MotionBased Event - Mapping trajectories in extreme sports

What is currently happening is a convergence of video, GPS and the Internet for documentation of extreme sports. These professional athletes want to be able to both map their experiences but also map their performance data. What is possible with the combination of these current technologies is that an athlete can map a personal itinerary before an event, participate in the event, retrieve the data from a GPS device synced with a video camera. That data (video, audio, duration, speed, cadence, heart rate, location, altitude) can be loaded to a website where it can be mapped and analyzed.

see MotionBased event
MotionBased website

Inversion of Space: Figure of city as traffic flow

One of a series of drawings by Architect Louis Kahn in 1953 of Philadelphia which illustrate the city through the movement, speed, and flow of its vehicles rather than by its physical configuration. Building blocks are simply suggested as a residual space defined via the accumulation of marks which define the traffic flow.

Flight Tracking - a living map of sky activity in the U.S.

To follow the cabspotting post... we move above to the trajectories in the sky . Flight Aware offers realtime (almost - there is a six minutes delay) as well as departure and arrival times, progress along airplane paths, data analysis, discussion groups, pilot itineraries, route analysis, traffic graphs...

mapping of all flight movements in the U.S. during a 24-hour period

mapping of a day (from 4am until midnight) of snapshots of all the radar/radio contact air traffic in US airspace

Cabspotting - a living map using cabs and gps

In this living map the city of San Francisco is studied via the trajectories of individual cabs moving through the city. The map is created by these multiple itineraries and also analyzed by an array of artists. Social, economical and cultural tendencies of the city begin to become evident. 

visit the cabspotting site (ever evolving map)

Trajects pendant un an d'une jeune fille du XVIe arrondissement

The accumulation of lines in this map captures the routine movement in one year's time of a young girl in Paris through her daily trajectories to piano lessons, home and school.

The study was done by French Urban Sociologist Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe in 1957 whose interest was to understand the city through the activities of the citizens. His work was meant as research for urban development decision makers.

One of his works - Paris et l'agglomeration parisienne (1952) is "a reference work, presenting at the same time snapshots of Paris and an experimentation of new methodological tools (aerial views, districts' monographs, "dynamic" cartography - that is to say making connections between different parameters - unstructured interviews, research-action, commented bibliographies, etc.)."

Another project La Decouverte Aerienne du Monde as presented in the linked blog, seems to be of an alternate approach... the mapping as done from above from an all encompassing view as opposed/ or maybe to be complementary to the internal understanding of the city via the movements and activities of individual inhabitants.

link to various books on Chombart de Lauwe and his work

Negotiations of Traffic on a Street in India

FROM ABOVE

FROM BELOW (from within) absolutely crazy!

Navigadget - a device for tracking movement

real time movement tracking device that uses GPS technology

http://www.navigadget.com/index.php/2006/02/09/a-simple-gps-logger/#comment-197485

Swarming: the organization of groups in motion

In this New York Times Article "From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm" researchers speak about movement of groups and instinctive group organization. We humans are not the most advanced.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/science/13traff.html?emc=eta1

superABSORBER

An animated and absorbent wall barrier designed by my design studio fieldoffice. The superABSORBER is a new proposal for highway sounds barrier which in addition to absorbing sound pollution will also absorb airborne and light pollution.

This animated diagram done using MAYA conveys the main attributes of the superABSORBER highway wall barrier system. In this project we are using video as a tool to understand the moving forces that affect the design of the wall. 

As an ever changing material, the superABSORBER is affected by the daily rhythms of traffic movement that it mediates and exploits as a cinematic experience. This video shows one of the sides that the superABSORBER interfaces – the highway and the neighborhood by the projection of light across and through its surface. The superABSORBER is enlivened by the passing light of the automobile while mitigating this potentially negative by-product of the roadway into an intimate play of light on the side of the residences.

Amsterdam RealTime

A mapping of Amsterdam incorporating public participation

done by Amsterdam's Waag Society in collaboration with Artist Esther Polak (2002)

"Every inhabitant of Amsterdam has an invisble map of the city in his head. The way he moves about the city and the choices made in this process are determined by this mental map. Amsterdam RealTime attampts to visualize these mental maps through examining the mobile behaviour of the city's users.



During two months (3 Oct to 1 Dec 2002) all of Amsterdam's residents are invited to be equipped with a tracer-unit. This is a portable device developed by Waag Society which is equipped with GPS: Global Positioning System. Using satellite data the tracer calculates its geographical position. Therse tracers' data are sent in realtime to a central point. By visualizing this data against a black background traces, lines, appear. From these lines a (partial) map of Amsterdam constructs itself. This map does not register streets or blocks of houses, but consists of the sheer movements of real people."

http://realtime.waag.org/

Traffic Primers

work by Terraswarm: a series of experiments describing the city via rate, sequence, transition and feedback.

http://www.terraswarm.com/traffic_primer/index.html

Notation A/V

Notation A/V is the original class that I developed and taught at the University of Michigan to explore the possibilities of digital audio and video recorders as tools of notation through which to study the city. This website of the original course presents the assignments developed and student projects which took these readiliy available devices and exploited them, using them as drawing tools.


http://www.clemson.edu/caah/architecture/faculty/skinner/notationav.html

Motion Mapping

Motion Mapping is part of an ongoing research on issues of temporality, public space and representation.

Visitors are drawn into a luminous penetrable volume of string in which two small LCD screens presenting student work are embedded. Upon entering visitors quickly disappear into the solid while others already inside suddenly reemerge while interacting with the disappearing and reappearing ghosted projections of the previous users of the space.

The project was inspired by Parallel, an example of Vision in Motion by Moholy-Nagy. In this 1937 photograph by Ryuji Sibata the mosaic pattern of a swimming pool’s bottom in its distortion reveals the movement of a swimmer as it interfaces the body of water.

To view slide show of installation visit
Motion Mapping