Geotagged Photo Cartography

{Photo Geotagging of Baghdad: Source}

Currently, only fairly significant thoroughfares provide information for street view opportunities, but as was once suggested to me if Google were able to gather personal photos from around the world taken of the nooks and crannies of urban pockets and alleyways, as well as forgotten country roads and named paths, its essentially possible to visually map every path of travel throughout the world.

Flickr has developed software that can take the geotagged photos, which could list the city, country, state, etc., and use this information to fairly accurately create geographic maps.

It's a rather complicated process, using Where On Earth(WOE) IDs, and referred to as reverse-geocoding.  A short explanation of how it works by flickr:  scary and complicated math.  A longer explanation provided by Tran Kai Frank Da and Mariette Yuinec:

Imagine a huge mass of ice-cream making up the space...and containing the points as hard chocolate pieces.  Using one of those sphere-formed ice-cream spoons we carve out all parts of the ice-cream block we can reach without bumping into chocolate pieces, thereby even carving out holes in the inside (e.g. parts not reachable by simply moving the spoon from the outside).  We will eventually end up with a (not necessarily convex) object bounded by caps, arcs and points.  If we now straighten all round faces to triangles and line segments, we have an intuitive description of what is called the alpha shape.

The truly amazing part of this process is how the "community" has the authority to provide areas previously unmapped.  By uploading personal photos of areas not covered by mapping software, members have the power of further shrinking our world through greater visual access and understanding of locations one might not be willing or unable to visit.

Last fall I went on a three-week backpacking trip through India, a country so unfamiliar too me it felt world's away.  But after traveling there, and experiencing there culture and people, it's now to me, a place that's ONLY 16-hour plane ride away.

If a link between the flickr software and Google Earth can join, I think idealistically this can have a positive effect on reducing fear in our world caused by lack of knowledge.

Solar Seeking Botanical Mobilizaton

 

The location of plants, whether by man or nature is affected greatly by the availability of sunlight.  Plants will grow in odd contortions, stretch and die to obtain it, and this can change formation of spaces.  Well what if a plants root system had the ability to unearth and as Dave Matthews might say Step into the Light.

The Play Coalition, a design collaborative out of London, has created a robotic means for plant uprooting.  Few technical details are available on their website, so any summation on how the this thing works would be purely conjecture.  But imagine, as we love to do at D.U.S., an urban plaza filled with people, joined by giant, alien-like tree robots traversing along like nomads in search of sunlit urban pastures.

If these nomadic tree robotic technologies were available Landscape Architects could not only design with static figures but use sun patterns to create dynamic spaces in constant motion, redefining its character as time elapses.

    

{images via The Play Coalition}

Further Submersion: Seaweed Farming

{Conceptual portrayal of the future of aquafarming, artist unknown}

As further conceptualization of vertical farming develops, so to in the opposite direction.  The necessities for vertical and aqua farms are essentially the same; as population rapidly grows, there is simply not enough land required to feed and fuel the world.

Last week we discussed futures in submersed frontiers.   Recently, off the coast of Scotland, it looks as though experts are advocating further research into seaweed farming for its use as heating and fuel.

Professor Mike Cowling, science and research manager at The Crown Estate, said:

Given Scotland's rugged western coastline and island groups, and relatively clean seas, it is sensible to examine the farming of seaweeds and sustainable harvesting of natural supplies as a source of energy, to heat our homes and fuel our vehicles.

Heating and transport make up around three quarters of our energy use so it's vital that we find new ways of meeting that demand. 

Extracting energy from seaweed is a particularly efficient and reliable method of producing green energy, and growing of seaweed could have positive impact on local marine biodiversity.

If the continuous study and discovery of new technologies produce beneficial means of sea biofuel production, it might be inevitable that land speculation transitions to coastal seabeds.  Again, new layers of Google Sea will enable potential seabed buyers, along with their hired marine specialists to easily assess value of future biofuel harvesting.

It's doubtful that we'll transition off oil soon enough in anyone reading this's lifetime that we would see those on the ground floor of algae and seaweed biofuel production to become the next oil/energy tycoons.  But it is without a doubt that a time of exploration into unconventional frontiers is upon us, and those willing and able to pioneer their development will surely profit from it.

Related: Submersed Frontier, Up on the Farm

Submersed Frontier

{Multi-beam bathymetry - Plymouth England:  Image via Google Earth}

For the sake of argument let’s say it’s too late; the tracks have been laid for climatic disaster and we are full steam ahead.  In an undetermined amount of time the polar ice caps will melt and per the computer graphic synopsis shown on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth large portions of our coastal land will submerge under rising sea levels.

Then perhaps speculation in a new underwater frontier becomes viable, along with increased efforts and focus on preservation of what might necessitate future habitation.  As deep underground dwellings were once thought a potential sanctuary refuge from a post-apocalyptic world, are we close to seeing actual construction of alternative submerged habitat solutions, developed by opportunists looking to profit from the fear of an environmental catastrophe?

Google may be indirectly hinting at such a possibility.  Their newly developed Google Earth layer allows web users access to undersea landscapes, including the habitat of threatened species that live off the coast of England.

The new "layer" of Google Earth Outreach will feature video streams, photo galleries and stories from marine protected areas (MPA's) around the world.

The Government's conservation agency Natural England has contributed information about 43 marine sites around the coast of England that offer some protection to species such as the basking shark, as well as seahorses, corals and algae.

One of the sites users can visit "virtually" is Lundy Island, off the North Devon coast, England's only statutory marine reserve and a no-take zone banning fishing and enabling wildlife in the 3.3 square kilometer area to thrive.

Dr. Helen Phillips, Natural England's chief executive, said she hoped the new MPA layer in Google Earth would bring the marine environment to life and raise awareness of the need to conserve and enhance it.

Naturally its a far stretch to theorize that the new Google "Sea" is anything more then an attempt to raise awareness of oceanic preservation.  But with this ability of immediate visual access for what will surely cover immense areas of underwater habitats, a familiarity will grow that popularizes not just scientific but agricultural and architectural study of under water landscapes.  In my ruminant conceptualization of the potential for a modern day Atlantis I found a few topical examples courtesy of Pruned that suggest that I wasn't simply "being weird" again as my girlfriend has often expressed, but rather great minds do think alike!

The Oceansphere and Aquapod both are structures for fish harvesting, designed for protecting rapidly reducing fish populations.  Along with new developments of coral and seaweed agriculture, the Aquapod could become the new "chicken of the sea" farm.

I love the sea, but I'm no seasteader, so I hope a retreat to underwater landscapes doesn't become a necessity, but the option is compelling.

Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell

With the announcement of the release of their much anticipated movie Christmas on Mars, the set shots and further examination of band artwork had me pondering, what if The Flaming Lips were Landscape Architects?

Imagine if you will rather then an album track title from the Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots album, Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell represents the chosen name of an Urban Park designed by chief Landscape Architect Wayne Coyne and his firm The Flaming Lips. How would the surreal scale of misplaced oddities affect the psychology of space?

Based on the phantasmagoric quality of show production, artwork, and even their music, the spatial abstractions The Lips could create has the potential of challenging the parameters of unconventional design, forming spaces of surreal intuitiveness, or simply scaring the living shit out of us.

If they could somehow manifest the emotional journey of the music into reality would or could these become successfully experienced landscapes for many, or would their design capabilities be limited to more ephemeral Christo-like land art contructs?

The experimental success of the Zaireeka project, designed to unify one sound from 300 different components, hints at possibilities which could be somehow used to create urban spaces based on dynamic human connectivity and interaction.

What about other artists? How would the musical eccentricities of the likes of Bjork, Tom Waits, Radiohead, Sigur Ros, or Explosions in the Sky transcend Landscape Architecture?

A concept briefly discussed in my short-lived band days, whose members featured fellow landscape architectural students, we questioned whether we could design landscapes based on music and vice versa? The harmonies and sequences of a well-designed space have the potential to drive design to form similar emotions experienced through song. But can the two vastly different mediums even be translated to one and the other?

If this correlation does exist then we’d have to ask ourselves does the music we listen to while designing affect its outcome. Am I constraining my capabilities of designing a passive/healing space if my headphones are blasting Do the Evolution?

{All images and artwork via The Flaming Lips}