Culture Making items tagged maps

Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., by Nam June Paik

2009-01-07T15:43:49Z

Nate: “I like how the Mississippi River seems to glow extra-brightly, a nod perhaps to a superhighway of a different era.”

"Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S.," by Nam June Paik, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, photo by angela n (Flickr), 8 October 2007 :: via Intelligent Travel

Tundra quilt, by Leah Evans

2009-01-07T15:43:49Z

Nate: “Part of a lovely series of map-based quilts of estuaries, geological structures, and agricultural installations. I love the way it adds softness and dimensionality to the flattened landscape. Reminds me, too, of the Gerard Manley Hopkins' pied-beautiful description of "landscape plotted and pieced / fold, fallow, and plough"”

Tundra quilt, 20 by 23 inches, by Leah Evans Textiles :: via Design Boom

Arrivals and departures

2009-01-07T15:43:49Z

Andy: “Every commercial airline flight in the world, over a twenty-four hour period—a visual reminder of the scale and scope of culture, and the unprecedented ways that air travel connects us to one another. Also a reminder that prosperity and connectivity go together, and their distribution is uneven, to say the least.”

from "airtraffic," by Karl Rege et al., The Zurich School for Applied Sciences:: via Autopia

They vote by night

2009-01-07T15:43:49Z

Nate: “Among all the fascinating maps that've been made of the US voting patterns for the 2008 presidential election, I couldn't find the one I really wanted to see: a map showing both voter percentages and population density on an undistorted projection. With fancy databases it wouldn't be hard to do, but I did come up with a way to Photoshop an approximation, combining the red-blue-purple county-percentage map from the University of Michigan with the famous satellite image of nighttime illumination. It's not a total match for population—gas flares get counted as voters, for instance—but it comes closer than anything I'd found.”

Composite image by Nate Barksdale from NOAA and UM sources linked below, 9 November 2008

Geography of longing

2009-01-07T15:43:49Z

Nate: “Here's an alternative to the state-by-state maps we're being bombarded with in these latter electoral days: "Of the latest fifty craigslist missed connections posts per state, as beginning on midnight of the most recent Sunday, not including spam, responses or miscategorized posts."”

"Missed Connections: Where, Exactly," by very small array, 14 July, 2008.

An enterprise of world-building

2009-01-07T15:43:49Z

Nate: “OK, so it's not exactly what Peter Berger had in mind when he said "All human society is an enterprise of world-building," but could I resist the charms of this video of the inside of a cardboard-globe factory? I could not. (A video about the manufacture of the clay globe that is the Culture Making logo would, presumably, be a bit simpler.)”

from "Globes," a segment on the Discovery Channel's How It's Made :: via kottke.org

The trouble with online maps

2009-01-07T15:43:49Z

Nate: “I think the Cartographic Society's argument only carries so far—first, because any map-making is by its nature an act of editing, simplification, stylization, and erasure; and second, because as the technology improves, we'll start to see more ways of accessing the info included on the old maps as well as the new.”

a NYTimes.com Ideas Blog post, 12 September 2008

The president of the British Cartographic Society says Internet mapping (Google Maps etc.) is wiping away the richness of Britain’s geography and history. She says “corporate cartographers” are leaving off landmarks like churches, ancient woodlands and stately homes. And history out of sight is history out of memory. [BBC]

Not quite the Northern Lights

2009-01-07T15:43:49Z

Nate: “The Google Street View car in Alaska seems to have had its camera rained on—but it does make for a nice abstract picture of a rather ordinary retail boulevard in Anchorage (just up the street from an aging strip-mall called the Valhalla Center).”

Northern Lights Blvd, Anchorage, Alaska, Google Street View

Skyscrapers not to scale

2009-01-07T15:43:49Z

Nate: “Of course in this rendering, Asia -- where the real population-concentration action's happening -- is just a bunch of spikes on the horizon.”

a post by Alexander Ross, The Long Now Blog, 13 July 2008

I recently came across these amazing data driven globes from Yale’s G-Econ group. The one above represents population density, but their tool allows for all kinds of data to drive the topology from average rainfall to distance from coastlines.

All the countries that’re fit to print

2009-01-07T15:43:49Z

Nate: “With the exception of Mongolia, contries near the interior of ther respective continents seem to get a lot less coverage: Paraguay, Hungary, Congo and Niger.”

"The World as Reported by the New York Times", very small array, 21 July 2008 :: via kottke.org

Before and after, around the world

2009-01-07T15:43:49Z

The United Nations Environment Program has just launched this Google map-enabled site with before/after satellite images showing environmental change over the past few decades: cities grow, forests are converted to farmland, glaciers shrink. We’re making something of the world, both for better and for worse.