Chick2Go
GPS enabled East End Walking Tour
Tower Hamlets' Cemetry GPS Workshop
Dockers' Dilemma
A location-based game developed on the mscape platform with a flash interface.
Celine LJ's biomap tracking levels of arousal during a walk along the ExCel Dock. Just coincidence that it's purple but very apt ;-)
I've always been fascinated by Christian Nolde's BioMaps so I jumped at the chance to have a go at making my own map a couple of weeks ago when I attended the Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities Workshop held on the Sunborn Yacht Hotel, Docklands.
Hooked up to a sensor measuring the moisture given off by my index finger (in other words sweat), I wasn't quite sure what was being tracked and apparently that's just the point - it's impossible to really map emotion or get an exact reading so the best you can do is measure arousal...which might be caused by anger, exertion, excitement, happiness.....and half of the fun is trying to work out afterwards how you were actually feeling! I did the mapping along the dock and for the whole way I chatted to another particpant - Gordon...Comparing visual maps, it's clear that even on the same walk it's impossible to assume the reactions of participants. Our maps were entirely different. Maybe it wasn't the walk at all and just the conversation....
Something has been nagging at the back of my mind since I wrote about PerplexCity. A feeling of deja-vue. Now I've worked out why... When I was a kid I used to visit a friend who had a beautiful book called Masquerade, published in 1979. It was a children's book (but with a huge adult following), with fascinating illustrations containing clues to the location of a golden (18 carat) jeweled hare with a ruby eye created by Kit himself and buried "somewhere in Britain." The puzzle was solvd in 1981 but it sparked a huge number of further "armchair treasure hunts".
Searching for information about the book today I discovered, with pleasure, that PerplexCity was indeed inspired by Kit Williams' book. Bedtime reading then, for any budding Alternate Reality Game Designer!
The website describes Perplex City as "a story, a game, and a real-life treasure hunt." It's an Alternative Reality Game with clues and information hidden in newspapers, websites, magazines, sky-writing, music CDs, phone calls, SMS messages, live events, videos, puzzles and games all over the planet.
A valuable artefact, the Receda Cube, has been stolen from Perplex City and buried somewhere on Earth. The Perplex City Academy has launched a worldwide hunt for the Cube, using puzzle cards to gather interest and spread clues. They've also put up a very real reward of £100,000/$200,000.
I like the idea that the virtual city and the game have some connection to the real world, but we aren't told how. Similar to my idea for a game where players must discover the relationship between the real world and virtual maps to win. It's not clear however if Perplex City requires visitors to explore real locations in order to solve puzzles.
The new game will launch in March this year. If you want to play - you can sign up here!
The British Library's "A Life in Maps
" is a brilliant, free exhibition at the British Library. The book based on the exhibition is already sold out and there's still 6 weeks to go - a good indication of its' success.
There's also a virtual exhibit but I'd recommend braving the cold as you need to be there in person in order to appreciate the detail and artistry of the cartographers, to flood your field of view with maps several meters across and to promenade around Regents Park with a room-length park panorama. It's also fun just eaves-dropping on the conversations of fellow visitors, there was such a wide range of conversations...from Victorian men's fashion to the geographic impact of modern family values....
The exhibition illustrates the increasing importance of maps in a world where the speed and distance of our travels means we can no longer communicate routes by word of mouth or remember all the landmarks and turns of a trail.
It makes a point of revealing how maps should never be considered "factual", and always have agenda, some more obvious than others, and the close relationship between cartography and power. It also beautifully illustrates how maps have not only tracked the development of London but have also had an important hand in shaping it. For example, we see the many plans for the redevelopment of London after the great fire, and maps by Booth which finally confirmed the true poverty of London's poor and led to social reform.
Although it doesn't make the point very loudly, by contrasting the rooms of highly-crafted, one-offs, commissioned for government use with the emergence of shared online GIS tools such as google earth and microsoft virtual earth, and a tiny exhibit that it's easy to pass by, tracking a project (run by Juliet Sprake) in which students critique and go about remapping London according to their own criteria, we become aware of the recent revolution in map-making through its democratisation.
Until recently creating map-based location-based games was a real struggle. It was impossible to find high quality and publically available maps. Now OS are offering Get-a-map. The service allows you to search for and make up to 10 print or digital copies of maps anywhere in the UK by place name, postcode or National Grid reference subject to certain ts and cs. It also gives you the coordinates straight off - very useful.
They also have some great information in Mapzone including a simple intro to GIS and some information on their future plans to take advantage of location-based technologies and augmented reality.
When I visited OS at BETT 2007 they explained how geography is one of the least popular subjects in schools and desperately needs to improve its' profile and popularity. Call me single-minded but I see some great opportunities for location-based games here!
http://www.cartography.org.uk/Pages/Latest/Better.html
Go if you can - it's free! But if you missed it, a lot of what was covered has been added to the openstreetmap wiki.
Held in Glasgow this last Friday 17th November, The Map Designers onference, organised by the British Cartographic Society brought together cartographic designers, and designers from the world of media and GIS, to discuss the present and future of maps and map-making. I'd decided to go along on a bit of whim, not sure quite what to expect but imagining that if Drew Hemmett had chosen to speak it it, it was likely to be good.
Whether or not you were interested in cartography, the conference was excellent because the speakers were passionate about their subject. Each spoke clearly, every presentation was beautifully illustrated and held to what seemed to be the cartographers rule of thumb that information should aspire to engage wonder, discovery or humour and always be aesthetically pleasing.
There was a curious mix of deeply traditional artisans and cutting edge new media artist/researchers, practical and theoretical sessions but it was clear that there was respect for all approaches and recognition that we could all learn from each other.
The fact that map-making is a rich, multi-disciplinary field, with a foot in both the sciences and the arts makes it a process from which we have a lot to learn and of particular signficance in contemporary life where the boundaries between the two, most clearly illustrated by new media, are progressively blurring.
However the strongest message of the day was that; with GIS, GPS, the growing proliferation of maps in our daily lives, and the democratisation of map-making, keeping our sights on good map design is even more important now than ever before. I am sure we'll see these kinds of events happening more frequently in the future.
There's little to be found on the web about the conference so here's a summary of the programme and links to the presenter information where availabe. I'll post further resources and thoughts that came out of the conference over the coming week.
Morning presentations
Charlie Beattie, Honorary Fellow of the BCS, Formerly at Ordance Survey- Welcome
Dr Mike Wood, Senior lecturere in Mapping Science, Aberdeen University - Introduction
Alan Collinson , Geo-Innovations, BCS Design Group Co-Convener- The Principles of Map Design
David Barbour, Stirling Surveys - Maps People Can Read - designing for recreation and orienteering
Mary Spence, MBE, Global Mapping, BCS President - The Qualities of Better Mapping
Susie Jones, Royal School of Military Survey, BCS Design Group Co-Convener- GIS and Cartography
Alan Collinson - From GIS to Map Art
Hannah Clinch - Green Mapping
Chris Freemantle - GreenHouse Britain chris@freemantle.org
Matthew Chalmers - Contextualising tourist maps
Afternoon sessions
Wendy Price, Wendy Price Cartographic Services - Mapping as an Art, Tourist Maps, Inviting and Inforamtive, maps@wendymap.co.uk
Dr Max Baber, Professor of Geography, Samford University, Alabama, USA - The Significance of Map Designfor Effective Analysis and Decision-Making in Public and Private Enterprises
Drew Hemment, Director, Future Everything - Collaborative Mapping and Locative Media
The scale isn't everything we'd have hoped for but it IS copyright free.
I felt SOOOoooo virtuous picking out The Power of Maps by Denis Wood as my next bedtime book. For a start - no pictures (unlike most of the lovely map books out there), secondly I had found it whilst reading the recommended biblography for the only university module that exists (as far as I know), on location-based mobile media. Well if THEY say so..
I've never read such a detailed verbal count of a visual communication medium. Denis wood takes a long, leisurely chapter to fully demonstrate that maps are not objective, another to argue that categorising them would be like trying to categorise the world. In my opinion, the detail is unneccesary unless you're thinking of becoming a devout cartographer or making lots of cartographer friends.
I'm being a bit unfair because despite its' wordiness, each chapter leaves me enlightened.
if nothing else.....it's going to come in handy on 7th!
Plan to provide a summary of each chapter here, for those who don't fancy plowing through it themselves!
A seminar for cartographers in Glasgow covering new ways to look at Maps. A sign of the times.
http://ccablog.blogspot.com/2006/09/map-designers-conference.html