Bruce, R. (1999). World Views: Maps & Art. Minnesota: Fredrick R., pp.62-75.
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Knowmad: Motion + Action = Place
An exhibition held at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Massachusetts, the Knowmad Confederacy began in 1999 by Mei Chin. The Knowmad confederacy explores actions by creating the conditions match in terms of place. Knowmad is a game mapped from real tribal groups using pattern design taken from their traditional rugs and other iconic artefacts to symbolize their culture to create decorate environments for the player to engage with. This mapping process helps to justify cultural awareness surrounding nomads as well as depicting their changes in terms of motion or time. Unlike common popular culture video-games, Knowmad is different in that it maps out a life-like 3D world that would be familiar to nomads, creating a realistic experience and environment for the gamer to submerge themselves with instead, experiencing life as a nomad in a virtual environment but one that is so exact that the patterns on the rugs in the game are incredibly detailed pixel-to-pixel copies. Knowmad also exhibits the unfortunate history, social-political views and actions towards tribal groups by showing off their ancient craft of weaving rugs using up-to-date technological advancements at the time of the exhibition in Feb 2000. At the exhibition game was presented on an arcade machine under a geometric dome fit with stylized replicas of nomad rugs flooring a wide opening letting visitors watch and experience live gameplay
Mapping out worlds in a similar way based on experience, however without the historic and cultural values, would include popular relaxation simulation games such as Nintendo's Animal Crossing series; an endless game consisting of the player reliving his life in a calming yet eventful town without having to experience the violence aspect often prominent in nowadays gaming culture. Mapping out using a gamification style is something for me to think about towards my approach for this project, whether this would be suitable for the idea I am yet to choose upon I am unsure about but I would preferably like to create something with purposefulness, much like how Knowmad brings human expression from middle-eastern history to life in a western environment.
Bruce, R. (1999). World Views: Maps & Art. Minnesota: Fredrick R., pp.69-75. Laura Kurgan
Spot 083-264: Kosovo,
June 3, 1999 - A record of war
From the same book, I found out about the use of French satellite used during 1999 to collect data and form a map over Kosovo made publicly available. The satellite recorded ethnic cleansing during the Nato war and broadcasted it at the speed of light. Tragic events such as this, also including the burning of villages and refugee camps have been permanently stored as data sets. The satellite presented the data as high-quality picture elements/pixels using colour keys to represent different parts of the map. For example, red stood for vegetation whereas blue stood for roads.
A spokesman (not named) from Pentagon graphic design agency disregarded the events of the data sets produced by satellite recording: "I won't talk about what kind of imagery that is". This suggests the extreme level these images had on the public because for the first time ever evidence of these catastrophic events occurring during the Nato war was being released in real-time, showing why and how the events happened through still imagery. However, not only were the data sets creating a huge impact but also the satellite technology to do behind this technological advancement.
Obviously creating something like this using satellites would take a great deal of time and would be a complete replica if I were to do it for my own project but that is beside the point. The Spot Kosovo data sets are an eye-opener for me in a sense that they show the potential open-source maps can have on real people in a negative way, we learn the extreme news of what events have occurred to people just like us in history and the positive being that it is not hidden and therefore we can avoid similar events reoccurring.
Learning and reading about this article has really changed the way I think and view the world.
How would the rest of the world react to the imagery shown by the data sets? Were they shocked, scared, angry or were they (in some strange way) proud? Therefore I would like to explore the emotions different people have from different backgrounds. How will my map make them feel? It's all about exploring, prototyping and collecting data in an unbiased way. I can't predict with 100% certainty what emotions my audience will have.
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