Just an assortment of maps, relatively unoriginal but worth exploring.

Attractiveness zoning. Colours range from green which is good to red which is bad, thicker the circle, the larger its impact.

Transparent image for layering.

Wireless Zoning. Green indicates BT and other public wireless access points intended for boats. Yellow reprisents spreading domestic wireless internet, bluetooth and cordless phone.

Combined with radio, television, satellite and mobile signals nowhere is ever truely out of contact, with layers of digital information flowing through space. It could be possible to make these layers visable in the real world by creating windows into it.

Layered with population density distorted pixelmap. Layered over streetmap.

With a very broad brief I decided to do a premotion of potential for the future from the perspective of the past. Only in the last ten years has Stonehouse really developed having been in a constant state of decay with little investment. I decided to play on this with my postcard which is designed to look like dated promotional material for the area meant to encourage development that never happened or took far too long.

And now in Sarcas-O-Vision:

The real idea behind it is that it shows us that these visions rarely come true. The font was used in the 1982 film Blade Runner in which the dystopic appearance of the city(complete with flying cars) is supposedly set in the year 2019 which is unrealistic yet may have seemed plausible 27 years ago that in 37 years it could be a reality. So widespread and total change in older cities, particularly in Plymouth, is slow with buildings, architecture and street layouts only changing when social, technological and economic needs and capabilities change or historical events and decay force change.

An interesting aspect of the development of cities is the growth of its infrastructure be it visible such as roads or invisible such as sewage systems or mobile phone tower coverage. A one hundred and thirty years ago the people building houses couldn’t have known the effect on wifi and mobile phone signals the stone that they were using to build walls would have nor could have electricians sixty years ago anticipated the amount of electricity we now consume. So as society advances our buildings can be left behind with the need for constant modernisation, some things can be upgraded whereas others need to be replaced. This can seem to fracture a city with mixed architecture, the best example of this probably being London which has massive variance between building designs.

Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s Plan for Plymouth is an example of when a fresh start to an area can accommodate the growth of infrastructure and create consistancy(even if people dislike it). Within Stonehouse the Millbay area is now under development albeit slowly after the demolition of many industrial buildings in the area. On Stonehouse Peninsular there has been regeneration of The Royal William Yard and the surrounding area which is helping Plymouth catch up.

And just as Plymouth starts getting the funding it so desperatly needs, we hit a recession. Oh well.

In a semi-related note I also found this blogpost with a good collection of Retro-Futurism which is worth a look for those who are interested and this talk on faux nostalgia and how yesterday looked at tomorrow.

A symptom too much free time.

Had another Idea. The pixilated map represents a cold statistical view of Stonehouse, but also the area has meaning that can’t be expressed with just numbers, the image needs meaning on a human level. So the idea is to superimpose this onto the pixilated image in a rough flawed yet natural form.

In the first week I sketched a diagram of Stonehouse from memory. As nobody ever really experiences Stonehouse looking down on it from the sky it also reflected my perspective of it on ground level and how far I judged distances so certain labels are in the wrong place and the shape of the coast it wrong, so the map is imperfect. However it more accurately reflects how the area feels and what impression it leaves on you moving through it. For myself I was fairly accurate but it would be interesting to see this done with someone who doesn’t know Stonehouse as well as I do.

So there is a conflict between the humanly perceived space which we live in and the space viewed as data by a machine which cannot make sense of the meaning behind what is inputted into it.

I manipulated the map I drew from memory and superimposed it onto the pixelmap to create a rough example of the concept, the presentation would be nicer in the final piece.

Population density.

Just a couple of possibly bad ideas:

Textures and materials in the final piece that represent each pixel such as a leaf for a pixel which contains trees, pebble for beach ect, either using computer texture or photo. The images could be mapped to the pixels.

Using a single strip of pixels and narrowing down focus.

Changing perspective on the image.

Blurring the pixilated image to create a smooth effect.

I’ll add to this as I come up with more and make decisions.

From today’s session I’ve gotten a better idea of the direction to take my part of this project. Using the idea of amalgamating areas into single pixels in which a single colour is derived, this colour can be used to reprisent the location and can indicate its appearance, landuse and ‘atmosphere’.

In the IDAT106 module, having been split into groups, we have been tasked with collection of data from Stonehouse, an area of Plymouth, for use in an abstract form to be presented as art that with context can convey information in a fresh and interesting way.

Fortunately for me I happen to live in Stonehouse and know the area very well so my “local knowledge” should be quite useful.

Using an aerial photograph from google maps as a starting point our group split up to each develop our own separate ideas and themes for the project.

One of my intial ideas was to map the areas of green (trees, grass and plants) verses the areas of grey (buildings, roads ect). This led onto the idea of working out the overall colour of parts of the area and eventually to pixilate images to the extent there is only one remaining colour that can be used to describe the location. By combing these into a mosaic they can become a texture into which over data can be reprisented as the height of each tile. As not every location in the area can be accessed, this could possibly take place along a route or journy along with the collected data.

Using the inital aerial photograph I made this example of how this “texture” could appear. This average colour information could also be used in a different, more abstract, form to compliment the data and provide meaning. For example landuse would relate well with the colour. Also the level of detail and size of each pixel can be changed.

I feel that it should retain some context and meaning rather then becoming entirely abstract yet I would like it to be aesthetically appealing.