I created a new app called Mymap, working on the concept to expend our territories and encourage to reflect on all the place we will have to discover in our life, as well as the one we will never see.
De Certeau argues that the act of walking selects and fragments the space traversed; it skips over links and whole parts that is omits. Moreover it can “be traced on city maps in such a way as to transcribe their paths and their trajectories. But these thick or thin curves only refer, like words, to the absence of what has passed by. A spacial order organises an ensemble of possibilities and interdictions, then the walker actualises some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them exists as well as emerge.” [3]. It is what the app is doing: revealing the choices taken, the places visited or the path used, while the rest is hidden behind a white layer.
This is the mockup of my idea.
In my head it was quite a simple idea (coming from a person who don’t have any experience in coding yet) but in application it has been quite difficult and several iteration of the app had been necessary.
First I thought it would have been possible to make a reverse heat map: instead of having colours appearing on a layer on top of the map, it would make transparent the white layer. In practice what was possible is to draw a white layer on google maps by giving the points clockwise then removing polygons from this layer by giving the point anticlockwise. It created a lot of different issues: closing the route every time we created a new point: drawing the territory and not the route; superposed polygons resulting on re-masking the map…
The solution came up with the discovery of hulljs. Using a complex algorithm, it draws around the GPS points the route.
The app uses phone gap, a free and open source framework that allows you to create mobile apps using standardized web APIs for web platforms as well as mobile app with the same code. The language is Java Script. To store the routs (even is it not possible yet with the current version) HTML5 Local Storage will be use. Google maps API, Cordova plugin geolocation and the GPS of the phone are used as well.
I am already thinking about a future version of the app. I would like to make the map appearing in different shade of colours: for example the area you use all the time (’your territory’: going to work and back home for example) would be tinted in red, whereas the one you visited only once would be blue. it would allow a better understanding of the territory.
For complementary informations about the app (interface, calculus of the opacity), or more references have a look to the slides of my presentationand my research.
For this idea I also looked into the concepts of ‘creating your own border’ and ‘staying in your confort zone’, however, this time on ow to expend our territories and encourage to reflect on all the place we will have to discover in our life.
For that, I want to create a mobile app: it will be a white page when you start using it for the first time, then the map will reveal itself when you went somewhere physically.
I tried to make a visualisation of my idea in this short animation:
In my head it is quite a simple idea (coming from a person who don’t have any experience in coding yet 🙂 but we already told me that it is not as simple and I am worked I will not be able to make it on time for the 13th of december.
One way I think it might be possible is to make a reverse heat map: instead of having colours appearing on a layer on top of the map, it would make transparent the white layer.
The second stage of this project (depending how difficult it is to do the ‘simple’ idea), would be to make the map appearing in different shade of colours: for exemple the area you use all the time (’your territory’: going to work and back home for example) would be tinted in red, whereas the one you visited only once would be blue.
For this idea I looked into the concepts of ‘creating your own border’ and ‘staying in your confort zone’, resulting to refuse to see in the other side of the road how people are living or even your closest neighbour ?
This observation started with the living lab project, where the two cycle paths going through Inverleith divide the neighbourhood into three different parts. This division coincides with the level of deprivation of the area, resulting in the path acting like a border within the community (see picture bellow). The journalist Anna Minton, claims that divisions in the cities are a key factor behind rising fear of crime and that the link between security and discrimination is most distinct at the extremes of ‘the social spectrum’, in very wealthy or very deprived areas. (2009, pp. 139-140 – Minton, A. (2009). Ground control. London: Penguin Group).
My feeling is that it is very easy to stay on a routine, ‘bury ours head in the sand’. It allows us to not called into question our behaviours and the impact of our actions in the society.
I believe that developing empathie, be open to others would help to create a better word. Experience, relate and understand others could help to be more open on the world surrounding us (on different scale) and try to ‘be in the shoes of someone else’. In a sense brake the borders we create.
That is why I had this idea to visualise the invisible borders within the city. Where are these streets which divide a ‘healthy’ neighbourhood to a ‘deprive’ one. How can you make people aware of these ‘invisible’ borders ? And by visualising them, could it help to awake about these disparities. Also, are people from one side of the road go to the other side or are they staying within their territory ?
I fist superposed the deprived scale map of Edinburgh on a satellite screen shot of the same territory. Then I traced in top, the road which separated two area with very different colours (a healthy area to a more deprive one).
It gives a different vision of the town. When you see the maps with the colours, you see the territories. When you only have the lines, to is about seeing the borders, and make reflect on the fact to ‘cross borders’, ‘walk in the territory of someone else’, ‘being curious of what is happening in the other side of the road’.
The final step was to convert these lines into ‘cloud’ or smoke, in order to make the borders visible but also fog and mist blur boundaries.
I made an image, trying to represent how it would look like.
On my last post about the different topic I was looking I developed the one on borders.
Since few days I was looking at ‘to be disconnected’ in relation with happiness (the border theme also have a connection with happiness in the way I see it). I looked at the fact that when you work you are expected to answer an email promptly, or the time spending on social media in comparaison with ‘human’ (see this post).
On this topic I am interested in making the ‘invisible’, ‘visible’ (same ideas with the borders, I guess happiness and make the invisible visible are the commun aspect in both cases). Visualise all the data surrounding us all the time.
I am asquint the question: is there a correlation with being more connected? If you are in an environment with less radiation would you spend less time on your mobile?
For that I would like to measure:
• the level of radiation corresponding with location and to see if the person is more connected when there is more waves around (link GPS tracking and, data transfert and level of radiation).
• how much data transferred on a location (link GPS tracking and data transfert) and superpose with the map of coverage
• the number of word exchange with a real person in comparaison with number of word with social media (or time speeding corresponding verbally and on social media)
I guess it is maybe less interesting than the ‘border’ theme, as a lot of people are looking at the subject currently with these app helping to disconnect: Freedom, I Off You, Antisocial, Forest or the wall paper which block radiations, and the WiFi cold spot.
I read that problems linked up with hyper connectivity are more a society issues (we use technology to respond to what is expected from us… ) and not a technical issue. Create more technology to not use technology seems not the right things to do, it is “the cat biting its own tail”.
I don’t think I can come with anything to change today society, because it means to solve a question of hierarchy (have the power, to be disconnected against society expect me to be connected all the time), also job organisation and planification, and finally todays life style (teenagers hyper connected…).
Please give me your feedback on my ideas, and if you have any thoughts how I could develop them or in which direction I should go. Any comments are welcome. (see the pages with the mind map My thoughts)
The different themes I am looking at for the moment are:
BORDERS
on 2 different aspects:
– inequality between people: because you are born in x or y country you can’t move freely (visa, border…) Why do I have some right than other people doesn’t have? How this is right ? Also, by doing that, is not increasing the desire to see what is forbiden? When you are not allow to do something you might try harder to make it possible.
– creating your own border by staying in your confort zone. It can result to refuse to see in the other side of the road how people are living or even your neighbour ? and I am not talking (yet) about situations in other country or continent, where it can be so far from the reference framework that it is difficult to identify to the situation or living condition.
My feeling is that it is very easy to stay on a routine, ‘bury ours head in the sand’. It allows us to not called into question our behaviours and the impact of our actions in the society.
Is developing empathie, be open to others would help to create a better word ? Experience, relate and understand others could help to be more open on the world surrounding us (on different scale) and try to ‘be in the shoes of someone else’. In a sense brake the borders we create.
DISCONNECT
To experience, relate, understand others, and reconnect with the self, I believe that it is important to be able to ‘disconnect’: from the technology, from the consumer society, from ‘always more’ and ‘always faster’.
EQUALITY
I am a bit obsess with this idea that we are all human, all made of 70% of water, all the same in a way. In contrast there is this huge inequality on the planet where world’s richest 1% own 40% of the world’s wealth. it is related with the first idea developed in ‘border’.
Maybe equality between people could maybe take place in the ‘between’ places, passage, connections, non spaces.
HAPPINESS
This is the big question: How to have a good life? Is happiness living well and doing well? Should it be our goal in life and how to get there? Yet, my position on these questions is that to have a good life you should act in coherence with the values you are believing in. You should go out of the confort zone to live new experiences, and learn from it what is essential for you and bring something positive out of it. It can be as simple as coming back from work by another route, try to observe the word with open mind and a sense of detail…
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