Subjectively Imaging Atlanta

This blog intends to document the process of my master's project. Below you'll find the very nascent inklings of what I hope will become a solid, narrowly scoped investigation of my experience in the city of Atlanta. This blog will serve as a repository of analogous projects, writings and images that will serve to inform my work.

About the project…

How do we imagine our city spaces? How would a Google map: account for a good spot to watch a sunset cascade from a skyscraper; intimate the precarious – yet thrilling – nature of a parking lot after hours; or portray inequality to incite discourse? Despite the robust expressiveness of the digital medium, cities are typically remediated as maps, urban experiences as starred ratings, places of consequence as push-pins.


For instance, crime maps fail to address the broader social issues that exist behind crimes or the legal procedures that are spurred by police reports. Tying these events to geographic locations also produces an interesting set of constraints. Cities, or parts of cities, are condemned by virtue of featuring more pushpins than other cities or districts.


The city “experience,” or life in the city, transcends the constrained lexicon of way finding and casual reviews. The existing means of digital city representation do not account for the social aspects of the metropolitan experience, the diversity of perspectives existing within the urban scene, or the quantifiable data that can positively affect urban change.


As a master’s project, I would like to employ the affordances of the digital medium to appropriately account for the complexity of metropolitan existence. Ultimately, I would like to arrive at a robust, expressive and engaging digital image of the city. This image could consist of visualizations of data (quantitative or qualitative) and mappings of city spaces (real or imagined) furnished from the subjective perspectives of city residents.


Getting on with it…

As it stands this project exists only as many questions:

Should this take the form of an online social community? If so, what would be the available means of expression? What level of expressive constraint should be imposed?

–or–

Should this exist as an online digital artifact comprised of visualizations authored or chosen by me? Should there be a material correlative (i.e. a printed “map” of these materials)?

–or–

Should this be a digital “Urban Observatory” (as posited by Richard Wurman)? Could it blend of the subjective social aspects of the city and urban utility (i.e. way finding, legislative information, demographic information, etc.)?

–or–

Should this be a narrative using existing means of city representation? For instance, could existing maps, data sets, photos, and reviews be juxtaposed with other media to make more meaningful expressions of the city and the city experience?


Challenges

The largest challenge: articulating this idea to the point that an identifiable “project” materializes. I could also cite technical limitations – like the ability to implement a fully functioning online social community or creating captivating, insightful visualizations – as significant challenges as well. A challenge too, would be defining or better understanding the conventions users have adopted, or invented, to engage their cities online.


The Goal

Ultimately, I’d like to put forth a new means of engaging cities that is both informative and expressive. Or to have as a goal a means of escaping – or enhancing – the way cities and their events are currently represented online.