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All this year I've been dreaming of maps, so I thought I'd try to paint some. I started with no plan in mind and a random wiggly line for the coast and built the contours up from there. Of course, they're not remotely as cool as the ones in my dreams, which are part map, part blueprint, part weird schematic diagram. I don't even think they're that interesting as paintings, standing alone. But I have a plan for them, as part of my exhibition at the Magic Café in January, and I'm going to need your help.
There are no people on these maps. No towns, no roads, no names on anything. They're empty landscapes. I was going to see what they suggested to me and draw cities and roads and stuff on with a marker, but then I had a more interesting idea. I want you to populate them for me.
All contributions will be welcome. No matter how small. No matter how mundane or fanciful or frivolous. Anything from a one-line comment saying "I think there'd be a bridge there" right up to an extensive treatise on the history, culture and economy of the land. What I'd be especially happy for you to do is to download one of the large images behind the thumbnails, draw features on it and mail it back to the address in my userinfo. Or just comment on this post – comments with ideas in will be left screened because I don't want people's ideas to influence each other. What I hope will be really interesting about this is what different people will see in the same image.
For the exhibition, I'll compile everyone's contributions and map images into a book which will be displayed alongside the paintings. (Let me know if you want to be credited by username or otherwise.) There'll also be images of the blank map available there, so people at the café can add their own ideas. It might be part of my website eventually. I'll be doing my own version, possibly versions, but my contribution is no more important than yours.
Where are the cities/towns/villages, if any?
What are the names of the landscape features?
How do people travel around?
What sort of culture(s) live there?
Are they high-tech or low-tech?
How do they make their living?
What do they do and where do they go for fun?
Are they indigenous people or recent settlers or a mixture of both?
What's the history of the area? How about the politics?
Are there ruins of past civilisations? Sites of past battles? If so, why were the battles fought?
Do they all get along or are there tensions between different areas?
Are there legends or old stories related to the landscape?
…basically, anything whatsoever that occurs to you about what might go on in these landscapes. There are no rules or constraints. The colours are only supposed to indicate contours, not necessarily climate. The two maps may or may not be part of the same world. You tell me.
If you like this, please spread the word – I want to get as many contributions as I can. Please get it in by 20th December, to give me a chance to compile it all into a folder, though if you send me stuff before that I'll appreciate it. I'll unscreen comments when it's all over. The exhibition will be running from the 4th to the 31st of January at the Magic Café, Magdalen Road, Oxford.
Thank you!
(Oh, and check out strangemaps, as recommended by
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tamaranth, for possible inspiration, weirdness and general map-geek joy.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2007-11-28 04:53 pm (UTC)I will get
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Date: 2007-11-28 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 05:17 pm (UTC)It's also on LJ, as
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Date: 2007-11-28 05:52 pm (UTC)Settlements
Date: 2007-11-28 05:28 pm (UTC)2nd map: this part of the world is much cooler at the top of the map & suffers from the brunt of weather fronts coming in off the Eastern Ocean. There are many small temples dotted around the lake; the treacherous mountain passes mean the lake is also the main transport link up there. The 'holy' dudes up there take little or no notice of the 'sinful' dudes by the seaside, who think the holy dudes must be mental to live all the way up there where all the fish are dead. The lower valley is boggy marshland near the mouth of the silty river, totally malaria-ed up and un-cultivate-able. Nearer the river's source are dudes who like riding horses.
I could do this all day!
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Date: 2007-11-28 05:30 pm (UTC)The stories would sort of tell themselves, then.
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Date: 2007-11-28 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 11:10 pm (UTC)The terrain graphics aren't the standard ones shipped with the game - but they are the ones I use by default, because they're far nicer to look at.
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Date: 2007-11-28 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-29 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-10 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 05:38 pm (UTC)[ cpio has a new favourite site ]
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Date: 2007-11-28 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-29 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-29 09:43 pm (UTC)Your place names are also great. Hint.
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Date: 2007-11-29 09:59 pm (UTC)(Especially as her name apparently derives from the city of Winnipeg's Latin motto, yay.)
So what do we do, just download one of the above two images and doodle on them?
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Date: 2007-11-29 10:38 pm (UTC)And yes, doodle away. Or just post some text in a comment!
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Date: 2007-11-28 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-29 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 09:35 pm (UTC)i was really interested to hear you'd been dreaming maps. what you wrote of the maps-of-your-dreams make sense and seem quite beautiful ot me/my imagination.
i once dreamt i was a map. it was a really odd experience - woke up (in the middle of the night/middle of it) feeling quite strange. it was interesting.
i was intending to oclour in the most recent copy of your comic/zine i have - i felt inspired to - but didn't make/haven't made time to. i htink i was waiting til i'd done that to tell you i liekd it.
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Date: 2007-11-29 12:25 am (UTC)also: brilliant idea, i'm very interested to see comes out of this. will the book be available independently of the exhibition?
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Date: 2007-11-29 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-30 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-30 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-29 06:14 pm (UTC)The second picture makes me think of Norway - must be your mention of fjords. However, though mountainous, it is also fairly dry and deserty except for the green rim around the river deltas. The sea is shallow there rather than continuing to slope steeply into unknown depths, hence the silting up of the deltas - only shallow-draught crafts can safely nagivate those inlets and reach the green rim of pasture.
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Date: 2007-11-30 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-03 03:30 pm (UTC)(hastily rescreening)
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Date: 2007-12-02 01:49 pm (UTC)Travelling primarily via boat - small boats, that hug the coast rather than venturing out across the deeper water in the centre of the ring of islands. The inhabitants mostly live around the edge of the water, but do travel into the forested areas for food. The main town and local seat of government is currently at the mouth of the river on the south-west, but historically there was a second centre of political power at the monastery on the island just to the north of that. That island still has the second largest population, but the old city at the river mouth, that served the monks, is falling into ruins and people are spreading out along the coast instead. There are only a handful of elderly monks left on the monastery at the top of the mountain, by the river source - whether the decline of the monastery is a result of, or the cause of, its loss of power isn't entirely clear.
Fjords:
A small, fairly isolated fishing and farming settlement by the lake at the top - subsistence mountain farming, goat-based. The fish (salmon) are plentiful, though. It's possible for them to get over the mountain to the villages nearer the other river, but only outside of the winter months.
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Date: 2007-12-05 10:34 am (UTC)The Ko or Kuo is an ancient rift valley that has been filled-in by the erosion of the surrounding mountains to form a flat alluvial plain, approximately 40,000 sq Kilometres in area, drained by the River Ko and open to the sea on the Eastern side.
The mountains are volcanic in origin to the North, and part of the tectonically-uplifted seabed that forms the continental plateau to the South. Both areas have substantial mineral deposits, with copper, nickel, lead and uranium being mined in the North, and coal iron, ore and bauxite being extracted by extensive open-cast developments in the south.
The Eastern margin of the Kuo is the world's largest estuarial salt marsh, extending over some 10,000 sqKm, and a major wildlife habitat for migratory birds. Despite a series of large-scale drainage and reclamation projects, it remains largely uninhabited due to it's exposure to destructive storm surges and flooding during the cyclone season, and uncultivated owing to the high degree of salination of the underlying sand and clay due to these repeated incursions of seawater.
The upper Kuo is, by contrast, well-drained and fertile; it is the site of the World's oldest known field irrigation system, dated at nearly 5,000 BP, and was until recent times one of the most densely-populated regions of the planet. The terraced hillsides that form the perimeter of the Kuo remain in cultivation where soil and water conditions permit, and support a population of approximately three and a half million people.
This population density is above historical norms, due to the presence of an estimated 2.5 million refugees from the collapse of agriculture in the Kuo Plain.
The city of Ko Ming was, at its peak, a major centre of administration and commerce, being situated at the centre of the Kuo below a series of rapids that mark the highest point at which the Ko river is navigable by ocean-going vessels. The population was recorded by Imperial census at 750,000 people in the late Middle Ages, and expanded to some four million during the rapid industrialisation of the last century.
[See main article: 'History of Ko Ming']
Name:
The name of the city is a pun based on the two-part pictogram of a bear above a salmon stream that appears in the earliest stone and pottery fragments found on the site; this was reinterpreted as Ko Ming, or 'righteous uprising of the people' during the revolutionary period, continuing a long tradition in which the site has been almost, but not quite, renamed by successive rulers. Recorded names include Ko Jiang Mienh, daggers (or axes) in the water, a reference to the rapids; Kow Guang Ming, the city named after the second imperial dynasty (lit. 'place of homage to the Ming'); and Ko Min Jiang which, loosely translated, means 'great assembly on the river'. Official documents continue to use the form Ko Ming, but the most common usage is currently 'Kuwo-Mihin' a word taken from one of the Mountain dialects meaning 'Poisoned Well'.
Early History:
The foundation of the city has been dated by archeological evidence as some 5,000 years before the present day, and the excavated remains of temples and irrigation channels show it to have been an early example of an 'Hydraulic civilisation': a society whose structure arose in the organisation of labour for irrigation. The construction of flood defences and the dredging of the upper and lower River Ko mark its emergence as the commercial hub of the Kuo during the First Empire, and led to the expansion of its population to over half a million people.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-05 10:34 am (UTC)Industrialisation:
Light industry and textiles were the mainstay of the local economy at the beginning of the last century, employing an estimated 500,000 people in Ko Ming and a further 2 million people in smaller towns scattered on the Kuo. Early textile manufactures based on wool, cashmere and felt obtained from pasdtoral communities in the southern plateau were displaced by flax and cotton as demand from the expanding urban population outstripped supply.
The revolution saw a centrally-planned expansion of heavy industry, with the development of nickel and copper smelting plants in new towns to the North, and of coal-mining communities in the south. The Triumphant Peoples Hero steel plant was, at the time of its construction in Ko Ming, the world's largest integrated ironworks, with blast furnaces, foundries and a rolling mill occupying a site some 70 sqKm to the North of the city and employing over 100,000 people in its heyday. The development of heavy engineering enjoyed a 'hub' effect, with the ready availability of electricity from coal in the South permitting the growth of electroplating plants and specialist foundries using nickel, chromium and molybdenum from the North in the production of high-grade steels for toolmaking, munitions, and aircraft production throughout the Kuo. Shipbuilding is the only major heavy industry not to be developed in the region, despite the construction of a deepwater port in Ko Ming for the bulk export of steel, alumina and processed non-ferrous metals.
The Rail network was developed during the first Five-Year Plan but the Kuo is notable for the high proportion of goods transported by river, with extensive canalisation of the Upper Ko and its tributaries supporting the movement of almost all bulk commodities (iron ore, alumina and coal) from the South to the Ko Valley.
The economic liberalisation of the closing decade of the last century saw a large-scale population movement from the land to the cities, with the city reaching a peak population of 4 million. The economy was dominated by an expansion of manufacturing industry producing consumer goods for export. An early dependence on imported plastics and chemical feedstocks was replaced by net exports from a growing chemical industry, starting with the Crimson Banner Dye and Plastics plant, one of the last examples of a centrally-planned industrialisation and one of very few to remain in production and profitable into the current century. The development of Ko Ming and the Ko valley culminated in the expansion of the consumer electronics sector, with the region becoming a world center for the production of semiconductors, display screens and personal computers.
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Date: 2007-12-05 10:35 am (UTC)By the beginning of the previous century, the lower Ko river had become completely anoxic due to discharges of untreated sewage from Ko Ming, a problem which persisted throughout the development of the city as attempts to improve waste water treatment failed to keep up with the expanding population. The upper Ko became increasingly polluted with domestic effluent from the towns of the Kuo and safe drinking water became a serious public-health issue until the Third Five-Year Plan and the construction of reservoirs in the surrounding uplands and a network of aqueducts and water treatment plants.
However, the catchment areas for these reservoirs were heavily contaminated: in the south, by groundwater seepage from the coal mines; and in the North by airborne pollution originating in the copper and nickel smelting industry. Information on public-health issues arising from heavy metals and phenolic residues in the drinking water supply was suppressed by the authorities.
Airborne pollution, including particulate smogs originating from coal power generation and the blast furnaces of the region's steel plants, was a visible sign of the region's environmental degradation throughout the latter half of the century, with life-expectancy dropping to 55 for adult males due to the prevalence of pulmonary diseases.
However, the major environmental problem was, and remains, the extensive contamination of the region's groundwater, originally by mercury and other heavy-metal salts discharged by foundries and electroplating plants and, later, by phenolic residues from the plastics industry. Public discussion of the health problems arising from these practices was suppressed, and the situation was largely accepted by the local population; however, agricultural production ceased on the margins of the upper Ko following repeated crop failures and outbreaks of mass poisoning.
The abandonment of farming villages affected by mercury contamination was facilitated by an expansion of industrial land usage by the new factories producing consumer goods; the resulting mass evictions obviated the need for large-scale evacuations on environmental grounds, with the potential for social unrest being largely defused by the absorption of the displaced population into manufacturing employment and a general rise in living standards.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-05 10:37 am (UTC)The expansion of the semiconductor industry and the widespread practice of discharging untreated solvents into local watercourses exacerbated the public-health problems of the region and resulted in the first episodes of large-scale public unrest, when it became clear that over a third of all the children born in the region in the first decade of this century had visible deformities. Official attempts to restrict the dissemination of accurate figures for environmental hazards and health statistics failed to suppress public awareness and discussion of the problem; however, the lack of reliable information resulted in rumours and suspicion turning into widesprad panic and outbreaks of rioting culminating in mob assaults on farming and food collectives believed to be supplying contaminated rice and wheat.
The use of the Workers' Revolutionary Army succeeded in restoring order over a six-month period in which it is unofficially estimated that over a quarter of a million people died in the rioting, and nearly four times than number were transported to labour camps in the mining communities or forcibly employed in the factory collectives of the state sector.
Official attempts at an environmental cleanup were ineffective, partly due to corruption and the inability of the Central Government to influence regional managers and the increasingly-powerful private sector owners of the factories; but mostly due to the intractable nature of the contamination in the soil and groundwater. Repeated fires on the surface of the river Ko and the release of choking fumes from contaminated sediments in times of low water flow provided a visible symbol of the region's environmental degradation; less-visible were the insidious health problems that had, by the end of the first decade of this century, reduced adult life expectancy to 45 years with skin, liver and kidney cancers supplanting pulmonary conditions as the pricipal causes of mortality.
However, the increasing availability of information through the new medium of the internet and satellite television broadcasts ensured that official attempts at controlling the news became entirely ineffective. Large-scale public demonstrations against the authorities and the worst polluters increased in frequency until their suppression by the army and the declaration of a State of Emergency. Outbreaks of violence in outlying towns continued, despite official attempts to shut down the internet and jam all foreign broadcasts.
The situation reached a head when news emerged that the male fertility rate had dropped below 40% in men under 25, with wild rumours circulating that solvents were causing the widespread feminisation of young boys. The summer of 2012 was marked by rioting in all major towns and, in Ko Ming itself, a six-day street battle which began as a brutal attempt at restoring order by military force and ended in a siege, with the Workers' Revolutionary Army surrounding the city and using battlefield weapons to prevent the population of 4 million people abandoning the city en masse.
Owing to the sprawling nature of the city, the siege was ineffective; the population and the accompanying disorder and destructive rioting spread throughout the region with factories replacing official buildings as targets for mob violence and the army becoming unable to do more than defend temporary barracks on the plains and protect it's own supply lines. Despite predictions that order would be restored, or that a new revolutionary government would emerge, the region remained in a state of chaos for the following twelve months. The insurrection ended when famine - the inevitable result of the cessation of organised agriculture and food distribution - caused the population to disperse into surrounding countries, becoming a regional pool of some 15 million migrant labourers, with less than 4 million people remaining in the Ko plain.
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Date: 2007-12-05 10:37 am (UTC)Although parts of the lowlands are uncontaminated and available for agriculture, few people venture there as the chemical contamination is widely feared; the population is concentrated in the surrounding hills, where mediaeval terracing systems support a population of 3.5 million and appear to be capable of doing so indefinitely. Continuing migration from the region is reducing poulation pressures; however, the continuing refusal of the local labour force to enter the Ko plain proper is hampering externally-funded decontamination programmes and it is unlikely that the Kuo will be fit for human habitation in the forseeable future.
The death toll due to cancer continues, and a lack of organised census and public-health data is hampering attempts to determine whether the high levels of chromosomal damage amongst environmental refugees from the Kuo represent a permanent legacy of ill-health in future generation. Migrant labourers are shunned by local populations in many parts of the region, and a number of prominent industrial city-states have enacted laws forbidding intermarriage. However, they are permitted to live and work by local governments, who welcome the downward pressure on industrial wages that is imposed by environmental refugees from the Kuo and, increasingly, from similar disasters around the world.
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Date: 2007-12-17 03:32 am (UTC)I want the left-hand one to have a Circle Line of boats going around the inner sea.
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Date: 2007-12-18 02:08 pm (UTC)On the archipelago map you ought to include either a pub or a pirate ship called 'Hugo's. Every Wednesday and Sunday they live broadcast a jamming session of 7 or 8 musicians - guitar, mic, drums, sax, a filk rock pop outfit which sounds like a practice session in front of fans. Its very community orientated, which would take in the 'pub' outfit or the crew of the ship. The main players in Bid Daddy Cadi Band are,
Skippy - trumpet /lyrics
Beezer - guitar
Reverend Rob- Bass
Nick the stix - drums
Hugo Trombono- Trombone, Vocals
Irish - guitar
Other musicians drop by the studio, or crew members join in the jam when the feeling takes them.
They broadcast to a video chat room called, Archipelago, or another name of the region chosen, in the title. Their shows only broadcast to between 6-20 people, though they're cool in the McLuhan sense. ie. theres a high level of interactivity. The songs are often played on request (covering Lynrd Skynrd, Metallica and Kochalka tunes) Several of the original songs are named after their listeners and played as odes to them. Their non-original tunes include 'The Froggy Shuffle', 'Didnt You', and 'Ode to Logan (An instrumental song about a cat)' They sound like early REM's 1980 live shows if you've ever heard those. Lots of noise, heavy improvisation, played for someones birthday party. Their audience are like a family. And lots of them smoke pot.
Oh and in the bar model they play under the bar. The bar is small but is on a raised platform and the steps only go up to the bar and nowhere else. They also serve really nice coffee and pizza, the band arent too loud, so theres quieter seating space at the back.
Hugo owns the bar. His wife Chris only works the bar those two nights a week and one other, though she is a regular. Take whichever model you prefer.