Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Vanessa Berry's Magnificent Melbourne Memory Map



Can be found in Disposable Camera - The Melbourne Issue - available here. I always love VB's writing - something about it soothes me and reminds me that it's okay, in fact, good and interesting to be a human bean. She's also writing about Sydney on this blog: Mirror Sydney

Reading this post reminded me of this blog where the artist is mapping Canvey Island. These places that are near but apart from the city...

When the other day I was dismally thinking you had to come from a place, really know it, to map it, but of course this is not true - because you don't have to physically visit a place in order to have impressions, ideas, winged thoughts, associations, and these things are mappable. 

Come Wander with Me


From this episode of The Twilight Zone:

Friday, January 25, 2013

A Drift in the Country

Notes and thoughts on Writers on Walking: http://hackneypodcast.co.uk/2011/01/episode-20-writers-on-walking/#more-596



The body becomes fluid while walking, the man said. It's like slipping into a stream of memory. Whoever I'm paraphrasing said a writer must engage with the world - for him, the morning walk provided contact, observations, strangeness ...

But to walk around a small town and to walk around Hackney are two very different things. Is is even possible to Drift in the country? Perhaps I need to know the land better. Like, if I knew the names of the birds and clouds and flowers would I then have more to write about? There are not enough people to spy on here! Where can I eavesdrop? (Country strangeness is different to city strangeness). I don't know the land well enough. (The land is not a person to me yet - I don't know her creaks and lines).

I had an early summer evening walk. I mapped it and gave names to the landmarks and it was, I suppose, a way to make my world more mysterious, more story-ish. But now the nights are too hot. The plums have all fallen and I know who the moaning man is.

 




Nights in Hackney

Australia Day Map

Via Amanda:


Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Mapping (Me)lbourne


Mapping (Me)lbourne with Lisa D’Onofrio & Simmone Howell

Most people are familiar with the idea of maps as representations of geographical information, but mapmaking can tell our personal stories, assist us to understand the world around us and our place within it.
In Mapping (Me)lbourne you will make maps that are not just for directions but are works of art and inspired imagination. Meet a cartographer, undertake urban wanderings, create a map using writing, photography and collage.
Your maps will be published and distributed as alternative city guides.
Dates: Wednesdays from 17 April to 15 May
Time: 5pm to 7pm
Cost: Free

Bookings essentialbook online 

A Cultural Map of the Beasts, Legends & Arts of Kent


How fantastic is this: From here

Artist Nicole Mollet. Her site is full of wondrous things.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Janet Cardiff The Missing Voice


Janet Cardiff's The Missing Voice:



"Sometimes when you read things it seems like you're remembering them..."

http://www.artangel.org.uk/projects/1999/the_missing_voice_case_study_b/about_the_project/about_the_project

Photo source: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug03/jensen/Noir/dames.html

Notes on James Bridle podcast/Lost Steps

From here: http://www.loststeps.org/?p=1055

- Janet Cardiff's - The Missing Voice (Soundtrack to city)
- Charles Dickens night rambles, De Quincey
 - "If you go for a long walk in the city very strange things happen..."
- Wordsworth - The Dreamer
- Walking Stewart - A footnote in other people's stories, exists in the corners of other people's memoirs... walking the bridges and parks of London
- an internal map - a restricted orbit
- died half a mile from where he was born (Eliot - the end is where we start from)
- Newspapers/Map is foldable - "tectonic feeling" of the parts of the city coming together
- Open Street Map
- Newspaper Club
- Navigating the city by landmarks (Everyone's London - my own: Hungerford Bridge, Pollo, Charing Cross, Gordon's, the steps to the Thames...)
- Patrick Keillor's London ( re-photographing, now layered with own memories, city as palimpsest)

Notes on Aris Venetikidis

From this: http://www.ted.com/talks/aris_venetikidis_making_sense_of_maps.html

Cognitive maps - how we make places out own.

1. Brain makes linear/90 degree angles
2. Attach emotion and memory
3. Create symbols - - landmarks - markers of meaning - we abstract, repeat experiences & recognise them

We move along linear routes and our minds straighten roads.
What you draw does not resemble a street map - it's a visual construct, a schematic.
Rules of schematic design (clean up corridors, straighten things)
The language of wayfinding in our minds - simplification, geographical distortion, omissions