TerraLine · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 97 days ago
TerraLine
The TerraLine instrument re-appropriates the magnetic compass to show directions that are not cardinal but indicators of economic states. It is an instrument that helps one navigate Earth using such directions.Navigating or orienting ourselves in such ways could offer opportunities of envisioning and exploring our world from different perspectives.
More information in slides below:
Screen Visualization for TerraLine · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 134 days ago
I created this to help me debug the two navigation techniques that I am using to get the set of countries that lay in a given direction. One is navigation by the rhumb line or compass heading and the other is using the great circle path as the trajectory.
When using rhumb line method the navigator sets a certain heading say 30 degrees and continues to head in that direction.
Whereas a great circle provides the shortest possible path between any two points but requires the navigator to constantly correct the heading. This makes navigating by great circle a lot more complicated than rhumb line method. Great circles are
Wikipedia entries on the two methods-
Rhumb Line
In navigation, a rhumb line (or loxodrome) is a line crossing all meridians at the same angle, i.e. a path of constant bearing. It is obviously easier to manually steer than the constantly changing heading of the shorter great circle route.
Great Circles
The great circle on the spherical surface is the path with the smallest curvature, and, hence, an arc (an orthodrome) is the shortest path between two points on the surface. The distance between any two points on a sphere is known as the great-circle distance. The great-circle route is the shortest path between two points on a sphere; however, if one were to travel along such a route, it would be difficult to manually steer as the heading would constantly be changing (except in the case of due north, south, or along the equator).
About the thesis · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 211 days ago
Area of enquiry
Re-appropriating the magnetic compass to show directions that are not cardinal but indicators of emotional, economic states. Creating new kinds of directions that a device could help you point to and explore.
Why do we need such a device
Most navigation devices in the past (compass,sextant) opened a new territory which one could move towards, explore and discover. When the compass points north it points towards a direction and not ‘a location’ or point. But in contemporary navigation devices, such as the GPS ,an absolute co-ordinate system, like ones latitude and longitude on a imaginary grid is given utmost importance. The GPS is extremely efficient and in this efficiency we loose a lot of richness of contexts due to the absence of the act of exploration. When we use a GPS, often its about getting from point A to B. While when we use a compass its still about getting from A to B but the journey in between those points is also important.
In brief I am interested in pointing devices that are fuzzy, vague and tacit and not in devices that are exact, precise or ingrained in a grid of x and y coordinates.
Practices and Inspirations
The Compass itself
GPS Table – Fiona Raby and Anthony Dunne
Practices of the Situationists
the boomerang (yes the aboriginal one)
The Listening Post – Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen
Texts
Else/Where Mapping – Peter Hall and Janet Abrams
Field Guide to Getting Lost – Rebecca Solnit
Power of maps – Dennis Wood
Alison Sant – Redefining the basemap
Beyond Locative Media by Marc Tuters and Kazys Varnelis
Project 1 - Myriad of Conversations · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 339 days ago
Myriad of Conversations is derived from personal memory of a few events from approximately 20 years of my life. These events are represented briefly as conversations I’ve had with the people involved on a plain (the map) that has no specific chronological order of the events represented. It grew out of an interest in involving the archetypal roles we play of the brother/sister, friend, companion, child etc into a map as a way to organize and represent interactions with different characters in our lives.
These events and relationships are contained within a boundary- which in this case is drawn as a tree. The tree(perimeter) is porous to indicate things that you choose to learn and ignore. The tree is a container of things.
The table is a specific instance or a cumulation of events usually involving one other person (sometimes more). The opposite sides of the table usually represent the kind of relationship. And a conversation in the middle. Sometimes this is a shared understanding and at times it is an interpretation of one of the involved characters.
This is the final memory map
Prior to arriving at this map I tried other approaches in terms of how I wanted to organize these events. One of them was a much more structured, chronological and labeled map. I dropped this because I didn’t feel it was all that important to indicate time in such a clear manner using numbers. Also doing so would make it a string of events that had nothing to do with the meandering experience of relationships and conversations. It also looked too much like a taxonomy of interactions which I wanted to avoid.
I thought it would be interesting to further explore the table as symbol. What if its shape could change depending of what was being said at the table? But this would again turn into a much more detailed typographical work such as the one by Tibor Kalman (from the book You are Here).
This is the first sketch of what I initially intended to do. It was meant to be a comparison of the city grids of New York and the suburb I grew up in India.
I believe the symbols and metaphors such as the tree and the table are powerful in what they can contain and convey. Returning to such iconography is refreshing for me. I also made the map before I did the readings and in a way I was glad I did that. Primarily because I did not feel the need to think of elements of the map as discursive or event based- though there are some uses of tropes of storytelling and cartography. I still feel that I did more of an illustration than a map, primarily because the drawing fails to establish a well defined territory of interrelated events. The relationships and conversations to a large extent are loose, unique and dispersed. They don’t form a firm set of entities. Though this also due to the fact that I attempted to control exactly what I wanted to the map to tell/reveal.
If I were to iterate over I would start by building a detailed set of relationships between different characters I have played and come across in the years. And how each conversation has had a cause and effect on all my relationships with people. I would also further investigate the archetypal roles we play- its fascinating to see how we are different people in different circumstances.
And I would certainly use colour, texture and type!!
Inspiration:
Warli Paintings
You are Here – Katharine Harmon
Chance Procedures - John Cage · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 345 days ago
Added here for this composition’s map like qualities.. looking at it as though it were a process of creating, mapping through discovery and indeterminancy
Chance as not a way of giving up choices.
My choices consist in choosing what questions to ask. – John Cage