Today at the conference in Oxford 'Visualisation in the Age of Computerisation' we will be presenting a paper. The conference is packed and there are waiting lists for all events. This is to say how popular the topic currently is. Of course Oxford is a great place, they have managed to cover a vast variety of topics and invite popular and well known key speakers. Nevertheless there is also the aspect of hype and coolness about the topic that plays an important role. For an outine of the conference see HERE.
Steven Woolgar has in his key note already pointed out the differences in the rais of the visualisation and surprised with a few in depth analysis of visualisations. From neural advertisement analysis to the translation of lectures in to animations and the viualisation of key strokes as colour and sound.
The paper presented by Tim Webmoor and myself is focusing on aspects of ethics and practices for online social research especially regarding the gray area in which it operates given the lack of covering academic protocols. The title of this contribution is 'Massified Research and Visualisation' and it is based on the forthcoming paper "Scaling Information in the Information Economy: Implications for Massified Research and Visualisation from Public API Feeds'. The abstract of the presentation can be found HERE.
Below you can find the presentation to click through.
Tampilkan postingan dengan label presentation. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label presentation. Tampilkan semua postingan
Jumat, 25 Maret 2011
Rabu, 02 Maret 2011
Twitter Data - Seeking Spatial Pattern
I will be contributing to the CASA seminar tonight, given by Robin Morphet, Steven Gray and myself. It will be an update on the NCL - New City Landscape data collected from twitter. The collection of monitored urban areas around the world has now grown to over 60 location.
The update focuses on three elements, data pool, temporal activities of cities overal, and networks within the cities. There are also some additional aspects, for examples a view of the first three weeks of the revolution in Egypt as documented earlier focusing on Cairo.
Image by single-blogs / Tweet activity in Cairo around the Tahrir Square in the centre of the city and at the heart of the revolution. This is using Cartographic for the mapping of the data with a bing map in the background.
The temporal aspects show variations between the different cities. As a mode of classification a sample of nine cities have been ordered from evening to morning. Some cities seem to be more active in the morning and other in the evening. Dubai and Istanbul for example are clearly more active in the late hours, where on the other end Cairo and Bogota are early birds and tweet a lot more in the morning. The US cities Boston and Atlanta have both a peak in the morning and in the evening.
Image by single-blogs for NCL / timeRose diagram of 24 hours - showing twitter activity in percentage of total tweets by hour of the day. Covers the cities Cairo, Bogota, Mexico City, Manila, Atlanta ,Boston Los Angeles, Istanbul, Dubai.
Similarly there are preferences regarding the weekdays. Not all areas tweet the same day. The early week days, Monday and Tuesday are generally less active than the rest of the week. Manila clearly prefers the weekend, where Cairo, Istanbul and Mexico City prefer the end of the week, Thursday and Friday. Dubai and especially Bogota have the least differences between the weekdays with very similar numbers of tweets through out the week.
Image by single-blogs for NCL / timeRose diagram of the weekdays - showing twitter activity in percentage of total tweets sent by day of the week. Covers the cities Cairo, Bogota, Mexico City, Manila, Atlanta ,Boston Los Angeles, Istanbul, Dubai.
As a preview below you find the slides for the talk tonight. Some of the stuff has featured earlier on the blog. So you will ind some background there. You might try the tweetography tag or the twitter tag to dig down. It might involve a bit of scrolling to get to the earlier posts. Anyway if you have time come along tonight for the live update.
The update focuses on three elements, data pool, temporal activities of cities overal, and networks within the cities. There are also some additional aspects, for examples a view of the first three weeks of the revolution in Egypt as documented earlier focusing on Cairo.
Image by single-blogs / Tweet activity in Cairo around the Tahrir Square in the centre of the city and at the heart of the revolution. This is using Cartographic for the mapping of the data with a bing map in the background.
The temporal aspects show variations between the different cities. As a mode of classification a sample of nine cities have been ordered from evening to morning. Some cities seem to be more active in the morning and other in the evening. Dubai and Istanbul for example are clearly more active in the late hours, where on the other end Cairo and Bogota are early birds and tweet a lot more in the morning. The US cities Boston and Atlanta have both a peak in the morning and in the evening.
Image by single-blogs for NCL / timeRose diagram of 24 hours - showing twitter activity in percentage of total tweets by hour of the day. Covers the cities Cairo, Bogota, Mexico City, Manila, Atlanta ,Boston Los Angeles, Istanbul, Dubai.
Similarly there are preferences regarding the weekdays. Not all areas tweet the same day. The early week days, Monday and Tuesday are generally less active than the rest of the week. Manila clearly prefers the weekend, where Cairo, Istanbul and Mexico City prefer the end of the week, Thursday and Friday. Dubai and especially Bogota have the least differences between the weekdays with very similar numbers of tweets through out the week.
Image by single-blogs for NCL / timeRose diagram of the weekdays - showing twitter activity in percentage of total tweets sent by day of the week. Covers the cities Cairo, Bogota, Mexico City, Manila, Atlanta ,Boston Los Angeles, Istanbul, Dubai.
As a preview below you find the slides for the talk tonight. Some of the stuff has featured earlier on the blog. So you will ind some background there. You might try the tweetography tag or the twitter tag to dig down. It might involve a bit of scrolling to get to the earlier posts. Anyway if you have time come along tonight for the live update.
Senin, 21 Februari 2011
Urban Memories - Narrative and Time
I will be giving a lecture today at the Bartlett School of Architecture to the MA Urban Design course students. The course is directed by Professor Colin Fournier.
My talk will focus on the spatial dimension of narratives and time in everyday urban live. The different topics discussed are Repetition, with an introduction to the machine city and different types of cycles to create an identity of the place, Time as a framework of organisation, Space as a result of body physicality and experience, Pattern as a combination of time and space and a conception of place as mental maps to Morphology as the physical result of the narrative created.
As illustration material serves the data collected via the twitter microblogging site, the New City Landscape maps, as well as urbanDiary GPS tracking data.
My talk will focus on the spatial dimension of narratives and time in everyday urban live. The different topics discussed are Repetition, with an introduction to the machine city and different types of cycles to create an identity of the place, Time as a framework of organisation, Space as a result of body physicality and experience, Pattern as a combination of time and space and a conception of place as mental maps to Morphology as the physical result of the narrative created.
As illustration material serves the data collected via the twitter microblogging site, the New City Landscape maps, as well as urbanDiary GPS tracking data.
Senin, 08 November 2010
Community Remote Sensing - CRS
Notes on the GSA Annual Meeting 2010 in Denver, where I presented a NCL paper during the Community Remote Sensing session.
The session was organised by the Susanne Metlay for the Secure World Foundation and drew together a range of people working on crowd sourcing, online data mining and collaborative mapping. The range of work presented was very broad, but the overarching idea was to bring together these experts and in a concluding plenary discussion the way forward for an emerging field. As an overarching title the term Community Remote Sensing CRS was suggested, hence the title of the session.
Speaking of the variety of presented projects, it ranged from crowd sourcing projects, mainly smart phone based, for mapping and observing the nature environment. For example observations contributing to the national species registry, the mapping the spreading and growth of invasive weeds or the tracking of sessional changes from crowd sourced reports on the state of flowers and threes.
A major group of project was looking at disaster management, with data and information gathering and rapid response. The focus here was on using the crowd as well as the wider science and academic community to quickly mobilise and coordinate recourses in the wake of a disaster event.
A third group of projects focused on distributed systems to generate a wealth of detailed local data by piggybacking on existing resources, such as collecting weather and road information data through a network of vehicle based sensor information.
A fourth area was the mining of existing or online generated information of web services such as social networks.
The Session was opened with a presentation by William Gail from Microsoft Startup Business Group who talked about his vision of a CRS discipline, high lighting the potential as well a the challenges and problems that need to be faced.
Among the main aspects are the question of privacy and ethics, the validation and accuracy of the data as well as the question of ownership. These questions or topics continuously popped up during the whole session in various combinations and contexts.
Gail gave an overview of existing projects and efforts without getting too attached to a certain direction or solution. While trying to setting up CRS as a emerging fields this was essential.
The Virtual Disaster Visualiser VDV software was on the examples focusing on rapid disaster response and offers a platform for viewing, mapping, sharing and handling large quantities of aerial photo based surface information. It for example assists with remote sensing disaster damage assessment and supports the collaboration of numerous contributors and experts. The VDV was developed at the EPIcentre at UCL by Enrica1 Verrucci, Beverley Asams and Tiziana Rossetto.
The software was successfully deployed in the wake of the Haiti earth quake in 2010. The platform was used to coordinate surveys and allowed a team of 150 experts to asses the area of 1000km square within only 96 hours. For this the base data from the satellite processed by SERTIT which documented especially the port au prince area just four hours after the earth quake with a resolution of about 25cm square.
Image taken from National Geographic Blog / Screen view of the Virtual Disaster Viewer.
Two projects from UCLA, presented and co developed by Eric Graham demonstrated the potential of crowd sourced botanical data collections. The 'What's Invasive!' weed project made use of an Android platform application to map and monitor the distribution and growth of invasive weed species in the United States. The idea is to let volunteers submit location based and image information on the weed they happen to find. To do so the software would offer a location based list of weeds that can be reported. With one click the information is submitted to a central server and mapped in real time. The Android app can be downloaded HERE.
The second project called 'Project BudBurst' is focusing on the tracking of the seasons by collecting plant state information. With this application, also Android based, volunteers can log the progress different plant species make over the course of the year. The plant state is submitted via the app to a central server.
The idea is to get people to observe howler example threes grow buds and start flowering on their daily commute and that these observations can be simple and conveniently reported to simplify the contribution to a nation wide project.
The projects have to show some very promising initial results where the mapping is very successful and accurate as comparison studies show. Furthermore the crowd sourcing aspects allow for a widely distributed collection setup with a lot more reports than individual experts would be able to archive. However the project team has identified the challenges to be with the motivation of volunteers for a continuos contribution rather than one off submissions.
Image taken from Project Bud Burt / A loacation mapped with description popping up on te interactive map.
A massive environmental disaster hit the American Gulf Coast around New Orleans in May this year and the extensive oil spill will dominate the area for years in many ways. From food production, for example sea food businesses, to every day natural impact and animal deaths and large scale loss of habitats.
A local initiative to enable the local population to deal with the intense impact is the NGO Luisiana Bucket Brigade. They where in this from day one and they are locals, which means they know the area and especially they know the people. They got involved with the Grassroot mapping project and implemented it as part of their activities in the Gulf area.
The idea is to produced community sourced mappings of the oil spill. The technique was developed at the MIT by
With cheap parts and simple technique the project manages enable nearly everyone to start doing quality mapping. Their Wiki describes all the details of what is required and how to put it in practice.
The images captures b the flying camera are later on stitched together to a high resolution image that can be used to produce the maps. The flight device not necessarily needs to be a helium balloon, but also can be a kit, large enough to carry the additional weight of the cam.
Image by Cesar Harada & Hunter Daniel / Bay Jimmy, Detail 04, 20100722, for : LA Bucket Brigade | labucketbrigade.org/, with : grassrootsmapping.org/, location : 29.468400 ; -89.911300, time : 2010 July 22 @ 10:30AM
This is of course only a very short and incomplete selection of the presented work. The single-blogs contribution can be found HERE. The potential of community based data collection has been realised and can be taken a step further coming from the web 2.0 idea. Once more this session demonstrated the diversity of the possibilities for applications and utility. On the other hand it has also clearly visualised the questions that need to be addressed, starting with ethical and privacy issues all the way to ownership and authority.
The session was organised by the Susanne Metlay for the Secure World Foundation and drew together a range of people working on crowd sourcing, online data mining and collaborative mapping. The range of work presented was very broad, but the overarching idea was to bring together these experts and in a concluding plenary discussion the way forward for an emerging field. As an overarching title the term Community Remote Sensing CRS was suggested, hence the title of the session.
Speaking of the variety of presented projects, it ranged from crowd sourcing projects, mainly smart phone based, for mapping and observing the nature environment. For example observations contributing to the national species registry, the mapping the spreading and growth of invasive weeds or the tracking of sessional changes from crowd sourced reports on the state of flowers and threes.
A major group of project was looking at disaster management, with data and information gathering and rapid response. The focus here was on using the crowd as well as the wider science and academic community to quickly mobilise and coordinate recourses in the wake of a disaster event.
A third group of projects focused on distributed systems to generate a wealth of detailed local data by piggybacking on existing resources, such as collecting weather and road information data through a network of vehicle based sensor information.
A fourth area was the mining of existing or online generated information of web services such as social networks.
The Session was opened with a presentation by William Gail from Microsoft Startup Business Group who talked about his vision of a CRS discipline, high lighting the potential as well a the challenges and problems that need to be faced.
Among the main aspects are the question of privacy and ethics, the validation and accuracy of the data as well as the question of ownership. These questions or topics continuously popped up during the whole session in various combinations and contexts.
Gail gave an overview of existing projects and efforts without getting too attached to a certain direction or solution. While trying to setting up CRS as a emerging fields this was essential.
The Virtual Disaster Visualiser VDV software was on the examples focusing on rapid disaster response and offers a platform for viewing, mapping, sharing and handling large quantities of aerial photo based surface information. It for example assists with remote sensing disaster damage assessment and supports the collaboration of numerous contributors and experts. The VDV was developed at the EPIcentre at UCL by Enrica1 Verrucci, Beverley Asams and Tiziana Rossetto.
The software was successfully deployed in the wake of the Haiti earth quake in 2010. The platform was used to coordinate surveys and allowed a team of 150 experts to asses the area of 1000km square within only 96 hours. For this the base data from the satellite processed by SERTIT which documented especially the port au prince area just four hours after the earth quake with a resolution of about 25cm square.
Image taken from National Geographic Blog / Screen view of the Virtual Disaster Viewer.
Two projects from UCLA, presented and co developed by Eric Graham demonstrated the potential of crowd sourced botanical data collections. The 'What's Invasive!' weed project made use of an Android platform application to map and monitor the distribution and growth of invasive weed species in the United States. The idea is to let volunteers submit location based and image information on the weed they happen to find. To do so the software would offer a location based list of weeds that can be reported. With one click the information is submitted to a central server and mapped in real time. The Android app can be downloaded HERE.
The second project called 'Project BudBurst' is focusing on the tracking of the seasons by collecting plant state information. With this application, also Android based, volunteers can log the progress different plant species make over the course of the year. The plant state is submitted via the app to a central server.
The idea is to get people to observe howler example threes grow buds and start flowering on their daily commute and that these observations can be simple and conveniently reported to simplify the contribution to a nation wide project.
The projects have to show some very promising initial results where the mapping is very successful and accurate as comparison studies show. Furthermore the crowd sourcing aspects allow for a widely distributed collection setup with a lot more reports than individual experts would be able to archive. However the project team has identified the challenges to be with the motivation of volunteers for a continuos contribution rather than one off submissions.
Image taken from Project Bud Burt / A loacation mapped with description popping up on te interactive map.
A massive environmental disaster hit the American Gulf Coast around New Orleans in May this year and the extensive oil spill will dominate the area for years in many ways. From food production, for example sea food businesses, to every day natural impact and animal deaths and large scale loss of habitats.
A local initiative to enable the local population to deal with the intense impact is the NGO Luisiana Bucket Brigade. They where in this from day one and they are locals, which means they know the area and especially they know the people. They got involved with the Grassroot mapping project and implemented it as part of their activities in the Gulf area.
The idea is to produced community sourced mappings of the oil spill. The technique was developed at the MIT by
With cheap parts and simple technique the project manages enable nearly everyone to start doing quality mapping. Their Wiki describes all the details of what is required and how to put it in practice.
The images captures b the flying camera are later on stitched together to a high resolution image that can be used to produce the maps. The flight device not necessarily needs to be a helium balloon, but also can be a kit, large enough to carry the additional weight of the cam.
Image by Cesar Harada & Hunter Daniel / Bay Jimmy, Detail 04, 20100722, for : LA Bucket Brigade | labucketbrigade.org/, with : grassrootsmapping.org/, location : 29.468400 ; -89.911300, time : 2010 July 22 @ 10:30AM
This is of course only a very short and incomplete selection of the presented work. The single-blogs contribution can be found HERE. The potential of community based data collection has been realised and can be taken a step further coming from the web 2.0 idea. Once more this session demonstrated the diversity of the possibilities for applications and utility. On the other hand it has also clearly visualised the questions that need to be addressed, starting with ethical and privacy issues all the way to ownership and authority.
Selasa, 02 November 2010
New City Landscape - Denver
Denver is with a population of some 600'000 only the 24th biggest city in the US. However, the New City Landscape map generated from one week of tweets send within a 30km radius around the city centre draws out the features really nicely. There is varying activity across the focus area with a main peak over Downtown Denver. Some additional features like the airport draw out nicely.
As usual the green areas and parks are generally empty of tweets. There is however one example in Denver where people have tweeted quit a bit, the denver Standley Lake Peak was a sort of surprise. Can be found on the map towards the top eft, just below the Rocky Mountain Airport Plains.
Denver New City Landscape
Image by single-blogs using the GMap Image Cutter / Denver New City Landscape -Use the Google Maps style zoom function in the top right corner to zoom into the map and explore it in detail. Explore areas you know close up and find new locations you have never heard of. Click HERE for a full screen view.
I am presenting some of the twitter work today at the GSA Annual Meeting 2010 in Denver. It is a session on community remote sensing organised by Suzanne Metlay and William Gail as of GSA Geoinformatics Division; GSA Geoscience Education Division; GSA Geology and Society Division; Secure World Foundation. A presentation preview can be found below:
As usual the maps are also in the tweetography flickr set together with al the previously published maps.
As usual the green areas and parks are generally empty of tweets. There is however one example in Denver where people have tweeted quit a bit, the denver Standley Lake Peak was a sort of surprise. Can be found on the map towards the top eft, just below the Rocky Mountain Airport Plains.
Denver New City Landscape
Image by single-blogs using the GMap Image Cutter / Denver New City Landscape -Use the Google Maps style zoom function in the top right corner to zoom into the map and explore it in detail. Explore areas you know close up and find new locations you have never heard of. Click HERE for a full screen view.
I am presenting some of the twitter work today at the GSA Annual Meeting 2010 in Denver. It is a session on community remote sensing organised by Suzanne Metlay and William Gail as of GSA Geoinformatics Division; GSA Geoscience Education Division; GSA Geology and Society Division; Secure World Foundation. A presentation preview can be found below:
As usual the maps are also in the tweetography flickr set together with al the previously published maps.
Rabu, 27 Oktober 2010
Stadtraum - UrbanDiary
The data collection in Basel is well under way and the second series of participants are now collecting data for the study. For ten people we already have a complete set of two month of tracking data using the new GPS trackers.
There are a number of very interesting observations that has been made also in comparison with the previous study undertaken in London. The scale differences are striking what is a regular commute is completely different. It might be on average one hour for Londoner, but is probably stretched for Basler if it is thirty minutes. As a consequence work and leisure journeys do tend to much more similar in Basel than in London where certain trips have a stronger specification.
However there are a lot of similarities too. Foremost the extension of the direct and persistent interaction in the urban realm is very much directed and selective. There is in both cases a strong local activity around the 'known' territory.
The study was also presented to representatives of the Basel Department of Town Planning who were interested to hear about the research undertaken. A summary of the presentation can be previewed below, it is in German though, but there are enough images to illustrate and communicate.
Essentially it explains the method and uses illustration taken from all three sample studies in London, Plymouth and London. The Basel data is still in development so only some preliminary information could be provided. However the maps 'drawn' by the participants using the GPS, beautifully illustrate the focus each individual puts on the city.
Image by single-blogs / Visualisation of GPS tracked movement in Basel, Switzerland. The nine different individuals have been tracked over a longer period and it beautifully shows the individual focus on the city that is developed.
There are a number of very interesting observations that has been made also in comparison with the previous study undertaken in London. The scale differences are striking what is a regular commute is completely different. It might be on average one hour for Londoner, but is probably stretched for Basler if it is thirty minutes. As a consequence work and leisure journeys do tend to much more similar in Basel than in London where certain trips have a stronger specification.
However there are a lot of similarities too. Foremost the extension of the direct and persistent interaction in the urban realm is very much directed and selective. There is in both cases a strong local activity around the 'known' territory.
The study was also presented to representatives of the Basel Department of Town Planning who were interested to hear about the research undertaken. A summary of the presentation can be previewed below, it is in German though, but there are enough images to illustrate and communicate.
Essentially it explains the method and uses illustration taken from all three sample studies in London, Plymouth and London. The Basel data is still in development so only some preliminary information could be provided. However the maps 'drawn' by the participants using the GPS, beautifully illustrate the focus each individual puts on the city.
Image by single-blogs / Visualisation of GPS tracked movement in Basel, Switzerland. The nine different individuals have been tracked over a longer period and it beautifully shows the individual focus on the city that is developed.
Senin, 04 Oktober 2010
GPS and Twitter - Tracking in Urban Environments
I will be meeting with a group from Steer Davis Gleaves to discuss the value and possibilities of crowd sourcing daat for transport planning. We'll be focusing on twitter, but will also look at the GS stuff.
Kamis, 02 September 2010
RGS Annual Conference 2010
Today is RGS day, actually RGS has been on since Tuesday this week. RGS is the Royal Geographical Society: 'We are the learned society and professional body for geography'. The annual conference of course is a big event, prestigious and well attended we hope. THe official twitter tag for this conference is #RGSIBG10. So look out for this to follow the latest news on the day.
I will be presenting a paper in the session 143 organised by James Cheshire from spatialanlaysis. The session title is: Postgraduate Session: Analysing and Visualizing Social Change
THe paper I will be presenting is on aspects of routine migration in the city, the daily migration from home to work and changes in location on short term. I will be using both, the study using GPS to trace individuals in urban areas as well as the more recent twitter mined data with the New City Landscapes to illustrate these aspects. Important key elements will be time obviously, but also a number of aspects of repetition, memory and the creation of identity. There will also be a focus on visualisation using the Hagerstrand time-space aquarium.
The abstract of the paper:
The research project investigates temporal spatial patterns of citizens. For the study we are using GPS technology to track participants over a longer period to record repetitive activities. The collected data, through the GPS has a timestamp and a location, serves well this purpose. However the challenge is the visualisation and the interpretation of the data. To approach this problem the ‘technical’ GPS data is complemented with individual information collected through interviews and mental maps. This set of data helps to create a context, in which the aspects of temporal experience can be studied as an additional dimension to urban life. Visualisation concentrates on time budget in the spatial context taking location features into account as part of the memory as well as the creation of identity. For visualisation purposes a number of approaches are used, from time-space aquariums to animations.
I will be presenting a paper in the session 143 organised by James Cheshire from spatialanlaysis. The session title is: Postgraduate Session: Analysing and Visualizing Social Change
THe paper I will be presenting is on aspects of routine migration in the city, the daily migration from home to work and changes in location on short term. I will be using both, the study using GPS to trace individuals in urban areas as well as the more recent twitter mined data with the New City Landscapes to illustrate these aspects. Important key elements will be time obviously, but also a number of aspects of repetition, memory and the creation of identity. There will also be a focus on visualisation using the Hagerstrand time-space aquarium.
The abstract of the paper:
The research project investigates temporal spatial patterns of citizens. For the study we are using GPS technology to track participants over a longer period to record repetitive activities. The collected data, through the GPS has a timestamp and a location, serves well this purpose. However the challenge is the visualisation and the interpretation of the data. To approach this problem the ‘technical’ GPS data is complemented with individual information collected through interviews and mental maps. This set of data helps to create a context, in which the aspects of temporal experience can be studied as an additional dimension to urban life. Visualisation concentrates on time budget in the spatial context taking location features into account as part of the memory as well as the creation of identity. For visualisation purposes a number of approaches are used, from time-space aquariums to animations.
Rabu, 01 September 2010
CRESC - Data Mining and Crowd Sourcing
I will be at the CRESC 'The Social Life od Methods' conference in Oxford today. The conference takes place at St. Huges College and covers different aspects of methods in social sciences.
I am presenting a joint 'CASA' paper focusing on data mining and crowd sourcing. The team behind it is Andy Hudson-Smith from Digital Urban, Richard Milton, Steven Gray and myself. We are focusing on the development of tools that make use of the recent wave of digital social networking tools and methods.
For the first time it is possible to gather large scale social data sets containing detailed information about activity, interests and network of thousands of individuals. This is extremely exciting and interesting for spatial analysis. The city is not just a built artefact, but a living structure continuously changing with the inhabitants shaping it. Using this data we can start to understand the immediate connection between the environment and individual a well as collective decision making and opinion.
Image by single-blogs / A visualisation of my over 1200 facebook connections and how they are connected, using the Gephi software.
To illustrate this I will be using three recent projects that we have developed here at CASA. It will feature the 'Mood Mapper' turned into MapTube. The brand new Survey Mapper system that allows everyone to set up a survey and get the result on a map and the New City Landscapes generated from tweets sent in an urban area.
From the abstract:
The paper describes how we are harnessing the power of Web 2.0 and related technologies to create new methods to collect, map and visualise geocoded data as an aid to further our understanding of social, spatial and temporal change in cities. The authors begin with an insight into the ‘Ask’ survey system developed as part of the National infrastructure for e-Social Simulation (NeISS) project. ‘Ask’ provides social scientists with series of online tools to collect and visualise data in near real-time allowing the creation of ‘mood maps’ linked to a backend geographic information system. We examine the systems use to date, specifically by the BBC, and the implications of allowing anyone to survey the world, continent, nation, city or indeed street via our social survey system.
The authors expand on the concept with the additional of data mining social networks such as Twitter to collect, map and analyse social related data. Developed around the populist name ‘Tweet-o-Meter’ we have developed a system to mine data within a 30 km range of urban areas, focusing on New York, London, Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Moscow, Sydney, Toronto, San Francisco, Barcelona and Oslo. The system mines all geo-located Tweets creating a vast database of social science data and numerous challenges for both visualization and analysis. The paper concludes by arguing that data mining has notable potential to aid our understanding of the complex social, spatial and temporal structures of the city environment.
Image by single-blogs / Moscow New City Landscape, explore areas you know close up and find new locations you have never heard of. Click HERE for a full screen view.
I am presenting a joint 'CASA' paper focusing on data mining and crowd sourcing. The team behind it is Andy Hudson-Smith from Digital Urban, Richard Milton, Steven Gray and myself. We are focusing on the development of tools that make use of the recent wave of digital social networking tools and methods.
For the first time it is possible to gather large scale social data sets containing detailed information about activity, interests and network of thousands of individuals. This is extremely exciting and interesting for spatial analysis. The city is not just a built artefact, but a living structure continuously changing with the inhabitants shaping it. Using this data we can start to understand the immediate connection between the environment and individual a well as collective decision making and opinion.
Image by single-blogs / A visualisation of my over 1200 facebook connections and how they are connected, using the Gephi software.
To illustrate this I will be using three recent projects that we have developed here at CASA. It will feature the 'Mood Mapper' turned into MapTube. The brand new Survey Mapper system that allows everyone to set up a survey and get the result on a map and the New City Landscapes generated from tweets sent in an urban area.
From the abstract:
The paper describes how we are harnessing the power of Web 2.0 and related technologies to create new methods to collect, map and visualise geocoded data as an aid to further our understanding of social, spatial and temporal change in cities. The authors begin with an insight into the ‘Ask’ survey system developed as part of the National infrastructure for e-Social Simulation (NeISS) project. ‘Ask’ provides social scientists with series of online tools to collect and visualise data in near real-time allowing the creation of ‘mood maps’ linked to a backend geographic information system. We examine the systems use to date, specifically by the BBC, and the implications of allowing anyone to survey the world, continent, nation, city or indeed street via our social survey system.
The authors expand on the concept with the additional of data mining social networks such as Twitter to collect, map and analyse social related data. Developed around the populist name ‘Tweet-o-Meter’ we have developed a system to mine data within a 30 km range of urban areas, focusing on New York, London, Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Moscow, Sydney, Toronto, San Francisco, Barcelona and Oslo. The system mines all geo-located Tweets creating a vast database of social science data and numerous challenges for both visualization and analysis. The paper concludes by arguing that data mining has notable potential to aid our understanding of the complex social, spatial and temporal structures of the city environment.
Image by single-blogs / Moscow New City Landscape, explore areas you know close up and find new locations you have never heard of. Click HERE for a full screen view.
Selasa, 27 Juli 2010
Spatial Narratives and the Construction of Space
I will be giving a presentation tonight in Moscow at the Strelka Institute for Architecture, Media and Design.
We will have some special guest linking in via Skype. This will be Ralph Barthel to talk about the chalenges of the Tales of Things project and later on Steven Gray explaining more about Tweet-O-Meter, twitter mining and the brand new Survey Mapper tool.
The presentation is organised into parts, first looking at technology and urban sensing using virtual media data and in the second part will be focusing on the experiential part of the city and every day narratives.
Most of the examples you can find scattered across the single-blogs blog, but are here collected.
One additional feature for tonight is the New City Landscape map for Moscow. For the occasion we have generated a new tweetography map for the capital of Russia. We will put it live in the style of London, Paris, New York and Munich tomorrow.
We will have some special guest linking in via Skype. This will be Ralph Barthel to talk about the chalenges of the Tales of Things project and later on Steven Gray explaining more about Tweet-O-Meter, twitter mining and the brand new Survey Mapper tool.
The presentation is organised into parts, first looking at technology and urban sensing using virtual media data and in the second part will be focusing on the experiential part of the city and every day narratives.
Most of the examples you can find scattered across the single-blogs blog, but are here collected.
One additional feature for tonight is the New City Landscape map for Moscow. For the occasion we have generated a new tweetography map for the capital of Russia. We will put it live in the style of London, Paris, New York and Munich tomorrow.
Minggu, 25 Juli 2010
Strelka VVSR - Seasons in the City and дача
The dynamic and changing character of the social media data was the big topic today. We discussed the different conceptions of time in everyday life, culture, religion, science and society as well as the implications of working with dynamic data in general. Similar the processing programming was focused on the implementation of first sketches of visualisations. However there were a lot of difficulties to be solved surrounding the data as well as the platforms. Especially the clash of the character sets was something that needed to be resolved for every step.
The times here in Russia run a bit different everything is even later than it would be in London. Days stat at mid day lunch doesn't exist and dinner comes in around ten. Almost a 6 hour, quarter of a day shift. At the same time Moscow seems to be very quiet. COming from the busy London streets into a real hot, summery Moscow is like a full stop. Street appear extremely wide for the few cars and crossroads wast. The sort of dimensions you even think twice about crossing even with the green man showing.
Image taken from GoEa Aerial imagery / Datcha housing area around Moscow.
Driving round the centre, Kremlin, makes one wonder where everyone is, where the traffic is. They must be around the corner at the red light and will any second flood the roads around you? No, actually not, there is no one. Summer in Moscow, especially on weekends is quite calm. People prefer to go out to the country side where they ave their 'дача', 'Landhaus', second home, summer house. This seems to be a very strong tradition and this cyclical moving out of the city during the summer period is very popular. An estimated 25% of the families living in urbann areas actually have such a country house.
Also Vladimir Putin has his Dacha, like many of the new Russian elite. However with this boom the tradition changed form the soviet stile garden house buit from wood in to brick and concreet, multy story buildings.
Image taken from GoEa Aerial imagery / Datcha housing area around Moscow.
The popularity shows on the map and vast areas around Moscow and presumably also the other Russian cities are covered with this country style houses. On aerial imagery, from the distance it almost looks a bit similar to allotments. And in fact this is what the house surrounding land was used for a few decades ago. It was one of the main sources for people living in the city for fresh vegetables and similar goods.
The typology is loosely grid based and it seems that only very recently, currently in development, planners have adopted the 'Cul-de-sac', suburban style of layout typology, unfortunately.
Again for the records the presentation:
The times here in Russia run a bit different everything is even later than it would be in London. Days stat at mid day lunch doesn't exist and dinner comes in around ten. Almost a 6 hour, quarter of a day shift. At the same time Moscow seems to be very quiet. COming from the busy London streets into a real hot, summery Moscow is like a full stop. Street appear extremely wide for the few cars and crossroads wast. The sort of dimensions you even think twice about crossing even with the green man showing.
Image taken from GoEa Aerial imagery / Datcha housing area around Moscow.
Driving round the centre, Kremlin, makes one wonder where everyone is, where the traffic is. They must be around the corner at the red light and will any second flood the roads around you? No, actually not, there is no one. Summer in Moscow, especially on weekends is quite calm. People prefer to go out to the country side where they ave their 'дача', 'Landhaus', second home, summer house. This seems to be a very strong tradition and this cyclical moving out of the city during the summer period is very popular. An estimated 25% of the families living in urbann areas actually have such a country house.
Also Vladimir Putin has his Dacha, like many of the new Russian elite. However with this boom the tradition changed form the soviet stile garden house buit from wood in to brick and concreet, multy story buildings.
Image taken from GoEa Aerial imagery / Datcha housing area around Moscow.
The popularity shows on the map and vast areas around Moscow and presumably also the other Russian cities are covered with this country style houses. On aerial imagery, from the distance it almost looks a bit similar to allotments. And in fact this is what the house surrounding land was used for a few decades ago. It was one of the main sources for people living in the city for fresh vegetables and similar goods.
The typology is loosely grid based and it seems that only very recently, currently in development, planners have adopted the 'Cul-de-sac', suburban style of layout typology, unfortunately.
Again for the records the presentation:
Sabtu, 24 Juli 2010
Strelka VVSR Workshop Day One (two)
After having missed the official start of the workshop yesterday I joined the workshop team. Today was not only very hot but also very productive. Moscow is some 39C, maybe more depending on the source. So the water spender machines are in constan use and the cartridges have to be changed frequently.
Topics for today were processing, processing and processing. In between we had some short exercises concerning the interactions between virtual and real spaces. With this we want the students to start investigating in many directions and from the beginning to mix both worlds. YOu can follow the progress either on the workshop facebook page anOtherWorkshop, or on twitter @anOtherWorkshop with the #vvsr tag.
In a simple string of actions parameters for twitter mining were extracted from virtual user generated online information that was recreated and reinterpreted and put back online. The resulting stories of object and place produced a list of key search terms. Surprisingly there were many very successful search terms found in this way maybe no one would have thought of otherwise. It turned out that cleaning and smoke and pipe are actually very popular words in the world of Russian twitter users.
In a simple processing query, the terms were requested through the twitter api and visualised according to the day of the week, in columns and time of the day, in rows.
Image taken from the flickr account of anOtherWorkshop, generated by Yulia and Masha / This is using the Russian search term "труба" ("pipe"). Basically through out the week people are talking about pipe.
The tool that offers the most direct interface between the real world and the virtual literally is the Tales of Things. The platform to link memories, stories and thought via virtual content to any real world object. Obviously the students liked this hands on and easy accessible tool and started to log their stories.
There is the wonder full tale of the ghost of the house, who lives on in one of the buildings on the island and sort of leads it in to a positive future (from his seat in the rain pipes). Or there is the sad-sweet description of the girl/young lady who's face is printed on the chocolate bar that used to be produced on site on the island, or the confusion created by words if they are used in the same sense in a different context.
Image taken from the flickr account of anOtherWorkshop, generated by Zvezdnii and his colleague / The "object" - chocolate bar, sportig the girl on the cover. It is actually a rather disturbing facial expression if you think about it for a moment.
The day was rounded off with a late night lecture at Strelka by Hans Ulrich Obrist starting only after 10 pm local time. The talk is covered by single-blogs on twitter.
Just for the records the input presentation given today.
Topics for today were processing, processing and processing. In between we had some short exercises concerning the interactions between virtual and real spaces. With this we want the students to start investigating in many directions and from the beginning to mix both worlds. YOu can follow the progress either on the workshop facebook page anOtherWorkshop, or on twitter @anOtherWorkshop with the #vvsr tag.
In a simple string of actions parameters for twitter mining were extracted from virtual user generated online information that was recreated and reinterpreted and put back online. The resulting stories of object and place produced a list of key search terms. Surprisingly there were many very successful search terms found in this way maybe no one would have thought of otherwise. It turned out that cleaning and smoke and pipe are actually very popular words in the world of Russian twitter users.
In a simple processing query, the terms were requested through the twitter api and visualised according to the day of the week, in columns and time of the day, in rows.
Image taken from the flickr account of anOtherWorkshop, generated by Yulia and Masha / This is using the Russian search term "труба" ("pipe"). Basically through out the week people are talking about pipe.
The tool that offers the most direct interface between the real world and the virtual literally is the Tales of Things. The platform to link memories, stories and thought via virtual content to any real world object. Obviously the students liked this hands on and easy accessible tool and started to log their stories.
There is the wonder full tale of the ghost of the house, who lives on in one of the buildings on the island and sort of leads it in to a positive future (from his seat in the rain pipes). Or there is the sad-sweet description of the girl/young lady who's face is printed on the chocolate bar that used to be produced on site on the island, or the confusion created by words if they are used in the same sense in a different context.
Image taken from the flickr account of anOtherWorkshop, generated by Zvezdnii and his colleague / The "object" - chocolate bar, sportig the girl on the cover. It is actually a rather disturbing facial expression if you think about it for a moment.
The day was rounded off with a late night lecture at Strelka by Hans Ulrich Obrist starting only after 10 pm local time. The talk is covered by single-blogs on twitter.
Just for the records the input presentation given today.
Rabu, 21 April 2010
Space Time an Overview of Repetition
I will be giving a talk today at the London Metropolitan University at the MA Cities, Design and Urban Cultures lead by Ines Weizmann.
The topic is Time Space focusing on how the space is influenced by the cultural convention over time. If we define time as a cultural convention, in the sense of Thrift, I will ask the question of what the meaning of space can be. My Hypothesis for this talk is that both are constructed through the elements of time and place, in the sense of Tuan. An important role also plays the visualisation of the problem and I will use the well know examples by Hagerstrand and Debord to illustrate the problems surrounding the politics of temporal patterns. We will look at aspects of repetition and cycles regarding the question of contraints in the sense of Hagerstrand. His Time-Space Aquarium has widely been critisised for a number of points, and his definition of the contrains is one of them. In terms of politics of the temporal pattern I guess this aspect is crucia. Hagerstrand defines three types of constraint. Capability constraints refer to the limitations on human movement due to physical or biological factors. Thus, for example, a person cannot be in two places at one time. A person also cannot travel instantaneously from one location to another.
Coupling addresses the fact that in certain situations individuals are connected to one another, as for example in the morning rush hour.
Authority is a ‘domain’ or area that is controlled by a group or institution restricting access for other individuals or groups as in a hospital, a military base or a private club.
In an overall sense the concept of constraints refers to the possibility of an unconstrained existence. This view is fundamental to the urbanMachine, the setting were we are all users of the city as a service provided.
Aspects of creation and capacity to shape the immediate surrounding could become important in a new way to look at urban planning. In the context of current technologies and emerging applications, where temporal information, services and participation play a dominant role, I believe it would be important to rethink these static concepts.
The topic is Time Space focusing on how the space is influenced by the cultural convention over time. If we define time as a cultural convention, in the sense of Thrift, I will ask the question of what the meaning of space can be. My Hypothesis for this talk is that both are constructed through the elements of time and place, in the sense of Tuan. An important role also plays the visualisation of the problem and I will use the well know examples by Hagerstrand and Debord to illustrate the problems surrounding the politics of temporal patterns. We will look at aspects of repetition and cycles regarding the question of contraints in the sense of Hagerstrand. His Time-Space Aquarium has widely been critisised for a number of points, and his definition of the contrains is one of them. In terms of politics of the temporal pattern I guess this aspect is crucia. Hagerstrand defines three types of constraint. Capability constraints refer to the limitations on human movement due to physical or biological factors. Thus, for example, a person cannot be in two places at one time. A person also cannot travel instantaneously from one location to another.
Coupling addresses the fact that in certain situations individuals are connected to one another, as for example in the morning rush hour.
Authority is a ‘domain’ or area that is controlled by a group or institution restricting access for other individuals or groups as in a hospital, a military base or a private club.
In an overall sense the concept of constraints refers to the possibility of an unconstrained existence. This view is fundamental to the urbanMachine, the setting were we are all users of the city as a service provided.
Aspects of creation and capacity to shape the immediate surrounding could become important in a new way to look at urban planning. In the context of current technologies and emerging applications, where temporal information, services and participation play a dominant role, I believe it would be important to rethink these static concepts.
Selasa, 30 Maret 2010
Presentaion Tool as You Dream it
Prezi the tool you have been dreaming of ever since you were forced to use powerpoint for the first time. Finally these dreadful times are over! Prezi is here and it work! There is little to be said just head over to Prezi and start using it. Alternatively you stay here and test it right below with the embedded presentation. Use the arrow to click through, once you feel comfortable you can freely interact and drag the canvas with the mouse or zoom in and out with the moue weel or trackpad gesture. Note, I had problems loading this particular prezi with my chrome browser. I am having an issue with flash, safari and firefox should be safe.
However if you are still here, or you have come back, here is some more information on what it is and what it ca do.
It is a flash based application that will allow you to present content in a non linear way. You re working on a single infinite canvas, on which you can arrange content. Double click anywhere to write text, add images or shapes. It works all intuitively and is graphically stylish from the beginning.
The structuring is archived foremost by panning the canvas and the zooming in or out on content. These simple gestures make for extremely powerful tools and together with the stylish camera animation the result is astonishing.
The zooming is applied already while populating the canvas. By zooming in, performing gestures know from digital map navigation, a certain hierarchy is established. Text size for example will be directly adjusted to the current zoom level. There are virtually no limitations to the zoom level. This in it selve is already an extreme feature that can be used to surprise the audience. Details can be unveiled while the show progresse, elements that were only burred lines will suddenly be the important points. This will definitely engage the audience.
The panning or sequencial camera movement is applied by a separat tool as a path of numbered dots. O course they will be invisible in presentation mode. The panning is not restricted to horizontal and vertical movement, ut can aso be rotations and with a cleaver integration this too will definitely engage.
For me the online version is definitely more interesting. Having a fast internet connection helps. The very first question then is what kind of web content can be integrated. Here the functions are limited, but the most important feature works, videos can be embedded vi youtube. Simple put the link as text on the canvas. The clip will be shown just there, however an internet connection is required.
Presentations can be either put together on line in your web browser or you can download a desktop client. The final product can either be presented online or be downloaded and be shown locally. To present locally you don't need any extra software this will be integrated.
This is a really cool tool, with the downside of the price tag. There is a free version that will have a prezi watermark on it, next up will set you back $60 or then $160 per year. If you have to give a few presentation a year and you want to spice them up while having fun this product is definitely worth it! There is also an academic license available, a great option.
So far I have been using Google docs to do my presentations, mainly because it was a simple solution to have the content I wanted to show online. I have to say, that I actually dont like it, the graphics and the interface are just horrible and the options are very limited, which in it selve is not a bad thing. But if elements can not be arranged or scaled properly, combined with limited font and colour options, it becomes extremely difficult to create a nice sheet. Also the presentation options were constantly limited to the browser window and the biggest thing on the screen was usually the Google logo. Prezi is a lot slicker and offers stile out of the box. The potential of the nonlinear structure and the power of the zoom are a revelation. For me this is definitely one of the softwares of the year! And it comes with a cool Twitter support.
Thanks for the link go to urbagram
However if you are still here, or you have come back, here is some more information on what it is and what it ca do.
It is a flash based application that will allow you to present content in a non linear way. You re working on a single infinite canvas, on which you can arrange content. Double click anywhere to write text, add images or shapes. It works all intuitively and is graphically stylish from the beginning.
The structuring is archived foremost by panning the canvas and the zooming in or out on content. These simple gestures make for extremely powerful tools and together with the stylish camera animation the result is astonishing.
The zooming is applied already while populating the canvas. By zooming in, performing gestures know from digital map navigation, a certain hierarchy is established. Text size for example will be directly adjusted to the current zoom level. There are virtually no limitations to the zoom level. This in it selve is already an extreme feature that can be used to surprise the audience. Details can be unveiled while the show progresse, elements that were only burred lines will suddenly be the important points. This will definitely engage the audience.
The panning or sequencial camera movement is applied by a separat tool as a path of numbered dots. O course they will be invisible in presentation mode. The panning is not restricted to horizontal and vertical movement, ut can aso be rotations and with a cleaver integration this too will definitely engage.
For me the online version is definitely more interesting. Having a fast internet connection helps. The very first question then is what kind of web content can be integrated. Here the functions are limited, but the most important feature works, videos can be embedded vi youtube. Simple put the link as text on the canvas. The clip will be shown just there, however an internet connection is required.
Presentations can be either put together on line in your web browser or you can download a desktop client. The final product can either be presented online or be downloaded and be shown locally. To present locally you don't need any extra software this will be integrated.
This is a really cool tool, with the downside of the price tag. There is a free version that will have a prezi watermark on it, next up will set you back $60 or then $160 per year. If you have to give a few presentation a year and you want to spice them up while having fun this product is definitely worth it! There is also an academic license available, a great option.
So far I have been using Google docs to do my presentations, mainly because it was a simple solution to have the content I wanted to show online. I have to say, that I actually dont like it, the graphics and the interface are just horrible and the options are very limited, which in it selve is not a bad thing. But if elements can not be arranged or scaled properly, combined with limited font and colour options, it becomes extremely difficult to create a nice sheet. Also the presentation options were constantly limited to the browser window and the biggest thing on the screen was usually the Google logo. Prezi is a lot slicker and offers stile out of the box. The potential of the nonlinear structure and the power of the zoom are a revelation. For me this is definitely one of the softwares of the year! And it comes with a cool Twitter support.
Thanks for the link go to urbagram
Senin, 22 Maret 2010
Narrative and Time - MArch Urban Design
I will be at the Bartlett School of Architecture to give a talk on Narrative and Time. It will be for the MArch Urban Design students. I have put together elements of my current research work to explore the aspects of the narrative as a specific aspect of time as well as an tool to visualise time. The idea of the story plays an increasing importance in my work. It came up through the tracking project UrbanDiary and now plays an important role in the latest work on Twitter and the Tweet-O-Meter, where the stories old start the spatial investigation.
With this presentation the focus is on the everyday, the ordinary and how we are involve or selves in daily stories as we navigate the passage of time in space. The second part of the presentation focuses on examples of how a narrative can directly be employed for a project. The simpler the story the better and the more powerful the pictures painted. Examples are Senones, a revitalisation project for a small former industrial ‘city’ in France. Where three character played the lead role to explain and illustrate four future scenarios for the valley. Also the Nearness clip, as an interpretation of the ‘Ein Lauf der Dinge’ by Fischli und Weiss. Or there is also the BluDot chair tracking project, furniture stories in New York.
It has changed quite a bit since there is now more data on for example the twitter project. On the other hand there is for this specific talk also an element introducing some of the tools used to handle the data. This will be a range from Google Maps, My Maps, Google Earth to proper GIS. I am not really a professional on any of them, simply a user. Thanks for input on this part go to Dan over at Volunteered Geographic Information.
With this presentation the focus is on the everyday, the ordinary and how we are involve or selves in daily stories as we navigate the passage of time in space. The second part of the presentation focuses on examples of how a narrative can directly be employed for a project. The simpler the story the better and the more powerful the pictures painted. Examples are Senones, a revitalisation project for a small former industrial ‘city’ in France. Where three character played the lead role to explain and illustrate four future scenarios for the valley. Also the Nearness clip, as an interpretation of the ‘Ein Lauf der Dinge’ by Fischli und Weiss. Or there is also the BluDot chair tracking project, furniture stories in New York.
It has changed quite a bit since there is now more data on for example the twitter project. On the other hand there is for this specific talk also an element introducing some of the tools used to handle the data. This will be a range from Google Maps, My Maps, Google Earth to proper GIS. I am not really a professional on any of them, simply a user. Thanks for input on this part go to Dan over at Volunteered Geographic Information.
Kamis, 04 Maret 2010
Digital Footprints - Bartlett AAC
I will be giving a talk today showing investigations on a city level using digital footprint data. I was invited to talk at the MSc for Adaptive Architecture and Computation at the Bartlett School of Architecture. 'Digital Footprints / Tracing Bodies Through Narratives of the Everyday' will be looking at temporal aspects of citizens trails, data collection and visualisation.
New material processed from our Twitter project will feature as an example.
The talk will focus on digital aspects of the data, but still I would like to draw the connections to the physical aspects, as well as very importantly to the people themselves.
After the talk the students will be presenting some of the work they are developing at the moment and have a discussion.
Imge by single-blogs / Story board One.
New material processed from our Twitter project will feature as an example.
The talk will focus on digital aspects of the data, but still I would like to draw the connections to the physical aspects, as well as very importantly to the people themselves.
After the talk the students will be presenting some of the work they are developing at the moment and have a discussion.
Imge by single-blogs / Story board One.
Selasa, 09 Februari 2010
Narrative and Time
I am down in Plymouth today at University to give a lecture at the School of Architecture, Design and Environment with the title Narrative and Time. I have put together elements of my current research work to explore the aspects of the narrative as a specific aspect of time as well as an tool to visualise time. The idea of the story plays an increasing importance in my work. It came up through the tracking project UrbanDiary and now plays an important role in the latest work on Twitter and the Tweet-O-Meter, where the stories old start the spatial investigation.
With this presentation the focus is on the everyday, the ordinary and how we are involve or selves in daily stories as we navigate the passage of time in space. The second part of the presentation focuses on examples of how a narrative can directly be employed for a project. The simpler the story the better and the more powerful the pictures painted. Examples are Senones, a revitalisation project for a small former industrial ‘city’ in France. Where three character played the lead role to explain and illustrate four future scenarios for the valley. Also the Nearness clip, as an interpretation of the ‘Ein Lauf der Dinge’ by Fischli und Weiss. Or there is also the BluDot chair tracking project, furniture stories in New York.
With this presentation the focus is on the everyday, the ordinary and how we are involve or selves in daily stories as we navigate the passage of time in space. The second part of the presentation focuses on examples of how a narrative can directly be employed for a project. The simpler the story the better and the more powerful the pictures painted. Examples are Senones, a revitalisation project for a small former industrial ‘city’ in France. Where three character played the lead role to explain and illustrate four future scenarios for the valley. Also the Nearness clip, as an interpretation of the ‘Ein Lauf der Dinge’ by Fischli und Weiss. Or there is also the BluDot chair tracking project, furniture stories in New York.
Narrative and Time
I am down in Plymouth today at University to give a lecture at the School of Architecture, Design and Environment with the title Narrative and Time. I have put together elements of my current research work to explore the aspects of the narrative as a specific aspect of time as well as an tool to visualise time. The idea of the story plays an increasing importance in my work. It came up through the tracking project UrbanDiary and now plays an important role in the latest work on Twitter and the Tweet-O-Meter, where the stories old start the spatial investigation.
With this presentation the focus is on the everyday, the ordinary and how we are involve or selves in daily stories as we navigate the passage of time in space. The second part of the presentation focuses on examples of how a narrative can directly be employed for a project. The simpler the story the better and the more powerful the pictures painted. Examples are Senones, a revitalisation project for a small former industrial ‘city’ in France. Where three character played the lead role to explain and illustrate four future scenarios for the valley. Also the Nearness clip, as an interpretation of the ‘Ein Lauf der Dinge’ by Fischli und Weiss. Or there is also the BluDot chair tracking project, furniture stories in New York.
With this presentation the focus is on the everyday, the ordinary and how we are involve or selves in daily stories as we navigate the passage of time in space. The second part of the presentation focuses on examples of how a narrative can directly be employed for a project. The simpler the story the better and the more powerful the pictures painted. Examples are Senones, a revitalisation project for a small former industrial ‘city’ in France. Where three character played the lead role to explain and illustrate four future scenarios for the valley. Also the Nearness clip, as an interpretation of the ‘Ein Lauf der Dinge’ by Fischli und Weiss. Or there is also the BluDot chair tracking project, furniture stories in New York.
Selasa, 02 Februari 2010
Stadtkolloquium Workshop
The PhD workshop took place over two days at UCL and was a platform for PhD students to discus their research with other students. The sixteen participants are all doing research related to urban questions. Nevertheless this proofed to be a very divers criteria. It was a mix of geographers, anthropologists, artists, architects and more. Quite a few people didn’t fit only one category so the group was very dynamic.
The workshop was organised by two PhD students from UCL, Sandra Jasper from the Geography department and Luis Moreno from the Urban Laboratory. The concept was for each participant to present condense and short her or his work, followed by a longer plenum discussion and questions. This worked very well, as the organisers managed to structure the program in blocks of two with a similar topic. This would provide a good structure through out. My contribution can be found HERE.
It was for me, with an architectural background, really refreshing to discuss for once amongst other architects. Some completely different topics came up for discussion in this divers setting and this was the real benefit.
Looking thought the notes and the program again the five main topics were Urban Interventions, Urban Complexity, Urban Politics, Writing Spaces and Ethnographic fields.
The most striking discussion, that followed as lead unintentionally through al the topics really was the identity of the profession. What do we do and how does it relate to other filed and the urging questions how can we work together, exchange and develop. What better setting than to discuss it with people in a similar situation with divers backgrounds and interests, but common ground?
I happened to watch Prince-Rasmus’ TED talk the night before the workshop and this probably already set my mind for this debate. He was talking about Architectural Agency.
The workshop was organised by two PhD students from UCL, Sandra Jasper from the Geography department and Luis Moreno from the Urban Laboratory. The concept was for each participant to present condense and short her or his work, followed by a longer plenum discussion and questions. This worked very well, as the organisers managed to structure the program in blocks of two with a similar topic. This would provide a good structure through out. My contribution can be found HERE.
It was for me, with an architectural background, really refreshing to discuss for once amongst other architects. Some completely different topics came up for discussion in this divers setting and this was the real benefit.
Looking thought the notes and the program again the five main topics were Urban Interventions, Urban Complexity, Urban Politics, Writing Spaces and Ethnographic fields.
The most striking discussion, that followed as lead unintentionally through al the topics really was the identity of the profession. What do we do and how does it relate to other filed and the urging questions how can we work together, exchange and develop. What better setting than to discuss it with people in a similar situation with divers backgrounds and interests, but common ground?
I happened to watch Prince-Rasmus’ TED talk the night before the workshop and this probably already set my mind for this debate. He was talking about Architectural Agency.
Kamis, 28 Januari 2010
The Temporal Narrative of Space
I will be at the Stadtkolloquium workshop for the next two days. The Stadtkolloquium is an international PhD workshop for and with PhD students here at UCL. A divers range of research topics related to the city and urban aspects of space will be up for discussion.
I will be presenting a paper with he title ‘UrbanDiary - The Temporal Narrative of Space or the Construction of the Collective and its Visualisation’. The main focus will be on the last part of the manufactured title construction, the construction of a collective and visualisation aspects of temporal data.
A brief summary will form the introduction to enable everyone to understand the extent of the investigation as well as to grasp what field work has so far been undertaken. This set the background for the explanations and ultimately the discussion to follow. The focus of the explanatory part is held on the experience and perception of space. The aim is to build up, on one hand the methods and ways of investigation and mapping , as well as on the other hand introduce the concept of the narrative. Along the story of individual experience, the narrative of the space and ultimately the city is redrawn. It is not so much the mark on the city, but the mark the city leaves on the individual that interests. It is hoped that this also clarifies the position. However, the aspect of the body and is left out of this discussion. This is mainly to not confuse the direction of the discussion.
The Discussion part is dived in to two section, the possibility of a collective construction and the visualisation of the findings. Earlier is illustrated with track records shown on a city level including and connecting to the immediate urban morphology, followed by the UD London map. The new twitter weekend map is then used to illustrate other sources of data that could be interpreted as collective. However this is mainly thought as a starting point for the discussion around the construction of a collective and its value compared to the individual data.
With a activity graph based on time and amount of activity, the transition to the topic of the visualisation is introduced. Also the time-space aquarium will be up for debate and an animated UD London map.
I will be presenting a paper with he title ‘UrbanDiary - The Temporal Narrative of Space or the Construction of the Collective and its Visualisation’. The main focus will be on the last part of the manufactured title construction, the construction of a collective and visualisation aspects of temporal data.
A brief summary will form the introduction to enable everyone to understand the extent of the investigation as well as to grasp what field work has so far been undertaken. This set the background for the explanations and ultimately the discussion to follow. The focus of the explanatory part is held on the experience and perception of space. The aim is to build up, on one hand the methods and ways of investigation and mapping , as well as on the other hand introduce the concept of the narrative. Along the story of individual experience, the narrative of the space and ultimately the city is redrawn. It is not so much the mark on the city, but the mark the city leaves on the individual that interests. It is hoped that this also clarifies the position. However, the aspect of the body and is left out of this discussion. This is mainly to not confuse the direction of the discussion.
The Discussion part is dived in to two section, the possibility of a collective construction and the visualisation of the findings. Earlier is illustrated with track records shown on a city level including and connecting to the immediate urban morphology, followed by the UD London map. The new twitter weekend map is then used to illustrate other sources of data that could be interpreted as collective. However this is mainly thought as a starting point for the discussion around the construction of a collective and its value compared to the individual data.
With a activity graph based on time and amount of activity, the transition to the topic of the visualisation is introduced. Also the time-space aquarium will be up for debate and an animated UD London map.
Langganan:
Postingan (Atom)