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.

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