world-making

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Worlds in worlds, North Philly cowboys

June 20, 2007 in Martha Camarillo, Philly, black cowboys, terraforming, world-making | No comments

Funny, I was working on my book, and for some reason it hit me that my last few posts have kinda been downers. But I guess things are pretty down. But the down part isn’t everything, is it?

Procrastinating, I came across this beautiful and amazing picture, which Jenny Davidson posted on Light Reading.

The picture below comes from a book on black cowboys in Philadelphia. Mike Newell wrote a profile on them a few years ago for the Philadelphia Weekly:

Black inner-city cowboys have been racing their horses at the Speedway since before even the old-timers can remember.

“Some things just always been around,” says one Speedway regular, gray and stooped, moving through the crowd. “It’s what we do.”

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Terraforming v.3?

June 18, 2007 in Iraq, strange maps, terraforming, war dead, world-making | No comments

So what do we call terraforming gone wrong?

Terraforming: the transformation of one kind of space into another, non-native form. The intersection of material power and imagination. Manifest destination.

Arizona, Mars, Iraq–

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Terraforming, v.2: picturing war and peace

June 15, 2007 in global economy, maps, peace index, war dead, world-making | No comments

Strange Maps comes with another fabulous map, this one of “US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs.” It got me thinking on how many of the realities that shape our lives, particularly large-scale ones, are often difficult to grasp because some phenomena just have have too many strands, or are simply too abstract for conscious recognition. We can intellectualize them, and might have some vague sense we are affected by them, but the what of it– that’s the hard part. Read the rest of this entry »

Terraforming, v. 1

May 19, 2007 in Baudrillard, Borges, Francesca Berrini, Griffin and Sabine, Heart of Darkness, The Matrix, art, arti/facts, maps, simulacra and simulation, terraforming, world-making | No comments

I love maps. I’m still working on why, but I am sure about the love. This one is called “Hope in a world of trouble.”

Over at Strange Maps, one of my favorite blogs (how about a daily dose of cartogram? or a diagram of the Eisenhower Interstate system?), there is a short piece on Francesca Berrini, an artist based in Portland. (You can read her bio here. You can also buy her awesome and inexpensive greeting cards here.) She uses pieces of old maps to create new maps of imaginary places.

The following description of her work appears on her website. It is really fascinating:

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