Christmas Reading

Two books stand out this holiday season. I bought the paperback of Richard Ford's latest, Canada, once I had reached Canada and was waiting in Ottawa for my connecting flight to Montreal.  I have been a Ford fan for a long time, ever since a friend in Edmonton told me to read Ford's excellent short story collection Rock Springs.  In that collection, or another one, Ford's characters live in Great Falls, as they do in this latest book.  Great Falls is a rough town in Montana, and I sometimes wonder if the people who live there are self-conscious about the fact that one of the greatest writers of our time uses their locale as both character and backdrop to his Chekovian tragedies.

The second book I have only just begun, but it is deeply satisfying and a bit decadent for me.  Rodrigo Quian Quiroga's Borges and Memory is a work of philosophy that examines an important intersection between science and art.  It revolves around a Borges story about a man (Funes) who has perfect memory.  The author examines Borges's notes made in the margins of his books to see just how much research into psychology and the science of memory he had made.  As it turned out, a great deal, and Borges anticipated current scientific findings in neuroscience a half a century before some of these recent discoveries were made.  This book is a bit like Jonathan Lehrer's Proust Was A Neuroscientist,  but the Borges book benefits from being written by an academic, a professor, working in the field about which he speaks.

GISystems, Science, Art and Toolmaking

GIS is an art and this realization begs a couple of questions.  Does the status of GIS as art make it any less a science?  Is arty GIS aligned somehow with its tool-status, in this case for making cool patterns/maps?

I'm thinking specifically of Mei-Po Kwan's Professional Geographer article "Affecting Geospatial Technologies," in which remotely sensed images were turned into maps of emotion.

Reviewing the GISystems/Science debate again in preparation for the upcoming GG3090 Critical GIS and the geoweb course at Royal Holloway has got me thinking about how the debate is still fresh.

A popular image of GIS or GIS-mappy things in movies or games would probably objectify the technology as a tool for making parts of movies or games work.

The map is often a sort of deus-ex-machina that comes in at the right moment to save the day.  Think of the cool maps the mop-haired tech-geek in the latest Bond movie Skyfall uses to leave a trail of ever-so-subtle-and-not-too-obvious breadcrumbs (or mapcrumbs) to lure the bad guy into Scotland where his fate will be sealed.

Cinematic maps obviously have to be flashy and nowadays usually animated to make the cut for cameo appearances in such high stakes movies as those in the Bond or Bourne series.  I've always fallen more for Bourne because the sense in those movies is that you never get off the geospatial platform, that you are always in the map as it zooms in and out of various locales across the globe.

So perhaps in the end GIS as art falls in the realm of that under-discussed area of the debate, that of toolmaking.  GIS provides a means for making tools artists and cinematographers and feminists can use to represent aspects of life that no other toolmaking technology can represent in quite the same way.

This has always been the case with maps.  Maps are both a science and an art.  Think of the crucial guiding role of the map in Hitchcock's 39 Steps.  Obviously there was no GIS when that movie was made, but the map serves to guide a viewer's emotions around the various landscapes in which the action of the movie takes place.  Conley has written about this map, which made me go watch it partly because I was interested but also partly because I didn't have an internet connection in my flat yet, and it was the only thing on my computer I hadn't watched.

So I would hazard a guess, that GIS is art, science and tool, and that toolmaking drives both the art and the science sides of the equation.

Montreal

We are decorating the 'arctic fir' fake Christmas tree that was put up in our front room here in Brossard Quebec on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, across from downtown Montreal.  The fake fir tree looks a lot bushier on the box.

Montreal's snow is a lot fluffier in my memory.  Right now the only snow we're getting is borderline snow but is more like rain that instead of puddling and pooling outward (it does that too), also goes upward into rain piles that dam the liquid parts into huge pools.

Two days ago I did the dance of the rain piles in my Dr Marten shoes, carefully picking a pathway far enough away from the car splash zone to remain dry, and far enough from any corner to try to avoid the dammed slush lakes.

I made it through a whole day dry.  Had I been wearing my Clark's shoes I would've been drenched through.  It was not until after dark, around 4:30 that I made my fatal error, stepping into what I thought was a shallow puddle only to find myself ankle deep.  One third of one foot got drenched.

Still I got home and felt dry.

Critical GIS and the Geoweb (GG3090)

I'm getting pretty excited about the upcoming Critical GIS and the Geoweb course starting next term in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway.  We will touch upon how GIS rides an alleged physical/human divide in geography, how this technology offers a unique way of analysing and criticising origins and reasons for constructing that divide.

There will be two streams students can follow.  The first will focus upon BRITICE and the visualisation of geomorphic landscapes of northern England.  The second will be a critique of statistical constructions of more urban areas around London, starting from the choropleth map in the classic industry standard GIS package view, moving from there through ethnographic investigations of the same places with eventual qualitative data to be posted and saved in Google Earth's kml format.

Virginia Water Totem Pole

I found this authentic Haida totem pole on my first ride from my new home in Egham.

It was about a 40 minute ride along Christchurch road I think, and quite a nice ride at that.

Then I made it to the big royal park where you are allowed to ride on some of the paths.

Seeing the totem pole on the map I rode to it and found it in about 5 minutes.

The totem pole memorialises the inclusion of British Columbia within the British Colonies.

Haida carvers were brought in some time after its installation to re-touch the paint.

Some German tourists were also there looking at the pole, a whole family discussing and tilting their heads back to take in its height.

The day was fine and cold, perfect for riding.

I stopped on the way back at a small grocery store in Virginia Water and filled up my pannier bags with groceries.

The man in that store was very friendly and Norwegian I think.

Picadilly Circus

I have developed the habit of going to Picadilly Circus for fun.  I really like the London Library and its air of exclusiveness and most of all, its quiet.

The clothing shops are out of my price range but I still love to look.

It's easy to walk back a few stops and get on at Hyde Park or even farther west, saving a bit of time on the underground.

Egham

It's been a while since I posted to this blog.  I've relocated to Egham since the last post and a lot has happened in between.  The new flat was unfurnished so on Saturday I waited for my washing machine to arrive (late) and when it got here the delivery men called me 'boss' at least three times each.  Today, when my new (cheap) refrigerator arrived one of the delivery men had a multicolored 'rasta' hat stuffed with what I can only assume to be dreadlocks.  They were all very friendly and helpful.  In the new year sofa/couch, dresser and ironing board will be added to my suite of new household items, as will curtains.  Everything is a bit makeshift, but I'm very comfortable, and I even have my own private garden, where I know my two cats, Oscar and Charlotte, will be very happy.