User:Zpalomagar/PROJECT PROPOSAL/THIRD DRAFT
THIRD DRAFT
>>>>>THIS IS NOT THE MOST RECENT VERSION<<<<<<
What do you want to make?
An Atlas that explore the potential of cartography and diagrams as a socio-political communication tool which can amplify the voice of communities and give visibility to their common interests, revealing hidden information and making the reader raise awareness about their social crisis. I want to visualise the claims and crisis in foreigns communities in Rotterdam using crowdsourced cartographies as communication elements to map resistance and claim for improvements.
Cartographies were understood during centuries as tools of power and domination, they used to define territory and draw its borders and resources. In 1995 Nancy Peluso introduced the term Counter-mapping referring to efforts to map "against dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals”. Nowadays technology has a crucial role in the process of revert the power-based structure of mapping. This alternative approach to traditional cartographies allows to draw realities based on people voices and not in politic interest.
Information can be translated into visual elements in very different ways following a wide variety of protocols and rules. Diagrams are based on codifications of language to produce visual elements (Drucker, 2014). I want to explore these translation methods from isotypes to tech solutions for a global language. To translate the information coming from people to maps and diagrams, I will develop a collection of digital tools that allows me to process, select and represent this data.
Collectivity and crowdsourcing are also key points of the elaboration of maps and diagrams with communities. I want to explore the digital possibilities of crowdsourcing and collaborative processes that represent the wisdom of crowds, creating data sets based on people. These collective processes have an added value since people with very different backgrounds intervene from anywhere in the world.
I want to look for vulnerable foreign voices online (through petition platforms, online communities, twitter angry hashtags …) and offline (local communities, collectives). These voices are usually lost in between an overwhelming amount of information. I’m going to extract these claims and to translate it into counter-maps drawing a multilayer social cartography about racism in the city of Rotterdam that allows popularising this information through visual language. Then I want to test the role of online publishing of this information and the process of re-publishing maps.
Moreover, I’m going to explore paths to give this information back to society. This maps or visualisation can be transformed into urban tools for designers, architects and urban planners being able to materialise these claims. Maps are a cross-disciplinary tool, a hybrid design element for professionals and people.
Why do you want to make it?
I believe in the necessity of amplifying the information that represents people voices and taking it as a base to built better societies. Cartographies and diagrams are powerful tools in order to visualise hidden realities. In the city of Rotterdam is extremely important to understand foreign societies and to put us in maps and visualisations. I understand maps ad a means to an end.
I map for a cause, I map in order to visualise racism situations in Rotterdam, I also map because I want to stimulate collective action, I want people to feel represented and I want to transform these cartographies into useful elements for improving the city.
Images are produced and consumed in our current culture in quantities that would have been unthinkable in any previous period in human history (Drucker, 2014) so this is a crucial area to communicate with people. If we add to this that a lot of the information we have on the internet, especially when it comes to data groups, requires complex interpretation procedures, for me visual communication becomes a necessary tool to engage with modern man, who receives a large part of his knowledge through pictorial impressions ( Vossoughian, 2011).
Cartographies are tools between art, architecture, design, activism and technology. I position myself in the blurry area between some of these disciplines that is why I hardly believe that cartographies, diagrams and maps are the optimal tools for me to communicate with people. These communicative elements became even more powerful when you combine it with technological tools. This is not about automatic data visualisation but about emotional and affective cartographies that connect with people. As a personal interest, I have always been fascinated about graphic novels like Building Stories by Chris Ware that explores alternative visual storytelling challenging the traditional text-based layout of novels and give the reader freedom to read in interpret a story. We need new visual strategies that allow us to explore alternative readings, as Jan Tschichold explained: “as a rule, we no longer read quietly line by line but glance quickly over the whole, and only if our interests are awakened, do the study in detail”.
How do you plan to make it?
First I plan to develop an inventory of digital tools that I can use to visualise information. This step will make me conscious about the possibilities of representation with digital mechanisms.
Then I want to collect information about social claims in foreign communities in the city of Rotterdam and build my own data sets from peoples voice. In order to collect this data, I want to explore the existence of social claims online and offline and match it with convenient representation languages. This step is the construction of my own data set. To make this collection of information it can be interesting to organise collective sessions of mapmaking (mapathon) with locals exploring the dynamics, protocols and languages using when developing a crowdsourced map.
The next thing to do would be to translate this information into (virtual) cartographies using visual grammar and clarifying and selecting the information. ( Maybe also community voices are present here to have feedback and real representation).
Finally, the last step would be designing re-publishing strategies for these maps. I understand the project as an unfinished Atlas of radical cartographies that can be explored virtually.Moreover, it can also be translated in other mediums in order to facilitate diffusion, to make people gain awareness of a crisis or to claim for improvements. So during this step, I would explore the possibility for this cartographies to be published, spread and translated in different mediums and platforms.
What is your timetable?
September/October:
Develop an inventory of useful tools for representation and becoming familiar with them and with formats (D3, Python, Json datasets, CVS…)
Working on Project proposal and Thesis Outline
Star to look for an online platform where social voices are present and first thoughts about how to collect this data.
Look for local communities
November:
Finish project proposal and Thesis Outline
Star First Chapter
Collect information to visualise (amplify)
Start to develop some speculative cartographies/visualizations with this information
December:
Write the First Chapter
Continue to develop some speculative cartographies/visualisations with this information
January/February:
Write Thesis
Work more into details of cartographies and visualisations created
Start to make counter-maps collection public. Different mediums where to publish
Feedback from communities involved?
March/April:
Finish Thesis
Finish Atlas of alternative cartographies
May/June:
Work on the grad-show display and finish some prototypes if needed
Who can help you and how?
Steve/ Marloes - Global language
Michael - How to collect and process data
André - Translation of data into graphic elements?
I would also like to contact with some external people that are working in the Netherlands or outside to talk about their experience with counter-mapping and diagraming ( Lize Mogel, Patricio Dávila, André Mesquita???)
Onomatopee - “Diagrams of power” exhibition was inspiring - How a drawing or a map can express power, especially with cartography and representation of territories - geopolitical maps. Can I find someone in Eindhoven that can help me with that?
Aldo de Moor
Relation to previous practice
During my practice and formation as an architect, I have always understood diagrams and maps as my main personal tool for communication, for expressing my ideas and I have always tried to turn these drawings into generative elements for architecture and urban design. Furthermore, during my professional practice, I have been working in different urban projects that tried to use people voices to develop maps that could generate new urban models for specific areas.
Looking at the projects of last year The Network we (de)served was a space for me to research about crowdsourced practices to map networks and how it can be represented through diagrams. With this project, I started to engage with collaborative processes and the concept of “wisdom of crowds”. I understood the additional value of multi-sourced creations and co-productions.
The project The Library is Open and more specifically the workshop marginal conversations revealed a huge interest on me in amplifying, in this case, a text with participative activities. I understood the workshop format as a space to enrich a source with inputs from very different people. We were also working in this project in the visual coding that people use when they were annotating and how to understand these visual traces. With the project Entreprecariat, I also worked with the concept of the power of capitalism and structures of power that is precisely the starting point of this research when cartographies are understood as instruments for domination.
Relation to a larger context
Last year data became the most valuable asset on Earth surpassing oil. There is a vital process in how to understand this information, transform it and make an emotional document with them. We are not machines, we are not excited with number but with emotions so we have to transform knowledge behind data into sensitive elements. Links between knowledge and visuality not only have historic roots, but they also have historical and cultural dimensions.
Today we are surrounded by information, it is everywhere, there is much more information that we can process in our life. I believe in the collection selection and transformation of this information into a visual element that engages with society. This is the result of hard work between the artistic practice, the design and the technologic tools that we can use to achieve this goal. This is about turn complex phenomena into images.
References
Drucker, J., 2014. Graphesis: visual forms of knowledge production, MetaLABprojects. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Vossoughian, N., 2011. Otto Neurath: the language of the global polis. Nai Publushers, Rotterdam.
This is not an atlas: a global collection of counter-cartographies, First edition. ed, 2018. , Sozial- und Kulturgeographie. Transcript, Bielefeld.
Diagrams of Power, First edition.ed, 2019, Patricio Dávila, Onomatopee. Rotterdam.
Lima, M., 2011. Visual complexity: mapping patterns of information. Princeton Architectural Press, New York.
Tufte, E.R., 2001. The visual display of quantitative information, 2. ed. ed. Graphics Press, Cheshire, Conn.
Caquard, S., 2013. Cartography II: Collective Cartographies in the Social Media Era.
Mesa del Castillo, M, 2012. Víctimas de un Mapa. Phd. Universidad de Alicante, Alicante.