Help me populate some empty countries. Ahem.

[devi]

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 tamaranth, for possible inspiration, weirdness and general map-geek joy.)

Comments

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

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.