Loki’s Journey – A Rabbit’s Map

This is the third mapping experiment I have done for my research. I decided it would be interesting to map a living creature and how it behaves. So, with the help of a good friend, I took my rabbit Loki out of his hutch, put on his harness, and allowed him to run around the garden.

As my friend ran around the garden with him, following where he wanted to go, I observed and mapped out where he went. The dots represent spots where he stopped, and I labelled some of the ones where he did something other than just standing. It was interesting to note that some areas he actually designated for particular activities, such as digging, sleeping and grooming. The activity took us about an hour. He had a particularly fun time playing in the garden at the top left corner of the map, so we stayed there for quite a while. Funny how rabbits spend more time playing than sleeping.

I’ve labelled particular landmarks in my garden to give you a rough idea of where everything is. This is a pretty simple map, as I needed to be quick to keep up with Loki’s antics. He’s rather energetic for a bunny!

My inspiration for this map was animal tracking. I have a thorough love and interest in animals, and tracking their patterns is one of the most intriguing things ever. Animal tracking, and the maps made from those tracks, is an important social/biological experiment in order to keep track of animal populations in the wild and where they move to. I wanted to try and recreate this in my map, thinking about whether wild rabbits share the same traits as my domesticated rabbit has.

A Map of my Journey on Wikipedia

Have you ever been at your computer, bored out of your mind, probably supposed to be studying, and then randomly started searching things on Wikipedia?

I have. I do it all the time, I like to call it a “search journey”. Where you search one thing, and then go through and click random links until you come to something totally unrelated.

As my second experiment, I decided to create a word map of a search journey through Wikipedia. I started with the word “garden” (as that was the focus for our mapping projects in class) and then proceeded to click through the first hyperlinked word in each page that went to.

This map simply shows how “garden” and “society” are related through simple searching and word association.

I’d like to do another one similar, but instead of searching just the first word of each page, I’ll rather go through and click the links that interest me. I think that will make a much more interesting and diverse map.

Map Experimentation: Map of a Plague

I love the concept of “what if” maps. By this I mean, a map depicting how things would pan out if a particular event were to happen. This is the theme I’ve decided to follow with my maps.

I know I’m behind, but that’s because I was convinced until now that I had to do my map and experiments based on the Foundations garden. Once I realised that wasn’t the case, I decided to go full speed ahead with mapping according to my interests.

This particular experiment combines two of my favourite interests – gaming and diseases. Yes, it’s an odd combination. Allow me to explain.

The game ‘Plague Inc’ (designed by one-man game developer Ndemic Creations) is an apocalyptic game where the player creates and evolves a disease with the sole intent of destroying humanity. The aim of the game is to infect and kill every single human being on the planet, without first being eradicated by a cure. The game is challenging, strategic and above all, addictive.

I created this map through my own playthrough of the game. I took a stock image from Google Images that I thought would be appropriate, and opened it in Photoshop. As I progressed through the game, I would mark out where and when particular events would happen, using the in-game news reports and the game’s own time.

Here’s a quick profile of my disease:

Name: Cava Bug (yes, I named it after the class, CAVA101)
Disease Type: Bacteria
Origin: Australia
First Infection: 29/3/2014
First Symptom: Coughing
Transmission: Airbourne and waterbourne

I began by documenting which countries the bug travelled to, and which ones it infected. The blue dotted lines represent travel by boat, and the orange solid lines represent travel by plane. After a while, as my disease began to rapidly infect more countries, it became too hard for me to document them all, so I just recorded as many as I could in the first part of the game, before my disease went out of control. Each time another country was infected, I would pause the game and write the date of the infection. Each of the red dots and dates represent a new infection. They are all very scattered, so it’s a bit too hard to read them in chronological order. I recorded any new evolutions to my bug in purple, near the country where it first happened. Once my disease was spotted, I recorded anything to do with the cure effort in green. It was interesting to see which countries attempted to lead the cure effort, and which ones succeeded and failed. Although the cure effort began in Australia, where the disease originated, it was the UK that eventually took over and successfully found the cure. In the later stages of the game, when things started to get scary, I recorded particular dramatic events in yellow, such as government collapses and nuclear explosions.

The result here is a very complicated and chaotic map of how a disease affects the world.

I might try another one of these at a later date, and perhaps make it a bit more comprehensive. I had a lot of fun with this one, and am eager to try and win this time!

Mapping Reasearch

Finally, Olivia is actually posting something about mapping. Hooray!

I’ve been doing some research on different kinds of maps that have caught my eye. Here are just a few:

Blue Horse, by Matthew Cusick – a collage of different maps made to look like a horse. You can see more of his works here:  http://mattcusick.com/paintings-collage/map-works

The Fool’s Cap Map of the World. Artist Unknown. Circa 1580-1590. No one knows who, when, where or why this map was made. Depicting a jester’s garb with the face replaced by the map of the world, this map is the biggest mystery in western cartography history. You can read more about it here: http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/480-the-fools-cap-map-of-the-world

An accurate map of Australia. Artist unknown.

Leo Belgicus, by Petrus Kaerius (1617), copied from the original design by Michael Aitzinger. An image of a lion transposed onto a map of the area, its ferocity symbolizing the belligerence of a nation fighting for its life. Read more about it here: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/425-leo-belgicus-rampant-and-passant/

London Boroughs Map, by Blanka Kveton. A word map of all 33 areas within London. Read more about it here: http://anytimeanywhere09.blogspot.com.au/2010/05/london-borouhgs-map.html

A Cat’s Map Of The Bed, by Hilary B. Price. A humorous map of different parts of the bed according to a cat. Some more info here: http://designtaxi.com/news/359465/Comic-A-Cat-s-Map-of-The-Bed/

The “European” Marge Simpson, by Michael Hulse. Another humorous map, depicting parts of Europe that, when coloured appropriately, uncannily resemble Marge Simpson. Read more about it here: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/459-marge-simpson’s-european-adventure/

If San Francisco Crime Were Elevation, by Doug McCune. A series of digital maps showing the areas of crime in San Fransisco in 2009. Read more about it here: http://dougmccune.com/blog/2010/06/05/if-san-francisco-crime-was-elevation/

Mao of the World’s Countries Rearranged by Population, by Frank Jacobs. An interesting, yet disconcerting map of what the world would look like if each country’s population was shuffled into countries according to size. Read more about it here: http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/490-map-of-the-worlds-countries-rearranged-by-population

The Relationships Of Every Twitter Employee, by Santiago Ortiz. An infographic map showing the conversations of every single Twitter employee who is conversing on Twitter. Learn more about it here: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671990/creepy-infographic-maps-the-relationships-of-every-twitter-employee#1

The Fox

In class last Tuesday, we were instructed to create a palette of complimentary colours, and then from that palette, choose one set of complimentary colours and create an image, using leaves from the garden to make shapes. The image needed to reflect something natural that you might find in or around the garden, such as plants, trees or animals. I used my favourite animal, the fox, as my inspiration, and created this image, using the complimentary colours blue and orange.

I really like the way this image turned out. I chose a selection of leaves from the garden and took a rubbing of each one by laying them under paper and rubbing over them with pencil. I then used each one as a template and cut out shapes from different parts of the colour palette. Then I arranged them into the shape I wanted, using long, spiky leaves for the face and paws, and rounded leaves for the eyes and ears. To finish of the piece, I wrote around the image the first stanza of The Fox Prayer:

“I call on Fox,
Shapeshifter and Trickster,
Edge-walker and messenger.
Help me blend with my surroundings
And adapt to the changing landscapes.
Show me the hidden paths between the worlds.
Teach me the ways of invisibility and camouflage.
Gift me your keen senses
That I might see more of what is around me
And use it to accomplish my goals.”

I decided to use the words of this prayer because of the use of it’s words to do with nature and environment. The fox to me is a very inspirational animal, and thus it is a motif in most of my work. I can imagine little foxes running around campus late at night, hiding in the gardens and chasing the ducks around the pond. You would never even know they were there.

A Focus on Mapping

So I haven’t really posted much about mapping yet, which is meant to be the whole focus on this entire blog. I’m not very good at following instructions.

I thought I’d make a quick list on some of the ideas I have brainstormed for my assignment. For those of you that are unaware, the assignment is to make a map of the garden outside our classroom in a creative and unconventional way (by that I mean, non-geographical). I haven’t actually started anything yet, but that will change this week, once I make up my mind on what I want to follow.

Here are the ideas I’m having at the moment…

• A drawing/photograph of the garden, reflected in the face of a compass. (will probably be a digital, photoshopped image)
• A sculpture of the garden, built within an A1-sized wooden box (diorama style)
• A glass vase containing soil and plant samples from the garden, with photos taken at particular intervals to record the process of decay (printed on A1-size canvases)

These three ideas are all competing for attention at the moment, but I’m keen to follow through with at least one of them. The vase idea is my favourite so far…I’ll be taking a glass jar with me to class one day to gather some samples to take home and start building this “map” – a literal map of everything in the garden, what it is now, and what it will eventually become.

Shade

I know this is unrelated to my course, but I wanted to give you an insight to my usual art style.

This is Shade – one of a collection of characters that I use for my own artistic purposes. Shade is a ghost fox. She has a rather deep background, which I won;t bother going into because a) it has nothing to do with this course and b) you’re probably not interested anyway.

Regardless of that, Shade is a character that I closely associate myself with, and she makes appearances on my paper quite frequently, I like to imagine that she’s my little spirit guide, following me around and giving me direction. Funnily enough, she usually only makes her appearance when I am feeling down…but when she does appear, she seems to take all my anxiety away with the lead of my pencil. As such, any piece that I draw of her tends to be quite emotional.

This piece is the second artwork in my journal. A simple drawing, but I think it’s quite pretty nonetheless.

The Compass

This is the first artwork drawn in my art journal for this course. Combining both elements of the current course theme (“mapping”) and my anthropomorphic art style, this artwork allowed me to experiment with a level of realism that I haven’t explored before. I absolutely love how it turned out. I copied a basic image of a hand holding a compass from Google Images (I can’t seem to find the original image anymore…), and elaborated on it with my own twist. The quote is a common phrase used for those who frequently travel, as I do, and is often seen on traveller’s pendants and charms.

Technological Failures Will Not Help You Through Uni.

So you know how I said I’d be updating this blog frequently?

Unfortunately my laptop had other ideas. One of the disk drives fried and left my computer unable to be turned on or used, so it had to be sent away for repairs. And because I am so attached to my dear piece of technology, I didn’t think to just use another computer for the job. Also I forgot the name of the website. So that didn’t help me either. Nonetheless, I have my laptop back, so I can get to actually writing about important stuff.

Just thought I’d update you on why I haven’t been updating. Technology sucks.

Welcome to my little word…

Hello. Looks like you found my blog. That’s cool.

So this little thing here is going to be my project for the next season as a part of my university degree. So what you’re going to he here is going to be a lot of arty things. Because I’m a Creative Arts student. And that’s what we do. Arty things.

Well, I’d ought to write here some things about myself, so you know who I am, considering this is my first post, and to reassure you that I’m not just another creeper on the internet who wants to post pictures of cats (although I do love those and they will inevitably work their way into my blog. Damn cats.)

Things about me!!

Olivia | 21 | Nowra, NSW, Australia

■Currently studying a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Visual Arts) at University of Wollongong
■I work as a barista-in-training at Gloria Jean’s Coffees and a small privately-run cafe in Berry, NSW.
■I also work in Kangaroo Valley as a horse riding instructor and horse trainer.
■I have previously attended Tocal Agricultural College in Maitland, NSW, and studied a Certificate III in Horse Husbandry.
■In 2013 I spent three month in Pennsylvania, USA, working as a camp counsellor at a summer camp, teaching children of all ages how to ride and care for horses.
■After realising that working with horses would be poverty (and around the same time, discovering my passion for creativity), I decided that persuing an artistic career would be perfect for me, and thus applied to become a university student and do my BoCA.
■I have always had a passion for art, specifically anthropomorphic art – the art of animals with human-like qualities. My favourite art style is cartoonism, as I’m yet tp learn how to draw realism effectively and I find that I can put more expression into my work through cartoon characters.
■My dream job is to be an illustrator/writer for children’s books, as I would love to combine my love of drawing and writing together. In spite of the amount of people saying this is too difficult a career to persue, I am set on proving everyone wrong.
■My artistic niches are drawing, painting, sculpting, photography, writing and costume design.
■I earn a little bit of pocket money by doing art commissions on the internet, which I usually use to buy art for myself.
■I have a series of characters which usually find themselves starring (or hiding) in most of my art. The star of the group happens to be a little black-and-red fox who identify very closely with.
■I occasionally dress up as a big furry animal for the entertainment of the public. You’ll probably see photos of that here amongst all my uni things.
■I love internet memes. So if you don’t understand my lingo, I apologise in advance.
I think that’s about it, for now. I aim to post here at least once per week, so no doubt you will be hearing from me again before too long.

– Olivia.