A recent article in London newspaper Metro showcased an interesting Twitter project, The Twitter Map, which maps cities based on the levels of tweets being sent in those locations and uses traditional contour mapping to display the information. The map of London (pictured), shows how ‘areas of the capital are renamed in the map to correspond with their traffic levels, ranging from Soho Mountain and Peckham Crag to Gherkin Point and the Wembley Plains’ (Metro.co.uk).
The Twitter Map has evolved from Tweet-o-Meter, a creation which documents Twitter traffic from different cities around the world, and is a project from UCL’s CASA (Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis), foremost by Fabian Neuhaus and Steven Gray.
This work maps the online world with the geographic world by collecting data sourced from tweets sent via mobile devices which include the location at the time the messages are sent. It beautifully builds a bridge between these parallels and there’s something special about relating all the information flying around above our heads back to a real person, time and place particularly in a society which is ever more using digital communication.
A fantastic new exhibition has just opened at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art.
Johnnie Shand Kydd is an acclaimed documentary photographer perhaps best known for his portraits of artist friends such as Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst. In 2000 he embarked on a longterm project to capture the dramatic and chaotic world of Naples. Having never visited the city before, he soon developed a relationship with it that he described as ‘akin to a drug habit’, returning again and again over the next eight years.
Naples is known as the ‘Siren City’ because of the legend of Parthenope who, having failed to seduce Ulysses with the beauty of her song, threw herself into the sea and was washed ashore at the place that was to become Naples. Documenting the city’s streets, culture, traditions and people, Shand Kydd was seduced by its contradictory and complex nature – sinister yet humorous, sacred yet profane, theatrical yet real. He observed a darker side to Naples, related not only to its infamous corruption and criminality but also to the city’s inherent pagan character. Whilst seeing Naples as a tough, noisy and anarchic city he also finds beauty and a particular light-heartedness which, he argues, can be ‘discovered in the detail rather than the overview.’
‘Siren City: Photographs by Johnnie Shand Kydd’ runs until 12 September 2010. All exhibition materials have been created by TheFrameworks.
Just before the British General Election TheFrameworks hosted the second ‘in just 60 minutes!’ event where guest speaker Justin Webb drew parallels between the US and UK elections. The video above includes footage from this successful event.
Justin Webb was the former BBC North America editor and now presenter for Today on BBC Radio 4. During the event Justin compared the processes of the UK and US elections and provided some interesting insights on both their similarities and differences. He also recalled some fantastic anecdotes and even predicted a certain high profile gaffe from Gordon Brown less than 24 hours before it occurred!
[See original post: Rise of The Shard // Updated 20/08/2010]
The Shard continues to rise with windows now being attached to the main scaffold that surrounds the core.
Current images
Taken daily between 08 February and 20 August 2010
