Due 1-17 (Maps)

This assignment is done in preparation for Ingrid Burrington‘s visit: in particular, her

  • Workshop on Sunday January 17th (10am-3:30pm in the STUDIO; lunch provided)
  • Artist lecture on Tuesday January 19th (in class, 9am-10am)

This assignment has the following parts:

  1. Kindly review these Additional Course Policies
  2. Computer Prep for Ingrid’s Map Workshop
  3. Some readings on maps
  4. Looking Outwards #2 (Maps)
  5. Be sure to sign up for two days on the IACD Snack list

2. Computer Prep for Sunday Maps Workshop

Ingrid Burrington sent along the following request for things you should prepare on your laptop before her workshop on Sunday January 17th. A quick summary of her requests is below, but please note that Ingrid has provided complete, detailed installation instructions on her github:
https://gist.github.com/lifewinning/743f8c6226acf48c9d2b.

Notes from Ingrid’s workshop can be found here:
http://lifewinning.github.io/maps-cmu/slides/

  • GDAL [Geospatial Data Abstraction Library]
  • GPSBabel
  • Node.js [really doing this to install NPM]
  • Specific geospatial Node modules: togeojson, geojson-merge

In addition, she asks that you take a bunch of photos with your phones, but make sure to turn geotagging on! (We’ll be ripping it from the Exif data of your photos.) You may want to consult this article on how to turn geotagging on or off on iPhones or Android.

During her workshop, Ingrid will focus on the Leaflet/OSM stack, including:

  • Breakdown of Slippy Maps: Digital vs Web (i.e., ArcGIS vs web), Base Layer (tiles)
  • Sources: Proprietary (Google Maps, Bing), OpenStreetMap
  • Mapbox (whole wide-randing suite of tools, some of which we’ll be using, but heart of their project/business model is a pipeline for rendering tiles and generating maps)
  • CartoDB (powerful data storage/querying tool, nice GUIs for visualizations)
    File formats (KML, GeoJSON, TopoJSON, GPX, NMEA, CSV, PostGIS database, etc.)
  • APIs (Google Maps, Mapquest, Geonames, Mapbox Geocoder, Mapzen Search), etc.

… and more.

3. Short Readings About Maps.

It’s the International Year of the Map!

We’ll be doing several readings about maps throughout the semester. I thought we should get started with the following. Please read these before class on Tuesday January 19th:

4. Looking Outwards #02. A Concern about a Map

It’s easy to find maps that are pretty, seductive, and (purportedly) explanatory. Find a map that interests you — and then find a problem with it. (Or at least, identify something about it that concerns you.) Write a Looking Outwards blog post about it. Be sure to include an image of the map, and a reasonable citation (creator’s name, link to article and/or original project). Be sure to explain the failure/flaw/concern/ineffectiveness.

Some possible places to get started: