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]

Environmental issues:

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.