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.)

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[hairyears.livejournal.com]

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.