My hypothesis is that travel time reveals global connectivity. That is, in a world based on time, cities that are the most economically, politically, and culturally related will be seen as spatially near one another.
The following maps show travel time from London, Tokyo, and New York. Cities are sampled from each continent proportional to the continent's land area. The cities are plotted in time space, represented by the concentric circles, where each circle represents one hour of flight time. A geographic map is underlaid for reference.
Here are a couple of animations that I produced earlier in the process. They show morphing from a geographic map to a map based on travel time.
2D Animation
3D Animation
A-1
A-2
A-3
B-13D representation of the London time map.
B-2Visualization of London time map with x, y, and z time coordinates.
The following series of collages shows residual from a population density map that has been cut away by the associated morphed map from above. This reveals the areas where the land has been stretched or pulled away in the redrawing based on time coordinates.
C-1
C-2
C-3The map below shows all three time maps overlaid. I extracted the common areas between the three maps and integrated them into a political map collage.
D-1
D-2The extracted areas + political map.
It seems that London, New York and Tokyo are increasingly becoming individually indistinct as economic, political, and cultural centers. The new world I envision from this information would visualize this centralization so that the most related cities of the globe politically, economically, and culturally become one global city and all other areas are located according to their connections to this global city. In our age where time is everything and technology is increasingly being built to solve the problem of time, technology would be the catalyst to bridge this gap between the world as it is and the Time World.
I would appreciate your questions, interpretations, thoughts, and critiques.
26 comments:
Interesting premise. I find it difficult to read this premise in your graphic presentation.
Nathan,
I too like your notion of describing geography in terms of aerial travel time. To add a bit of complexity to your concept, you may want to consider two additional factors. Travel time can not be calculated by concentric circles and linear paths. Travel between many countries is often quite complicated by government restrictions. Similarly, flying to Europe from the U.S. is generally faster than the reverse because of jet streams. I need more information about how you produced your images in order to comment further on them.
Nate Dicks: Mid-Review Crit: November 9, 2006:
Peter Laurence, Lecturer in Architecture, Clemson University:
1. Information Design
1.1. Megastructure Level—Product vs. Process: From some of your words and presentation, ie the title “Mapimation” and your discussion of a hypothesis, I understand this to be a project at a certain level of completion. I only understand this for sure from being invited to review the project. It would be good to clearly indicate this post as different from other posts and proposal/product from process. Similarly, it would be good to review your objectives (the assignment) at the outset. The blog format lends itself to regular visits over time; a one-time viewer/reviewer, however, will not be doing this and cannot be expected to read every post to extract the product/process relationship.
1.2. Intermediary Level--Organization: You have some 5 different styles of images (1-3, concentric circles; 4-5, black field; 6-8, white field; etc.). The presentation of your information does not correspond to the differences in these images as well as it could.
1.3. Artifact Level--Numbers or keys: Numbering or keying your images in the blog or in the images themselves would facilitate discussion of images and allow the visitor can follow along.
2. Content/Project
2.1. Images 1-3, Three Global Cities: NYC, London, and Tokyo are understood to be global cities. You do not say anything about your selection of these cities however. Are they chosen because of population, economics, number of international flights, or something else? I am not sure if I understand these images but have deduced that the stretched figures equal geography reshaped to time? The London drawing seems most effective because London is near the center of everything. But you use a differently scaled underlay (grey) map for each, so one can’t really compare the data. With NYC and Tokyo, the concentric circle structure is similarly shifted, by being moved off to the sides. In other words, something needs to remain stable among the three studies: either underlying world map or concentric circles framework.
2.2. Colors: I would emphasize the color keying at the outset.
2.3. Image 9: This should perhaps follow Image number 3.
2.4. Images 4-8: I don’t understand them or the point of them.
2.5. Images 9-10: What do these really tell us?
2.6. Analysis of data: The idea “that London, New York and Tokyo are increasingly becoming individually indistinct as economic, political, and cultural centers” is not supported by the data. This conclusion and proposal, meanwhile, is unclear:
“The new world I envision from this information would visualize this centralization so that the most related cities of the globe politically, economically, and culturally become one global city and all other areas are located according to their connections to this global city. In our age where time is everything and technology is increasingly being built to solve the problem of time, technology would be the catalyst to bridge this gap between the world as it is and the Time World.” Technology, ie the travel-time that you have studied, the internet, telephones, obsolete telegraph machines, IS already the so-called “catalyst” that mediates between time and place.
3. Project/Proposal
3.1. What is your proposal?
PL
nate,
i think it would have been helpful to see the animations you generated to arrive at this information. perhaps you can insert them into the blog for future reviewers. because reviewers have left their email, i would encourage you to engage in a dialogue with them, asserting or clarifying your work based on their questions. you may email them, if they left contact information and redirect them to the blog post, after leaving your own responses to their comments in comments section of the posts.
both Joshua Lee and Peter Laurence, thus far, have left good comments that I think you have considered and/or that will be very helpful to you as you proceed.
Thanks for the comments. I wanted to add some information that could help in understanding my project.
I generated the time maps (images A1-3) by first plotting cities in their geographic locations. I then researched the shortest flight duration to each city from the respective hub city (London, NYC, Tokyo). I then plotted the city according to its position on one of the concentric circles (each circle represents one hour of travel time.) I thought of each city as a handle that would stretch or distort the land around it as it moved towards or away from the hub city on the circle-plane. So, after I plotted the cities in "time space," I redrew the continents to create the distorted shapes you see. Here are links to previous posts that may help clarify the process:
http://nateframbes.blogspot.com/2006/10/mapimation-travel-time.html
http://nateframbes.blogspot.com/2006/10/mapimation-pin-up.html
Please see the latest post for my ideas for a proposal:
http://nateframbes.blogspot.com/2006/11/global-network-archipelago-thoughts-on.html
Also, images C1-3 show the residual of a population density map after each time map (A1-3)has been subtracted from it. In other words, I overlaid the time maps for London, NYC, and Tokyo over a population density map then cut the time map out with photoshop. I think these reveal the areas that were distorted in redrawing according to time. The cities in the areas that you see moved the most from their actual location. (I hope that makes sense.)
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