A new way of seeing

This post has now been sitting in my to-do list for 2 weeks. So i think its about time i finished it off.
A few weeks a go I was in a borders-a-like book shop and discovered a new (to me) outline of a world map. Its called Peters projection and it is a map which shows the world by physical area rather than relative position. It was a bit of a shock to see Africa and South America so big and Europe and North America so small - And it made me realise firstly that I never really questioned my visual perception of the world and secondly how much power a single image can have over your view of something.
Something which has really intrigued me over the past few weeks is Brendan’s new blog. From what I can gather he basically uploaded the site complete but unfinished, and over the period of a few weeks he changed and refined the design in a public space using the comments as critique. Its a great idea, especially in a medium where 90% of the effort and process put in to a project is never seen.
A few extra bits for good measure.
- Check out the work of Dr WooHoo loads of great abstract images based on the colours found in photographs
- A interesting looking tool/toy called Fidgt/Visualise for visualising social networks.
I have not played with it yet, so leave a comment if you have. - Manufactured Landscapes is a great documentary you must watch. Its a very slow burner and does not draw any conclusions. But after its finished you’ll be amazed at how much imapct our lifestyles have on the whole world.
- Fragile Earth: “presents horrifying images of the changes in our planet wrought
by climate change and relentless human development.” ~ The Independent, 15th September 2006