Map Your Memories

For the Map Your Memories project, Becky Cooper printed hundreds of blank maps of Manhattan and walked around the island asking strangers to map "their Manhattan." These maps are compiled into a new book, Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers. 

The results vary from the wordless and strictly artistic to maps full of illegible scribbles to simple numbers with separate translation pages.

Here are some examples - chosen based on personal tastes and legibility. These images are all from Cooper's tumblr page.

 

 

This one is from cartoonist and essayist Tim Kreider.

More USA Perception Maps

A few years back, I posted some maps for the 4th of July showing how we perceive others and vice versa. Here is a collection of maps about how we Americans see ourselves.

From inboxQ, America According to Twitter:

I don't understand some of these, particularly Chicago (Miami of Canada?) and San Diego (yuck?)

Here's the United States of America as Seen by New Yorker, Dan Abramson:

 

The U. S. Map According to Michiganders, via mLive:

The United States According to the NFL from HeadBlitz:

While we're on sports, here's a complicated one. When the "World" Series was conceived in 1903 the world was clearly a much smaller place. In the author's words it was "obviously named by someone who thought the “world” ended just past the Mason-Dixon Line and the Mississippi River." This one comes from an article posted at Gate 21, an extremely slow loading blog from the University of Tennessee.

Finally, I couldn't resist this nasty one from GraphJam - America According to Europeans. As the comments clearly illustrate, lots of people have no sense of humor. Hope if you're one of those folks, this doesn't ruin your holiday.

What is Map of the Week?

Today is the fifth anniversary of Map of the Week! Sort of. Actually it's more complicated than that as most things are. An exact anniversary date is tough to pin down so today is as good as any. Here's the boring history lesson:

Map of the Week started in or around 1993 when I shared a house in Lawrence, Kansas with fellow graduate student, frequent commenter and Renaissance blogger Michael5000. We started putting maps of the week on the kitchen wall (or maybe fridge I can't remember everything from those crazy college days.)  They were not exotic or special - just maps that we felt like posting and the practice didn't stick for very long because we had homework and life to attend to.

When I accepted a job in Seattle, a place I'd never been, I drew this mental map based on my limited knowledge and probably posted it as a final map of the week. The map suffers from the classic "figure ground" problem-the water looks like land and vice versa. The original is on yellow paper, printed on the back of a lost dog notice.

On occasion I would send Mr. 5000 maps in the US mail that I found to be noteworthy. Here is a map from a charity newsletter of a project they did in Moncton, New Brunswick. I clipped out the charity's name to spare them the embarrassment as they do some very good work.

The map is pretty tough to read from my poor copy but basically they didn't know where Moncton or New Brunswick were so they just plopped it right in the middle of the country. That's OK - Canada's a small place!

Years later (around 2004 or so) I decided to revive Map of the Week as a weekly e-mail with a map attached. Five years ago today I started keeping track of what map I posted on what date with an eye towards a possible blog. I finally created the blog in 2007 and began by back posting all my entries beginning October 5th, 2005. As of today the blog has reached over 150 countries!

Map of the Week will try to continue to bring a quality blog product every week, with the occasional extra map of the weekend or other special event. Map of the Week will not advertise your book, or map products but if something looks interesting, I may post it without the sales pitch. Thanks to all my readers for years of support!

Map of the Week - Jimmy Corrigan's World

I've looked at this site many times and still don't completely get it. It's an interactive promotion for Chris Ware's graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Boy on Earth. I have not read it, but the story here does not appear to follow the book as described online. It does make an interesting use of maps to tell a story. Click the map below and then the lower arrow. Next click on one of the circles on the globe and you get a piece of the story.

This a typical immigrant coming to the US to find whatever opportunities are out there story. If you really want to follow it the trick is to click on what's supposed to be Tennessee but really is too far south and east. Then click the right arrows. There seem to be parallel stories about slavery and some traffic accident in Panama. Again, the relationship to this graphic novel is unclear. Below is a typical sequence showing parts of the story.


If you click on Chicago you get this nice little zoom in sequence


The site does work in that it makes me curious to read the story. Then again after months of looking I have yet to actually place my order.

Map of the Week - Quilts of Perception

Diane Savona, a mixed media and textile artist from New Jersey sent me some nice pictures of map quilts she's done. Here is "A Map of Hometown Perceptions" showing the area around Paterson and Passaic, New Jersey.


In her own words:
"A young man told me that he is afraid to go into neighboring Paterson, with it’s mostly African American population: it’s dangerous. I’m a middle-aged woman, and feel no such danger. I thought about this as I was reading “Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad” and wondered if I could use my quilting to explore subconscious feelings and prejudices. This map explores the perceptions we develop about our homes and our neighbors. Most of the materials used were obtained at local garage sales.
I was born & raised in Clifton, pictured here as the all-white, fiercely non-integrated community of my childhood – the borders are tightly sewn with measuring tapes. Now living in the much more interesting city of Passaic, I sewed in layers of Jewish, Hispanic and African textiles. One section of Passaic is marred with soot, representing the big fire several years back. The neighboring town of Nutley is presented with a police badge, reflecting my son’s view of it as a highly regimented police state. West Paterson is seen as merely a rise of ground – growing up in the shadow of Garret Mountain, I had no idea what lay behind."

This detailed section helps to clarify the above quote.

Map of the Week-The World According to UAlbany

I just got my alumni magazine from UAlbany aka SUNY Albany, Albany State, University at Albany (my school changes its name every other year). The cover has this world map, strangely reminiscent of the childrens' maps I showed a few weeks ago from the Barbara Petchenik Competition. Yes we're proud of our worldly outreach - we even found the other two places that are not NYC (Boston and Canada) and proudly label them on our map.
There's also a big suspension bridge linking the Rocky Mountains with the Pacific Ocean and a 150 mile tall palm tree growing in central Florida. We also moved Mount Fuji to Mongolia for your convenience!

Map of the Week 121-Colbert Maps Pennsylvania

It's an exciting week at Comedy Central as the Colbert Report is in Philadelphia for next week's Pennsylvania primary. The most striking feature of his Philadelphia set is a ridiculous map of Pennsylvania. Below is a video where he explains the map and Ben Franklin demonstrates early GIS map zooming capabilities (slow load warning)


By the way if youse want to better understand the Philly accent click here - the pictures will really help!
You'll also some good cheesesteak info on those pages.

Map of the Week 116-Baltimorrific!

For those of you like me who were foolish enough to miss the Chicago Festival of Maps, life has given you a second chance.
The Baltimore Festival of Maps begins Sunday with the opening of Maps: Finding Our Place in the World. This is the same exhibit that appeared at the Field Museum in Chicago, now making an east coast appearance at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The Walters chose the London Glove map to represent their various mapping exhibits (there are several other exhibits and events going on at the museum).

As a fan of maps made by non-professionals, I'm really looking forward to seeing the Maps on Purpose exhibit. Art on Purpose, a community arts organization led various neighborhood map making workshops. Below are a couple of samples. Unfortunately the resolution on them is pretty coarse.













Of course I was curious to see where these neighborhoods are so I located them on yahoo maps. I used yahoo because I'm partial to their "micro-neighborhoods" even though they're often wrong. The map on the left is in Sandtown-Winchester, in the top right (NW) part of the map. The map on the right shows the Hollis Market-Union Square neighborhoods at the southern edge of the map.
One thing I have not found on the festival site is a map locating the events. Maybe someone (her majesty?) knows something I don't. I took the map below from yahoo and outlined in purple the area of the neighborhood map above and marked the Walters in a red asterisk. Now you know where to go and what to do. See you there?

Map of the Week #99 - [murmur]

Murmur (excuse me it's [murmur]) is a cool multimedia project established in Toronto. You can click the link below, choose a neighborhood and bring up a "mental map" such as below. Clicking the red dots will bring up audio files that are stories told by everyday people who have a connection to those locations. Below is their own description of the project:

[murmur] is a documentary oral history project that records stories and memories told about specific geographic locations. We collect and make accessible people's personal histories and anecdotes about the places in their neighborhoods that are important to them. In each of these locations we install a [murmur] sign with a telephone number on it that anyone can call with a mobile phone to listen to that story while standing in that exact spot, and engaging in the physical experience of being right where the story takes place. Some stories suggest that the listener walk around, following a certain path through a place, while others allow a person to wander with both their feet and their gaze.
The stories we record range from personal recollections to more "historic" stories, or sometimes both -- but always are told from a personal point of view, as if the storyteller is just out for a stroll and was casually talking about their neighbourhood to a friend.

MOTW #7

This is part of the CD cover for "My Buzz Comes Back" from Philly hip-hoppers Slo-Mo and Mic Wrecka. They have a really cool mental map of the Northern Liberties neighborhood in Philadelphia. Oh and the music's darn good too.