Monday, August 27, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
alternative routes
ever since i found out that you can customize your google maps, i have been wanting to make albums and albums full of maps. this is a quick and easy way to start to figure out my own pattern of movement through the city. if i'm smart i'll also remember to include modes of the purpose of the trip, transportation, who i'm with, and -most important- things i saw along the way (ideally pictures of them) and what i thought about them.
i just figured out which is the most-used electric outlet in my apartment by plugging my phone in to charge and recalling how often my room mate and i crouch down to that space to unplug something, plug something else in.
that might not seem relevant, but if we realize the our geographical patterns, that is, how we normally interact with our spaces, we can identify and solve problems hidden by routine. so the problem with the electrical outlet might go like this: in order to prevent the cluttering of space and the possible demise of this (and therefore the other) outlet(s), we could start using other outlets. this might, in some small way, improve our quality of life by preventing a future shortage. this could also make us think about all the ways we use our electricity, how to conserve, save money, etc.
a larger quality of life issue comes up when i start to think about mapping (and changing) the routes i take through the city. last night i went to meet tiffany for a show at the empty bottle. on the way up i rode my (new!) bike, taking the direct route up western ave. for those of you who don't live in chicago, western is a major north/south street on the west side of the city. it runs from 147th street on the south side and comes to a dead-end on howard street at the northern-most edge of chicago. i have traveled up and down western every day, on my way to work, to friends' houses, etc. countless times in the 14 months i've lived in my current apartment. city buses, semis, and cars pass by creating a constant stream of traffic noise. the sidewalks are at times covered with shattered glass (near schools, churches, and the alderman's office). people shout at you from their porches and cars. bushes of weeds creep out from their empty lots.
so i rode up western at about 10 pm last night. when i returned later, i rode east one block and turning right onto oakley, i came upon a totally different environment. an affirmation that i had made a good decision was the 4 bikers in view along the tree-lined street. i rode past residential houses on a somewhat quieter street, relieved from the western avenue traffic. i felt that for the time being the pollution in my life could be mitigated or ignored. heading southward, i became even more pleased. i passed an evangelical church, with its sculpture of the virgin, hands upward and dramatically lit. i passed what i figured to be a russian orthodox church and smiled to myself because it hadn't even occurred to me there would be one in the city. i love to appreciate the material facts of religion much as many appreciate art.
as i passed under a bridge and into the warehouse district, oakley ave lost its quiet vitality. a dark-colored car with tinted windows crept northbound about a block away, and my sense of caution heightened. i kept the driver's side of the car in my sights, cleared any danger from the car, and headed toward the intersection. i decided to turn back out to western when i came to a stop light next to another car, completely stopped in the middle of the northbound lane and surrounded by six or seven men.
back on western i passed the new low-income housing on the north side of the highway; the same guy who shouted to me on the way up shouted to me on the way back. i arrived home, wondering if there was a better way to get between my neighborhood and the northwest side of chicago.
maps are made by surveyors and city planners. these are comprehensive, birds-eye views designed to improve the infrastructure of the city. maps made for the chicago cultural center chart points of interest for any kind of tourism in the city (graveyards of chicago, public art, millennium and grant parks). some of the most exciting maps were made by cartographers as they crossed new territory.
but the best maps of all tell something about how people traverse their spaces. a project called amsterdam realtime sent citizens of amsterdam, equipped with tracking devices, to practice their everyday life in the city. the tracking devices recorded their movements. londoner christian nold's biomapping project records people's emotional responses to their surroundings in different neighborhoods all over the world. more on these later.
unfortunately google is still testing something called "My Maps" or I just need to spend more time figuring it out. so i'll have to wait to make such wonderfully complicated maps. fortunately google can provide links to maps i make. here's an added bonus, before i stop. two very long walks this week:
graham and i walked from his friend's house in the south loop to my house early this morning after a party. he had his bike, i really didn't want to take the train. we walked through the uic campus and all the way down taylor street, which reminded me of when i was a student there. i told him many stories. he told me i should be a tour guide.
on the day chicago was almost demolished by tornadoes trees and lamp-posts fell across the blue line, and i had to figure out a different way home from work. after going around the block from the train, i headed southward to harrison, then west to halsted, where i caught the harrison bus home. i watched the traffic as i walked through the slight rain without an umbrella.
footnote (1) : as i was searching frantically for the amsterdam realtime project (which was challenging because i forgot the name of the project!) i found two websites worth taking a second look at: gapminder and mapping worlds. for future review.
footnote (2) : an article about the amsterdam mapping project appeared on the website of the paris-based project interdisciplines
i just figured out which is the most-used electric outlet in my apartment by plugging my phone in to charge and recalling how often my room mate and i crouch down to that space to unplug something, plug something else in.
that might not seem relevant, but if we realize the our geographical patterns, that is, how we normally interact with our spaces, we can identify and solve problems hidden by routine. so the problem with the electrical outlet might go like this: in order to prevent the cluttering of space and the possible demise of this (and therefore the other) outlet(s), we could start using other outlets. this might, in some small way, improve our quality of life by preventing a future shortage. this could also make us think about all the ways we use our electricity, how to conserve, save money, etc.
a larger quality of life issue comes up when i start to think about mapping (and changing) the routes i take through the city. last night i went to meet tiffany for a show at the empty bottle. on the way up i rode my (new!) bike, taking the direct route up western ave. for those of you who don't live in chicago, western is a major north/south street on the west side of the city. it runs from 147th street on the south side and comes to a dead-end on howard street at the northern-most edge of chicago. i have traveled up and down western every day, on my way to work, to friends' houses, etc. countless times in the 14 months i've lived in my current apartment. city buses, semis, and cars pass by creating a constant stream of traffic noise. the sidewalks are at times covered with shattered glass (near schools, churches, and the alderman's office). people shout at you from their porches and cars. bushes of weeds creep out from their empty lots.
so i rode up western at about 10 pm last night. when i returned later, i rode east one block and turning right onto oakley, i came upon a totally different environment. an affirmation that i had made a good decision was the 4 bikers in view along the tree-lined street. i rode past residential houses on a somewhat quieter street, relieved from the western avenue traffic. i felt that for the time being the pollution in my life could be mitigated or ignored. heading southward, i became even more pleased. i passed an evangelical church, with its sculpture of the virgin, hands upward and dramatically lit. i passed what i figured to be a russian orthodox church and smiled to myself because it hadn't even occurred to me there would be one in the city. i love to appreciate the material facts of religion much as many appreciate art.
as i passed under a bridge and into the warehouse district, oakley ave lost its quiet vitality. a dark-colored car with tinted windows crept northbound about a block away, and my sense of caution heightened. i kept the driver's side of the car in my sights, cleared any danger from the car, and headed toward the intersection. i decided to turn back out to western when i came to a stop light next to another car, completely stopped in the middle of the northbound lane and surrounded by six or seven men.
back on western i passed the new low-income housing on the north side of the highway; the same guy who shouted to me on the way up shouted to me on the way back. i arrived home, wondering if there was a better way to get between my neighborhood and the northwest side of chicago.
maps are made by surveyors and city planners. these are comprehensive, birds-eye views designed to improve the infrastructure of the city. maps made for the chicago cultural center chart points of interest for any kind of tourism in the city (graveyards of chicago, public art, millennium and grant parks). some of the most exciting maps were made by cartographers as they crossed new territory.
but the best maps of all tell something about how people traverse their spaces. a project called amsterdam realtime sent citizens of amsterdam, equipped with tracking devices, to practice their everyday life in the city. the tracking devices recorded their movements. londoner christian nold's biomapping project records people's emotional responses to their surroundings in different neighborhoods all over the world. more on these later.
unfortunately google is still testing something called "My Maps" or I just need to spend more time figuring it out. so i'll have to wait to make such wonderfully complicated maps. fortunately google can provide links to maps i make. here's an added bonus, before i stop. two very long walks this week:
graham and i walked from his friend's house in the south loop to my house early this morning after a party. he had his bike, i really didn't want to take the train. we walked through the uic campus and all the way down taylor street, which reminded me of when i was a student there. i told him many stories. he told me i should be a tour guide.
on the day chicago was almost demolished by tornadoes trees and lamp-posts fell across the blue line, and i had to figure out a different way home from work. after going around the block from the train, i headed southward to harrison, then west to halsted, where i caught the harrison bus home. i watched the traffic as i walked through the slight rain without an umbrella.
footnote (1) : as i was searching frantically for the amsterdam realtime project (which was challenging because i forgot the name of the project!) i found two websites worth taking a second look at: gapminder and mapping worlds. for future review.
footnote (2) : an article about the amsterdam mapping project appeared on the website of the paris-based project interdisciplines
Saturday, August 18, 2007
lists of lists
i've been making a list of the lists i want to make
would you call that meta-listmaking?
am i simply a project creator rather than a project executor?
tiffany and mckenzie -- please tell me, was it borges or proust who made those long sensuous inventories of things?
here's the challenge: the napkin images won't behave. i'm having some photoshop genius girls come over now and help me. well i guess i should say they happen to be coming over and then can help me. they will be caught unaware. perfect.
would you call that meta-listmaking?
am i simply a project creator rather than a project executor?
- the last 10 songs i've listened to and what i was doing when i listened to them (also associations)
- a historical ethnography of western ave
- the western bus - convincing chuck that it's not full of weirdos
- places i dream of going and what i think they would be like
- journals from traveling to those places and how they turned out
- my favorite pubs in the city, ranking order, and why
- the lives of my friends (a bit tricky - privacy issues)
- poems about them
- printmaking projects
- which are linked to my desire to make architectural photographs of unlikely buildings in chicago
- something that would reflect my approach to meaningful work (projects, service, academics, etc)
- things i wish i would have done before turning 18, 21, and 25
- my dad's obsession with family genealogy
- i'm not quite as determined as i'd like to be to research the genealogy of my mother's family
- taking oral histories of my family and friends
- putting together an archive of them
- but the archive
- would live
- and not gather dust
tiffany and mckenzie -- please tell me, was it borges or proust who made those long sensuous inventories of things?
here's the challenge: the napkin images won't behave. i'm having some photoshop genius girls come over now and help me. well i guess i should say they happen to be coming over and then can help me. they will be caught unaware. perfect.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
artefacts of myself, or bar napkins
moving back into my parent's house in the middle of my college career one summer in 2002 wasn't too difficult. i had tried, struggled, and failed for two years to make an adult life for myself, moving between st. louis and chicago more times than i'd like to admit, and i was ready for a break. i had just turned twenty and settled in to complete the last two years of college. however, i couldn't resume the life i left at eighteen.
the problem: my bedroom. i had occupied it since i was twelve. the small room at the back of the house, permanently lit by a light post in the neighboring back yard, where i had spent five years transforming from a strange and shy child into an even stranger, defiant teenager, was a crypt of those years; during the two years of my absence from that childhood address on Lakehurst Street a thick layer of dust had settled on half-finished scrapbooks, Beatles CDs and posters, reports written in 10th grade, photographs printed and obsessed over in 12th grade, seashells brought from my former North Carolina home, and all the et ceteras produced from those years. i could never manage to discard any of those items save for those two or three moments of insanity where i spent a day or two going through my closet and drawers reminiscing over those things i made myself throw away. the pink curtains and sea-shell themed desk i reluctantly accepted from my mother at a younger and less confident age remained. journals abandoned after ten pages remained. the 3x5 notecard box in which i hid cigarette butts remained.
i returned to my parents' home at twenty, made a feeble attempt at reconstituting the room for myself and resigned to sleep for the next two years on the couch in the basement (which subsequently became a site of turf wars between my high-school-aged brother and i). i trumped my mother's talent for procrastination, and despite all our good intentions nothing was ever done; i could never bear (and never had the time) to file through all the stuff of my former life to choose what was worth keeping. when i moved away for graduate school my mother eventually hired a friend to tackle the room. it was strange to return on christmas vacation one year to find all of my stuff (my life, at one time) relegated to large blue tupperware tubs, and labeled jars, such as one, filled with coins and a two dollar bill labeled "her life savings?"
that which i had saved in my life thus far was taken care of ... to make way for a guest room. i am usually the guest staying in that room two or three times per year.
are my pack-rat days over? my obsession with preserving the artifacts of my past lives, picking and choosing what might some day elicit far-gone memories of my former selves comes into conflict with the space i presently wish to occupy. i learned, the year i moved to hyde park for graduate school, that i couldn't simply cart all those treatises on existentialism, those unread novels and books of poetry around with me the rest of my life. those books remained on a shelf in my small oddly-shaped room unread as the books purchased by the command of the syllabus and of my thesis research piled up on the floor, displaced by my desire to remain with past desires to know jean-paul sartre, t.s. eliot, and simone du beauvior.
i've learned that those acts of creation, those collections, those ephemera that result from my experiences can no longer be carried, in physical form, from apartment to apartment every one to two years. let's face it: since 2004 i have lived in chicago; but i have moved four times and i don't have that library i have always wished for (ah, what i would do to live alone in a two bedroom apartment!)
so i suppose, unless i become a wealthy and narcissistic archivist of myself i must learn to stop collecting. this prospect is quite frankly depressing. it doesn't deserve a second thought. i am, naturally, a collector, a cataloger, an archivist. so i create this space where i hope to store those things i value, such as the bar napkins either written on in the midst of events, moments, or conversations. i value those things as momentos.
during the past few days i have been carrying these bar napkins around with me. they will disintegrate in my purse, rattled around with everyday contact, but posted here they have the chance to become reflective pieces... whether they be lists of favorite dinosaurs, all the 50 (or 51!) United States darryl and i can try to remember, or momentos of the night when margeaux excitedly (and then reluctantly) judged a poetry slam contest. here i hope they will live and become part of a complex archive of my present. enjoy.
the problem: my bedroom. i had occupied it since i was twelve. the small room at the back of the house, permanently lit by a light post in the neighboring back yard, where i had spent five years transforming from a strange and shy child into an even stranger, defiant teenager, was a crypt of those years; during the two years of my absence from that childhood address on Lakehurst Street a thick layer of dust had settled on half-finished scrapbooks, Beatles CDs and posters, reports written in 10th grade, photographs printed and obsessed over in 12th grade, seashells brought from my former North Carolina home, and all the et ceteras produced from those years. i could never manage to discard any of those items save for those two or three moments of insanity where i spent a day or two going through my closet and drawers reminiscing over those things i made myself throw away. the pink curtains and sea-shell themed desk i reluctantly accepted from my mother at a younger and less confident age remained. journals abandoned after ten pages remained. the 3x5 notecard box in which i hid cigarette butts remained.
i returned to my parents' home at twenty, made a feeble attempt at reconstituting the room for myself and resigned to sleep for the next two years on the couch in the basement (which subsequently became a site of turf wars between my high-school-aged brother and i). i trumped my mother's talent for procrastination, and despite all our good intentions nothing was ever done; i could never bear (and never had the time) to file through all the stuff of my former life to choose what was worth keeping. when i moved away for graduate school my mother eventually hired a friend to tackle the room. it was strange to return on christmas vacation one year to find all of my stuff (my life, at one time) relegated to large blue tupperware tubs, and labeled jars, such as one, filled with coins and a two dollar bill labeled "her life savings?"
that which i had saved in my life thus far was taken care of ... to make way for a guest room. i am usually the guest staying in that room two or three times per year.
are my pack-rat days over? my obsession with preserving the artifacts of my past lives, picking and choosing what might some day elicit far-gone memories of my former selves comes into conflict with the space i presently wish to occupy. i learned, the year i moved to hyde park for graduate school, that i couldn't simply cart all those treatises on existentialism, those unread novels and books of poetry around with me the rest of my life. those books remained on a shelf in my small oddly-shaped room unread as the books purchased by the command of the syllabus and of my thesis research piled up on the floor, displaced by my desire to remain with past desires to know jean-paul sartre, t.s. eliot, and simone du beauvior.
i've learned that those acts of creation, those collections, those ephemera that result from my experiences can no longer be carried, in physical form, from apartment to apartment every one to two years. let's face it: since 2004 i have lived in chicago; but i have moved four times and i don't have that library i have always wished for (ah, what i would do to live alone in a two bedroom apartment!)
so i suppose, unless i become a wealthy and narcissistic archivist of myself i must learn to stop collecting. this prospect is quite frankly depressing. it doesn't deserve a second thought. i am, naturally, a collector, a cataloger, an archivist. so i create this space where i hope to store those things i value, such as the bar napkins either written on in the midst of events, moments, or conversations. i value those things as momentos.
during the past few days i have been carrying these bar napkins around with me. they will disintegrate in my purse, rattled around with everyday contact, but posted here they have the chance to become reflective pieces... whether they be lists of favorite dinosaurs, all the 50 (or 51!) United States darryl and i can try to remember, or momentos of the night when margeaux excitedly (and then reluctantly) judged a poetry slam contest. here i hope they will live and become part of a complex archive of my present. enjoy.
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