Making My Own Backyard
Posted by: amber
Most of my focus these days is on trying to find my bearings here in Portland. I try to figure out how I can get in, how I can get involved.
I read the paper, and I read the Willamette Weekly, and all over the media there is discussion of this overwhelmingly large demographic in Portland: The underemployed artists who flock to this city in droves. I read it, and my mind goes crazy. My first thought is this: "But I have a job!" Meanwhile, the rest of my head is flooded with the embarrassment of the truth. I am those people. I am the artist who just moved here, and I want my chunk of the sidewalk just like every other artist living in this city.
Then I think a little more about what it is I really want. Do I really want to fit into every elses's structures that already exist? Would that make me feel accomplished? Perhaps. But then I think about what I truly loved about living in Olympia for the last dozen years. I did not love it because I could fit into everyone else's scene. I loved it because I participated in creating new events and structures and studios. I loved it because I helped make things happen.
If I want to rise above the demographic the media has forced me into, I am going to have to make my own life happen here, too.
Finding My Place
Posted by: amber
What is it that is so important about maps?
I spend every possible free moment I have constructing maps out of fabric. Every weekend I sit listening to this American Life and stitching together these abstract aerial views. The thoughts in my mind about maps are so gargantuan that I have had a hard time focusing on any of them. They're just bubbling around in my head without settling anywhere. I keep sewing away, cutting up fabric and stitching it back together, without being able to gouge my way into the next level of my own ideas. I'm missing something basic about what is important about making these maps.
The other night I was listening to Dennis Woods talk about his neighborhood mapping project (on This American Life of all places), and it gave me that special agitated feeling I save for times when I feel extra-inspired. Dennis made an entire atlas of maps from his neighborhood; traffic signs, power lines, jack-o-lanterns, graffiti, patterns of leaf light, things carved into the cement as it was setting. He knows his neighborhood intimately. In Dennis Woods' view, the maps "are what it is to live in the neighborhood." Then it hit me why I can't focus on anything more that a distant perspective of an imaginary town. I don't really know what it means to live in my neighborhood. I've only lived here for a few months. I couldn't really isolate what is significant here. I don't know what is worth mapping.
the earth.
Posted by: amber
I am practically speechless right now. It is almost impossible for me write. However, I feel that it is important to say that I have found my new dream toy. Maybe this free program is already old hat to the rest of you technology hounds, but I just found Google Earth , and my brain is nearly falling out of my head. It's a virtual satellite globe of our planet. It's interactive. I can't be very articulate about this phenomenon right this second, because its absolute coolness is overwhelming me. But you should just get it yourself for free. Then you can zoom in on your own backyard. Or on Ingeborg's backyard in Norway. Or wherever.
What is it about maps?
Posted by: amber
The other night I was listening to NPR, and one of the chummy interview guys was talking to this blogger about google maps. Usually I can take or leave the NPR technology human interest stories, but this one really caught my attention. Maps. That's my thing. I was suddenly doing what the people during pledge drive week describe when they want you to give them money. I was parked in the dark outside the grocery store, writing information down on the back of some receipt. I couldn't wait to get to Google Map Mania . It turns out that all these people are using google's satellite map of the entire world (you could find your house on it if you looked) to map out things like cheap places to eat in Manhattan and the locations of trains (in real time) in Dublin.
First, this website provided the indulgent opportunity for me to aerially surf the globe, examining the patterns and inconsistencies in urban areas all over the globe. It's not the order of things that draws me, nor is it complete chaos. What really gets my heart racing is the way structure of cities is rigidly set up, then persistently bent and stretched and broken.
The lines of a city from above look stunningly organic. The roads weave, the freeway cuts through like a river. Right angles of neighborhood streets are dissected by defiant alleyways. Certain landmarks have a way of claiming their space; parks stop the movement of roads, natural forces stubbornly stick to their spots.
The way that nature dictates and reorganizes the delicate structure set up by centuries of city planners is pretty impressive. You can try to move a river, but you'll be sorry.
(My brother told me all about it one night, describing how a river than had been channeled to fit into the rigid structure of the surrounding city. After floods had completely messed everything up, a team of engineers designed a new path for the river so that it would not flood again. After weeks of work, they unveiled a plan for the river - it looked exactly as it had before anyone had touched it to begin with.)
Then there are places like Tokyo, where human intelligence has overridden nature, building on top of unbuildable space. The city itself looks like a microchip.
The second thing that Google Map Mania did for me was to reopen a question that has been floating around in my head for a while now. What is important to map?
While we were looking at the website, my friend Jasmine stated her interest in finding a map of photo booths in Portland. I would love to have a map of good swim spots in my area. I think that the maps we want say a lot about who we are as people. They show what we care about. They show how we live our lives. I want the maps of the good life to become realized.
What map do you want to see?
