CityMurmur is a project developed in Madrid as a result of Visualizar'08 workshop at the Medialab Prado in November 2008.
CityMurmur aims at addressing maps and diagrams not as passive representation of realities but as tools for interpretation and action. It wants to build a time-based narration, an historical archive of media coverage of the urban space which is able to reveal some hidden dynamics useful for city policy support, critical media analysis, and sociocultural research.
The project consist of a web site to build different maps. Each map of the city is based on the news collected in the CityMurmur data-base.
The news, and the data that build each map could be fitered accordingly three main parameters: topics, typologies of media, and impacts of the news sources.
The filter panel allows to combine the various topics, typology and impact even through a time lapse. The goal of the project is to show how different media differently describe the urban space through the attention that is payed on each street of the city. In the hypothesis of the increasing importance of the on-line presence in contemporary society, a media geography has been generated intersecting the media scape with the geographical reality of the city.
All comments and ideas about this project are very welcome!!
Gaia
An Atlas of Radical Cartography
How kewl Maps can be! Beautiful website, too.
It reminded me a little bit of these: The (book) project is a little more political than citymurmur.
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An Atlas of Radical Cartography is a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration. The map is inherently political-- and the contributions to this book wear their politics on their sleeves.
An Atlas of Radical Cartography provides a critical foundation for an area of work that bridges art/design, cartography/geography, and activism. The maps and essays in this book provoke new understandings of networks and representations of power and its effects on people and places. These new perceptions of the world are the prerequisites of social change.
* Paperback: 160 pages
* Publisher: Journal of Aesthetics & Protest Press (Mar 2008)
* Language English
* ISBN-10: 0979137721
* ISBN-13: 978-0979137723
* Product Dimensions: 19 x 11.2 x 3.8 cm
Picture to be checked out here:
http://www.dgtf.de/119.html?&tx_ttnews[backPid]=120&tx_ttnews[pS]=1172379430&tx_ttnews[pointer]=4&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=224&cHash=26a90540d8
I have seen similar things - not as advanced - like in urban subculture art events. The Question is – when putting the murmuring a little bit aside: What do we actually see?
The representation reminds me a little bit of 90s Media-Art. It was just nice to see things build up.
But at this time it was much more difficult to retrieve data in the way we can today.
Your project is nice and poetical, but I miss (like all Germans, always) the critical approach a little bit...;)
I agree to your hypotheses: Nowadays its like: If you want to know something about your neighbour, you google him...
What do others say?
red dot winner raul mandru: the surveillance map of the world
I found it interesting that recently a young german was honoured with the red dot in communication design for his interactive game/installation "surveillance map of the world.
Really wonderful piece of information design and - like in city murmur - the concept of showing hidden qualities of informational space.
Raul shares a video of his project and fortunately already joins our network. https://www.designresearchnetwork.org/drn/users/raul_mandru
The Surveillance Map of the World from Raul Mandru on Vimeo.