Virtual Maps
uriah April 6th, 2009
Mapping using the Internet, like most applications on the web, seems to begin by using existing models of visualisation. It makes sense to use what we know and understand about paper maps from their long history. When maps are used as a tool to try and locate a place there is a relationship between that visualised place and the actual place. The main difference between a printed map and a virtual might be the passage of time. The Internet, with its ability to change and update quickly, gives us the ability to apply filters to the visualisations.
Google maps is a good example. These maps employ the aesthetic of a road map: A bird’s eye view; small icons; various line widths and colours to denote area. 
Perhaps this over-simplification has lead to abstraction; can users relate to this perspective?
The satellite view is almost godly, especially as the view can now extend to the Moon and Mars.
Is it in our vernacular to experience maps this way? Google came up with a solution. To shift the perspective from the top to the ground, to a driver’s perspective. This tries to bridge the gap, becoming more personal and human, but there have been growing concerns about privacy as the all encompassing photographic nature is too intruding. Is photography too detailed for this job? It seems as if you need to have had a relationship with that space before you can place yourself in that photograph.
Is there a better way to bridge between the abstraction and the actual place? An alternative is to use a more visual and iconic map like Edushi. An isometric view shows a top-down, map-like schema of geographic features but can also show a relationship with realistic 3D attributes of that geography. This example is a map of Shanghai into which the user may be able to place him/herself more easily than into a Google map. The iconic form is a lot more friendly than Google street view. Like the abstract road map there is one icon for tree, a few different icons for different buildings to show residential, shopping, high rise, libraries. Each with a different heights. How many of us need to register the difference between an elm and an oak or a fir and a pine, unless this specificity is particularly helpful for orientation in the streetscape? Similarly, only when a building is unique does it require a “landmark” icon.
We can compare this to Tadashi Ishihara’s Midtown Manhattan Map that offers a huge amount of detail in a similar, isometric projection. Google’s street view shows real peope walking around, sitting and eating. Is this the kind of detail one needs to understand a place? Does this fall into the trap of showing too much detail and becoming invasive?
Edushi looks like an alternate world that’s clean and friendly, and not as a invasive as Google’s. Politically perhaps Google is more truthful, showing us our dirty streets and real people. What value does it have? How does one use this photographic information?
Perhaps it depends entirely on the user: Do you want aerial photographs so you can experience the fun of spotting your own place on Earth from a Satellite? Does the photograph provide affirmation that your patch is as photogenic or democratically important as the next person’s?
If you actually use electronic maps as a tool for locative information, distance between places, as a navigation device like a paper map, is the photographic so helpful? Would another form be of more use?
Forgot to add links for easier use. Edushi, Googlemaps, Tadashi Ishihara, Blast Theory; Rider Spoke
April 14th, 2009 at 10:44 am
I think it comes down to use: What do we need from the map or the street view or the aerial photograph? Are these doing similar jobs or very different ones. One of the difficulties with photography as an information source is that it can include more information than is necessary. The camera can catch everything around the subject it was intended to capture. Sometimes this extra information can hinder the understanding of the subject. It can be a noisy medium in this regard.
April 16th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Responding to the issues of mapping that are being raised here, maybe locative media is worth considering. It is a technological system related to urban space where the participant/user can move in physical space while negotiating with the media. Located art therefore, is the art of media and wireless systems, as is the case with the UK’s locative media group, Blast Theory.
They utilise digital and wireless technologies to make interactive performances and video work encouraging critical discussion. Their current work developed form Uncle Roy All Around You (2003), is Rider Spoke (2007-2009) where the audience cycles through a city holding a computer looking for a discreet place to record a message, the data is then stored and they go and hunt for other participants messages. As they state: “The piece continues Blast Theory’s fascination with how games and new communication technologies are creating new social spaces…It invites the public to be co-authors of the piece and a visible manifestation of it as they cycle through the city. It locates the venue precisely in its local context and invites the audience to explore that context for its emotional and intellectual resonances”.
This adds a different dimension to the idea of mapping the city. It offers a more experiential idea of mapping, where you negotiate both a virtual-visual map and the physical context in real-time. Following this, how could access to additional information, like smell, noise etc., be included with maps? This would definitely add to the ‘noise’ that Stuart speaks of, so how could this be managed, so that it could still be functional - whatever that means?
To see Rider Spoke’s latest incarnation at the Rock’s in Sydney (Feb 2009), see Nick Dent’s article:
http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/aroundtown/rider-spoke–review–53.aspx