Some maps were never meant to be georeferenced, and the Peutinger Map is one of them. Here are some nicely scanned versions of its sections.
But I do respect the efforts that some have made to scrape off the locations, do some creative and researched geocoding, and provide scholars with a digital tool that may provide an insight or two. This is a new one that I just learned about, the Omnes Viae. Locations are based on Richard Talbert’s work.
via Neatorama.
Posted in humanities, maps, web mapping
A “Metro Wine Map of France” done by David Gissen. Nicely designed and reminds me that I’d rather be there than here.
from Edible Geography.
Posted in food and drink, maps
One way that spatial literacy is cultivated is the habit of observing (noting, identifying, recognizing) patterns. Once that starts happening, they become your frames of reference. They’re images that your mind draws upon as it makes inferences and organizes information. Pattern, process, pattern, process.
Most geographers I know chose window seats in airplanes, even the geographers with long legs or small bladders. Then Google Earth (and its fellow virtual globes) brought the visual exploratory experience to our desktops. If you find yourself stuck with neither the internet nor an airplane, I highly recommend Bernhard Edmaier’s Patterns of the Earth, and Philip Ball’s Branches and Flow and Shapes. I also like to look through Gregory Dicum’s Window Seat, but I’ve never really used it while I’m flying. I guess you could build a virtual globe lesson with it too.
Speaking of virtual globe lessons, check out Scott Wilkerson’s DELUGE project, one of the best collections of geologically-focused kml files I’ve ever come across. He did a brilliant job of gathering and georeferencing topo maps to support 3D- and spatially-based learning.
Anyone know of other such books and resources?
Posted in design, education, geography, maps, spatial thinking
The location-enabled form of navel-gazing. Wear a GPS for 200 days and then categorize all of your activities. Someone has a lot of time on their hands… But from an anthropological perspective, I appreciate the curiosity of it – http://www.tlclark.com/atlasofthehabitual/index.html.
Posted in daily life, data & visualization, maps, VGI
Movies: a film buff has mapped 9000+ shooting locations that take place in 2000+ movies. My university (Redlands) shows up for its cameo in The Rules of Attraction, a movie that I’ve managed to miss all these years.
Music: for people who associate music with specific places, a new map mashup lets people link to a favorite song snippet at a locale of their choice, world-wide. Music + place = memories.
Posted in maps, music, social media, VGI, web mapping
Today I gave an overview of spatial cognition research to undergrads from Psi Chi and others from the university community. A basic summary of findings from studies of spatial abilities, focusing on mental rotation (because I like Tetris so much), embedded figures, and the like. Much of which I’ve learned myself over the last few years of interacting with the folks from SILC and diving into new areas of spatial research.
I talked about the role of egocentric and allocentric perspectives on You Are Here maps. Navigation made the list too. Like the ways in which GPS usage affects brain activity.
We discussed a bit about spatial language, such as our tendency to associate “north” with the notion of up, and a place more difficult to access, and “south” with down, and easy. And the rare languages within the rare cultures of the world that maintain a geocentric grounding, so you can say, “Hand me the cup that’s sitting on the west side of the table” and everyone around you would know which one you meant. The NY Times had a good story on this a while back.
We aren’t doing any traditional psychology research on spatial abilities at Redlands. Rather we focus largely in the area of spatial relations, as described by Golledge and Stimson a while back. Spatial relations = abilities to recognize spatial distributions and spatial patterns, to connect locations, to associate and correlate spatially distributed phenomena, to comprehend and use spatial hierarchies, to regionalize, to orientate to real-world frames of reference, to imagine maps from verbal descriptions, to sketch maps, to compare maps, and to overlay and dissolve maps. That’s more of what we do here.
So much to learn, so little time.
Posted in education, maps, spatial thinking
The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB just hosted a 2-day mini-conference on GIS and the Humanities.
Friday morning opened with a trio from UCLA. Diane Favro focused on the Digital Roman Forum and spoke of her wish to create digital environments within which we could have a real walk around. She says it’s place, space, and pace we need. Elaine Sullivan, an Egyptologist who worked on the Digital Karnak Project, spoke of the two courses (this one on learning with Google Earth & GIS, and this one that’s focused on research) that she’s leading for UCLA undergrads. It’s funded by their Keck Digital Cultural Mapping program. Several weeks ago several of us from Redlands went to UCLA to watch her students present their projects and left greatly impressed. Tim Tangherlini gave a delightful presentation about his study of the folklore collected by Danish folklorist, Evald Tang Kristensen. Here’s an example, profiling the work of five storytellers through the use of visualizations and mapping. He noted that GIS has helped highlight some of the differences between regional collecting patterns that had otherwise been overlooked.
David Rumsey gave a keynote presentation in which he praised the value of digital tools to enable close, distant, and dynamic readings of maps. His map collection, and his generosity in sharing it with the world, are remarkable contributions to this field of humanities-focused GIS work. He’s currently hard at work to provide us with georeferenced versions of many of his maps. New to me: he does the georeferencing work all himself, and he praises GlobalMapper in helping him do it.
In the afternoon the Stanford group shared the stage. Nicole Coleman and Dan Edelstein shared the Mapping the Republic of Letters. Their “dashboard” interface of information is lovely, and the 2.0 version of the representation of the flow – not yet on the web – is even nicer. Somehow I had the impression that Voltaire was the only subject, but in fact there are many case studies available. Nicole came out with one of my second favorite phrase of the day: “I need a hyperlink into electronic enlightenment.” Zephyr Frank rounded out that session, asking how mapping changes how arguments are made. He shared several components of his Terrain of History project, including this visualization of Yellow Fever and the Rio Slave Market. The Rio Slave Market one is reminiscent of Agent Based Modeling.
The day finished with 3-5 minute lightning talks. The inimitable Waldo Tobler was up first (a lightning talk? really? the man could talk – in an informed manner – for days on end). Top statement of the day goes to Waldo: he’d just heard several Stanford folks talk slightly indirectly and obliquely about how to interpret the role of fluctuating distance in their respective projects, so he opened with, “Of course, Stanford doesn’t have a geography department, so they wouldn’t know about the distance decay function.” [Strong laughter and cheers from the geographers in the room.] Other highlights included Kitty Currier from the UCSB geography department sharing her work with mapping soundscapes; I think this is one of the examples she included of work in London. Finally, some of the Google Earth and Google Maps student projects that UCSB artist Lisa Jevbratt shared were playfully imaginative. The class was focused on these applications as “Artistic Tools and Environments.” Probably will be hard to figure some of them out without some explanation, but they’re worth exploring. Making on-the-fly projections of where we might expect to find a rainbow was a popular one.
Final thoughts for Day 1: the words “compromise” and “imposition” were used a number of times when people commented on their uses of GIS for humanities projects. Much of what we saw focused on digital mapping (i.e., web-based, Flashy or Java scripted animations, or Google Earth/Maps). The use of commercial GIS and “deep” spatial analytical questions, or answers, was largely absent.
Posted in cartography, conferences, geography, GIS, humanities, maps, web mapping
Another clever use of geocoded Tweets, to see where profanity emerges. Patterns of profanity. Profane patterns. http://cartastrophe.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/no-swearing-in-utah/
Here’s the first example I’ve seen of mapping surnames across the United States. Following an example in the United Kingdom too and the global version. Last summer I asked one of the developers of the UK version how conclusions overall are affected by female names changes (for those of us who have adopted our husband’s names). I mean, it’s really just a snap shot in time for last names, right? Just interesting that the UK version, indicating change over time, loses those of us whose birth names no longer register in the system…
Posted in maps
What I like about Steve Benzek’s cartographic work is that it’s all him. He has nothing to prove but to himself; his work reaches the high levels that it does not because it’s part of his day-job, but because it gives him pure and personal satisfaction. Keep up the great work, Steve!
Posted in cartography, maps
diana maps 