Critique Response: Google Earth/final project

I really enjoyed our final critique. I think that there were a lot of amazing projects, with a wide range of use of google earth and sketchup. I also think we chose different angles to use the map--some made it an emotion-tied map, some connected the land on St Marys to something different (the stars, the body) and some made super-creative lenses through which to view the campus. 

I am also really happy that there was a lot of positive response to my map. I wanted to re-create my own experiences with food on campus, which are wide-ranging and not typical of all St Marys students, though I do share a lot of things with the campus as a whole, like the great room or free food from lectures. I also include a lot of unique experiences and information, such as dumpster diving, the health co-op, and picnicking in historic. I also have different associations and connections with some of the places on campus; Caroline, which has vending machines, will also be linked to Metallica for me since that is what my friend Mike plays while we're eating pizza in his room. The boathouse is connected to the Polar Bear Splash, which I helped organize, as well as sailing and free food in the new boat house. I also wanted to include more than one sense in the map, which is why sounds and songs are sometimes included in the placemarks. I also included an interactivity, and information. Some links take the user to websites, one takes them to my own journey project. With this map, I can hopefully explain and share these experiences I have had regarding food with others. 

I thought Bartoz's comment was very interesting and useful--if I brought in more information, like how I did when talking about dumpster diving, it would allow for an even better sharing of my experiences. Recipes, tips for free food, and even rating certain foods in vending machines or the great room would be an awesome addition, and make my map more of an information hub for the campus. I considered doing my project in this vein originally, mapping out all the vending machines and all the free food locations on campus, but I also wanted to skew it to show my perspective of campus, so the user sees how I eat on campus. (How egocentric!) I think that is why I include non-food related objects, like the townhouse pond, with links to photos I've taken of ducks, or the atmospheric moon and ocean sounds of the point. So if I did add more information, it would be very Tara-centric information, like my favorite recipe to cook in the co-op, or the cost of my favorite chips in the vending machine. 

Artists: marek walczak & martin wattenberg, Apartment

I was looking at everyone else's blogs, and I noticed a lot of posts about the apartment link. I decided to check it out since it seemed like this piece was also working with mapping space and ideas through blueprints, and I'm still searching out other projects that are mapping space with ideas like my final project. 

Oh my goodness, this site is amazing. The premise is that the user types a sentence, or a word, and based on the words, it creates rooms in a blueprint of an apartment. "I was thinking about an apple" will create a bedroom, library and kitchen. Within the blueprint, "I" will float around the bedroom space, "was thinking" will float in the library, and "apple" will go to the kitchen. 

I was impressed, but when I went to see the 'favorite apartments' that other users have created, I was blown away. One, titled "paradise paradise paradise" had a whole bunch of typical words to describe a beach vacation; "water", "fun", "sand", "clear", "beach", etc. The words move in a patter, though, in the room, so a window full of clear, sand, and sun rotates in cylinder, while water slowly drifts in the kitchen, and the words in the living room bounce from corner to corner. My favorite is probably one called "light light light" which is just a window space, filled with the word light twisting in what reminds me of a tornado. The words, which represent ideas, go beyond just the face-value meaning and with the shape and motion they create, add a new dimension. Kind of reminds me of our letter project, where we try to use our letters to create a poster that includes a representation of historic meaning of our letters. 

These apartments remind me of the pshychogeography readings. The apartment can be a map of our minds, our thoughts, or maybe I could map the first paragraph of Little Women into a blueprint. It's a connection of thoughts, visualized through words, further visualized into a blueprint, and animated by motion and patterns (and repetition of words). 

Artists: GH Hovagimyan, Love Songs from My Computer

My mac has many synthetic voices, and they are very interesting to play with, and I even set up voice notification for my instant messaging client on the computer, with different voices saying different words when my friends logged on. Love Songs from My Computer reminds me of this, as Hovagimvan has taken popular songs and had synthesized voices sing them. The clips are open in one window, so the user can play multiple clips, creating layers to the song. The artist is not a trained musician but is willing to cross lines between digital art and music, to create something that is a hybrid of the both. It reminds me of Pat's presentation when he came to visit my color theory class, where color and images were translated into sound, and vice versa, to create a dialogue between sound and image. Love Songs is a dialogue between digital voice and human, industry presentation and our own ability to mix and remix these songs. 

Artists: EcoArtTech, Eclipse

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Eclipse shows users how air pollution harms national parks, even when we cannot see it. It takes a photo from flickr from a park that the user designates (The one above is from the Santa Fe National Forest), and then applies the real time air quality to distort or edit the photo, similar to how air pollution alters the atmosphere of these parks. The picture above is a 'good' air quality.

I love the environmental consciousness of these altered photos, and how it even re-uses currently existing photos (taken from flickr) to show the aftereffect. The combination of sources and way the user chooses the location hopefully create a piece of art with an impact on the user's mind.

Artists: Warren Sack, conversation map, and the visual thesarus

While working on my final project, I have been thinking about mapping places a lot. These two site visually map conversations, and words. The thesaurus is interesting because it groups words in clusters according to meaning--it is a much more efficient way of finding words, and then jumping to new words. It reminds me a lot of the Baltimore County Public Library search, which visually shows you results you can modify. 

The conversation map is a much more in-depth version of those maps. It is a Usenet

 newsgroup browser that searched through the threads on the soc.culture.albanian newsgroup, and organized the conversations happening within that group. It indexes the threads by themes, threads, and who is discussing them. you can then expand the words describing a theme into the full thread.

It also is, to me, an interesting study in social relations on the internet--I would like to see this applied to livejournal or facebook, or twitter! This also gives me food for thought in organizing my thoughts on St Mary's into a map for my final project.

Artists: Matthew Ritchie, The New Place

 Matthew Ritchie's website, The New Place, is a continuation and bridge of his former project, The Hard Way. The Hard Way is an interactive environment in which the user follows a character, the story and interactions that occur. The New Place is similar in that it also explores the interactions between three characters: the actress, the swimmer, and the golem. These three characters are metaphors for three elements, which are primary in the carbon-oxygen weathering cycle.  Because of this, the narrative plays out on a number of levels, not only through story telling but through a scientific narrative. Apparently, The New Place is only a prototype, and I eagerly look forward to seeing the full site. I was also captivated by the clean graphics, and the direct flash narration. I really enjoyed the visual storytelling the site used, and I like the idea of using digital animation to tell a story.