The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

Remedia Amoris / The Cure For Love by Ovid
|| 4/3/2008 || 1:28 pm || Comments Off on Remedia Amoris / The Cure For Love by Ovid || ||

Remedia Amoris (Love’s Remedy or The Cure for Love) is a 814 line poem in Latin by the Roman poet Ovid written around 5 BC. The aim of the poem is to teach young men how they can avoid idealizing the women they love and to give assistance if love brings despair and misfortune.

I discovered this poem when I was researching antique stained glass sundials and I came to the initial conclusion that Ovid’s prose is visually interpreted on Blaeu’s world map from the mid-1600s (detail above). Late last night I found both the latin and translated version of the poem, so I decided to do something I wish there was more of on the internet: a side by side layout which shows the original Latin on the left and the translated English on the right.

To add a unique visual element to the poem, I made the line number (which came from the Latin text) the color of the English translation. This involved quite a bit of manual coding, but I think it makes the latin / english comparison easier and slightly more visually engaging. By using red & white type face and numerical indention, the layout looks like a creve coeur or broken heart when scrolling. I bolded one section for emphasis related it’s discovery [hint: around line #185].

There are a few translation discrepancies that I’ve found thus far and there are many others which come across slightly convoluted and require more inquiry, but overall the poem is quite interesting. It includes topics like tree grafting (Genetic Engineering Version 1.0), having multiple lovers, travelling, and what to do and not to do when getting over a relationship. It’s interesting how much things have changed in the last 2,000 years, and as cliche as it may sound, how much our emotions have stayed the same. We all face the same relationship troubles and like Ovid, there will always be people telling you how to deal with them.

If you’ve got about 45 minutes to spare, here is Ovid’s Remedia Amoris / The Cure For Love:
(You might need to widen your browser window to view the on-line polyglot correctly — it was originally design for a previous layout on this website. Drag the lower right hand corner to make the screen wider. Some browsers you can adjust the font size to achieve a similar result.)

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Antique Stained Glass Sundials
|| 3/27/2008 || 3:27 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

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ordered last week: New Blaeu
|| 3/10/2008 || 9:25 pm || Comments Off on ordered last week: New Blaeu || ||

Originally created last summer as “NOVA ET ACCVRATISSIMA TOTIVS TERRARVM ORBIS TABVLA [2007 Remix],” when this map was published in the December 14th issue of the Christian Science Monitor, the editors truncated the name and simply called it “New Blaeu.”

Last week I decided to update the map slightly by trimming the edges and doing some color correction. It’s being printed at 20″x16″ and preserved behind glass in in an ornate gold frame. I am also planning on framing some of the other antique maps I purchased recently to compliment this map. I think they’ll look really cool all hung together; the real old with the fake new.

View the other detail:

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The art of Map Fest by Teresa Mendez – The Christian Science Monitor
|| 12/14/2007 || 12:42 pm || Comments Off on The art of Map Fest by Teresa Mendez – The Christian Science Monitor || ||

featured: NOVA ET ACCVRATISSIMA TOTIVS TERRARVM ORBIS TABVLA [2007 Remix]

Exactly 9 months to the day after David Montgomery’s article in the Washington Post was published, Teresa Mendez writes a great piece about maps and she includes section about me:

__snippet__[with links added]

They are artists such as Ms. Contro and the 11 others featured in “The Legend Altered: Maps as Method and Medium,” the Carrie Secrist Gallery exhibition. And they are artists such as Nikolas Schiller.

Except Mr. Schiller hesitates when asked to define what he does. Is the young D.C. resident, profiled earlier this year on the cover of The Washington Post Style section, an artist? Is he a mapmaker?

“I make pretty maps or artistic maps,” he says, searching for the right description, “or boutique maps.” He finally settles on “conceptual cartographer.”

Schiller takes US Geological Survey aerial photographs and plays with them.

“The Quilt Projection” which his website (www.nikolasschiller.com) calls “A Journey Through Geometric Geography” is his most prolific series. It consists of 350 images that look less like maps and more like something you might see peering through a kaleidoscope.

There are the “quilted” neighborhoods of Mount Vernon in Baltimore, Md., and Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan. There is George Washington University in D.C., which Schiller attended for a time, and the University of Texas at Austin. Look close enough and you can identify familiar landmarks: streets, parks, a monument. But step back and the tessellation makes for a wonderfully abstract mosaic.

Schiller’s work is a way to see the world anew, to be an explorer when nearly every corner of the earth has previously been combed.

“With the world already charted and mapped,” he says, “geospatial art allows you to discover it all over again.”

Schiller is something of a curator of maps. He can point one to websites of antique maps, industry maps, and calendars detailing map exhibits around the world. The Internet, it would seem, abounds with cartograms. Twice, he mentions the Waldseemueller Map.

Also included on the Christian Science Monitor’s website is a 90 second audio report filed by the author. She talks about my Lenz Projection and how it was developed.

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An Updated Astrological Calendar from 1544 – Eastern Hemisphere
|| 8/10/2007 || 10:31 pm || Comments Off on An Updated Astrological Calendar from 1544 – Eastern Hemisphere || ||

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

Continue reading:

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

NOVA ET ACCVRATISSIMA TOTIVS TERRARVM ORBIS TABVLA - 2007 Remix by Nikolas Schiller

I updated the Library of Congress‘ version of Joan Blaeu‘s “A New and Accurate Map of the Entire World” (1662?) with NASA’s Blue Marble satellite images. Unlike the previous version, I decided to use a different satellite image for the eastern hemisphere so that the tip of Brazil does not overlap.

View the Interactive & Original version:

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An Updated Astrological Calendar from 1544 – Western Hemisphere
|| 7/8/2007 || 12:40 pm || Comments Off on An Updated Astrological Calendar from 1544 – Western Hemisphere || ||

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

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

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

View the Interactive & Original version:

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A New Map of the Terraqueous Globe : according to the the Ancient discoveries and most general Divisions of Geospatial Art
|| 5/29/2007 || 1:52 pm || Comments Off on A New Map of the Terraqueous Globe : according to the the Ancient discoveries and most general Divisions of Geospatial Art || ||

A New Map of the Terraqueous Globe : according to the the Ancient discoveries and most general Divisions of Geospatial Art by Nikolas Schiller

Worked on this “New Map” nearly all Memorial Day… took 12 hours to complete!
It’s a 269 year enrichment, errr, a cartographic memorial? Continue reading:

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Quadrant Map of DC – Translated into Latin – “Novus Columbus Quadrans”
|| 5/14/2007 || 9:20 am || Comments Off on Quadrant Map of DC – Translated into Latin – “Novus Columbus Quadrans” || ||

Legend:
+ New Columbia – Novus Columbus
+ North West – Septentrio Occidens
+ North East – Septentrio Oriens
+ South West – Merides Occidens
+ South East – Merides Oriens
+ Anno Domino MMVII – Year of Our Lord 2007
+ Signature written in Arabic

This is my first draft of this map. I’ll probably make another with a different color scheme. I feel that there is a lot to be added to this map, but not sure where to start. It’s my first time using Latin as a main focus of a map. I got the idea after looking through the old maps yesterday that it would be funny to label the quadrants of DC in Latin (and future maps with historic samplings). Being that some feel Washington is the modern day Rome, I felt this lexical motif works well. It’s partly educational, partly humorous, and it crosses a few lingusitic barriers that I’ve never approached. Moreover, I am well aware that the water in the area of DC I live in has lead in the water, just like the Romans!

The choice of New Columbia as the title is a reference to the name that DC residents chose to-be for the state of the District of Columbia. I’ve honestly never liked the name “New Columbia” for the state’s name, it’s too old. There is nothing New about naming another state New. Plus, as for abbreviations, NC is already used by North Carolina! So after DC becomes a state, would it be called New Columbia in name but still go by DC or Washington? Or all three?

Society is Enriched by Labor :: Socio Ditata Labore
|| 5/12/2007 || 4:22 pm || Comments Off on Society is Enriched by Labor :: Socio Ditata Labore || ||

“Antique Home”

Today I finally got around to looking through the David Ramsey Historical Map Collection. Like Archive.org, there was a lot to discover…

The above image is an assembled detail of a beautiful engraving on the title page of Atlas Nouveau, which was published in 1742 in Amsterdam (original cover after the flap). The detail contains the Latin phrase, “Socio ditata labore” and shows a scene of exploration. There is a slain dragon on the right side and on the left are soldiers bringing a woman to the new land. I couldn’t pass up this engraving! I do need a Latin translation, anyone know it? (A friend of mine was able to get a translation for me – below)

Behind the engraving is a tessellated detail from Home Quilt #5, which features the row house I’ve been living in for the last 3 years. The house was built around 1889, a 147 years after the Atlas was published. The source aerial photograph was taken in March of 2005, published in February of 2007, and revisted on March 29th, 2007, and finally today, a 265 year enrichment.

I also made a pop-art style tile that features the engraving in different colors.

From an e-mail:
Here is the report from my classicist friend in LA:

as for the latin, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as it stands – ‘socius’ is a friend, companion, (father in law in some contexts) – so it could be some sort of dedication, as in: ‘for my father in law, with enriched labor” – which, as I say, makes no sense. if, however, ‘societas’ has been mistaken for ‘socio,’ then it can read, as you say, ‘society is enriched by labor.’

Title Page & Notes:

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Nikolas Schiller is a second-class American citizen living in America's last colony, Washington, DC. This blog is my on-line repository of what I have created or found on-line since May of 2004. If you have any questions or comments, please contact: