The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

The Gershman Y Quilt #2
|| 3/9/2010 || 3:31 pm || 4 Comments Rendered || ||

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The Gershman Y Quilt #2 by Nikolas Schiller

Using a portion of the Gershman Y Quilt, I rendered this derivative map.

The forthcoming series of four maps will be based on one portion of this map.

View the Google Map of Philadelphia.

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The Gershman Y Quilt
|| 3/8/2010 || 3:27 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

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The Gershman Y Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

The first map in this series uses the resampled aerial photography that was republished in 2006 laid out in a Hexagon Quilt Projection. Aside from the Gershman Y, this map contains the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and the Suzanne Roberts Theater.

The subsequent maps in this series will all be derived from this map.

View the Google Map of Philadelphia.

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The Eye of Philadelphia
|| 3/7/2010 || 3:20 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

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The Eye of Philadelphia by Nikolas Schiller

I’ve started working on a series for next month’s exhibition in Philadelphia. I’m not sure what final scope of the project will end up being, but I’m enjoying the act of making new maps again.

The first in this series is based off of the similarly pattered “eye” series that I used in locations like Kansas City, Missouri and Erie, Pennsylvania. The imagery used in this project is based off of two type of aerial photography from the USGS. This map employs the .75m per pixel spatial resolution that was published in 2004. You can read the metadata here.

While there is newer 2006 imagery at .15m per pixel, there has not been subsequent imagery added to the USGS servers since I made my first generation maps of this city. I found and requested newer imagery from the city of Philadelphia, but was met with no answer upon two e-mails. Therefore I had to follow-up with the older imagery that is slightly out-dated, but just as useful for what I am working on.

I chose .75m resolution imagery for the oblique nature of the imagery. This allows the viewer to see the sides of buildings they would otherwise not see if the photograph was taken directly above; which is the case with most orthorectified imagery. I’m please with the results and look forward to printing it out.

View the Google Map of Philadelphia.

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The Modern Geographer is featured in Pro-Prosições vol.20 no.3 Campinas Sept./Dec. 2009
|| 2/25/2010 || 2:18 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

On April 1st, 2009 I received an e-mail the author Jorn Seemann, a graduate student at Lousiana State University, requesting to use my piece “The Modern Geographer” in an upcoming peer-reviewed article for the 10-year-anniversary issue of the Brazilian journal Pre-Posicoes (Universidade Estadual de Campinas, UNICAMP). I was expecting to have to send him a larger version of the work, but to my chagrin the on-line version was able to work for publication.

O quadro O geógrafo não é apenas um objeto perfeito para uma leitura geográfica de imagens, mas também uma fonte quase inesgotável de inspiração para discutir o passado, o presente e o futuro da geografia. A composição de cores, objetos e sombras abre espaço para interpretações múltiplas. Provavelmente nenhuma delas corresponderia ao que Vermeer tinha pensado quando pintava o quadro. O significado original pode perder-se no decorrer do tempo, mas isso não invalida as nossas ponderações. De forma semelhante às iniciativas dos geógrafos de desconstruir os mapas, as obras de arte também podem ser re-significadas como “meios de encontrar [finding] e depois criar [founding] novos projetos, efetivamente re-formando o que já existe.” (Corner, 1999, p. 224). Um exemplo do presente é o Geógrafo moderno, de Nikolas Schiller (Figura 8), que mostra clones do geógrafo cercando uma mulher cujo corpo é uma estampa de fotos aéreas de Washington, DC.

I will have an English translation on-line shortly…..

Harborside Quilt #3
|| 2/19/2010 || 1:45 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

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Harborside Quilt #3 by Nikolas Schiller

This final edition is derived from sampled imagery from the previous two renderings. I chose the layout for this version based on the beautiful geometric design that is created at the center of the map. These two recursive samplings have created an almost crystalline map of the area.

View the Google Map of Oakland Habour.

Here’s another YouTube video that shows Harborside Health Center on KTVU:

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Harborside Quilt #2
|| 2/18/2010 || 1:45 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

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Harborside Quilt #2 by Nikolas Schiller

This version of the map is derived from sampled imagery from the previous map to create this Octagon Quilt Projection map of Oakland. The recursive sampling employed in this map creates a more geometric geography.

View the Google Map of Oakland Habour.

Here’s another YouTube video that shows Harborside Health Center on CNN:

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Harborside Quilt
|| 2/17/2010 || 1:45 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

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Harborside Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

This week I am traveling to the West Coast to do research on the medical cannabis industry. One of the places I hope to tour is Harborside Health Center, which is considered the best dispensary in the United States.

I was curious to find out where the facility was located in Oakland and upon downloading the imagery, I realized that it’s location has all the ingredients for an interesting map: a highway, a harbor, and the aerial photography is crisp and unpixilated.

View the Google Map of Oakland Habour. This map uses the same imagery that Google is currently using.

Here’s a YouTube video that shows Harborside Health Center on CNN:

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51 Random Banners Now Greet Visitors
|| 12/26/2009 || 1:21 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

Banner Graphic Featuring A Detail from The Vicissitude of the Seasons Explained

New banner graphic featuring my name written in Hebrew over
“The Vicissitude of the Seasons Explained” from Bowles 1780 Map of the World

On Christmas night I got a random Facebook message from a Peruvian friend of mine who recently moved to Israel. After we were done chatting, I asked the same request I’ve asked a few other times to friends in distant lands, “Can you translate my name into ____Hebrew____?” A few moments later I was sent the basis for these six new banners. Now my name is now randomly displayed in English, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Chinese, and Russian.

Below are the rest of the new banner graphics hyperlinked to their original blog entries:

Swampoodle Quilt #2

Banner Graphic Featuring Swampoodle Quilt No.2

Racine Quilt #2

Banner Graphic Featuring Racine Quilt No. 2

West Sahara Lake Circles Quilt

Vassar Quilt Refraction
$Banner Graphic Featuring Vassar Quilt Refraction$

University of Southern California Quilt

Related Entries:

Washington Monument Quilt #2
|| 10/22/2009 || 5:22 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

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Washington Monument Quilt #2 by Nikolas Schiller

When the 2005 USGS aerial photography was released to the public in the spring of 2007 there were a few places that were censored through pixilation. On this blog I documented how the White House was censored. I documented how the U.S. Capitol was censored. And I even experimented with a QR-Code to show that the Washington Monument was censored. After doing some exploration within the newly obtained 2008 Washington, DC orthophotography, I discovered that the White House and the U.S. Capitol are STILL censored.

However, now that the construction of the new visitors center at the Washington Monument has been completed, which is the reason, I am told, why the Washington Monument was originally censored in the 2005 imagery, the imagery of the monument is now available without pixilation. Moreover, its the exact same imagery that is being used on Google Maps. While I expect to showcase the censorship of the White House & U.S. Capitol in some future entries, I decided to make make my first map of this new dataset of the Washington Monument because I wasn’t able to make it using the last batch of imagery.

To construct this map, I first rendered a full-size Hexagon Quilt Projection map using the original imagery, then sampled a portion of the resulting map, and used the sampled portion to create this derivative map. I chose to sample the portion in the first map because of two underlying aspects of the map. First, I really liked the way the shadows of the Washington Monument combined together. Secondly, I liked the way the apex of the Washington Monument was combined (see detail below) to create a pyramid. Over the years I have enjoyed playing with the notion of aerial & architectural chiaroscuro, as in, using shadows generated by buildings within the original aerial photography to create a new, larger shadow. This map embodies this ongoing design element perfectly.

View the Google Map of the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

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National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Quilt [COMMISSIONED MAP]
|| 10/16/2009 || 3:11 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

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National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

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

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

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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: