User:Zpalomagar/PROJECT PROPOSAL/FOURTH DRAFT
FOURTH DRAFT
>>>>>IM WORKING IN THIS VERSION RIGHT NOW, THE FINAL ONE WILL BE AVAILABLE MONDAY AFTERNOON <<<<<<
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 demands. Invisible information will be revealed about house speculation and gentrification phenomenon in the city of Rotterdam in order to make the reader raise awareness about it. I will visualise people claims and crisis situations 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 digital communication and technology have 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 political interest.
When information is translated into graphic units, a series of protocols and rules are generated. 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. This project is about to render the information coming from people and communities in Rotterdam to maps and diagrams. I will develop a collection of digital tools to process, select and represent this knowledge.
Collectivity and crowdsourcing are also key points of the elaboration of maps and diagrams with communities. I will explore the physical and digital possibilities of crowdsourcing and collaborative processes of map-making representing the wisdom of crowds, creating data sets based on people (social datasets).
I will look for vulnerable gentrified 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 the housing crisis in the city of Rotterdam. Then I will research the role of online publishing of this information and the process of re-drawing and 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 citizens.
Why do you want to make it?
In 2016, a referendum took place in The Netherlands asking citizens about Rotterdam housing vision. This referendum had 17% of participation so it was not considered as it did not reach the minimum 30%. Rotterdam citizens confessed that they didn’t participate because they didn’t know what they were voting for. This new housing vision implied a huge gentrification phenomenon in different areas. I hardly consider that this reality is misrepresented in the city and communities are silence about that.
I believe in the necessity of amplifying the information that represents people and taking it as a base to built better societies. Cartographies and diagrams are powerful tools in order to visualise information. I map for a cause, I map in order to envision vulnerable situations, 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 societies. If we add to this that a lot of the information we have on the internet, especially when it’s related with data sets, requires complex interpretation procedures, for me visual communication becomes a necessary tool to engage with modern human, 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 these disciplines. This is why I consider cartographies, diagrams and maps are the optimal tools for me to communicate with people. 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 with graphic novels that explore alternative visual storytelling challenging the traditional text-based layout of books and give the reader the freedom to scan and 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 to visualise information. This step will make me conscious about the possibilities of representation with digital mechanisms and how to use it.
Then, I want to collect information about house speculation and gentrified communities in the city of Rotterdam. These sets of information will be the starting point to draw the first maps about this phenomenon that will change when interacting with communities take place and will allow building my own data sets from people voices. I want to explore the existence of social claims online and offline and match it with convenient representation languages, producing the collection of counter-cartographies. 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.
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 openly explored. Moreover, it can also be translated into other mediums in order to facilitate diffusion. So during this step, I would explore the possibility for these maps 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
Start 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 dealing with gentrification phenomenon in Mexico and Spain. We tried to use collaborative sessions to develop maps that could generate new urban models.
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 online 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. The workshop format is a space to enrich a source with inputs from diverse perspectives. 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 circumstance 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.