A view of Glossop on a sunny Sunday in September.

Going Underground workshop, 21-22 September 2006

I took part in a fascinating interdisciplinary meeting at the end of last week in Manchester looking at all diferent aspects of underground spatiality. Organisers Simon Marvin and Steve Graham brought together a good range of speakers (programme and abstracts here). Stand out presentations for me: Wayne Barrar's photographs of industrial underground spaces; Helen Scalway's talk on getting passenger's to draw sketch maps of the London Underground; David Pike's review of the forms of underground spaces in (Hollywood) cinema.

I gave a (slightly) modified talk on urban exploration (slides are here) and also chaired a session. I am working on completing the paper on 'space hacking' and will post it once a reasonable draft is ready.

cheers
martin

Software and the Mundane Management of Air Travel





A piece, co-written with Rob Kitchin, on airport spaces, security and code has just appeared in the journal First Monday, as part of a special issue on 'Command lines: the emergence of governance in global cyberspace' (September 2006). The article was written a while ago, for a conference in April 2005, so some details are now a little out of date.

Rethinking Maps sessions at RGS-IBG Conference, Wednesday 30 August 2006

I co-organised, with Chris Perkins and Rob Kitchin, two successful sessions on new ideas in mapping at the RGS-IBG conference last week. A diverse range of papers delivered were presented (abstracts are here):

Session 1 papers:

1. Deconstructing the Map
William Cartwright, RMIT University, Australia

2. Performing Cartographies: Wayfinding Within The Airport
Paul Anderson, University of Edinburgh

3. MAPS withOUT Borders
Ron Wild, Independent cARTographer

4. OpenStreetMap.org – Citizens Mapping the World [SPEAKER NO SHOW]
Steve Coast & Mikel Maron, OpenStreetMap

5. Emergent Mapping: The Possibilities for Cartographic Multiplicity and Resistance
David Turnbull, Deakin University, Australia

6. Tools and social uses for collaborative map building
Peter Miller & Cameron Shorter


Session 2 papers:

1. Maps & Orientation
Eric Laurier & Barry Brown, University of Edinburgh & University of Glasgow

2. European topographic mapping and the aesthetics of landscape cartography
Alex Kent, Canterbury Christ Church University

3. Spatial Diaries? Personalisation and Reflexivity in Maps
Jona Piehl, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

4. Maps, Race and Foucault
Jeremy Crampton, Georgia State University, USA [PAPER READ BY ROB KITCHIN]

5. TheirWork: An Online Map You Can Contribute To
Dominca Williamson & Emmet Connolly, University of Plymouth