embodied Tim Knowles

Here's a fun post I found on F.A.D. (Free Association Design).

The post is about an artist named Tim Knowles and his work exploring and experiencing the city and space more broadly.

I like the long exposure adventures across fields at night.

And the windwalks he takes and subsequently maps.

More Tim Knowles and a whole whack of interesting projects here.

Dude draws with trees!

That's all I have. Time for shower and bed. Suffice to say lots of people are searching for their bearings in the world, trying to represent themselves and their embodied wanderings. My data collection continues apace and given all the juicy creative outputs that are around, eventually I'll come up with something to do with it!

Oh, and clown is fun. I need to come up with a 1-2 minute presentation for Wednesday. Nothing yet, but something clever this way comes no doubt.

a walk

Just walked Daydream to band practice in Clint's space. It was my first time going there and it's pretty fantastic. Apparently formerly a wood workshop, with low ceiling and a general crap feel, now, and increasingly so, a cool venue with proper ventilation, sound-proofing and a middle of upgrading feel.

I'm now having ideas for a show I could put on. I still don't think my performance is anything people would make a special effort to come to, but I'm thinking if I can get a few more of my maps finished, and some maps from my collection presented/mounted, I might be able to at least provide the backdrop for an interesting spectacle.

Nothing much to say about the walk except for a few things.

One: Daydream's off the cuff suggestion about me getting a pedometer makes me think I should get a pedometer. Easily incorporated into my data collection which is right now a lot of words. I can send daily ped.dates on twitter or here. Ped.dates being updates but for your feet and from the future.

Two: Bought some scooby road atlases.

Three: Drum circle starts tonight apparently, despite the rain. I realized it's just a group improv activity where group-think is responsible for what's happening, when to speed up, stop, etc.

Four: Stopped to watch a ladies softball game. It's interesting to watch people playing in the cold rain for no 'reason'.

But they have plenty of reason, of course. It's their thing. The thing they do to get away from work or family or whatever. They hit the ball, run the bases and cheer each other on with classic phrases like 'good eye' and 'way to waste that one', as well as a never-ending stream of platitudes telling whomever that they're doing great.

It's nice.

And it's interesting, seeing those ladies. Ladies whose body types would leave me, in passing, assuming little more than a walk from the couch to the fridge as exercise for the week. Let's be happy we aren't all so judgmental. They swung with intent, ran the bases, played hard and then, I assume, went home cold, wet, but surely satisfied.

People are weird.

Tomorrow if I see one of the softball players I'm likely to look past without a second thought. But tonight, with the steady rhythmic worship of the drum circle coming from the dog bowl, their patch of illumination in an otherwise dark, cold park drew me in and I watched. Pitches hummed, bats cracked balls, the rain was back-lit as it fell through the lights, while the team in grey had a tidy inning, scoring 3 runs.

data maps of the Brit election

See how much fun data can be!

The Guardian has made these awesome maps with their data.

They've also done some fun stuff with the data and listed it here.

Or if it tickles your fancy you can get an entire spreadsheet with all the data here. Votes, swing that took place...anything you could want!

My data collection is coming along. So far a bunch of street names, but it's a start.

Also, isn't The Guardian just an awesome news entity? The things you can do with a little distance from the market and its profit generating mindset.

(Also, more here.)

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.