serendipityoucity

Emil sent me this video this morning! Wonderful!

Playing for Change is a reminder to me that along with politics, activism, research, writing, & work, that love, beauty & inspiration are essential ingredients of unity. I often forget those.

Edward Said and David Barenboim’s intellectual and musical collaborations were also about that. They created an Arab Israeli orchestra, music school and foundation to support the arts in the region. This continues to bring young people from all sides of the conflict together to play, discuss and perform. It is expected that this orchestra will be on par with the Philharmonic in a few years. NPR has assembled a number of their conversations into Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society. In this they discuss their intellectual and musical collaboration. Interestingly, NPR has made the transcript of this conversation available for free as part of its contribution toward positive change. The film about the East-West Divan Orchestra, Knowledge is the beginning was shown by Madame Said in Ottawa last year and it was truly wonderful to see this orchestra in the making and the challenges they have faced overcoming prejudices, and playing in the occupied territories. Both Said and Barenboim are clear, that music will not change the world or stop the conflict, but while people are playing and listening for a couple of hours, they are not hating. And that is a fine start!

The 1990 One World one Voice collaboration was the first international assemblage of musicians following one song line! It is based on the same principal as Playing for change.

It was created as a “chain tape” started by Kevin Godley. The multitrack tape was sent to various studios around the world where local artists added their contributions to it. Sections of the video were also filmed in the performers’ home countries and edited together.

I came across it when living in Japan in the early 90s. 250 musicians globally joined in on the performance. There are 12 clips in all and they are all worth watching & listening to, I included clip 8 because my favorite Ryuichi Sakamoto is in it playing the piano and its strings along with Peter Gabriel, Stewart Copeland, Geoffrey Oryema, Suzanne Vega, Lou Reed.

ohm!

Interesting Foreign Policy article on the determinism of geography in international affairs. The article invokes the work of great geographic thinkers that have brought us what we know and do regarding territorial claims and the influence of technology on the creation of shatter zones.

The Revenge of Geography.

I wrote a blog post about this over at DataLibre.ca. I am very impressed with what these groups did and am appalled that citizens need to use the courts to get the government to represent the public good once again!

In the United States, figures move back and forth between academia, government and private business, with none of the firewalls that Canadian governments throw up to protect the bureaucracy from new ideas

It reflects the usual circulation of elites, resulting in the absence of citizen in the discourse. A state of power affairs we are stuck with for a while, and the best we can hope for is that the right elites are at the table!

Most strikingly, is the truth uttered in the latter part of the sentence - the firewall separating the Canadian bureaucracy from new ideas! What do we need to do to create a rapprochement between citizen and government?

via: Globe and Mail

I wrote about emotional mapping and biometric data some time ago here and here.

I still really like the design aspects of these artifacts and what their possibilities are. This group of people are developing and toying with these for art and research, however, the same technologies could be used for surveillance and I imagine these could eventually become skin embedded technologies. We questions artists less when they do this, but what if this were being done in a biology lab? Would we question more? Should we produce this art and do this type of techno science simply because we can?

Skin embedded technologies is something that deeply concerns me. On the one side it appears cool to have a hypermedia/technologically enhanced body and on the other, it could just become one more class differentiator, monitoring, control mechanism, the new plastic surgery avec technology. A new marketing technique that seems benign yet preys on ones biological inferiority or insecurities - not unlike buying breast implants for your 16 year old daughter to ensure her success in life or to buy that frail boy some added technological muscle. Freedom right?

Some accuse those who want to critically reflect on these technologies and their social implications as being bio-conservatives or neo-luddites. Irrespective of the name calling/labeling I think we really need to critically reflect about what we do with technology, how we use it, embed it and to consider the socio technological regimes and the politics behind their creation! This is more than just art! Technology is not politically neutral!

While I am ambivalent, I am still attracted to the artistic potential of these technologies and the questions these inspire. I am also a geographer. The emotional cartography folks have created a book that can be downloaded for free and I look forward to reading some of the articles!

Emotional Cartography - Technologies of the Self [emotionalcartography.net] is a collection of essays from artists, designers, psycho-geographers, cultural researchers, futurologists and neuroscientists, brought together by Christian Nold, to explore the political, social and cultural implications of visualizing intimate biometric data and emotional experiences using technology. The theme of this collection of essays is to investigate the apparent desire for technologies to map emotion, using a variety of different approaches.

I am really excited that this woman is coming to town! I try to watch the NFB film about her work Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics just before every census. It is because of her that unpaid work gets tracked and women all over the world stopped calling themselves homemakers and started calling themselves nurses, nutritionists, childcare providers, nursing home care attendants, handywomen etc. on the Census.

She was also instrumental at tracking the unpaid work of women in subsistence economies. She revealed how their work, instrumental at the survival of the household, never made it into national accounting systems! She developed time maps to assess how a woman’s day was structured versus a mans. That technique has made its way into many development practices to truly assess the work of women in overseas development projects but also to assess the affects of the decisions made by male leaders on women’s behalf, and that affected women’s lives in a real way. Also, she was instrumental at making New Zealand a nuclear free zone!

Her book If women Counted is what got me to really think about the politics of the census, the politics behind the ‘objective’ and seemingly benign questions that were being asked and how those influence how we envision our societies and what deserved to be tracked across time. That book also got me excited when the long form of the Census would show up at my door or the short form for that matter!

Octopus Books and Oxfam are thrilled to welcome Marilyn Waring and launch her new book 1 Way 2 C the World: Writings 1984-2006 on Monday, April 27th at 7:00 p.m. at the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library (120 Metcalfe).

Marilyn Waring is a truly absorbing figure known as a distinguished public intellectual, a leading feminist thinker, environmentalist, social justice activist, and for her early political career after election to New Zealand’s parliament at age twenty-three. Assembling some of her most thought-provoking writings, 1 Way 2 C the World is a compelling collection of essays and reflections on many important issues of our time. Written in lively, crisp, and often humourous prose, Waring provides illuminating commentary on topics such as gay marriage, human rights, globalization, the environment, and international relations and development.

Including accounts of being in India at the time of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and in Ethiopia’s during the 1984 famine, Waring’s vivid writing remains contemporarily relevant, while this collection includes recent writings on the post-9/11 world. Brimming with pieces that are essential reading for anyone concerned with the state of the world, 1 Way 2 C the World is bound to fascinate and inspire.

knowing one is insignificant but not willing to abide by that

This is a great map map!

Produced by Freedom House whose mission statement is as follows:

Freedom House is an independent nongovernmental organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world. Freedom is possible only in democratic political systems in which the governments are accountable to their own people; the rule of law prevails; and freedoms of expression, association, and belief, as well as respect for the rights of minorities and women, are guaranteed. Freedom ultimately depends on the actions of committed and courageous men and women. We support nonviolent civic initiatives in societies where freedom is denied or under threat and we stand in opposition to ideas and forces that challenge the right of all people to be free. Freedom House functions as a catalyst for freedom, democracy and the rule of law through its analysis, advocacy and action.

via: Ethan Zuckerman’s Blog My Heart’s in Accra

It has been quite the week!

I also finished the Pilot Atlas of the Risk of Homelessness this week. The Atlas will soon be going live and I hope it starts a conversation between geographers, geomaticians, data providers and colleagues and front line workers in the social sector. We discovered that you have to mortgage the house to purchase data to study homelessness at a national scale in this country! Surely, that cannot be the sign of a democracy!

I got to work with the ever so wonderful cartographer Sebastien Caquard and the ever to delightful Christine Homuth a new geomatician in our lab, and 3 cities. So great!

Pilot Atlas of the Risk of Homelessness

Executive Summary

The Pilot Cybercartographic Atlas of Risk of Homelessness is the first national and city scale mapping endeavour that represents risk of homelessness data in an interactive fashion using timelines, different scales and associated text and charts including regional and local scales. The Pilot Atlas of the Risk of Homelessness renders in maps and interactive graphs well defined and accepted Canadian risk indicators such as vacancy rates and rental markets, rent geared to income units, families spending 50% of their income on rent and housing starts. When these indicators are visualized in an engaging manner readers can more readily distinguish trends, patterns and issues that cannot be conveyed in static data tables. Atlas modules include the visualization of indicators across time at three scales: Canada, 23 municipalities and 3 featured cities/metropolitan areas. The City of Toronto provides data to show their aging social housing stock; poverty and the disproportionate spending on rent are explored in City of Calgary neighbourhoods while la Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM) tells the story of social housing and housing affordability for lower-income renting populations. An interactive GraphoMap shows Vacancy rates, housing starts, and 50%+ spent on rent for 24 cities at three time points while the Canada map shows the rate of change between renters and owners over time. A map of Canada shows the rate of change between renters and owners and clearly demonstrates data issues associated with Canada’s ever changing and incompatible statistical geographic units.

The Atlas is intended as a pilot to demonstrate to a variety of stakeholders that cartographers, geographers and subject matter specialists can work together to create engaging, understandable and useful visual content representing the structural issues of homelessness in Canada. Modules are created with stakeholders so that they may use these to inform public policy. The Atlas is designed using the Nunaliit Cybercartographic Atlas Framework which is an open source software designed at the GCRC specifically to ensure that others can add content to it. For example, a research group, a community group or other cities may have data they have collected during the course of their work or research that could easily be rendered into maps of this kind and be added as a module. This is a living Atlas created specifically for that purpose – to continuously expand on this story and to disseminate the data in a way that is easily understandable. The Atlas could expand to include not only risk of homelessness data but also population health and homelessness, absolute homelessness and housing themes along the continuum of homelessness. Finally, access to and cost of public statistical data were considered barriers to the creation of some content, especially in the social sector.

I have just submitted the following keynote book chapter for a Cartographic Heritage book. I and Prof. Taylor were invited to submit and we decided to pool our resources and submit 1 chapter from our lab. While I am not an expert in archiving, I have been doing research in the field for 4 years and more and more I am enamoured with that profession and with the role memory institutions have in shaping knowledge, history, the nation. The social shaping of those institutions however need us digital artifact producers to be cognizant of our role and to consider working with preservationists. We also rarely consider our objects as heritage, yet these maps, data, technologies and their related infrastructures embody a time and they say something about our contemporary society and there is merit in giving those future researchers something to look at.

During this process I discovered a great Canadian archival historian, Terry Cook and one of my favorite titles from him is as follows: It’s Ten O’clock, Do You Know Where Your Data Are?. I also love archives in popular culture, and had a great time looking up the Jedi Archive - Remember when Obi-Wan discovered missing systems as did yoda! It is all there in Wookiipeedia .

The Preservation and Archiving of Geospatial Digital Data: Challenges and Opportunities for Cartographers

Tracey P. Lauriault1, Peter L. Pulsifer1, D.R. Fraser Taylor1

1Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre (GCRC), Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University

Abstract: In terms of preserving our digital cartographic heritage, the last quarter of the 20th century has some similarities to the dark ages. In many cases, only fragments or written descriptions of the digital maps exist. In other cases, the original data have disappeared or can no longer be accessed due to changes in technical procedures and tools. Where data has not been lost, as with the Canada Land Inventory, the cost of recovery has been high. Based on experience gained through participation in a major research project focused on preservation, the development of several digital cartographic frameworks, systems and artifacts (e.g. Maps and atlases), multidisciplinary work with archivists, data preservationists, data librarians, public officials and private sector cartographers, the authors discuss possible strategies toward the preservation of maps, geospatial data, and associated technologies – cartographic heritage. The chapter concludes with an overview of some of the questions and research opportunities that are emerging from the discussion.

Keywords: Cybercartography, Archiving, Geospatial Data, Preservation, Cartographers