Critical GIS .com

Community Mapshop 2015 has culminated in a series of outputs and engagements, but most recent among these, is our Atlas for a Community Mapshop . This is a compilation designed by a student in the course,  Renae Mantooth , containing a number of the graphics and maps produced at the mid and final reviews for the studio. Using Denis Wood's Everything Sings  as our inspiration, the class was asked to prepare graphics in grayscale, allowing for their easy reproduction and circulation. You can read the digital text, here (or below, or download ). We explored the following themes: Food Network Education Opportunities Modes of Travel Bus Shelter Inequity Uneven Housing Landscape Wifi Inequity Blue Grass Trust Plaque Program Facade Dichotomy From the text: Drawing on the last twenty-five years of scholarship in critical cartography and critical GIS, this workshop begins from the premise that maps are more than windows on the world. Maps do not only provide a re...

[ Chris Alton, Zulaikha Ayub, Alex Chen, Leif Estrada, Justin Kollar, Patrick Leonard, Martin Pavlinic, Andreas Viglakis, Matthew Wilson ] Following a seminar in critical and social cartography at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, course participants set about writing a manifesto of sorts, a provocation in the thinking and practice of geographic representation. Make art, not maps. Talk is cheap. So are pixels and kilobytes. To build is more labored than to destroy, and maintaining the tenere of an attentional wave is the work of humanist scholars, artists, writers, poets, playwrights, and architects—and not for gaggles of open-source spectators. Masterpieces are immutable. Let's build masterpieces or #dietrying. We would rather enter the ground in pursuit of ineffability than constantly losing face in the mangle in which we are all subsumed. Harness confusion. How maps and mapping need to be rethought starts with a rejection of both the possibility and desirability...

Ptolemy Windheads, ca.1490, Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library This spring I'm excited to be offering Critical & Social Cartography, a seminar in the Graduate School of Design (SES-5345). I've copied the course problematic and the weekly discussion topics below. Critical & Social Cartography Wednesdays, 10am-1pm Gund Hall: Gropius Room http://tinyurl.com/HarvardCart How might we identify the practices of responsive/responsible social and critical cartography, amid the proliferation of digital spatial media? To address this question, this seminar begins with the premise that cartography is not ‘dead’, although certainly challenged by the advancement of GIScience. Rather, the renewal of geographic representation can be charted as paralleling the advancement of neogeography, the saturation of location-based services, the marketization of geodesign, the reconfiguration of the humanities toward the spatial and the digital, and the drumbeats of ‘big data’...

This fall at Harvard, I'll be co-teaching Maps and Mapping with Charles Waldheim (chair of Landscape Architecture at the GSD). A course video has just been produced to promote the course on campus. Geography at Harvard! Course description: Mapping has been considered both an art and a science, as part of artistic, communicative, and analytical processes in the geographical tradition.  This course will serve as an introduction to the concepts, techniques, and histories that enable mapping as an empirical and analytical practice, with particular attention to the digital.  It covers the centrality of the map in everyday life and considers the changing role of the map-maker as society becomes increasingly saturated by digital information technologies.  Of particular interest will be the use of Internet-based mapping tools and location-based services and the relationship of these tools with more traditional digital mapping techniques, such as geographic information systems...

It's very interesting to see a faculty position announced so clearly in "critical GIS"! Definitely feels like a first... Lecturer in Human or Environmental Geography (Critical GIS Specialism) Fixed-term for 2 years The Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London invites applications for a fixed-term lectureship in Human or Environmental Geography with a specialism in Critical GIS. A research focus on the interface between geo-technologies and environmental and/or development themes is particularly desirable. Indicative areas of interest and research include Participatory GIS, location-based digital technologies and their relationships with communications technologies, and the politics and governance of spatial data and geo-technologies. The successful applicant would join the Politics, Development and Sustainability (PDS) Research Group. This group of about 20 research-active staff and 35 PhD students works in locations across the globe w...

Students in my Digital Mapping course (UKC101, soon to be GEO109), with TAs Ryan Cooper and Sonya Prasertong , worked on a 'generative constraint' project -- a module that Jentery Sayers and I developed as part of our Huckabay Teaching Fellowship while at the University of Washington. The constraint was to take photos of a celebrity cutout around Lexington, developing a creative story that links together the photos and places.  The students then tagged these photos to a collaborative Google Map. Celebrity Mapping Project with Matt Wilson from UK College of Arts & Sciences on Vimeo .

Erin Moore and Ben Reckelhoff at the Center for Media Design are promoting this year's GIS Workshop with a nice article (below) and short video as part of their February Emerging Media Initiative Update . Geography students provide GIS services to local non-profits by Erin Moore, Emerging Media Initiative; video by Ben Reckelhoff, Center for Media Design  In spring 2010, Matt Wilson, Emerging Media New Faculty Fellow in Geography, launched a unique GIS course that partnered geography students with local organizations in need of digital mapping services and analysis. Last year, student teams provided mapping solutions for four community organizations, including Delaware County United Way and Open Door Health Services, a community health center for the uninsured and under-insured. United Way and Open Door have continued their partnerships with Ball State into 2011, offering opportunities for a new class of geography students to apply their skills to important social issues. For t...

I've been wanting to create a subgrouping of my bibliographic database on the topic of 'critical GIS' for some time.  I've finally completed a draft  (no doubt, a work in progress)!  I hope others will find it useful, as I've enjoyed revisiting some of these key interventions.  To see the bibliography that I use for my introductory GIS course, click  here .

Last week, at the Imagining America conference in Seattle, WA, Sarah Elwood and I co-organized a workshop titled, "Participatory Mapping: Engaging Sites, Mobilizing Knowledges".  With the help of Jin-Kyu Jung , Ryan Burns , and Josef Eckert (and greatly informed by the work of Jentery Sayers ), 22 workshop attendees collaborated in six small groups to map the university, using documenting practices like sketching, filming, and photographing.  The workshop packet is below. Each group was given a theme which was to be expressed through their mapping process.  Themes included: collaboration, movement, culture, politics, and the social.  After a brief, 30-minute field mapping session, each group was able to upload a few items to the collaborative map (see below).  The map is by no means complete (are they ever?), but it gives you a sense of the kinds of practices afforded by visual, mobile technologies. Session description: Building on the organizers’ experi...

The folks over at the Center for Media Design (thanks, Ben, Tommy, and Erin!) have pieced together this snazzy YouTube video documenting the 2010 GIS Workshop .  It contains brief interviews with community partners and my own summary comments on the conclusion of the workshop.

At the conclusion of GIS Workshop (GEOG448/548), each student team presented their findings to community partners.  While all the student teams created products that will greatly assist their community partners, the animal shelter project, in particular, captured the attention of the community partners.  The Star Press , drawing on recent concerns about the operation of the animal shelter, ran a story about the mapping project. An excerpt: It's raining stray cats and dogs in Muncie, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it. That's what mapping by Ball State University shows. It also shows the problem is worse in south Muncie, including the Industry Neighborhood. "There's certainly a south-of-the river phenomenon," said Matt Wilson, an assistant professor of geography and emerging media expert. But he advises against finger-pointing. "This is a social justice issue," said Wilson, who predicts the spread of stray animals wil...