust public school education. So two days before I turned 10 years old I took the exam with Ms. Delia, the elementary school’s counselor. She had platinum blonde hair, a perpetual suntan, and would always wear funky, multicolored dresses. I still remember her generous smile and supportive words that she’d always offer me during my six years of elementary school.

The test that I took was the revised edition of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. According to her written note in the margin of the results, I hurried through the exam. I don’t remember if it was because I was a little cocky 9-year-old who thought he knew it all or if I was nervous about how my scores would turn out or if it was some latent ADHD symptoms that were never fully addressed. My guess is that it was a combination of all three. Regardless of my possibly reckless speed, the final result was that my IQ score was 131, which was one IQ point higher than I needed in order to be allowed into the TAG program.

From fourth grade until sixth grade, one day each week I was bused out to the TAG center to take “enrichment” classes. It was here where I first learned how to program in BASIC, where I surfed the internet for the first time, created my first pinhole camera, and even where broke my right arm. I look back at this part of my public school education very fondly and believe that it helped shape me in ways that I’ll never fully comprehend.

However, I am posting this discussion today because I am curious about how much my intelligence quotient has changed over years. If I were to take the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, how would I fare? Would my IQ be very much different today than it was nearly 20 years ago? Would I be less intelligent, more intelligent, or about the same? What if I took a different IQ test like the Stanford-Binet? What good would it do for me to know this information at 28 years of age? Does it even matter???

I’ve always had some persistent issues knowing that my IQ placed me into the top 2% of the population. As in, if I was in a crowd of 100 randomly selected people, this IQ score would statistically make me the second smartest person in the crowd. But so what? Innate intellect does not automatically get you the job you want or even help you obtain friends or get you a college degree or even lead the crowd of 99 others to safety. It’s just an arbitrary number, right? I don’t have any intention of joining MENSA because I could really care less about belonging to a group of people that theoretically pride themselves enough to join an organization simply based on their score on a standardized test.

The beauty of this blog, which is now over 5 years old, is that I have a digital repository for documenting & sharing what my intellect has helped me accomplish. I take solace knowing that an IQ is not simply an arbitrary number that can differentiate someone from others, but rather, its their actions and creations that set them apart.

My Artomatic 2009 Opening Night Exhibit Dissected on Flickr

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:36:14 +0000

For my second official upload to Flickr, I continued last year’s practice, and uploaded a photo I took of my Artomatic 2009 exhibit on opening night. By adding notes over every part of the display photograph on Flickr, you can click on the embedded links and view the respective content on my website. If you are unable to make it to this year’s exhibition, I hope this dissection satiates your curiosity.

My own Coat of Arms, the Origin of the Stars & Stripes, and Hartburn, DC

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:57:37 +0000

Original image created in Chicago, 1894.
From the Library of Congress’ An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera.

Some time in the future I’d like to read more deeply into heraldry and come up with my own Coat of Arms. Today there is so much talk about name branding that I think it would be an interesting juxtaposition where my Coat of Arms could visually explain some subtle details about me. My motto would either be Socio Ditata Labore or Gloria Immortalis Labore Parta, but how would I go about designing the shield? That is where I am currently stuck at, but I imagine that if I were to dig deeper into the arcane traditions of heraldry, I would come up with something fitting.

About two months ago I was rummaging through the Library of Congress’ An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera and came across the image above. I knew that the DC flag was based off of George Washington’s family crest, but I didn’t know that it had been changed over the centuries prior to his family’s arrival in America. Moreover, I didn’t know that the city I currently live in, Washington, DC, might have been called something completely different…

From a New York Times’ Letter to the Editor published on April 8th, 1984:

Eberhartpence, Eberhart, Hartpence, Hart - what’s in a name? Indeed, had it not been for a change of name back in the 12th century, our nation’s capital might be Hartburn, D.C.

You see, when George Washington’s British ancestor William de Hartburn moved from Hartburn to Wessington in 1130, he changed his name to William de Wessington, which later became de Washington. The ”de” was dropped when the family arrived on these colonial shores around 1659.

Had William retained his original name, the father of our country would have been one ”George Hartburn.”

Imagine that– a gastrointestinal themed capital city. The people’s pyrosis!

I bet the George Hartburn University would have an even better medical school too! It makes me wonder if there would even be a Hart Senate office building, lest someone get the wild notion of burning it down. Or what about the lexical ramifications of when the British torched Washington in the War of 1812? Would this alternate history be called The Burning of Hartburn? I can only laugh and, of course, take some antacids.

A very long time ago, a couple weeks after the reelection of George W. Bush in November of 2004, I wrote that my most recent map looked similar to the gas mask I had purchased days prior:

Yet living in DC with 4 more years of Bush, I am expecting some acid reflux in the belly of the beast…

While there was only one case of acid reflux to hit Washington, DC during the subsequent 4 years, and a mild case at that, I can laugh again at this alternative history double entendre. Acid reflux in the belly of the beast? Only if George Washington’s ancestor didn’t change his name.

YouTube video of the early years of Disco in the Washington / Baltimore area from 1976

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:41:51 +0000

This video was created by Tom D’Antoni in 1976 for Maryland Public Broadcasting’s show “The Critic’s Place” on the Disco phenomenon when it was happening. It shows some of the nightclubs that existed in Washington, DC and Baltimore during the early years of Disco. I really enjoyed how Tom highlighted the social differences that existed between DC and Baltimore 30 years ago and how they, in some ways, still exist today. I am really curious about where the clubs that were featured in the video were located. At about 4 minutes in he mentions 20th & L streets and that area is now all office buildings. I gotta wonder if there are any nightclubs in the locations shown in the video that still exist today?

A big thanks goes to Dori Hadar, who posted this on Facebook, and is the person we can collectively thank for helping to discover Mingering Mike. You can purchase his insightful book about Mingering Mike on Amazon.

Note: while the YouTube video’s title says “Disco 1975 (74?),” upon a thorough reading of the comments posted on YouTube, audiophiles were able to accurately place the video at 1976.

A Navy Yard Perspective

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Sat, 30 May 2009 18:43:39 +0000

: rendered at 9,000 X 6,000 :

While on blogging hiatus, I made this map on May 12th, but didn’t post it. I don’t really have any rationale for not posting it except that I wanted to take a month off from blogging to see where my daily visitor threshold was; as in finding how many people visited my website without daily blogging. So in order to ascertain the data, I purposely withheld this entry.

Following up last year’s Artomatic maps, which also featured the area prior to development, I decided to try something a little different. When making this map I spent a lot of time working with the field of view parameters to create the depth of perspective. In the foreground (the lower half) you have a somewhat close-up view of the area around the Navy Yard Metro station in Southeast, Washington, DC and in the upper half you have a larger field of view that appears to stretch out to infinite. The aerial photography was taken in the spring of 2005 before the stadium and subsequent nearby development had been completed. Even if you look at the current Google Maps of the area, the construction of this year’s Artomatic venue had not even began.

View the Google Map of the Navy Yard in Washington, DC, which features newer imagery

: detail of the Navy Yard Metro prior to construction :

View the rest of the map details:

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: zoom out from center :

: zoom to center :

: upper corner of the map :

Related Ward 6 of Washington, DC Entries:

Related Miscellaneous Projection Maps:

My maps on display at Artomatic 2009

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:10:49 +0000

Click on the maps to view their respective blog entries

A New & Arabesque Map of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

This antique map mashup is over 400 years in the making. It features 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 Mercator-inspired map from the center and kept the highly decorative border similar to my other antique map mashups. The border contains allegorical drawings of the seven known planets, the four elements, the four seasons, and the seven wonders of the ancient world (copied from Dutch painter Maarten van Heemskerck [1498-1574]). This border was used on hundreds of subsequent maps for the next 50+ years by Blaeu and his son on a variety of maps. Interestingly, Washington, DC has a few modern replicas of the seven ancient wonders, but I’ll let you figure out which ones they are! (Anyone want to guess which two I can see from my rooftop?!?) The name of the map is a play on words based on the 18th century naming convention “A New and Accurate Map..” The central portion of the map features modified aerial photography (an arabesque) from the USGS (taken in the spring of 2005) of the circularly-shaped Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Israel / Palestine 1993

This map is derived from a scanned map of Israel & Palestine from the “Atlas of the Middle East,” which was published in January 1993 by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and obtained from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. At the time of it’s creation I was working at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab studies and my coworker’s vacation to Lebanon had to be cancelled due to an Israeli military incursion. I chose the map because of the way the occupied Palestinian territories were shaded on the map. The CIA chose to use rather ugly black diagonal lines to say “status still undetermined” and when I modified the map something interesting happened. The stripes became the points on a hexagram or Star of David, a recognized symbol of the Jewish state of Israel. To further express my feelings toward the continued occupation & military incursion, I added the iconic image of Palestinian defiance, a cartoon character by Naji Al-Ali named Handala to the lower corner of the map. Until his assassination in 1987, Ali used this character throughout his body of work as means to convey his displeasure toward the way the issue has been handled. The aim of this map is spark dialog so that peace may prevail.

Superdome Quilt - 1st Derivative #2

The day after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sent airplanes equipped with cameras to the gulf region to assess the damage. A few days later they released these high-resolution aerial photographs of New Orleans to the public and I downloaded the two tracts that contained the flooded area around the severely damaged Superdome. Shortly thereafter I made a couple maps based on this imagery and then tried out my new procedure of recursive sampling (a quasi-fractal) to make a highly detailed tessellation of the area. As you can see in the map, the blue hues are due to flooding of the streets and the little yellow blips around the map are what is left of the roof of the Superdome. A genuine question can be asked, if I were to obtain the imagery of the Superdome today, what would it look like? This map captured a moment in time that affected the lives of millions and I can only wonder what will happen when the next category 5 hurricane hits the next urban area. Sadly, the question is not if, but when….

I am located on the 8th floor of Artomatic 2009. Hope to see you!

Be back in a bit…

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:26:05 +0000

Taking a month long blogging break.
I’ll be back to regular postings around the end of May!
Follow me on Twitter for updates or subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed!

The Craig Retroazimuthal Projection aka the Mecca Projection

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:45:28 +0000

The Craig retroazimuthal map projection was created by James Ireland Craig in 1909. It is a cylindrical projection preserving the direction from any place to another predetermined place, while avoiding some of the bizarre distortion of the Hammer retroazimuthal projection. It is sometimes known as the Mecca projection because Craig, who had worked in Egypt as a cartographer, created it to help Muslims find their Qibla. Check out the mathematical calculation used to create the map on Wikipedia.

I think it would be neat to use this cartographic projection technique to create a map that uses Washington, DC as the center.

Related Mecca Entries:

Google Map Mashup: The Qibla Locator

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:54:09 +0000

Following up on yesterday’s posting, I stumbled across this interesting Google Map mashup. The Qibla (or Kiblah or Qiblah or Quibla) is the Arabic word for the direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays, otherwise known as the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca. For obedient muslims, the Salah, or formal prayer, is performed five times a day: at dawn (fajr), noon (dhuhr), in the afternoon (asr), at sunset (maghrib) and nightfall (isha’a). The Qibla Locator is a simple Google Map that is designed to automatically orient Muslims toward the direction of the Kaaba. Simply enter your location and the red line that is generated shows the shortest distance to the Kaaba. In the case of the screen grab above I decided to show what direction a Muslim would pray if they were in the White House in Washington, DC. I chose this location because I’ve read about some nutty folks who actually think president Barack Obama is a Muslim. Frankly, I don’t care what religion he practices and to take issue with anyone’s religion is a sign of intolerance and veiled ignorance. What I find most interesting about the Google Map is that the rhumb line toward the Kaaba can be somewhat deceiving. I’m not blaming the author of the mashup, rather, I think the nature of how the Quibla is found is unique. Since its based on the shortest distance to Mecca, sometimes the fastest way seems counter-intuitive, as in, I was thought the path from the White House (above) would be facing South-East instead of North-East. If you have a moment, try it out.

A couple interesting notes from the Wikipedia entry:

• The head of an animal that is slaughtered using Halal methods is aligned with the Qibla.
• Muslims are buried with their faces in the direction of the qiblah. Thus, archeology can indicate a Muslim necropolis if no other signs are present.

A short history of the Qibla:

Originally, the direction of the Qibla was toward Masjid al-Aqsa, Jerusalem (and it is therefore called the First of the Two Qiblahs). At least since Mishnaic times (AD200), Jews face the Temple Mount in Jerusalem while praying. The Mishnah speaks about this in Berakhot (Talmud) chapter 4, Mishnahs 5 and 6 and this practice is even found as early as I Kings 8:35-36. In Islam, this qiblat was used for over 13 years, from 610 CE until 623 CE. Seventeen months after Muhammad’s 622 CE arrival in Medina, the Qiblah became oriented towards the Kaaba in Mecca. According to accounts from the prophet Muhammad’s companions, the change happened very suddenly during the noon prayer in Medina, in a mosque now known as Masjid al-Qiblatain (Mosque of the Two Qiblahs). Muhammad was leading the prayer when he received revelations from Allah instructing him to take the Kaaba as the Qiblah (literally, “turn your face towards the Masjid al Haram”). According to the historical accounts, Muhammad, who had been facing Jerusalem, upon receiving this revelation, immediately turned around to face Mecca, and those praying behind him also did so.

Related Mecca Entries:

Related Interactive Entries:

[Update] The Architectural Athan Drum & Bass Mashup via YouTube Doubler is now transcribed

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:36:57 +0000

Click image to view the mashup on YouTube Doubler

Just under one year ago I created an interesting mashup using Brian Kane’s YouTube Doubler. Dubbed “the Athan Drum & Bass Mashup” (and since then I’ve added “architectural” to the title), the mashup features a slideshow of Islamic architecture on the left side and a stationary camera focused on a Drum & Bass DJ’s turntables on the right. Last night I revisited the original entry and discovered that whomever had uploaded the slideshow decided to transcribe the Athan using YouTube’s annotation feature. Now you can actually read the English translation of the morning call to prayer sung in Arabic.

#update - This iteration also automatically rewinds!

Related Interactive Entries:

Obama can’t criticize Chavez on at least one issue

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:21:00 +0000

From Time Magazine:

Those same Chavistas add that the U.S. has scant right to criticize Venezuela’s policy on its national capital when residents of Washington, D.C., still aren’t allowed representation in Congress.

This sounds similar to what a senior official in Hong Kong said a few years ago to Representative Tom Davis: “Give your nation’s capital the right to vote and then come talk to us about democracy in Hong Kong.”

Fashion District Quilt #2

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:06:01 +0000

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

Using this portion of Fashion District Quilt, I composed this derivative map. I chose this layout because I liked the way the tessellation created almost-circular building clusters.

View the Google Map of the Fashion District in Los Angeles, California

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Related Los Angeles Entries:

Related Hexagon Quilt Projection Maps:

Fashion District Quilt

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:25:56 +0000

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

As I was doing research for the upcoming exhibition in Los Angeles, I decided to map out the area around the Gallery 727. After consulting a few different maps, I found that the gallery is technically located in the area known as the Fashion District, albeit on the periphery. Google Maps lists the area as the Historic Core, but I don’t think “Historic Core Quilt” has a good ring to it. I chose the Octagon Quilt Projection because I like the way the shadows in the streets form a compass rose around the center of the map.

View the Google Map of the Fashion District in Los Angeles, California

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Related Los Angeles Entries:

Related Octagon Quilt Projection Maps:

|| Upcoming Exhibition || Photocartographies: Tattered Fragments of the Map

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:14:04 +0000

Photocartographies: Tattered Fragments of the Map is a curatorial project materializing in multiple forms: an exhibition, a publication and a series of public programs.

Photography and cartography are entwined in similar processes of subject orientation that structure our experience of social, environmental and virtual landscapes. A map is not a representation so much as a system of propositions. This project reveals mapping itself as a generative process of knowledge creation, a liberatory method for re-imagining and re-imaging our world, its built and natural environments, and the relationship between space and place.

Maps are tied to a history of authority, scientific rationality and practical application, masking the underlying subjectivity and biases of their creation. Satellite-based navigation, the disciplines of geography and, more recently, urban planning, have popularized and proliferated map imagery while helping to cement an aura of unassailable cartographic objectivity. Maps have become ubiquitous tools in our daily lives, and are understandably identified in accordance with a few simple assumptions: they are graphic representations of spatial relations and their creators are technicians bound to graphic systems that reflect a physical reality. However, the true nature of maps is one of distortion, beginning with their projections of three-dimensional surfaces onto two-dimensional frames, and compounded by territorialization, a habit of identifying, naming and claiming. Maps are image-objects in which different conceptions and configurations of time and space are created, not just charted.

In 1858 Gaspard Felix Tournachon executed the first aerial photographs from a hot air balloon tethered above the Paris skyline. In turn, Baron Haussmann employed this omniscient view to redesign the city, combating its perceived disorder. Over the last 150 years, people have used zeppelins, airplanes, and satellites to photographically capture and archive every piece of our globe with increasing accuracy and frequency.

More recently, public access to maps, as well as the access to their means of production, have been greatly enabled by digital technologies—most notably tools such as Google Earth and freely accessible archives like those offered by the USGS. Borges’ story of mapping the entire Kingdom with exactitude may seem improbably complete. And yet, maps can never escape being part of the world their creators try to represent. Like the photographic image, “The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious” by coding power, politics, and aesthetics. All maps are still projections, and all territories are maps.

Mapping and photography are conceptual frameworks, rather than methods, that inform this project. The exhibition features artwork from Anthony Auerbach, Katherine Bash, Charles Benton, Noah Beil, Mike Hernandez, David Horvitz, David Maisel, Adam Ryder, Oraib Toukan, Angie Waller, and Nikolas Schiller.

Exhibition Opening - May 16, 7:00-10:00
Exhibition @ Gallery 727
727 South Spring Street, downtown Los Angeles
www.TatteredFragments.info

If you are in the Los Angeles area please check out the exhibition! It will be up until July 3rd, 2009.

Phoenix Quilt #2

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 23:24:09 +0000

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Using this portion of Phoenix Quilt, I created this derivative map of downtown Phoenix, Arizona. For this map I decided to employ the Dodecagon Quilt Projection because its been a little while since I’ve used that projection. I also liked the way the rooftop of the Sandra Day O’Connor US District Court creates a nice design around the center.

View the Google Map of downtown Phoenix, Arizona

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Related Arizona Entries:

Related Dodecagon Quilt Projection Maps:

A Response to Doug Feaver’s “Listening to the Dot-Commenters”

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:01:33 +0000

In yesterday’s Opinions section in the Washington Post I came across Doug Feaver’s article called “Listening to the Dot-Commenters” and felt compelled to write this missive concerning his incomplete analysis of anonymous commenters on the Washington Post website.

He writes:

But the bigger problem with The Post’s comment policy, many in the newsroom have told me, is that the comments are anonymous. Anonymity is what gives cover to racists, sexists and others to say inappropriate things without having to say who they are.

He goes on to defend the commenters because they add dynamic content to an article, can be entertaining, act as a non-scientific survey on the topic de jour, and oftentimes show that the readers do not necessarily agree with the journalist who wrote the article. While these are all factual points, Feaver misses the larger issue. Comments are not completely anonymous.

Of the 330 comments that were generated by the article at the time of this posting, only one commenter addresses the larger point that I am attempting to make.

dlpetersdc wrote: Posts here are only anonymous to readers of these posts, not the WaPo’s staff. When you post, likely your IP address is recorded with the entry…[snip]… But anyone who thinks that you can remain anonymous on the Internet is fooling themselves.

Lets take this commenter’s summarized point one step further. Since all traffic on all websites leave a digital footprint that can be tracked back, in real time, to a unique IP address or Internet Service Provider, why does the Washington Post continue to shield it’s readers from one of the most important & least invasive aspects of this harvested data: the commenter’s geographic location??

Unlike the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, as a newspaper of record that does not have nationwide circulation, the Washington Post’s existence and continued success is contingent upon a large local subscriber base and those living outside of the current distribution area reading articles on-line. Each month I pay to have the paper delivered to my house, but am essentially given no extra privileges when reading or commenting on an on-line article. Alternatively, each on-line article that non-subscribers read also helps the Washington Post’s bottom line through on-line advertising. Yet all commenters, paying subscribers and non-paying readers, are given the exact same treatment in the comments section of the Washington Post website. I feel this is unfair, unwise, and only perpetuates ignorant, racist, and bigoted remarks.

The incorporation of the geographic location of commenters might not seem significant, but the implications are quite important to the general discourse. When I read an article about the unconstitutional D.C. voting rights bill (aka the 1/3 Compromise), I sometimes like to see what comments are being left on-line or if someone expresses a legal opinion that I have not read yet. However after I have read what the different commenters have written, I am generally saddened that local opinions are sometimes lost in the clutter of non-local opinions. While the Washington Post knows the approximate location of each “anonymous” commenter, this information is not disclosed to other commenters, and it creates & perpetuates a vacuum of ignorance.

Moreover, sometimes the Washington Post will have a poll about an issue and many times I’ve found that the results are unbelievably skewed by those who do not live in the region. Why not add some basic geoscience to the poll by disclosing the difference between how readers from the Washington metropolitan region voted versus those who live in the rest of the world? This geographic data is already there waiting to be used, but sadly it is not.

But its not just an issue of liking or disliking comments; I can always choose not to read them. The root of the issue is that the Washington Post is perpetuating this type of ignorance by shielding their on-line readers from where a comment is originating. This data is collected the moment a user begins loading content from the website and it does not personally identify any readers. While an IP address can be spoofed, most people are not going to take the time to put forth the extra effort just so they can prevent their approximate location from being revealed.

Commenters can still be anonymous and have a geographic location attached to them. For example, my current IP address only shows that I am a Comcast subscriber based in Washington, DC. With thousands of other Comcast subscribers, I still retain a level of anonymity by creating an “anonymous” account using a different e-mail address and creating a screen name that only I know of.

Imagine for a moment that immediately after the commenters screen name there was the text “from [LOCATION]” or as it would read on the screen: ANONYMOUS COMMENTER from Memphis, Tennessee or Nik Schiller from Washington, DC. Who would you be more likely to read if the article was about something in Washington, DC? Or Memphis, Tennessee? Esssentially, what comments have more credibility? Those comments originating from the geographic location of the subject of the article? Or those that do not?

Well, of course, it depends on the context of their comments. If they were bashing the residents of Washington, DC and do not live here, I would most likely ignore them. But as it is now, even though the Washington Post knows where the commenter is from, all other commenters are denied this basic level of geographic understanding and it alienates readers who actually pay for the newspaper.

In conclusion, I believe a more civilized level of discourse can be established if the level of anonymity is slightly altered by providing the geographic location of all commenters. Its not so much about WHO the commenter is, but WHERE the commenter is from that is at the core my logic. Locals commenting about local affairs will be treated with more respect, while people who don’t pay for the paper, leave absurd, racist, or sexist comments, can & will be ignored more easily. As a paying subscriber, I feel it’s the least the Washington Post can do to encourage my on-line participation. The current model is a free for all that can be more civil, if, and only if, the Washington Post chooses to bring more sunshine to their paying & non-paying readers through the visible disclosure of the geographic information that each on-line reader already provides.

Phoenix Quilt

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:31:25 +0000

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Over the years I’ve done my best to map every major city throughout the United States. Some cities & states withhold their imagery from the public domain and I’ve been unable to map those geographies (I’m looking you at Vermont!). While Tuscon, Arizona was released to the public a few years back, Phoenix, the primary city of Arizona, was not released until sometime last year. I don’t get updates of when new imagery is released in the public domain, which has kept me in the dark about when other cities are releasing new imagery, otherwise I would have mapped Phoenix sooner.

For this map I decided to employ the Diamond Quilt Projection on the area around downtown Phoenix. The source aerial photography was originally .8 feet per pixel, but in order to capture more of the downtown area I reduced the spatial resolution of the source imagery to cover more area. In doing so, I have most of the important buildings in downtown Phoenix. Known as Cooper Square, the buildings in this map include Chase Field, U.S. Airways Center, Sandra Day O’Connor US District Court, Bank of America Tower, City Hall, Maricopa County government buildings, Phoenix Civic Center, and Patriot Square Park. Unlike most of my state capital maps, the Phoenix state capitol is located to the west and I will probably have to go back and make a subsequent map so I can include it in my ongoing series of state capitol buildings.

Anyways, I resampled a portion of this map and will post it tomorrow.

View the Google Map of downtown Phoenix, Arizona

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Related Arizona Entries:

Related Diamond Quilt Projection Maps:

[DAILY LINKS] April 8th

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:00:00 +0000

These are my shared links for April 8th

Making Advocacy & Humanitarian Maps - What map does not advocate, or argue for something? We are always calling maps to our aid. Three free books on maps and advocacy have been made available for download recently, and are worth a look.
Food Decorating Pen - cupcake lovers take note!
Manhattan Euro - Artist Ronald van Tienhoven (1956) captured the dynamics of 400 years of Netherlands-Manhattan in his design of the Manhattan fiver. The front side shows, next the a coin-in-coin likeness of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, the precise structures of Manhattan in 2009. Thanks to modern technology, the artist was able to minutely depict Southern Manhattan in 3D. On the back side you can see and feel the landscape of Manhattan in 1609, represented faithfully thanks to scientific research by the Wildlife Conservation Society of New York.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton & Senator Joe Lieberman introduce a D.C. Statehood Bill

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:10:04 +0000

UPDATE: In case you didn’t figure it out, this entry was my April Fool’s Day joke. While the event at the U.S. Capitol was real, the introduction of the D.C. Statehood Bill was a farce.

Upon hearing that the Justice Department has found the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009 to be unconstitutional, this morning Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) introduced a D.C. Statehood bill to Congress.

This bill will make the nearly 600,000 citizens of America’s capital city equal to those in every other state in America. The legislation will allow District residents to elect two senators & at least one member of the House of Representatives. It will also grant the residents complete budget autonomy, control over the penal system, and allow residents to vote for their own district attorney. The bill also shrinks what is considered the “Seat of Government” to the area around the United States Capitol and National Mall to allow Congress to retain some control over the District of Columbia.

“I’m tired of being treated like a second-class congresswoman,” said Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton this morning at the press conference, “and D.C. Statehood is the only route to full equality.” She went on to say that she was pressured by the high-profile advocacy group DC Vote to push for partial representation because they wanted to make sure D.C. only has one vote in Congress. She concluded, “they didn’t want to have to change their name to DC Votes.”

Former vice-presidential candidate Senator Lieberman introduced the Senate’s version of the bill that contains a unique compromise. Unlike previous D.C. Statehood legislation, it contains a provision that prevents D.C. residents from electing two senators from the same political party.

“As an independent, I understand the importance of partisanship and the current view of Washington, DC is that the residents only vote for candidates in the Democratic Party.” By including this controversial provision, Lieberman hopes to win over Republican leadership who fear that the senators will always come from the Democratic party. The DC Home Rule Charter already contains a similar provision for a portion of the At-Large City Councilmembers to be from minor political parties and this practice will be continued in the DC Statehood bill.

In order to help District residents understand the importance of what D.C. statehood will provide, this evening ACLU and many other human rights groups are hosting a teach-in & free concert on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Their goal is to educate District residents on the benefits of D.C. statehood.

Below are two different flyers for tonight’s event at the U.S. Capitol:

[DAILY LINKS] April 1st

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:00:00 +0000

These are my shared links for April 1st

SatNav Shoes: Navigate the City on Foot - I'm not sold on the aesthetics of the shoe, but I must say it's got geospatial soul.

Surveillance under Freedom

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:19:15 +0000

Last month I did sound for the American Student Medical Association on the West Lawn of the United States Capitol. While the group was marching up the hill before the start of the rally, I looked up to the dome of the Capitol and noticed the little surveillance camera below the Statue of Freedom for the first time.

Related Photography Entries:

[DAILY LINKS] March 30th

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000

These are my shared links for March 30th

Earth Hour 2009 - Click on the images to see what it looks like without (some) electricity.
270 - Palestine’s Island Paradise, Now With a Word from its Creator - Mr Boussac took advantage of the resulting archipelago effect “to use typical tourist maps codes (mainly icons) to sharpen the contrast between the fantasies raised by seemingly paradise-like islands and the Palestinian Territories grim reality.” The map does have a strong vacationy vibe to it – but whether that is because of the archipelago-shaped subject matter, or due to the cheerful colour scheme is a matter for debate.

[DAILY LINKS] March 30th

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000

These are my links for March 30th:

The crate sphere - I wonder what the world record for most milk crates is?
'Dead Pixel in Google Earth' - Dead Pixel in Google Earth (2008) is a work of concept art by Helmut Smits; the 82×82-centimetre square of burned grass represents one pixel from an altitude of one kilometre.

World Wildlife Fund’s Zoomorphic Fantasy Maps

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:25:22 +0000

Click to view full-size image

I came across these zoomorphic fantasy maps a few weeks ago and smiled. They brought back fond memories of when I was in second grade and used to draw large futuristic cities during my free time in school. I prefer to think that those sketches were the visual result of the influence that Sim City had on me back then.

These black & white bird’s eye view sketches show an elephant (above), rhinoceros (below), and sea turtle (below) all include the text of the campaign: “Our life at the cost of theirs?” The aim of this campaign is to frame the encroachment of urban life within the scope of contemporary degradation of the natural ecosystems these animals live in. By drawing these imaginative urban areas within the outlines of the endangered animals, the artists present a poignant perspective of whether our urban societies can sustain their current growth without damaging the animal’s fragile habitat.

Since the original images are larger than the formatting I use here, I have shrunk them down for layout purposes. By clicking on the images, you can see them in full-size.

CITATION
Advertising Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai, India
Executive Creative Director: Piyush Pandey
Creative Director: Sumanto Chattopadhyay
Art Directors: Mayur varma, Mandar Wairkar
Illustrators: Swapnil Nilkanth, Nishikant Palande
Copywriters: Sumanto Chattopadhyay, Karn Singh, Mandar Wairkar
[VIA Ads of the World]

View the other fantasy maps:

Click to view full-size image

Related Found Maps:

Related Advertisement Entries:

Related Animal Entries:

Related Bird’s Eye View Maps:

YouTube videos of the “Do-Re-Me” dance in Antwerp’s Central Station

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:50:40 +0000

Last month I created a Facebook group called Washington Metropolitan Area Residents For A 24 Hour Metro. Each week or so I’ve been sending members of the group different subway related YouTube videos- ranging from Improv Everywhere’s Subway Art Gallery Opening to Toronto’s subway dance party. Last night I came across another iteration of the faux-flash-mob-that-decides-to-dance-in-a-train-station-meme and decided to share it with the group. It features 200 well-choreographed dancers getting down to a remix of Julie Andrews singing Do-Re-Me from the musical The Sound of Music in Antwerp’s Central Station. Similar to the efforts behind the T-Mobile video, I believe the motivation behind this video is related to the promotion of the Belgian theatrical version of “Looking for Maria” or “Op zoek naar Maria,” which is based on the Sound of Music.

Below is the behind the scenes video and two different perspectives of the dance:

“A Haircut One Year In The Making” - A time-lapse YouTube video of my long-awaited haircut

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:27:53 +0000

After growing my hair out for the last year, I decided to film the long-awaited haircut in my living room using my digital camera’s time-lapse recording function. While the haircut was taking place a couple of my housemates come home and watch the haircut unaware that there was a camera recording in the background.

The video gratuitously starts out with a couple photos I took of myself from July of 2008 until March of 2009 then transitions to the footage my Canon SD750 recorded using the one frame per second time-lapse feature. I would have included more photos from June of 2008 to March of 2008, but I couldn’t find any photos on my hard drive.

Anyways, I doubt I’ll grow my hair out like this again for awhile, but honestly, I enjoyed having it.
Up next: the sideburns!

MUSIC: Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in F Major by Antonio Vivaldi
Performed by the Gardner Chamber Orchestra. Audio directed by flutist Paula Robison.
Audio courtesy of Archive.org

Artwork Note: On the wall, behind me to my left, is my map “Washington Monument Lenz”

Related YouTube Entries:

Related Timelapse Entries:

[DAILY LINKS] March 24th

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000

These are my shared links for March 24th

PlatyPreserve — Oxygen-free wine preservation in the back country - I would like to take one of these backpacking.
Smokestack Washington: 1921 - Interesting view of what the National Mall looked like 90 years ago. [Part3]
Monumental: 1919 - Interesting view of what the National Mall looked like 90 years ago [Part2]
The Nation's Attic: 1919 - Interesting view of what the National Mall looked like 90 years ago.
Little Pete Seeger: 1921 - Pete Seeger turns 90 this May

[DAILY LINKS] March 24th

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000

These are my shared links for March 24th

BB exclusive: new track from David Byrne + Brazilian Girls (audio) -

A Gigapan of the 105 & 110 Quilt

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:10:18 +0000

After uploading yesterday’s map to Gigapan, I realized that most of my maps on the website are not really panoramas. They were big files, but not wide panoramas, so I decided to make a special map that looks more like a panorama. To do this, I found the map 105 & 110 Quilt in my archives and opened it up. Then I increased the size of the canvas by a factor of 3 to 27,000 pixels wide and added two more copies of the map in the new space. Finally I saved it and uploaded it. I could easily do this with the rest of the Los Angeles Interchanges Series, but I think one example is enough for the time being. I would have made it larger, but my computer can only handle files 30,000 pixels or smaller. Maybe if I were to use a different computer with more ram and more hard drive space I could actually make a GIGApan.

If you are subscribed to my RSS feed and are reading this on through your RSS reader, please click here to view it on my website or click here to view it on the Gigapan website.

Related Interactive Entries:

Related Entries from the Los Angeles Interchanges Series:

A Gigapan of Erie Coke Corporation Eye

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:43:59 +0000

After posting the map, I decided to upload it to the Gigapan website in order to add a little more interactivity to the map.

If you are subscribed to my RSS feed and are reading this on through your RSS reader, please click here to view it on my website or click here to view it on the Gigapan website.

Related Interactive Entries:

Erie Coke Corporation Eye

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:37:00 +0000

: rendered at 9,000 X 6,000 :

After I rendered Erie Coke Corporation Quilt, I sampled a portion of the map to create a derivative tessellation. I applied this tessellation to the miscellaneous projection template I created last year when I mapped downtown Kansas City, Missouri. While the previous version looked more like a human eye made of the highway, this rendition is about focusing in on the pollution coming from the smokestack at the Erie Coke Corporation. I tend to work in perfect symmetries and by centering the plant, this map becomes asymmetrical and somewhat out of balance. I achieved this by moving the center of kaleidescope to the right side, and after a few minor tweaks, I was able to magnify the smokestack without degrading the source aerial photography (see below). Or check out the interactive Gigapan.

View the Google Map of the Erie Coke Corporation outside of Erie, Pennsylvania

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Related Pennsylvania Entries:

Related Miscellaneous Maps:

Erie Coke Corporation Quilt

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:08:14 +0000

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Coke is used as a fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. Cokes are the solid carbonaceous material derived from destructive distillation of low-ash, low-sulfur bituminous coal. Cokes from coal are grey, hard, and porous and the process of their creation gives off a lot smoke. It was also this smoke that brought me to this imagery.

The other night I was looking for new cities to map and came across the imagery of Erie, Pennsylvania. As I was looking around I found this blemish of industry near the center of the town. Like the maps Baton Rouge Quilt - An Oil Refinery Reflection and Enrico Fermi Nuclear Reactor Quilt, this map focuses on the smoke being generated by the geographic subject. I chose the Octagon Quilt Projection because I was able to create a smoke reflection that points to the eight general directions: North, South, East, West, North West, South West, North East, and South East (see image below).

What I find most interesting about the land on which the Erie Coke Corporation is situated is how dark the ground is. Surrounded by the blue hues of Lake Erie, the ground that factory sits on is completely black from all the coal that has been processed throughout the years. It makes me wonder how much pollution generated from this plant goes into the Lake and in the air around the town.

View the Google Map of the Erie Coke Corporation outside of Erie, Pennsylvania

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Related Pennsylvania Entries:

Related Octagon Quilt Projection Maps:

[DAILY LINKS] March 20th

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000

These are my shared links for March 20th

Reproducciones vegetarianas - famous paintings made with vegetables.
Arte, con lo que sea … - portraits made from the tape out of old cassettes.
Subway Art Gallery Opening - this will be sent to members of the Washington Metropolitan Residents for a 24 hour Metro…

[DAILY LINKS] March 18th

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:46:42 +0000

These are my shared links for March 18th

More Evidence That Intelligence Is Largely Inherited: Researchers Find That Genes Determine Brain’s Processing Speed - Shared by my friend Erin in SF: “A new type of brain imaging scanner shows that intelligence is strongly influenced by the quality of the brain’s axons or wiring that sends signals throughout the brain. The faster the signaling, the faster the brain processes information. And since the integrity of the brain’s wiring is influenced by genes, the genes we inherit play a far greater role in intelligence than was previously thought.”
Seattle Crosswalk: Tap foot, Lights blink, Cross street - Check this out - as you enter the crosswalk make sure you touch the yellow rectangle on the sidewalk. This activates the blinking lights that line the crosswalk.
New Mexico Repeals Death Penalty — Kansas and Montana May Follow Suit - That leaves 35 states with capital punishment.

Where did Google’s video rankings go?

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:55:47 +0000

About a week ago I noticed that Google had quietly removed my favorite component of their on-line video services: video ranking. It was an automated service that allowed users to be able to see which videos were viewed the most, blogged the most, and shared the most each day, week, and month. This ranking system offered a unique snapshot of the internet video zeitgeist and oftentimes helped me find videos that I otherwise would not have found.

There was also the ability to seek out the popular videos based on geography through the country search. This allowed me to find videos that were popular in England or Canada and compare them to the popular videos in America. All there is now is Hot Videos, which does not provide the same depth of understanding the other metrics offered.

So why the removal of a popular feature with no note to the public? Well there was a tangentially related note posted back in January on Google’s Blog about the discontinuing support for uploads to Google Video. However, in their FAQ and blog entry there was no wayward mention that the video rankings would be taken away.

I understand that Google Video, the video hosting service, had to spend a great deal of time & money removing copyrighted material on an ongoing basis. With YouTube already having to deal with this, it makes sense to consolidate the video operations within YouTube. But why remove the rankings that cross over to all of the videos hosted by Google, including YouTube? It just doesn’t make sense.

The only answer that I’ve been able to come up with is the suppression of popular videos. By removing the ability of users to see what videos are popular at a given time, Google can prevent users from sharing the popular videos with others. If they want to prevent the next Zeitgeist film or rant about the smelly New World Odor, they have found the perfect way to do so: don’t let people know what is popular through their on-line services. Instead, make them find it themselves through other means.

But why would Google do this? What would be their motive? I really don’t know, but it reminds me of the Samizdat in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, where Google wants to prevent its users from watching The Entertainment in order to help maintain social cohesion. But, alas, people will always find a way to obtain what they are looking for. The only difference is that it now appears that Google is not being the best search engine it can be.

In summary, I don’t care if Google stops allowing people to upload videos to their Google Video servers, people will find other servers, but don’t remove popular methods of finding video content. I want to know what the most viewed video was yesterday in _____[country]_____. I want to know why ______[video]______ was watched by more people yesterday than any other video on the internet. Google once provided an excellent tool for knowledge discovery through it’s rankings system but has taken it away without a decent reason. So, dear Google, when will you reinstate the video rankings? …And why did you remove them in the first place?

The screen grab above links to what used to be the video ranking page and now forwards visitors to basic Google Video front page.

Related Google Entries:

Related Censorship Entries:

[DAILY LINKS] March 17th

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:59:05 +0000

These are my shared links for March 17th

Resource Hogs: Greening Prison Infrastructure - Greening all the prisons in the United States could create savings of up to $196 million per year.
Getting A Leg Over Shadwell - photos of a well executed installation of a woman's leg and high-heel shoe from atop a building.
VILLA SIMONT, 12.3.39 [1] - I didn't know the French Foreign Legion received a 1/2litre of wine a day [Orwell's Diary]
My Social Graph is Getting Weird - Jeremy Fuksa takes us on a little journey through the WTF friending land of Facebook at a Pecha Kucha
Liberia’s Blackboard Blogger - Alfred Sirleaf is an analog blogger. He take runs the “Daily News”, a news hut by the side of a major road in the middle of Monrovia. He started it a number of years ago, stating that he wanted to get news into the hands of those who couldn’t afford newspapers, in the language that they could understand.
FUNK the War - nice little video

[DAILY LINKS] March 15th

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000

These are my shared links for March 15th

Cycle Chic et l'Amour - By bicycle. On foot. By bus. By tram. A new step in [for] life.

[DAILY LINKS] March 14th

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000

These are my shared links for March 14th

Fenty Opens Up—A Little - On Congress and Guns: “What we have to decide in the District of Columbia is, do we take the momentum of the voting rights lobbying and do we say we’re going to have that and not let anything get in our way and then work hard to take off any non-germane amendments? I think that over the past decade there have been a lot less negative things put on our budget…it keeps going down, except for guns. Guns, from what I’ve seen, is the one issue where actually there’s more interference…which is an instructive thing to note if it’s true because it just means that no matter what happens with this voting rights bill, there’s going to be interference by the gun lobby on some other bill that we have going through Congress, not just this year but next year.”
Dan Funderburgh : This is how wallpaper is made - I would love to make wallpaper out of my Geospatial Art.

[DAILY LINKS] March 12th

blog@nikolasschiller.com — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000

These are my links for March 12th:

It’s Really Simple; Be Valuable and You Will Be Valued - the paradox of this, of course, is finding or estimating one's self-worth.
Google Reader starts a conversation - You can now comment on my Shared Items from Google Reader…
Who killed the electric grid? - How many extra power plants do we need to build if we introduce electric cars on a large scale? According to ecotech advocates, that matter is solved: none. Electric vehicles can be charged at night.
Many power plants have a surplus of energy during the night ("off-peak production capacity") because demand is low and generators keep spinning. Therefore, if we all start driving electric cars, oil consumption will plummet to zero and electricity production will remain the same.

However, not all electric vehicles will be charged at night - and it takes a surprisingly small amount of fast-charging cars during peak hours to take the electricity infrastructure down.
Why We Immunize - details on the most common immunizations: Hepatitis B, Polio, Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Haemophilus influenzae type B, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Chicken Pox…. Makes me want to get re-immunized!
The Seven Deadly Sins of my spam trap - made me chuckle…

The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller

Metro Crash Quilt #2

Metro Crash Quilt

The aerial photography of the area around the Metro crash site contains a Metro train

Dreaming of being on the Metro then one hour & seventeen minutes later a Metro train crashes

Front Range Quilt #2

Front Range Quilt

My Brash poem from Artomatic 2009

Analyzing my Facebook friends social behavior through Google Reader

Malfunction Junction Offset

YouTube Video: “A Fly on the Wall at Artomatic”

I am mentioned in today’s Washington Post article “Artomatic ‘09: Survival Tips From an Expert”

A brief discussion about my IQ scores from 19 years ago

My Artomatic 2009 Opening Night Exhibit Dissected on Flickr

My own Coat of Arms, the Origin of the Stars & Stripes, and Hartburn, DC

YouTube video of the early years of Disco in the Washington / Baltimore area from 1976

A Navy Yard Perspective

My maps on display at Artomatic 2009

A New & Arabesque Map of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Israel / Palestine 1993

Superdome Quilt - 1st Derivative #2

Be back in a bit…

The Craig Retroazimuthal Projection aka the Mecca Projection

Google Map Mashup: The Qibla Locator

[Update] The Architectural Athan Drum & Bass Mashup via YouTube Doubler is now transcribed

Obama can’t criticize Chavez on at least one issue

Those same Chavistas add that the U.S. has scant right to criticize Venezuela’s policy on its national capital when residents of Washington, D.C., still aren’t allowed representation in Congress.

Fashion District Quilt #2

Fashion District Quilt

|| Upcoming Exhibition || Photocartographies: Tattered Fragments of the Map

Exhibition Opening - May 16, 7:00-10:00 Exhibition @ Gallery 727 727 South Spring Street, downtown Los Angeles www.TatteredFragments.info

Phoenix Quilt #2

A Response to Doug Feaver’s “Listening to the Dot-Commenters”

Phoenix Quilt

[DAILY LINKS] April 8th

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton & Senator Joe Lieberman introduce a D.C. Statehood Bill

[DAILY LINKS] April 1st

Surveillance under Freedom

[DAILY LINKS] March 30th

[DAILY LINKS] March 30th

World Wildlife Fund’s Zoomorphic Fantasy Maps

YouTube videos of the “Do-Re-Me” dance in Antwerp’s Central Station

“A Haircut One Year In The Making” - A time-lapse YouTube video of my long-awaited haircut

[DAILY LINKS] March 24th

[DAILY LINKS] March 24th

A Gigapan of the 105 & 110 Quilt

A Gigapan of Erie Coke Corporation Eye

Erie Coke Corporation Eye

Erie Coke Corporation Quilt

[DAILY LINKS] March 20th

[DAILY LINKS] March 18th

Where did Google’s video rankings go?

[DAILY LINKS] March 17th

[DAILY LINKS] March 15th

[DAILY LINKS] March 14th

[DAILY LINKS] March 12th

Exhibition Opening - May 16, 7:00-10:00
Exhibition @ Gallery 727
727 South Spring Street, downtown Los Angeles
www.TatteredFragments.info