kellee's blog

Goals:
In going into this assignment, I knew I wanted to explore the beneath-the-surface aspects of mapping space. Sure, figuring out how to get around is useful, but if we are looking at a future in which “all of the streets of the world will soon be imaged in an Aspen-Movie-Map-like way(Naimark),” the possibilities to map space according to other rule sets than directions become more open. I also hoped to explore how having every space mapped leaves the door open to subtle manipulation by the companies that are able to create such world maps; there is choice in every design, even in that of a map.

Taking the Photos:
I decided to take my tripod and digital camera to Pershing Square and begin with a “traditional” panorama, take my cues from the environment, and go from there. I ended up taking some video by standing in one place, holding the camera up, hitting record, and turning around. I thought this might at least give me good coverage of the area. I then set up my tripod and began pointing, clicking, turning approx. ten degrees, and repeating. About four pictures later I got asked to stop taking pictures by a park security guard. He explained that I needed a permit to take photos in the park. I explained to him I was not using these photos for commercial purposes. I should tell you that my camera is really nothing very fancy. Nor is my tripod. However, he insisted that I cease taking photos immediately and leave the park. In the meantime, Erin and Brad were getting great coverage of the event with their cell phone cameras.

Creating the Panorama:
As an experiment, I dumped still images taken from the video using iMovie and my digital camera photos into Photoshop CS and got it to perform a “Photomerge.” Because my images were not a perfect panorama, an interesting thing occurred – a panorama was created based on the color and linear motifs of each image, despite their correlation in real space. The result was a fascinating collage of color and objects, which aligned much more with my memory of the park than a simple map did. I realigned the images myself to create a journey through the space – from yellow to green, from diagonal to vertical, from subjective to objective (as the picture quality goes from worse to better).

Viewing the Panorama:
Looking at the panorama horizontally like it is above, I think the progression of visual events is much more linear than they were in the space. This difference highlighted for me the aspect of panorama that only allows you to look in one direction at a time. The audience expressed frustration over only being able to see one wall at any given moment because they could see their was a story being told, but couldn’t get it all at one time.

Conclusion:
In this project I did not deal with issues concerning choice in map-making. Other than the fact that I made a choice, I don’t feel this final product highlighted my fears of “The World… brought to you by Google.” However, I think it did accurately reflect my feelings on mapping space through experience; I feel more and more that capturing my world and my life through digital photography gets farther away from my actual experience of it. For many reasons(that I might go into later), I have a very disjointed vision of the world around me. This panorama comes very close to capturing that feeling, and it might just be that the audience’s experience of frustration reflect my own.

I could do a whole other piece on my experience with the security guard. Maybe I should have stolen Brad’s idea to map a back alley. Perhaps these will be the only spaces to be creatively and effectively mapped by the public because they will be the only ones we lowly citizens have access to?