Tom Gauld’s definition of psychogeography seems rather cutting.
‘It’s Mainly Walking Around, Disapproving of Gentrification’
The Territory Is Not the Map
There’s something I’ve noticed about the recent round of debates about fantasy maps, something I’ve been noticing about discussions of fantasy maps in general. They don’t talk about fantasy maps in terms of their cartographic merit. That is to say, they don’t judge fantasy maps as maps.
When Alex Acks vents about fantasy maps, it’s because the mountain ranges in Middle-earth don’t make sense, not because the cartography of Pauline Baynes or Christopher Tolkien wasn’t up to the task. It’s more that the territory is shaped to fit the story rather than the other way around, less that the maps of said territory frequently lack a scale. When Boing Boing’s Rob Beschizza says that “Game of Thrones has such a terrible map it could be presented as a parody of bad fantasy maps,” he’s not saying that the cartography of the various Song of Ice and Fire mapmakers, such as Jonathan Roberts (The Lands of Ice and Fire), James Sinclair (books one through four) or Jeffrey L. Ward (A Dance with Dragons), is deficient. He’s saying that the Game of Thrones geography is terrible.
New York Nautical
Last month the New York Times had a profile of New York Nautical, a store specializing in nautical charts, publications, instruments and related goodies in Manhattan’s Tribeca district. If you’re wondering how they stay in business—because that’s inevitable when talking about a store that’s in the business of selling paper maps today—it turns out that most of their business comes from commercial ships buying charts required by the Coast Guard. [WMS]
A Humanitarian Crisis, Observed from Orbit
Earlier this month Human Rights Watch released satellite imagery of burning buildings in minority Rohingya villages in Myanmar’s Rakhine State—evidence, human rights observers say, of a government-led campaign against the Rohingya, four hundred thousand of whom have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. Amnesty International has collated on-the-ground and satellite evidence and has produced a map showing active fires in Rakhine State. The Washington Post’s coverage also features maps, before-and-after satellite images and infographics.
More Maps of the 2017 German Federal Election
Cartogrammer extraordinaire Benjamin Hennig has produced cartograms of the 2017 German federal election results. A second set of cartograms looks at voter turnout and each party’s share of the vote. These cartograms distort for population to compensate for densely populated areas, so that the choropleth maps used for election results are proportionate.
The German data visualization studio webkid worked on a number of election maps; they have a roundup of election maps and infographics they worked on as well as from other media organizations.
CityLab on Where the Animals Go
Now that Where the Animals Go, a book that maps tracking data from field biologists’ research projects, is available in a U.S. edition (previously), it’s getting another round of media attention on this side of the pond. This CityLab piece interviews the authors and highlights several of the maps (and the studies behind them).
Previously: Where the Animals Go.
Stuart Arnett’s Artistic Cartography
Ottawa-based artist Stuart Arnett creates works of art by drawing and painting directly on topo maps and nautical charts—“a mixed medium art form that I have named ‘Artistic Cartography,’” he says. “This combines a geographical map with graphite, Staedtler Marker and paint. This art form allows the subject matter to be paired with its natural habitat.” Giclée prints and originals are available via his website. [World of Maps]
Mapping with Microsoft Paint
The Washington State Department of Transportation is clearly run by sadists. They held a contest to create a map of road closures and special events in the Seattle area over the busy 29 September to 1 October weekend. But because they’re sadists (or because it’s Washington State, home of Microsoft), the map had to be created using Microsoft Paint, with entrants drawing on a supplied base layer.
In the end, there were four entries, which can be viewed at this Flickr album. Voting is by likes on Flickr or via Twitter. [Sarah Bell]
Tissot’s Indicatrix
Geo Lounge’s Elizabeth Borneman has a piece on Tissot’s indicatrix, which tends to turn up in discussions of map projections. (See, for example, this piece from Vox’s Johnny Harris, and the accompanying video.) And for good reason: it’s a useful visualization tool. All maps distort—representing a curved surface on a flat plane, et cetera, et cetera—but a grid of Tissot’s indicatrices superimposed on a world map will measure the distortion—linear, angular, by area—produced by that map’s projection. On the Mercator projection, the indicatrices remain perfect circles, but grow larger toward the poles; on equal-area equatorial projections, they maintain their size but squish into ellipses; on other projections they also angle left or right depending on how close they are to the edge. On compromise projections like the Robinson (see above), they do all three.
Russell Kirkpatrick on Fantasy Maps
You don’t have to draw a pointy-witch’s-hat faux-medieval map. You can draw an oblique perspective. You can fill your map with misdirection. You can scrawl annotations over it and make it an actual artifact of your story. You can make geological maps, three-dimensional cutaways, cartoons, whatever suits your story. In fact, I await the day when authors realise they can be as creative—and subversive—with their maps as they are with their text.
That’s Russell Kirkpatrick, a geographer and fantasy novelist from New Zealand, in a blog post discussing the use and usefulness of fantasy maps. Should fantasy maps have maps? “No, for three reasons.” Should authors draw maps? Yes, even if it doesn’t end up in print. Lots of interesting things said here. [Paul Weimer]
Bridges of London
Illustrator Lis Watkins created this hand-drawn map of London’s bridges for the AA and Londonist. At Mapping London, Ollie O’Brien notes that the bridges are shown “in their approximately correct geographical position, and correct distances apart, although the width of the Thames itself is greatly exaggerated, as a fish jumping out of the river announces in a little speech bubble!”
Mapping the Earthquake in Central Mexico
This crowdsourced map of collapsed and damaged buildings in Mexico City (in Spanish) appeared shortly after the 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit central Mexico on 19 September [via]. NASA also produced a map, based on radar data from the ESA’s Copernicus satellites that compared the state of the region before and after the quake. Interestingly, the data was validated against the crowdsourced map.
The New York Times produced maps showing the pattern of damage in Mexico City and the extent and severity of earthquake shaking (the Times graphics department’s version of the quake’s Shake Map, I suppose) as well as how Mexico City’s geology—it was built on the drained basin of Lake Texcoco—made the impact of the quake much worse.
The Cantino Planisphere
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Maps aren’t always named for their creators. The Gough map and the Selden map are named the people who owned them last before bequeathing them to the Bodleian Library. The Cantino planisphere, a Portuguese map of the world showing that country’s discoveries in the Americas and along the African coast, is named after the person who, ah, acquired it: in 1502 Alberto Cantino, undercover agent for the Duke of Ferrara, smuggled it out of Portugal, where maps were state secrets. Here’s an article about the Cantino planisphere from the March/April 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine.
You Are Here: An Anthology of SF/Fantasy Map Stories
I can’t explain how I missed this one when it came out last fall. You Are Here: Tales of Cartographic Wonders is an anthology of 18 science fiction and fantasy stories about maps. Edited by N. E. White, it includes one story I’ve seen before: Charlotte Ashley’s “Eleusinian Mysteries.” I look forward to reading the others and reporting back. Amazon | iBooks
Maria’s Deluge
Some of the most striking maps of the recent bout of hurricanes have involved the sheer amount of water dropped by these storms. (See previous posts on Harvey and Irma.) Above, a is a short NASA video showing Maria’s track through the Caribbean, dumping water in its wake.
Relatedly, the Washington Post produced maps of precipitation and river gauge levels on Puerto Rico that show just how much water Maria threw at that island.
