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]

Civil disorder and collapse:

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.