Temporal Tactics for Mr Seel’s Garden
Chris Speed has recently written a great post exploring the various design
methods used in the Memories of Mr Seel’s Garden project. Find out more about the theory and practice behind the creation of our iPhone app, our interactive map, postcards and Mr Seel food packaging..
To read the full post go here: http://www.chrisspeed.net/?p=1068
Excavating future local food sites in Liverpool
Freddy Taylor, a designer on our project, was up in Liverpool recently to take photos for our new local food postcard series. We’ll be using photos of current places to show either where food used to be grown, or where it might be in the future. You’ll be able to collect your free set at our final event on the 27th of January at the Bluecoat…
Hugging a Ghost: Mapping time and history
“…Networks are appropriate instruments for a capitalist economy based on innovation,
globalisation, and decentralised concentration; for work, workers and firms
based on flexibility; for a culture of endless deconstruction and reconstruction;
for a polity geared towards the instant processing of new values and public moods;
and for a social organisation aiming at the supersession of
space and the annihilation of time” (Castells 1996:470-71).”
At present the design team at the Edinburgh College of Art are working with the historical maps of Liverpool, Google mapping technology and a little creativity of our own to offer visitors to the Memories of Mr. Seel’s Garden website a way of experiencing overlaps between the present and the past through the use of maps. We’ll be:
Some of our methods for exploring how we use maps in Memories of Mr. Seel’s Garden have been informed by the growth of smart phone applications that challenge where we are in time and place. Equipped with GPS technologies that can locate a user on a Google map within 3 metres of accuracy, smart phones are changing the way that people navigate cities. The location of the user within a map is signified by the presence of a blue ball on the screen that denotes where she/he is. When a user launches the Google Maps application in the street, the blue ball seems to falls from over their shoulder and land on the screen of their phone. At the same time, image tiles begin to appear that place the user in a map of the surrounding area. As the user walks, the ball moves with them. This extraordinary moment of finding oneself in a map is the first time, in what feels like a thousand years, that the representation of space is coupled with time through the actions of the map-reader. Satisfied that you are located in space, the question for me was “where are you in time?”.
In satellite mode, whilst the Google maps are rich in photographic data they are not live. In fact they can be as much as two years old, so the question of “where are you in time?” is dependent upon how often the basemap was updated. One of the reasons that the basemaps are out of time is because Google want to present as hi-fidelity image as possible: without clouds, without extreme shadows. As a result, the tiles that make up the satellite view of any place on a smart phone will be made up of different times; an aggregation of space based upon the best collection of tiles that depict the place. So knowing when you are ‘in time’ isn’t possible.
But this circumstance of being out of time is very useful for those of us who worry about the assumption that there is a consensual ‘present’ any more. Knowing what the ‘time is’ would seem to be a figure of speech associated with a society of clock-time. Twenty years ago I might have had to organise the meeting of a friend for a drink by agreeing a specific time. Now equipped with a smart phone I am able to negotiate the ‘right time’ for meeting through the constant communication channels in my hand: email, SMS and phone, allowing us both to adjust the time of the meeting according to external events.
Keen to exploit this ‘annihilation of time’ (Castells 1996:470-71) and any assumption that Google can present a time of the present through its map, I was part of a small team that developed the iPhone Application: Walking Through Time. Walking Through Time (WTT) is a mobile application that allows smartphone users with built-in GPS to not only find themselves in the present, but also to find themselves in the past. By making available historical maps of Edinburgh, users are able to scroll through time, and navigate places using maps that are hundreds of years old. Funded by a JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) rapid innovation grant, the application was developed collaboratively between Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Edinburgh. The application simply allows people to find themselves in a Google map of the present, and select from a long list of old maps and relocate themselves in a 19th century map of the area. Retaining the user’s GPS marker, the moment that the map of the present becomes swapped with a map from the past, the smartphone situates the viewer in a cognitively disruptive situation. The playful interface of the iPhone and our ability to identify with the blue ball on the screen as ourselves, contests any truth in what we ‘see’ as the city around us, and what is supplemented with the images of buildings that have long since disappeared. Holding a new user’s hand, it is an unusual experience when one begins to navigate two places simultaneously, with the mind’s eye identifying with the ball on the screen as a proof of the self, and yet finding oneself located in a place that has changed dramatically.
The greatest fun that I have with WTT is finding objects that exist in the past and present and transcend the changes in the environment around me. To this day the most unusual experience is to be found in the hugging of trees. At different points of the year the trees that we pass on the way to work offer a sense of life, growth and death. In spring they are covered with a stunning array of fresh green leaves and feel as new as any new building that has been opened nearby. In Autumn the same trees exhibit incredible reds, oranges and browns before shedding them as they head toward winter. From observing the fresh greens, collecting conkers and kicking dead leaves, trees occupy a temporality that is highly dynamic.
Trees within the Edinburgh College of Art. Prior to being built in 1907 the site was formerly a cattle market.
Finding the same trees that appear both in front of you and in an 1850 map disrupts a sense of time. In the WTT application it is possible to walk up to a tree in 1850 and not only stand next to it but also hug it. Whilst aspects of the built environment may have changed or appear static, there is something extraordinary about touching a tree that is in the same place as it was 150 years ago. The accuracy of GPS also makes it easy to identify old trees and know when you are standing next to them.
Photo © Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. SC702546 Crown Copyright: RCAHMS
Trees depicted on the 1849 map of George Square, Copyright (C) 2011 National Library of Scotland.
Trees in George Square remapped against satellite imagery using the National Library of Scotland Mosaic Viewer: http://geo.nls.uk/search/mosaic
The sensation, I think, is akin to Carol Anne’s touching of the television screen in the 1982 movie ‘Poltergiest’. Both the screen and the tree bark operate as mediums through which it is possible (with the help of a little technology) to engage with the past as alive.
Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) in Poltergeist, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1982.
by Chris Speed. Edinburgh College of Art.
References:
Castells, Manuel. 1996. Rise of The Network Society: The Information Age, Volume I. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Mapping local food in Liverpool
Maps are brilliant things; not only do they tell where we are going, but they can be used to tell us where we’ve been. We were able to get copies of over 100 maps of Liverpool, from the Map Library at the National Library of Scotland.The maps ranged from late 18th century county plans to Ordnance Survey (OS) 1st edition surveys, at different scales, as well as copies of the latest paper maps that the OS has produced. The aim of the map research was to use the paper maps to establish whether the different map makers had depicted any food-related features. This would then allow the research team to see how food locations varied across the landscape of Liverpool, but also across time.
We ran two workshops in April and May this year, with the advice and support of Tinho Da Cruz, the map curator at the University of Liverpool. Researchers from the three community groups involved got together to look at ‘old’ (1970-1870) and ‘very old’ (1870-1700’s) maps.The aim was to establish if food was represented on the different maps, how it was depicted and whether we could identify different types of foods. The challenge, however, was to identify what counted as ‘food’ on the maps. For example, we had many discussions over whether particular trees were ‘orchard’ or just ‘wood’. This created lots useful group discussion as to what constituted ‘food’ on a map.
During the workshops we worked out that we could identify food origin sources = e.g. farms/orchards/glasshouses; production locations = mills; distribution centres = markets;storage facilities = banana sheds/warehouses and other places where food was consumed (pubs), historic sites where food was stored (tithe barns) and place names that indicated where food came from (‘High Pastures Farm’). After identifying these locations on the maps, volunteers held map working bees where they added the information we gathered from the paper maps on to a Google map.
As you can see we have masses of information from all over Liverpool and beyond. We also have some gaps that could be filled. In the meantime we’re starting to develop ways of showing this information through a map-based application. To do this Chris Barker is working with the team at the Edinburgh College of Art and one way that we’ve worked out is that the different map locations can be divided into: Origins, Production, Distribution and Storage, and finally Consumption. These broad categories, which follow on from those identified in the workshops, allows us to group places together, but also to show links between historic food locations, both spatially and perhaps across time. For example, a link could be created between an orchard where apples were grown and a fruit and vegetable market where the produce was sold to traders. Similarly, a dairy farm with cattle could be linked to a dairy via a railway to a station and then to a bottling plant for the milk.
The collaborative research has produced a wealth of further information stemming from the 2D paper maps. But we will also now be adding more local knowledge to the maps by including locations and stories from our Oral History interviews. This will then enable the team to produce 3D or even 4D food experiences for the broader community.
Alex Hale – Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland
Flow – Visualising the history of local food
Chris Speed from the Edinburgh College of Art is developing a creative way of sharing the data we uncover with the wider Liverpool community. Here are some of his recent notes about representing flow over maps. Links provided with the help of Peter Pratt at the University of Edinburgh.
http://thecrestarun.com/speedFiles/take3.html which is part of… http://www.alistapart.com/articles/svg-with-a-little-help-from-raphael/
Demonstrates the simplicity of drawing flow over maps – this works really well on smart phones making it very accessible as a technical approach even though it doesn’t look so cool!
This is simply wonderful – the flow of Wind across the US: http://hint.fm/wind/
The wind map is a personal art project, not associated with any company. We’ve done our best to make this as accurate as possible,
but can’t make any guarantees about the correctness of the data or our software. Please do not use the map or its data to fly a plane, sail a boat, or fight wildfires If the map is missing or seems slow, we recommend the latest Chrome browser. Surface wind data comes from the National Digital Forecast Database. These are near-term forecasts, revised once per hour. So what you’re seeing is a living portrait. (See the NDFD site for precise details; our timestamp shows time of download.) And for those of you chasing top wind speed, note that maximum speed may occur over lakes or just offshore. We’d be interested in displaying data for other areas; if you know of a source of detailed live wind data for other regions, or the entire globe, please let us know. If you’re looking for a weather map, or just want more detail on the weather today, see these more traditional maps of temperature and wind. From the developer:“The wind map is a personal art project, not associated with any company. We’ve done our best to make this as accurate as possible, but can’t make any guarantees about the correctness of the data or our software…Surface wind data comes from the National Digital Forecast Database. These are near-term forecasts, revised once per hour. So what you’re seeing is a living portrait. (See the NDFD site for precise details; our timestamp shows time of download.) And for those of you chasing top wind speed, note that maximum speed may occur over lakes or just offshore.” Hint.FM
http://sappingattention.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/visualizing-ocean-shipping.html
These are beautiful illustrations of the flow of ships around the world. The first one is long: it shows about 100 years of ship paths in the seas, as recorded in hundreds of ship’s log books, by hand, one or several times a day.
The second has to do with seasonality: it compresses all those years onto a single span of January-December, to reveal seasonal patterns.
