tracerouting with gps

This video was done over 5 years and 8000km by a cyclist who had a GPS affixed to his person at all times.

Originally found here.

Pretty neat.

I have some ideas about making maps based on my movements throughout the city.

Initially they were about tracing my meanderings onto an already drawn map, but that quickly shifted to something like this where the city, or at least my city, emerges from a blank canvas. The second idea seems much more suited to encouraging discussion on what a city really is.

Can you consider it a part of your city if you've never seen it? Maps give the impression of knowledge...how is that knowledge compromised by walking a street again and again? Never having actually been somewhere? Only having driven a road, never walked? ...And so on.

My mapping project also leads to all sorts of fun considerations around how to map my movement. Just a foot map? If it includes cycling or public transit how are those recognized? Do I try to draw the map to account for speed? For time travelled? Distance? For experience and depth of engagement with a route or destination?

I think the solution to all that might be to simply start a journal, or just have a sheet of paper on my room wall where I make notes whenever I get home. Recording my movements, modes of transport, experiences had or shared...whether I was walking alone or with others is a good stat too.

Or I could cease being Ludditic and get a GPS machine of my own...along with a notebook for all the mushy non-scientific stuff.

Anyway, the point is collecting the data.

And the video also made me realize why facebook, google, etc are all excited about data. Data is the hard part. Once you have it, there are all sorts of things you can do with it, but you have to collect it first. As I consider this project the data collection is the part that strikes me as daunting...the aftermath of expressing it in whatever form or forms, that's just exciting. There are so many ways to go about it and if I mess it up or do something I don't like the data will still be there.

No one will possess more data on me than me!!! I'll commercialize it and make so much money.

Clowning tomorrow. Also a full day at work. Good times I hope.

map cuts!

Holy smokes! So many people are into maps. It's great!

Daydream sent me this link from boingboing.

This Karen O'Leary lady has done so many of these things I don't know where to begin.

Here's a Vancouver piece from her Etsy page (Etsy of course being an online fashion/art/handmade stuff marketplace that comes highly recommended by Ms Fascinator, amongst others).

On this one it looks like she has used an actual map and simply cut out all the bits that aren't roads, really showing how it's the roads that tie the city together. Cut the other way and remove the roads and all you have is a bunch of squares floating to the ground.

But if it's the roads that are holding the city together shouldn't we be making more efforts to ensure roads are given over to people, not cars? Of course we should. It seems dumb to exclude the actors that bring life to the city from the physical space wherein the city's component parts are secured to one another. I'm not saying ban cars, just think about it for a moment and you'll catch my drift.

According to her description this map of Paris is made with heavier stock, watercolour paper. I assume she traced everything on then went about cutting it in the same way.

And again, something similar with New York. This is one from a set covering the whole city and is apparently done on lighter paper.

There are a whole whack more of these on her Flickr.

NYC again.

Keen, really just keen.

She also does some in pen and paper.

Great. And then she can put them onto cards, magnets, etc.

I'm super glad this was sent to me. These pieces are great and show me some possibilities. I've been chopping up a few things lately (I need a better knife and chopping surface) but the idea to remove most things and leave only roads in situ never crossed my mind.

I skipped right past that step and have been thinking about manipulating roads. Cutting them from their surrounds but instead of leaving them, changing their configuration, hopefully so that the roads themselves are still recognizable while their form has gone haywire. I suppose that might mean they will become unrecognizable, but I guess that can be part of the fun too. Make an interesting and aesthetically pleasing image, using a map as material, and only later upon closer inspection will people realize that they're looking at something familiar.

Heh. I should DO that, then I won't need to wonder such things. I wonder if that idea would work better with a a provincial road map or a city street? Oh! Or if I used one of those map books for a city that are done with a large scale. Go from page to page, following a road, then mounting it somehow. Anyway...thoughts from my brain.

I'm reading a few of the comments people are posting below the boingboing article, asking whether the pieces are diminished if they were laser instead of hand cut. I don't have an answer to that, but I'll admit there were moments when I was drawing this map

that I was wondering if it wouldn't be better to just learn AutoCAD instead. Probably not. It's about the process after all and it's not like I'm interested in efficiency! Although now that I have my map in digital form I'll likely manipulate it eventually.

I suppose if I keep going with evenly measured maps then a computer construction might make more sense, but it's not like I could make this with a computer.

Why would I want to? As this marker on construction paper monstrosity and Ms O'Leary's efforts at hatching a city show, there is so much fun to be had with variety in making and manipulating maps. So, computers? Whatever!

That's enough from me, but in closing I'll mention that I recently made a connection between why I like maps and how I interact with the world more generally, but I'm not telling you yet. Hint: it's about the big picture!

I don't do much these days

Not particularly inspired by anything. Except improv, but there's sadly not enough of that in a week.

Olympics are on.

Meh and Angry Meh would be my main emotional descriptors of late.

Got out of the house today, saw some kids throwing snowballs and that was pretty great. Two kids were on top of the slide and had a toboggan, or maybe just apiece of plastic, as defence. All the other kids were throwing snowballs at them. Everyone seemed pleased.

Then I found a chocolate museum. Then I bought groceries. Then I found a Winnipeg atlas at the Salvation Army store that is a consistent source for random maps and atlases.

Oh, and I also got a membership at the Trinity Community Centre. $40 for 3 months, what have I been waiting for? Holy smokes. And they have a pool!

I did this thing.

Inspiration from Toulouse, Sauveterre-du-Rouergue, Istanbul, some book with pictures of an Italian town (upstairs, too lazy to look) and other stuff.

Sorry about the glare. You're smart. You'll figure it out.

Skip-Skip-Skip to my letterpress and poetry

So remember back when I made this?

Good times, right? Well, check this out.

Imagine all the pebbles and battle beasts I could store in those jobbies. Too many!

The photo is courtesy of The Sweetie Pie Press, and is taken in the workshops of the Trip Print Press. Self described "Practitioners of the black art, letterpress."

Scary!

And fantastic.

Mostly fantastic, because those are not just wondrous wall decorations, no sir. Solely a great place to store toys? NAY! (Although they could do that.) We are of course looking at a lovely set of type trays.

You know how you scroll through your word processor options and can make words look however you want? Well, in real world publishing each of those choices would mean an entirely different tray with a pile of each letter in a particular, coherent style (a font if you will) so you can say whatever it is you want to say and make it look nice too. And of course there are different sizes, so there's that to consider as well.

I may be mis-placing certain terms in the description but I'm hopeful the people that are wiser about these things will lodge their corrections in the comments section.

It's all pretty straightforward, but I'm still excited because this reminds me of the time I spent standing and staring at all the toys in the Black Creek Pioneer Village printing office prior to Christmas, fantasizing. And I'm pleased that such things still exist as viable entities in the real world. There's no reason they shouldn't but like a lot of stuff, until a functioning letterpress is shoved in my face, I don't think about it.

It all makes me want to get married, just for the invitations, or successful enough that I need business cards.

Hell, I'm just really jealous of their drafting table and gigantic rules. Everything is relative of course, and I'm calling them gigantic because I've just spent the last 30 minutes scratching and re-scratching the same, almost 3 mm twinned lines into my next drawing. 3 mm is too small, the margin for error on length and angles too big.

Mercy. I need a drafting table, or a bigger pieces of paper and a regular table would work too.

One day I might put words to paper, rather than just screen, but in the meantime here we are. So why not tack on a poem a poem to the post? It's my blog, so sure!

Here's one that's part of my spit it out while the spitting's good and call it poetry because you're still not totally sure what poetry is or what constitutes good poetry so you may as well show the world what you wrote and maybe the world will tell you it's all right or maybe the world will tell you it's complete crap but it'll be good either way because then you'll know someone read it poetry project.

This particular poem was belched upon the paper in a furious scramble of penmanship, followed by minimal editing. Hopefully said belching is something more than white noise.

-----

Backpack full of groceries

My arms are buzzing

below, above

everything there is to think of

a mash of tortured

black & white

in a world that's the grey clarity

of a nuclear powered mud storm

Malleable is an intention

but to

fight & struggle

against the brain

seems,

feels,

is

wrong & tiring

So much effort except when

walking & walking

and all the problems are there

but fine,

far off at the

destination & nothing

until it's reached.

Maps and architecture and cities and me and an artist named Alice

I'm never sure how I get onto things, but at some point I found myself on this blog, which led me to one Alice Aycock's website. I thought some of her stuff looked really neat, and not just because she is using a grey background on her page and an awesome orangey-yellow colour for her main title. I'm also excited because her work ties in, however tangentially, with some of my interests in art, urban form, architecture, etc. that I've been reading and thinking about of late. (All the pictures I show below are from her website, where you can find more of her work and lots more information.)

Her stuff is farther down but first...

I recently finished this:

That is a drawing of a city. It's pencil on paper and as you can see my efforts at going over the lines were more aggressive in some parts than in others. I think I might do a series of these, maybe start inking them.

In my map I've largely blocked in spaces in terms of grass, concrete or water. There is also just a bit of detail (roof lines and some differentiation for docks) in some of the 'built' blocks. I've added some colour below so you can see what I'm talking about

For the most part, the areas without colour are human structures of one form or another.

This blocking is similar to how a Toronto mapmaker dealt with the problem of describing a city in 2-D from above. Leaving most blocks as blocks and restricting built detail to the ghosting of large institutional footprints. No little lines for house roofs in this one.

But then I came across this image on Aycock's site. What would I do for a building with a hat on?

Low Building With Dirt Roof (For Mary), 1973

I never considered how green roofs or any rooftop park would play in a map until I saw this picture. The traditional top-down view for maps works because things are simplified, often with the notion of single land use. But when there's a significant built park in a city, even if it's high in the air, it needs to be acknowledged. People following a 2-D map and finding a building where they expected green space would be surprised, so there needs to be differentiation of some type, whether it is colour, shape, labeling or something else.

And if I decided to take on a utopian mapping project (I quake even at the thought) I would need to consider the mixed land use that might be taking place on a very fine scale. Methinks I need to start drawing on bigger sheets of paper. More to follow on this theme, no doubt.

"The City of Walls", Isometric, 1978
The Garden of Scripts (Villandry), 1986

Maze, 1972

Walled Trench/Earth Platform/Center Pit, 1975

A Simple Network of Underground Wells and Tunnels, 1975

Project for a Circular Building with Narrow Ledges for Walking, 1976

I like these pieces because they are able to experiment with ideas of structure and architecture, without being concerned with eventual tenants. It's like she gets to play more freely with the signs and signifiers (pardon my weakness in semiotics) of architecture because she's building in farmers' fields. I'm sure she still takes human form into account, but unlike a 'proper' architect she has fewer restrictions. An architect must consider daily human use and if they don't think about how people will live in their built spaces, said spaces stand a good chance of failing.

Looking through the site, I'm definitely a bigger fan of her earlier work. She seems to focus more on architecture and structure than in her later stuff. Starting in the 80s her work begins to take on a more sculptural and decorative air. By decorative I mean there is less concern with function (as vague as it might be) and more with aesthetics. Her sculptures are still fantastic and full of use, it's just that the architecture that remains as a theme in some pieces is often more abstract and less obvious.

I'm always wary of venturing opinions on realms foreign to me (at least in writing, when speaking I venture insupportable opinions on things I know nothing about all the time). I worry I lack the vocabulary to express my notions accurately. Oh well. No offence intended anyone!

Functional and Fantasy Stair and Cyclone Fragment, 1996

And I'm not saying her sculpture is bad. Just that I like the themes she's exploring in her earlier work more.

If someone knows what I'm talking about, feel free to tell me.

Also, everyone should look at the artist's site. There are so many cool things there, even a machine that makes the world! In the meantime, play on this...

The Game of Flyers, 1980

Note at the bottom (that is here): I did an experiment and didn't promote the previous post. The results of the experiment tells me no one has looked at it. If you're interested, it's there and it's about food!

things a doin' where I do most of my stewin'

I hope you weren't getting used to somewhat relevant, thought-out blog posts.

Because my computer's acting silly again I'm trying to rid it of anything unnecessary so when I reformat there will be less to put back. With this in mind, here are some random photos with various words attached.

Let's start in my room.

As all of you must know by now, my bed is CONSTANTLY full of sexy babes.

This is just Toon and niXon snuggling. Sometimes they even let me in on the fun!

And by fun I of course mean moments of absolute terror.

What a dream puff!

With that in mind, sometimes I'm better off spending time alone, with a candle. Candles are great. This one was a gift I received at work. I gave a tour to the class and they appreciated it so much they candled me. Or they give one every year and I just won the candle lottery, either way, candle!

But candles can be dangerous. If you have one lit and say the wrong thing your room can EXPLODE! In my case the explosion resulted in most of my possessions being destroyed and a world of white descending on my being.

If this misfortune makes you sad dear reader, fear not! As luck would have it a small creature of indeterminate origins arrived to lead me on a magical journey.

He led me down a magical ladder.

Then along a magical tunnel.

So much magic going on.

And then POOF! I was in my room...woah.

POOF!

Amazing. In homage to the journey, the poofs, the magic and the world more generally, I made a nice little display dealy. It was originally going to be for Battle Beasts, but I figured the pebbles looked nice instead.

I'm actually in the midst of a few new things for my room. Beyond the floor there's a bit of a reorganization and decorating spree going on. Even considering a real bed, but that might have to wait for financial stars to align. Anyone in the mood to buy or donate a bed to my cause, I'm looking for comfort and a complete lack of bed bugs.

Also, everyone should watch this space (and others) for a possible room warming party in the relatively near future.

what's the deal with publishing poetry?

I know I tend to get ahead of myself sometimes, cart before horse and all that jazz.

This is definitely one of those times.

BUT.

What are the rules around publishing poetry and prose on a blog? Sometimes, when you enter a contest or submit a piece to a magazine the regulations state it must be unpublished material. Does my blog count as a something?

According to the CBC Literary Awards it does.

Uggh. So that means that I can't post my poems on here if I want to submit them to something like the CBC LAs. Of course that's just one contest, but such regulations are of concern to me.

Why? Let's introspect, shall we.

Reason 1 - Up until now my creative output has been an inconsequential, unenviable mess, so when I actually do finish something it takes on far more significance than it should. Each finished piece is a symbol, something to signify ALL the potential I'm convinced rattles around in my brain.

Reason 2 - Stemming from 1, if I consider each finished piece a master-work I'm instantly convinced of its dearness and value. Something of great worth of course needs to be cherished and only launched into the world at an appropriate moment, an instant where all eyes are watching and all mouths are ready to shout its praises.

Those moments don't come around too often. In fact, if one thought for about three seconds they would realize that such convoluted logic sound more like excuse making. A way to avoid ever finding out if what I'm doing is actually good, and so...

Reason 3 - This reason is a bit of a mess, bear with me, but we can generally say the third reason I am writing this inane post is confidence.

a - As mentioned above, if I talk about publishing something or submitting something it takes attention away from the act of publishing or submitting (or the lack of action) and my untalented deceit is never revealed!

b - Stemming from 2 is another facet of confidence; FEAR! On some level I'm afraid that I won't be able to rally my creative forces ever again. This one can be overcome, simply by doing something. Then doing something new. Then following that second something with another, and a fourth, and a thirty-second (after a 29th) and so on.

To be a creative individual you need to create all the time. Do, do, do, do and do. Not think, suggest and maybe next week. Take artistry seriously. As Canadian poet David W. McFadden ( a fella I've mentioned before) said, "From Grade 11 till now I've been writing poems every day, or thinking about it a lot on the occasional day I'd miss. To me an artist had to work every day, it had to be his entire life, or he was a fake."

A fake eh? Sounds familiar. So all I need to do is write a poem a day for the next 40 years? Well, maybe I should just take the meaning of his words and apply them personally.

And reason number...I don't even know. Am I onto italicized sub-sub-headings by this stage? My next point doesn't necessarily follow from the others, I just want to include it somehow, so...

Reason 3bi - I've mentioned this before, but thinking in terms of a best sellers and smash hits is wrong-headed. Chasing the latest trend and not being true to personal creative instincts results in shallow, unformed pieces. Mere shadows of what other original people were doing weeks, months and years before.

Stick with what you love and find hilarious, however, and at the end of the day you get something that you at least find enjoyable. If it finds fans in other like-minded souls that's great, but if it doesn't, who cares?

And so I struggle. Wanting to create something that receives recognition, worrying that personal notions of grandeur might be pin-pricked and deflated (not necessarily a bad thing), and simply wanting to create and push things out there regardless of the venue. Maybe even get to a point where I'm comfortable enough with myself that I know there will be other poems after this one and that I'll have another short story idea.

And I think I'm getting there, becoming more willing to release things into the world. Able to set aside all the above mentioned concerns. And if it does turn out I have created the greatest thing ever I'm sure it will take care of itself.

What set all this off?

I'm working on a poem entitled my bedroom floor on a Wednesday just after 8 in the evening (or sweat as communication). With a name like that how can it NOT be the greatest thing ever?

I was actually thinking about not posting it on here, but after writing everything I've just written I don't think that's possible.

Now you all have something to look forward to!

The Last Goodbye at Summerhill

I'm busy so you get this bit of lovely. Found with a description via Torontoist.

Turtle

What a strange day yesterday was. I spent the first half in my room watching rugby on the internets while finally gluing together my turtle shell.

Not my turtle shell so much as a turtle's turtle shell. But, given he was hit by a car before a troop of ants and maggots ate most of his flesh I don't think he'll mind if I borrow it. Forever.

Pay special attention to how some of the patterning is red while the rest is yellow. All the pattern used to have red on them but because the layer covering the shell has come off the pigment has leached! Where it stayed stuck down the red remains. A pro taxidermist would have preserved the shell to keep the colour or maybe not. A roadside gift (with assorted cracks) as the source material makes preservation more difficult.

Here's how he was coloured when I found him. I would have liked to preserve the leather somehow too, but such tricks are beyond my means.

Now I am preserving the shell (one layer at a time sprayed on in the backyard...are you people outdoors? It's amazing out there today!) I need to decide what to do with it next. A lot of taxidermists hang them on the wall, but I won't be doing that, or maybe I will.

Other option. I have some groundhog skulls in my room from when I was a kid. I might use them, the shell and other bits I don't have yet to make some sort of awesome creature. If I can find the right arms and legs I hope to have the beast stand upon my desk as a warning.

Don't play God!

ears (art)

moving

Slippers and TOMson are both pretty much vacated from their park pad and yesterday Daydream was finally kicking things into gear, so I went over to help him move. It was brief, as I had to scamper off to improv, but it got me thinking (surprise!).

Moving. It might be the thing that makes me crack. Makes me grow up.

The idea of going through my things, having to decide what to keep and what to toss, then sweatily stuffing it all in a vehicle lacks a certain appeal.

Don't get me wrong. Moves can be okay; I enjoy some sorting, tetrissing a vehicle to its absolute limits brings a smile, and there's always pleasure in finishing a task. I even have fond memories of moving myself and my sister after my first year at grad school. In that instance my life had been all brain and my body, feeling ignored, was happy to sweat it out.

BUT...

there's so much to loathe as well.

Finding a new place can be a pain, and until you know where you're going there's a fog of uncertainty perturbing life.

Then, when time syncs wonkily and you need to be out of your old the same day you're into your new, stress levels balloon.

Recruiting friends, securing vehicles then getting it all done. Limited muscle and space means choices must be made, and who likes to make those?

And this is all in terms of the relatively light life I currently lead. Half my stuff sits in my mum's basement but I still dread the thought of packing what's on hand. I'll eventually want to live in my own place (rented or owned) and that means more stuff even.

I like to imagine myself living lightly, but the reality of my room reveals my true nature. I've come into more than a few maps since arriving in Toronto, there are pieces of a child's bed and a three-legged chair across the room, and look at what I happily took off Slippers' hands in the last few days.

(If anyone wants to play board games...talk to me quick because I am turning some of these things into things. And by second things, I mean stuff for a wall [art?]. Bocce will remain bocce however - call me if you want to play. Anytime. I'm think a winter tourney...)

So... Moving and growing up.

I'm lost.

The premise of this post, now that it's written, seems to be growing up means getting lazy and rich - being able to collect stuff, wanting a place to keep the stuff and being able to arrange said stuff in a particular fashion.

I don't think I know what growing up means.

Let's try this.

Someday I want to live somewhere I know will be my home (base) for an extended period of years. And if I have to focus, find a career and make some money to do it, so be it.

Someday. If I have to.

Resolved!

the results of a rainy afternoon

I would like everyone to note:

-the handle

-the stitching, done inside out and reversed

-the cow

-the fowl

Oh, and by the way, that's my cell phone in there. Not scratched.