Emmet and I are currently preparing our second article for publication. Pretty ace. Here’s part of the abstract -

theirwork is a living mapmaking project, which by its nature rejects a top-down system of classification, or taxonomy, and adopts instead a system of labelling, or what has been dubbed “folksonomy”. Working from a conscious standpoint, which views authoritative and hierarchical taxonomic systems as disempowering, folksonomy enables the theirwork end-user, who works online, to collaboratively generate open-ended labels for map-based data. Forgoing other top-down systems that often produce hegemonic systems and organisations (such as copyrighted base maps and copyrighted Geographical Information Systems data), this essay descriptively reveals how theirwork is developing a rhizomatous model of collection, presentation and dissemination.

Thought I should put up a bit of written work about the project. It is a piece that keeps me inspired to work on the project - a snippet to help focus on ways forward…

This project aims to de-centre governmental legislative practices by creating a highly personalised, visual, kinaesthetic, emotional, sensory and tactile copyright-free bioregional map, via actual bodies walking and talking in real-time space. These bodies are located in the importance of place through the sensory body, and through human interaction. The map aims to make the ‘world into a home’ via re-experiencing the importance of small places through texture, sound, image and emotional experiences through positive localised action. In a sense place is valued and brought into consciousness via theirwork.

Emmet and I met to work in real space over two weeks ago now, and so I realise it’s time for me to finish recording the last bits of that event.

As the weekend drew to a close, we summarised how we were going to approach the next stage of the project. Previous posts about the weekend, detail how we got to this summary. For instance, Conversation versus refined writing / Guided by voices / What kind of data? / Looking back

Emmet highlighted that although we wanted to create an empty framework for people to develop and steer, we still needed an aim, an idea of what we were going to do. We just had to check that we were ready to change direction with it, or even give it up if necessary. He pointed out that Flickr did start with an aim - it did have a substantial framework in place. It gave up this framework.

We will develop the framework and aim, and head in with that, but with an open mind

Then we went back to the past, when we were blogging about the project before this weekend. And asked again, do you go out and use the map, or is it that you spend time online exploring and learning about the place? Or do these things come together somehow, so you can do either? And so are we looking to a future of armchair walkers and out-in-the-field walkers?

Here we realised a common interest - enabling people to explore, as Emmet says, ‘destination walking’. (Emmet will probably talk more about this some time.) When people are heading out to a place, or day dreaming/surfing about heading out, we want them to notice the place they’re heading towards and passing through. Even if it’s in a car, - What’s going on back there? How might things affect them that are going on that day, or indeed any day? I referenced that I wish it to be a tool that’s created in opposition to those car adverts where people are driving through landscapes devoid of animals and other humans, needing to feel protected in their cocoon of a ‘moving bathroom’. (Urry: 2000) And respectively, I want to enrich some of those Sunday walks, as well as some of those Sunday drives. I want to make people think about the outside. So we have to think about how we can enrich ‘destination walking’ and we have to determine how we reach people.

We aim to develop a tool that affects people’s journey - virtual or real - we want to catch their attention

We agreed that the wiki could become the database that drives the map and that the interface will allow soft data to get added. We also agreed that hard data might start to reveal itself. We are assured that handling data like this, keeping it in reserve, will enable us to develop a more suggestive tool. It will also check that the project doesn’t get too data heavy. We know we don’t want the project to be top heavy. In fact, at this point of the discussion, I shared with Emmet old meeting notes from earlier research I had carried out, (that I will put up here later) demonstrating this was the model I was being guided towards in the past. Experts were encouraging me to build a project that was driven government wise, data wise and design wise from the top down.

We are developing a tool by working from the bottom up - by way of workshops, interviews and an open online presence

We concluded with what we have to do

- Set up the framework
- Get hard data set aside
- Run the community focus session
- Prepare to collect soft data
- Then, start to build the interface

We discussed what I have to do next

- If possible, get the focus session in place before the next face-to-face meeting (end of October)
- Study what should follow the focus session, a workshop, or the one to one interviews in the place setting?

One to one interviews will be out in the field
People can deviate from the lakes edge, and so choose where to walk.

We discussed what Emmet has to do next

- Work a way of getting the walk we did off the GPS machine and onto the PC and MAC
- Create a map framework, that doesn’t use Google Maps, with places to enter data. Two layers will develop - a map driven by map software and a comment area driven by wiki software

We discussed what might happen in the future

- The map develops three layers: a map, comment area and GIS data layer
- Then the map develops multiple layers: tagging is introduced - comments, GIS data, images, and photos are tagged

Urry, J. (2000) ‘Inhabiting the car’ Between Nature conference paper: The University of Lancaster, 27 - 30 July.

The map with two layers turns into the map with three layers, then the map with multiple layers
Then you could make visible or plan your own walk-through or search for things you’ve heard about or might find interesting there, like fishing / fish or biking / tracks / eating or pollution / damage…or if a more urban area (hoping that the tool develops to other geographical areas) eco-coffee shop…Say you’re typing in a word search, or you’re writing/recording a story about a walk, and you want related subject matter to appear - it could ‘pool’ around in the form of tags - maybe appearing accross the map. In the end, using more of Emmet’s phraseology, you could help tag up a ’storm’ if you wanted or you could just investigate what’s there.

Joining and taking part in Green Map network action, confirmed in my mind that maps should be about addressing the needs of landscape and not just the needs of people. But it also taught me, that to achieve this, I needed to work with people to create maps from the very beginning of development. The work of Cuba particularly brought this to my attention. Here various processes of song, video, drawing, poem and story making have all contributed to the development of various kinds of maps. Not only that, different generations have been working together to develop maps.

Before I encountered Cuba’s work (at an international mapmaking conference) I had run my first mapmaking end-user workshop.

The end-users averaged the age of 70 and were encouraged to look at the idea of a map that held different landscapes - natural, cultural, energy, built and economic landscapes, and party to these landscapes, to think of these themes: getting educated, getting involved and getting around. I demonstrated these landscapes and themes by way of a diagram that I made. I reproduced the diagram in a 2D, 3D and 5D space to see how they engaged with different materials, and to help break down any barriers that might exist about being able to view or make a difference to such a diagram. The 3D model was made out of knitting needles and polystyrene balls. The 5D model moved in virtual space.

I then directed them to the ‘getting around’ theme and encouraged them to make mindmaps concerning what this subject meant to them.

Out of these mindmaps sub-subjects of ‘getting around’ were developed.

I then sought to highlight the strongest thoughts that came out of the mind maps through animation.

The process of animating the thoughts started to make me think of how you could map peoples’ record of ideas and perhaps start to map thought patterns. Hence, to use Dodge and Kitchen’s explanation, this workshop experimentation became ‘concerned with what might be termed as “people centred” information visualisation.’ (2002: 154).

The experiment started to show how peoples’ ideas flocked to one, two or more subjects that linked. To build the animation the actual process of ‘flocking’ was appropriated. The core source of reference used was a site that holds project work and code by Craig Reynolds. Utilising Craig Reynolds terms, Alignment, Cohesion and Separation, a storyboard was developed.

- Subjects and sub-subjects were represented as columns.
- Thoughts were Boids and could be manipulated about in terms of ‘what constellations were there and what were like city lights receding’ (Gibson 1984: 67). Boids would be the ideas being posted, shared and developed into knowledge.
- Identity tags were assigned to each Boid so they could move around the columns.
- Different mind maps could be colour coded.

Due to time and technical constraints, the Boids could not be steered to avoid or stick to the columns of information. However, what was successful was how three categories were shown to be the core thoughts that came out of the subject ‘getting around’ and if you rolled over them you could see what they were.

Although this project could have been taken much further, and Craig Reynolds programming appropriated much better, one can imagine what a spectacular stage of events this would have been if a ten further workshop mindmaps had been added. These new thoughts could have been directed to follow the others or to split off and make their own columns/swarms, if that is what a community had chosen.

This experiment, as in the last experiment discussed, was developing an interface that was becoming too heavy - too technically driven. I needed to sit back and look at how I was going to develop a tool with end-users that was easy for them to take part in from the beginning, so they in fact became beginner-users right through to end-users - Something where they could input stories, preferences, ideas, searches and data. It also needed to be somewhere I could listen and provide existing data. Vitally, I realised it also needed to be somewhere a programmer could sit down and listen.

Heartened and motivated by the Cuban workshops, I recognised my experiment with the workshop should continue. Pursuing ideas, I ended up driving into the field of qualitative research and ethnographic fieldwork. But once I found this, and started experimenting with it, I was struggling with how to utilise and code such research. My tutor and Emmet, whilst in a great coffee shop on Bricklane, encouraged me to investigate wikis. From here on in I saw the wiki philosophy was one I needed to adopt. And now Emmet is helping to adopt and steer this philosophical and practical approach.

Dodge, M & Kitchen, R (2002) Atlas of Cyberspace, Italy: Addison Wesley
Gibson, W. (1984) Neuromancer, London: Grafton.

Looking at ANTIPODE/2 I realise it’s time to make a note of some previous research I reviewed with Emmet. In some ways like ANTIPODE, I was developing the project in the past by trialling out different ideas that were about interweaving ‘photography and cartographic process to reconstruct in virtual space the landscape’. I had walked the lake with a digital camera and taken pictures every 20 steps. The pictures were then strung together in director and made into a projector file. You could then travel ‘through’ the lake with your mouse. The result was an ‘elevated map’ that you viewed and explored at an eye-level.

If you moved your mouse through the photographs towards the centre of the interface, you moved faster through the images. If you moved your mouse through the images, towards the outside of the interface, you moved as if you were strolling.

strolling

From here, I had imagined, What if you started splitting the screen? The Pillow Book was one of my main sources of inspiration for this - ‘Greenaway uses some of the techniques from Prospero’s Books, in the way the film is shown, with small rectangular boxes containing other images.’ I was imagining, What if you could travel the map in elevation and aerial view at the same time? And then I had all this data to reveal about the place. And a tutor was saying, What if you also could see the data at the same time?

With these ideas in mind, I started working with a programmer to develop the idea of time-compressed fluctuating populations of fauna and flora appearing on the elevated map. Once a data agreement had been signed we were able to experiment with live data from the Cornwall Wildlife Trust GIS database.

We got as far as this - when you stopped at certain parts of the lake, you would see what flora had been there previously.

And, when you stopped at a certain part, you could choose a month in which to explore what had been there previously.

Ideas developed from here

• New ways in which the Wildlife Trust could engage the general public by presenting to them dynamic interpretations of GIS data never seen before. They could see flora and fauna information sourced from a live database displayed using interactive techniques.

• You could create an educational parallel database that could be updateable by the public via SMS, using mobile phones. This would enable visual and text stories to be developed.

• Ways in which specialists who collect data for the Cornwall Wildlife Trust could be helped out in the field, through such ideas as enabling new data to be sent in real time via their via email, designated website and mobile phone. (i.e. specialists walking around Loe Pool would be able to send in live data as they see it).

As Emmet and I concluded, this work points to a project that is caught up in interface design and cumbersome software. There’s also the danger of it being too pretty and not gritty enough - that is not dealing with culture and nature - alike how the pillow book can get accused of lack of plot with too much concentration on imagery.

The plot functions more as a series of markers for Greenaway’s stylistic riffs than a necessary aspect of the movie. Indeed, The Pillow Book is so visually arresting that it’s capable of holding our attention for two hours largely on the strength of its images. There are pictures-within-pictures, French song lyrics rolling across the bottom of the screen, multiple aspect ratios, color bleeding into black-and-white scenes, and other intriguing methods of composition. Even simple shots, such as a swirl of ink-saturated water being sucked into a drain…James Berardinelli

What I think was successful about this experimentation of elevation and what we are taking on, is the thought of travelling across maps by ways of different perspectives, different stories and different times. Also, in our reserve list, is the idea of re-using data, with the idea of making data more accessible to the general public. Although the visual work was crudely ’sketched’ together, we are also interested in the surreal feeling that was produced by the GIS data appearing as visual images on the elevated map. But, it’s with my next post, I will put up tomorrow, that I will share other past work that is more conducive to the model that Emmet and I are now developing. It is about the idea and real need of end-user input.

During the month of October, Emmet is preparing a theirwork framework that can be taken into a first workshop with the community. This framework will be a map of Loe Pool. The community will be able to add data, comments and stories to the map. During October, I will initiate the groundwork for the workshop - looking at ‘who, when, where’ and how the ‘what’ - the map - gets used. Emmet has just made clear our approach to the ‘what’ in the last post.

Vitally, the methodology of the workshop, and subsequent workshops, will assist in the development of theirwork, creating a ‘check activity’ of what we are up to, as well as being a place in which to request, observe and develop new ideas. For instance, it should help to stop us from falling into the trap of defining ‘the tool’s functionality through interface design’. The workshops, whose methodology will focus on qualitative fieldwork, will assist in determining how the framework will turn into a tool for the community; the interface will emerge and grow in the course of these workshops. One to one interviews and online community presence will partner workshop activity.

As Emmet previously explained, ‘we discussed how for any new user, the function of the tool will be implied by the existing content’ and how this means we will be concentrating on the collection of soft cultural data in the first workshop. Hard flora and fauna data will not be presented. We know that as time develops -

the wiki could become the database that drives the map
the interface could allow soft data to get added
the tool could start revealing hard data

But for the moment, we are just concentrating on a framework that seeks to build a tool, which in turn will emerge with an interface.

This decision then led on to further brainstorming and questioning. What is the tool about? Will ecology stay in the picture? Is the tool about appreciating what’s there? Is the tool about revealing what’s there and what’s not there? What kind of walking is the project about - ‘armchair walking’ or ‘out in the field walking’? Where do cars fit into the picture? How does the urban fit into the picture? About trolleys in different terrains…

During last weekend, Emmet and I earmarked time to discuss existing map software, such as goolemaps. Importantly, we also wanted to look at how others were appropriating such software. One project doing this has just arrived http://www.yourhistoryhere.com/ We started observing this in some detail because not only is it using googlemaps, it’s setting out to achieve some of what we’re hoping to - that is the creation of a social mapping tool that allows people to attach their feelings to a place. Evaluating this project helped us to define theirwork further.

There is no feeling of real community yet, but it’s early days
The comment section of the site will allow a sense of community to build up
How are we going to portray a feeling of community?
At the moment we use a wiki for people to write into, they can go to the forum to chat/comment
Do we want a comment section, instead of a wiki/forum?
Will wiki entries enable a sense of community to build up?
How visible will the forum be?
Will we highlight any of its comments upfront?

We’re the opposite of yourhistoryhere
We’re pinned down to a geographical area
When will we grow to other geographical areas?
How will this effect the growth of the project?
Are we working ‘more’ from the bottom up because of our approach?

The language is formal, until you look down at the bottom of the entry page, and then it’s quite exciting! They talk about myfirstkiss and placeopedia. You finally start to get enticed in.

We need to create language that’s friendly and easy going
This is one of the reasons flickr is successful
There is no real navigation, no intrigue
The slider to traverse the map is too sensitive
The interface, and look and feel is too formal
The colours are bland and old
The idea of place is lacking because there is no photographic evidence of place
They just use text and map
We need to have photos/visuals
Maybe they’ve left photos/visuals out on purpose?
Maybe they’re coming later.

We wonder where they want to go with it?

It’s not friendly enough. Nor is it deep enough. Nor is it creating enough feeling
And it’s just all laid out there, there’s not much enticing there
We need to create a subtle set of intrigues and feelings
We need to create pause and reflection
We need to invite people, so they wanna come in
Perhaps we need to use tags to bring them in
We need to create the start of an enticing framework, and then interface.

One project that got us back to being excited was Elasticspace: The land that time forgot
Okay, so it’s not a tool, it’s about a feeling, but it brings together geo-coordinated track marks and photographs. Your eyes are made to walk the screen. Textures and marks appear.

We realise we need to be in the middle of these two projects. We want to create a tool, but we want it to be evocative.

Getting somewhere towards the middle, is this one I just discovered

The use of tags as an interface gets me really excited. They’re of real use, and of simple beauty.

Urbantic let’s you create a list of your favorite places. Use ‘Your Places’ along with your own tags to create your personalized directory.

That’s exactly what Emmet and I started imagining by the end of the weekend. Now we need to review this project.

This Saturday Emmet and I meet to walk the lake. We will walk it with a GPS device so we can leave a trail, and we will mark points of interest.

We then plan to read out the data, visualise the information we have collected and look at what we’re going to do with it. This will start to build the mapping element of this project. From the beginning of collaboration, Emmet asked “Do the workshops and interviews with the users just create content or dictate the structure and behaviour of the project?” I had explained that the intention was to achieve both of these things, but that a framework needed to be created/presented for the first workshop. From thinking about this framework we started to define the project.

There needs to be a skeleton of a project that’s taken into the workshop. And this skeleton is based on a map on which people can put ideas.

A lot of this skeleton is a map. It might be like a screen with virtual pins. When you hit a pin you enter the wiki and then anyone can add a wiki entry, and anyone can retrieve information from the map. So in the workshop you have a map with push pins that allows you to enter the wiki or/and a wiki with places that allows you to enter the map.

We then started focussing the idea further. This allowed us to define what we believe is the ’start-out’ function of the tool. Imagine boxes/grids that you enter or exit. And you can say, “I’ve walked this route and passed through these boxes.” Emmet said we should think about constrained walking. Each walk a user makes or wants to make can be information pulled together by looking at what information is in each box that is passed through. This information acts like a guide to the area. It’s full of all kinds of information - people’s feelings, knowledge, flora and fauna data, pollution counts…It can be filtered. It’s printable. It can be taken back to that place.

From here, Emmet said that we should start asking “What if the tool does this or that?” and that this approach would get us closer to defining the function. This weekend we will be able to ask this question with a lot of focus.

What if a person passing through this route can do this?

Think about spaces that people pass through
Spaces that people can tune into
Think of urban walks
Memories that lie beneath that space
Layers of experience
Think of a “community of places”

We now are sure that we help to create the content at first. And that everyone can add to the content. But now we see this content gets taken out again. But this time it has more meaning, or new meaning. And when it’s taken back out, it could trigger something new.

The content of the wiki can therefore become specific to the user. It’s not just some kind of junk filled data hole. It’s akin to openlondon but it’s more. It might juxtapose city and county, or rather town and country.

We established that we have to create a Theirwork Version 0.1 to get started. Version 0.2 might be quite different as we find what works, what doesn’t, what’s needed, what’s not.

To start off, we agreed that we need to use a wiki but that the project might not end up as a wiki.

Side note
Emmet had already established that he was not going to use pmwiki because it used flat files…these text files are just pages that have to be retrieved and reloaded and they are not searchable. He also looked at WikiMedia but it appeared less manageable. “MediaWiki may be more fully featured, but it’s a total beast under the hood, and would probably prove more difficult to modify in any major way”. Emmet went with phpwiki because it uses msql. It works faster and he has made it so that databases can be combined with other databases, - they can talk to each other - such as the one in this blog and the one in the community forum. So now we have the wiki set up set up, and this (1:1) blog for this kind of stuff, and Emmet has set up a forum for the community - and at this forum we are really going to listen to.

This weekend we will then see the start of gps information getting added to our work. To prepare for this, Emmet has been looking to see if there’s any open source map software we can adopt. Tomorrow we are reviewing what he has found, in readiness for the weekend. We are also analysing mapping software in general.

mind maps

Originally uploaded by theirwork.

Theirwork will combine mind based maps and land based maps.

pages of

Originally uploaded by theirwork.

So, I am starting to play around with seethrough.

This seethrough book is a mind map.