Time-Lapse and Urban-Mapping: An Infographics and Visualization Exploration

I’m using this platform as an archive for a conversation with Kayla. A PhD candidate at The University of Melbourne; who’s doing urban mapping or in her own words:

The course I’m doing is under School of Arch & Design. My main background is Landscape Architecture and for the PhD, I look into temporary markets. I would say it’s a mix of landscape architecture + urban/city + and “the everyday” things that go in between. And yes, I’ve never thought maps and mapping could be this fascinating too. It’s amazing to see a place/city differently once they are mapped in different ways.

She’s also the sister of Nadirah who’s a photographer in New York, whom I met last month at the Work Presentation session at The Republik Studio. I still owe her the editing of last bootleg video.

Now I’m committing my passion for time-lapse with another passion of mine: infographics.

My Del.icio.us account is populated with the infographics, information visualization, information design, infosthetics, statistics and timeline analysis. I’m used to bookmark tag with Del.icio.us, now I’m in semi-comatose mode ever since the news of Yahoo going to shutdown Del.icio.us. There’s even category for del.icio.us that I use in this blog with the help of xmlrpc.php.

Before I knew of Kayla work. I’m already set off on cataloguing the urbanscape of the city and the littoral space of my hometown — demarcated space of white sand and the blue sea, with sparkling stars above.

Her work on urban mapping is a great interest of mine, as the work-in-progress that I do for month long personal project of mine, involves with night market/temporary market (pasar malam) in urban city.

It’s an exciting notion that my work could be used for someone in their intellectual pursuit in the academia world of urban planning.

I’m pretty much an accomplished motion-control time-lapse photographer/videographer, but I need help with visualizing the soundscapes of the city into some form of waveform infographics.

The visual and interface design of Mark Coleran is the best place to start for inspiration. The time-lapse footage with the visualisation of soundscape, time countdown and sun dial would be an exquisite final product.

Mark Coleran: Domino

Mark Coleran: Domino

Mark Coleran: Mission Impossible 3

Mark Coleran: Mission Impossible 3

Mark Coleran: Mee-Shee: The Water Giant

Mark Coleran: Mee-Shee: The Water Giant

Mark Coleran: Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Mark Coleran: Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Mark Coleran: The Island

Mark Coleran: The Island

Lovely interface design, but I’m looking for more simplistic interface.

Now to the urban-mapping conversation:

o-kay-la:

Time & Space: Lorong TAR Night Market, Kuala Lumpur

Fieldwork, 2009

I just realised that my personal project on urban time-lapse with the Kessler Crane Elektra/Oracle system have greater impact in urbanscape mapping not just in time-lapsing per se.

What’s the traffic condition, the flow of pedestrians & vehicles, the light pollution source, the hygiene indicator, the environment controller & the of course the aesthetic aspect of the light play itself on low shutter speed.

All this from a simple time-lapse. Wow.

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o-kay-la:

fezr replied to your photo: Time & Space: Lorong TAR Night Market, Kuala…

I’m doing personal motion control time-lapse with Kessler Crane Elektra/Oracle system at Cheras’ (or M’sia even) longest night market, every Wednesday at Taman Connaught. This is called urban mapping?

I just realised that my personal project on urban time-lapse with the Kessler Crane Elektra/Oracle system have greater impact in urbanscape mapping not just in time-lapsing per se.

What’s the traffic condition, the flow of pedestrians & vehicles, the light pollution source, the hygiene indicator, the environment controller & the of course the aesthetic aspect of the light play itself on low shutter speed.

All this from a simple time-lapse. Wow.

Yes, I would say time-lapse photograph can be a kind of mapping when we specifically know what we want to document, or “reveal”.  And the best part, sometimes what we find stuff that we did not expect.

In the Lorong TAR Night Market project, I wanted to understand how the back lane is occupied across time, just like you posted: changes in how the space is utilized, flow of pedestrians & vehicles, etc.  We did the same for Petaling Street and it’s amazing to see how vendors bring in their kit-of-parts to set up night stalls in the middle of the street market.  It almost seemed like a choreography of some kind: they come in, they install, they vend, people come.  When the market closed, they uninstall, they go out, and by midnight, the garbage collection service comes and cleans the street.  By morning, everything was back to normal.

For my project, we had to do the shooting manually every half hour to every hour (thanks to my husband for shooting most of it!).  If you want to shoot Lorong TAR, start shooting from the morning because the vendors start setting up their stalls as early as 10 or 11 am (we only started in the afternoon and by that time the lane was pretty much filled with tents already).  And yeah, Taman Connaught Night Market is definitely the longest night market – stretching about 1km if I’m not mistaken! If you have time-lapse photos of this, hope you won’t mind sharing with me.  Would love to see how the super-long night market becomes a pop-up city over the night!

By the way, I recently found some works by Olafur Eliasson that also uses time-lapse.

I would love to. I’ll be more “industrious” with my time-lapse editing this upcoming month. I’m juggling between two jobs, offshore engineering & cinematography, and time-lapse as my past-time passion.

Check my flickr and Tom Lowe’s Timescapes.org for the kind of work that I’m doing. For the flickr there’s only one time-lapse video. I’m not much a zealous uploader. I will soon, in my Vimeo account.

Thanks for the pointer. I’m cataloging a couple of night market. Taman Connaught is the hardest due to the length. And I could only make one time-lapse per week, with different perspective (usually on the elevated pathway).

I’ll try to post one of the perspective soon.

Thanks for sharing your thought. I’m very keen in architecture, urban planning and design too. I hope the time-lapse work that I done could show something about the need for better gentrification project for the Malaysian community.

Cheers!

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o-kay-la:

Mapping Number of Night Market Stalls in Kuala Lumpur = 31,652 stalls

The data was sourced from the city council.  As in the previous map, each colour represents each day.  In this map, the tallest bar represents the highest number of stalls, which marks the largest or longest night market.  Now that I’m taking a second look at this, Pasar Malam Taman Sri Petaling on Tuesday nights actually has 900 stalls – marked by the tallest blue bar.  Pasar Malam Taman Connaught comes in second with 702 stalls.  Now that we’ve seen temporary markets as an amazing phenomenon in the country, we should be able to anticipate this in our future city planning (read: phd contribution, hopefully!)

Sri Petaling (Tuesday) is near my Oil & Gas office. Taman Connaught (Wednesday) is near my apartment. The infographics and the statistics are useful in order to get the best of the time-lapse exposure. The larger the traffic, the better the flow of the time-lapse can be captured.

I agreed with the urban planning to redesign more public space i.e. temporary markets and gardens for the community. We’re choked with the concrete and the asphalt, we forget how lush the empty space are.

I’m supposed to be in Vietnam for backpacking holiday. Missed the flight today. Yeah, fickle traveler me.

Now I know what I’m looking forward to this week. That, and all the the delayed editing of past videography work, and one of them is the bootleg video of your New Yorker sister last Work Presentation at The Republik. The one I uploaded at the youtube is a raw file. Grainy — should have use faster prime lens. Oh, well.

Cheers!

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Last night I was at the Vincent Moon & Efterklang, An Island screening at Eightyfourcube Studio. Even though it’s an acoustic short film yet soundscape of the landscape plays a vital part in the film.

Since I’ll be at the place for hours. I might as well capture the soundscape of the place and translated it into infographics of peak wave form.

There’ll be mash of time-lapse and wave-form graph. Like some wicked sci-fi movie. Hahaha. I’m just being optimistic. Is there an apps for capturing the waveform into infographics other than me just print screen the Final Cut Pro’s sound bar?

I’m scouring www.artofthetitle.com, www.informationisbeautiful.net,www.visualcomplexity.com & infosthetics.com for inspiration.

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o-kay-la:

Another amazing mapping.  This one is called MOUNT FEAR East London Police Statistics for violent crimes 2002-3 (2003) by Abigail Reynolds.

I thought fezr might find this an interesting example to “capture the soundscape of the place and translated it into infographics of peak wave form”.

I came to know about a lot of these mapping and artists from Katharine Harmon’s “The map as art: contemporary artists explore cartography”

Danke Schön!

Question: Quest + Action

Quest: Dirty Outdoor. Dirty Indoor.

Action: Laundry. Spring Cleaning.

Question: As thy heart torn asunder, why doth mine grow fonder? Broken elevator, rising televator. As I stand stunted with abrupt halt of ascending elevation, I scale the ladder. Mending silently, attempting to hoist her beyond the basement gloom. She rise, looming in glistening beauty — metallic hard, glassy class and velvet softness. No more, mere broken shell of an elevator, where none shall enter.

That my child, is Mr. Janitor in love.

A janitor with a history of OCD — and a darker secret.

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Fiction inspired by a heartbroken elevator, that none shall enter.

Bliss, from Dusk till Dawn

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats

T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), U.S.-born British poet and playwright.
Prufrock and Other Observations “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.

At dusk, we met. At night, we drove in the sleepless street. At dawn, we retreat.

A bliss. In past tense.

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Rainy night never fails making me hopelessly nostalgic.

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Not the best shot of her. It’s out-of-focus and blurry.

Yet, it’s my favourite moment with her.

“Stop taking picture of me”

It’s actually a video.

*pinching me*

“Argh, the attack of killer woman!” In reference to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978).

*mirthful amusement*

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Yup, it’s time to forget the past — sometimes in the near future.

Backpacking in Bali

I only planned for the accommodation for the first day. The rest of the week would be on backpacking mode — looking around for lodging and traversing the island by the map.

Alone at first, then I started meeting up people; Balinese, Javanese, Russian, Japanese and Australian. The last three would be the largest majority amongst the tourist group minority.

I rent a scooter to travel around. Stay up late till wee morning for photography shot near the cliff at the seaside, the paddy hillside, the littoral beach and the urban township — always under the glittering stars.

It’s a never ending sightseeing, from the culture event to night fest. I like the beach best!

Tagging along with a local for a surf (which I only watch — that’s one scary tube wave at Uluwatu) and pillion riding with a Javanese DJ (she’s working in Bali) along the dark gang (alley) and the chaotic town of Kuta is such a peculiar experience. Since I don’t usually like being in the water (which is ironic, since I dive and my work involved with subsea engineering) and I’m very much afraid of riding a motorcycle — especially as a pillion rider.

Skipped the tourist-trap. Tag-along with the local. And I’m on my way for an almost perfect backpacking experience.

Ladies Rock the Night @ Cloth & Clef

Amnesty International Malaysia’s “Women Reclaim the Night” on 9 March 2010 to celebrate International Women’s Day 100th anniversary.

This is the continuation of the previous entry. WordPress somehow refused to separate two gallery of different event — so here’s the second entry.

Cloth & Clef

Whenever Cloth & Clef comes to mind. The imagery of clef symbol that is created in my mind usually a different symbolism referred to James Clavell’s Shogun.

The clef musical symbol — or tauge as my roommate, back in Newcastle University who’s studying Master in Music Performance used to say — is an anatomical cleft.

Freudian maybe.

But more because I was reading this book during my primary years — and the graphic narration in it — scarred me.

Yet, I cherished the small library of James Clavell historical fiction at home. Growing up with the book however is a different story. The word clef, stuck as cleft in my mind.

“…poor bastards not hungry, he’s starving…he’ll gorge like a ravenous wolf…vomit it up like as fast as a drunk-gluttoned whore…eat like an animal and vomit like an animal…Not in front of a piss-cutting sonofabitch — particularly one as cleaned minded as a pox-mucked whore’s cleft!”

It seem apropos as the night of International Women’s Day ended at Cloth & Clef.

Clef as the symbolism of womanhood — at least in this perverted mind of mine.

“…lazy bunch of black bastards…how does one wear this? She held up the…codpiece…he wears in front, like this…over his trousers…over his cod… she looked at the bosun’s (codpiece) studying it. He felt her look and stirred…You want a quickie?…a bunk in the next cabin. Send your friend aloft..I’ll pay the usual…piece of copper — even 3 if your like stoat, and you’ll straddle the best cock between here and Lisbon…”

At this point the ladies bodyguard who doesn’t understand English senses something wrong and intervenes by drawing sword. The bosun responds by drawing pistols.

“Go on, monkey, come at me, you stink-pissed shithead!…tell this monkey to put up his sword or he’ll be a headless sonofabitch before he can fart!…monkey faced bastard pulled a sword…”

Reading James Clavell’s work, clearly doesn’t celebrate women’s dignity — much.

The noise at Cloth & Clef rendered that sexism at bay — yeay, girl power.

Solidarity Walk will end at Cloth & Clef, Cangkat Bukit Bintang for our Ladies Rock The Night Gig hosted by Rina Omar with main performance by all female band from Malaysia The PIPS and Liyana Fizi. The night will also witness a special performance by a band from China: The Overdose. The Gig also features musical performance from Liyana Fizi, Maleena, Beeha, Diandra Arjunaidi, Siew Wai Kok with Yong Yandsen, and poetry by Alina Abdullah, Marini Rafar, Fazleena Hishamuddin & Illya Syahirah featuring Amira.

To summarize:

Female gig performer: lo-fi feel at the preliminary set, some cover song and the usual radio-friendly lovey-dovey song.

Diandra Arjunaidi the Orange

Beeha Yeeha

Liyana Jasmay! Eh, Fizi -- FORKUSTIK @ Annexe Gallery inside joke

Poetry: the local poet up the ante with the poetry slam. Elaine Foster was there too — as an audience. Two of the poetry revolved around heart-break and failed relationship — the girls are mad as a hatter, must be the mercurial emotion. They don’t spit odium — only hokum at the podium.

Men -- you suck!

Experimental music: Hmm, can’t quite stomach it, despite the avant-garde nature — that is if you like the sound of barfing, tweeting and broken saxophone for 12 minutes. What a waste of 12 minutes of recording time in my precious Canon 5dm2. Poor baby.

Man, you blow!

The Pips: the heart of the mosh pit. I’m your new fan — Dyson Air Multiplier™ Fan.

Rina Omar: "Hey, we have the same height! High five!" A Midsummer's Night Dream's Bespectacled Fairy Reject: "No, I'm not." Rina Omar: "At least we're bespectacled."

The Overdose: the slosh of the mosh pit. The blue collar worker seemed to enjoy it very much — and it’s 2 am, imagined how much booze they drunk that night.

Ni yao si mo?

The gig ended with a cluster of punkish skins in front of the joint.

Tum-Tum-Tak

I bought Deepset – The Lights We Shed Shall Burn Your Eyes album at the selling-booth (not in the picture). Here’s some swags from the event. Copic markers not included.

Amnesty International Malaysia swags