territorealities

dimitrismakos: Silenced at midnight.. ”Greek government...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:33:49 -0400

Silenced at midnight..

”Greek government shuts down state TV/radio , citizens rushed to protest.”

©Dimitris Makos 2013

visualoop: The world map according to #Twitter New set of maps...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:17:07 -0400

visualoop:

The world map according to #Twitter

New set of maps with geotagged messages since 2009 is available online

Read it here: http://ow.ly/lB194

polychroniadis: Sculpture by Gregory Grozos, Plaster &...

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 15:53:55 -0400

polychroniadis:

Sculpture by Gregory Grozos, Plaster & Resin, 2012.

asg-stuff: “…the 100 documentaries we’ve selected below, will...

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 15:51:37 -0400

asg-stuff:

“…the 100 documentaries we’ve selected below, will lay the foundation on which the next paradigm will be built, post empire.” (via Films For Action Presents: The Top 100 Documentaries Inspiring the Shift to a Sustainable Paradigm)

datahacker: found some topographic data for mars (MOLA...

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 15:43:45 -0400

datahacker:

found some topographic data for mars (MOLA dataset), made a 3d map. the live version (shown in the first picture) is available to explore at http://maps.stamen.com/mars. i’ll be writing a blog post about the data and the process soon. (three.js)

fictionalhorse: dhrupad: At an intertexutal level, the...

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 15:54:19 -0400

fictionalhorse:

dhrupad:

At an intertexutal level, the Victorianism of the interior depicting the nineteenth century penchant for all things plush and patinated, evokes as well the useless expenditure and sensationalism of mainstream Indian cinema, in which both gods and humans are given a high-gloss “Color-by-Technicolor” appearance implicitly critiqued by the film. In contrast to the opulence of the interior, the countryside depicted in Devi has none of the lushness of the panoramic views that characterize the depiction of a mythical India in mainstream cinema—with their hills and dales, waterfalls and sunsets, skies and clouds through which heroes and heroines, gods and goddesses pass.

The distance between the exterior landscapes and the interior of Kalikinkar’s household is only too marked. For there are no elements of relief in the landscape in Devi: no baroque ornamentation, no carapaces or coverings that give the bourgeois nineteenth-century imagination its substance or twentieth-century escapism its content. The modern is coded as the shellacking of the private sphere in which more and more layers are added to protect the “private rooms of our prosaic understanding,” to use [Walter] Benjamin’s phrase, from exposure to the public. In contrast, the countryside in Devi reveals that the poor have no such escape to draw into. Importantly, neither does prakriti (or nature) herself, stripped as she is of vegetation or plenitude.

—Keya Ganguly, Cinema, Emergence, and the Films of Satyajit Ray

architectureandfilm: Contempt / Le Mépris / Jean-Luc Godard /...

Fri, 31 May 2013 15:40:25 -0400

architectureandfilm:

Contempt / Le Mépris / Jean-Luc Godard / 1963

free-parking: On Kawara, One Million Years, 1999 On...

Fri, 31 May 2013 15:36:17 -0400

free-parking:

On Kawara, One Million Years, 1999

On Kawara’s One Million Years is an ongoing epic work conceived by the artist in 1969, documenting the passage of chronological time. This 20-volume work is a typewritten record of one million years – Past and Future. Biblical in scale, each volume contains 2,068 pages. Past is dedicated to “all those who have lived and died” and Future is “for the last one”. One Million Years enables us to grasp time itself in the physical act of reading the dates aloud. It powerfully condenses our entire human history to only a few pages, and an average human life to a few lines. (via)

ethel-baraona: Cyber-Imageability and the Incommensurable...

Fri, 31 May 2013 15:35:03 -0400

ethel-baraona:

Cyber-Imageability and the Incommensurable Future of Cities..
Simone Ferracina
Synapse Series edited by César Reyes Nájera for dpr-barcelona.

Have you ever wondered how one can get up in the middle of the night and move in a pitch-dark room? What makes such nightly excursions possible is the development of a mental image of one’s home that tightly corresponds to the surrounding physical space.

But what if one could transfer this awareness from the domestic to the urban sphere? We might then be able to navigate the city with the same confidence that characterizes our domestic movements. While checking-in, liking, sharing and going through Augmented Reality experiences we might be unconsciously contributing to the construction of a nomadic, collective awareness.

Simone Ferracina outlines in this essay what it might be like to move inside the Augmented City – a metropolis built of mixed spaces that are continually created by subjects, yet not necessarily readable to them. He describes futuristic landscapes oscillating between bits and atoms, subjectivities and algorithms, anthropocentrism and ecological networks.

Welcome to the Augmented City, where you can customize the environment with electronic layers and provoke interactions that might lead to revolutions in obscure, digital autonomous zones.

Update your perceptions, and don’t trust the algorithms… start subverting them.

» Buy Simone Ferracina’s eBook on Amazon

org-for-spatial-practice: Drop City

Sat, 25 May 2013 06:55:42 -0400

org-for-spatial-practice:

Drop City

Photo

Sat, 25 May 2013 06:52:21 -0400

leesatkowski: laderas del mar

Sun, 19 May 2013 08:18:05 -0400

leesatkowski:

laderas del mar

thepeoplesrecord: Google+ demonstrates deforestation and other...

Sun, 19 May 2013 08:16:09 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

Google+ demonstrates deforestation and other man-made climate disasters with satellite images
May 18, 2013

It’s one thing to talk about deforestation, disappearing habitats, and shrinking glaciers and water resources, and another thing entirely to demonstrate it with actual satellite imagery. And thanks to Landsat images and the Google Earth Engine, we’re getting a glimpse at some key locations across the planet as they are changed by the hands of man. A series of interactive timelapse GIFs that use Landsat satellite data to display massive changes to the Earth’s surface could be a potent tool for motivating individuals and organizations to take action on key issues.

Google’s Animated GIFs of Earth Over Time focuses our attention on key features of our planet, such as the Amazon rainforest, the coal beds of Wyoming, the Columbia Glacier, the Aral Sea, and the deserts of Saudi Arabia.

Today, we’re making it possible for you to go back in time and get a stunning historical perspective on the changes to the Earth’s surface over time. Working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NASA and TIME, we’re releasing more than a quarter-century of images of Earth taken from space, compiled for the first time into an interactive time-lapse experience. We believe this is the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public.

- Google

Some of the visualizations are kind of subtle, and need to be put into context to really hit home (such as the massive increase in irrigated areas in Saudi Arabia, which affects local water supplies, or the urban sprawl of Las Vegas, which also puts increased demands on local resources), but some of them, such as this one documenting the rapidly disappearing rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon, speak for themselves:

Explore a global timelapse of our planet, constructed from Landsat satellite imagery. The Amazon rainforest is shrinking at a rapid rate to provide land for farming and raising cattle. Each frame of the timelapse map is constructed from a year of Landsat satellite data, constituting an annual 1.7-terapixel snapshot of the Earth at 30-meter resolution.

- Google Earth Engine

These interactive time-lapse images can be manipulated by pausing or zooming in to them, as we’ve come to expect from Google Earth, and may serve as a pivot point for those who are on the fence about the effects that our booming population and its increased demand for resources has on our Big Blue Marble.

Source

You can view all of the images at Google +, and you can read a backstory at TIME.

theadventuresofmichaelpawlak: The visual effects of Blade...

Fri, 17 May 2013 08:51:56 -0400

theadventuresofmichaelpawlak:

The visual effects of Blade Runner.

Pawlak fact: I portray visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull (bottom) in a film.

ryanpanos: Hill of Shame by Gianni Cipriano The so-called Hill...

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:32:46 -0400

ryanpanos:

Hill of Shame by Gianni Cipriano

The so-called Hill of Shame is a hill in the island of Lampedusa, half-way between Sicily and North Africa in the Mediterranean Sea, where hundreds of migrants lived in poor conditions in improvised tents during the immigration crisis in April 2011. Tents were built with metal sticks, sheets, clothes and mattresses in an open-air dump of plastic bags, dishes and bottles used as urinals. In 2011, about 53,000 North African and Sub-Saharan migrants arrived in the so-called “Door of Europe”, fleeing the unrest of the region and stranded on the island in appalling conditions. Migrants weren’t provided with the most basic humanitarian assistance such as shelter, medical care, blankets and access to sanitary facilities, while thousands slept outdoors.

Arturo Escobar

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:30:59 -0400

Arturo Escobar:

anthropologynotes:

Articles, papers and books by Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar, available for downloading.

From Wikipedia: “Escobar’s approach to anthropology is largely informed by the poststructuralist and postcolonialist traditions and centered around two recent developments: subaltern studies and the idea of a World Anthropologies Network (WAN). His research interests are related to political ecology; the anthropology of development, social movements; Latin American development and politics. Escobar’s research uses critical techniques in his provocative analysis of development discourse and practice in general. He also explores possibilities for alternative visions for a postdevelopment era. He is a major figure in the post-development academic discourse, and a serious critic of development practices championed by western industrialized societies. According to Escobar, the problem with the development is that it is external, based on the model of the industrialized world, and what is needed instead are more ‘endogenous discourses’.”

nomadicity: “En abril de 2013 Miguel Fernández recorrió, de sur...

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:54:49 -0400

nomadicity:

“En abril de 2013 Miguel Fernández recorrió, de sur a norte, la península de Baja California. Llevó consigo un proyector a base de luz solar y siguió la zona de subducción geológica mexicana. “Trabajo de campo. Atlas marginal de geología” es una investigación marginal: un atlas geológico inconcluso que busca establecer relaciones entre el tiempo de la tierra y el tiempo de la ruina.

—
ATEA
Topacio 25, primer nivel, Centro Histórico.
[Entre San Pablo y Fray Servando]
Metro Merced o Pino Suárez/ Metrobús L4 Las Cruces o Merced.

Estacionamiento en planta baja [$16 pesos la hora]
ATEA es bike friendly.”

we-are-star-stuff: Who says North is up? Upside Down maps...

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:52:49 -0400

we-are-star-stuff:

Who says North is up?

Upside Down maps (also known as South-Up or Reversed maps) offer a completely different perspective of the world we live in.

Technically speaking, even referring to the earth with words like “up” or “down” or comparing places with words “above” or “below” is flawed, considering that the earth is a spherical body (it’s actually slightly “fatter” at the equator) and flying through 3 dimensional space with no reference of up or down. However, the issue of “up” and “down” does become an issue when viewing the surface of the earth projected onto a flat piece of paper (a map). And the effect of the orientation of a map is more significant than you might realize.

As all maps require orientation for reference, the issue of how to layout the map orientation is as old as maps themselves. As map orientation is completely arbitrary, it is not surprising that they differed throughout time periods and regions.

The convention of North-up is usually attributed to the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (90-168 AD). Justifications for his north-up approach vary. In the middle ages, East was often placed at top. This is the origin of the term “The Orient” to refer to East Asia. During the age of exploration, European cartographers again followed the north-up convention…perhaps because the North Star was their fixed reference point for navigation, or because they wanted (subconsciously or otherwise) to ensure Europe’s claim at the top of the world.

In modern times, reversed maps are made as a learning device or to illustrate Northern Hemisphere bias. Different from simply turning a north-up map upside down, a reversed map has the text oriented to be read with south up.

The famous “Blue Marble” photograph of the Earth taken from on board Apollo 17 was originally oriented with the south pole at the top, with the island of Madagascar visible just left of center, and the continent of Africa at its right. However, the image was turned upside-down to fit the traditional view.

While the orientation of a map might seem harmless, it can have a significant effect on one’s perception of the world, and the relative importance of the different place in it.

In speech, we often refer to places being “above” or “below” others. Think of how you would say you’re about to travel to the state or country to your north or south (to go “down” to Kentucky from Indiana, or “up” to Canada from the US). Without even mentioning geography, ask any grade school student whether Mexico is “above” or “below” the United States. We’re all familiar with the “land down under”. As we often correlate importance to relative height (think how a citizens of a country will fly their flag higher than all other flags), the north-up convention reinforces the idea that northern bodies are more important than their southern neighbors. Suddenly, traveling “down” to the South might have an inference much deeper than geographic location.

After looking at the map more closely, you may realize that the South-Up orientation may change your perception of the relative status of different places. For example, South America suddenly looks to have more prominence, and Africa and the Middle East completely dwarf Europe. Likewise, tucking Northern Europe, Canada, and Russia away at the bottom of the map, subconsciously takes away their status.

To summarize, unconditionally accepting the north-up map convention without at least appreciating the effect stands at odds with viewing all people and places within the world equally. x x

mpdrolet: Israel Maria Sturm

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:51:49 -0400

mpdrolet:

Israel

Maria Sturm

Urbanization Is Swallowing the Coastline of the Mediterranean

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:37:00 -0400

by photographer Nick Hannes
For most of the past three years, Antwerp-based photographer Nick Hannes has been traveling across the Mediterranean coastline photographing the locals, the immigrants, the tourists, and the escalating urbanization that have been interfering with its landscape, for a project he’s called Mediterranee.