Project 2
Mapping Southampton
Information visualisation is an interactive visual representation of abstract data to enhance the consciousness of human perception. Abstract data includes numeric and non-numeric data, such as text and geographic information. A possible implication of the new understanding is that information visualization is a kind of easy understanding and handle art, it could help people to get and understand information quickly and enjoyably, thereby to make information playing a role in people’s lives.
This project I studied how to visualisation and creative a series of design work -'The Gum Road'. At the beginning of this project I want to collect the information about the 'Southampton Old Wall', but after a lot of my investigations and interviews with the staff of the Southampton Library, I found that our group's area were so small that the old wall's changes in the region were not significant. Finally I decided to do ‘The Gum Road’.
LJ's Skechbook
Research in Southampton Library
Research on the Roads of Southampton
THE GUM ROAD
I find a special phenomenon is that there are reasonably distributed trash bins on the road, but there are still lots of gum on the streets. I made statistics on the quantity, distribution and shape of the gums on the roads of our group's area, and then I designed the theme map of 'The gum road' based on the data that I collected.
Outcome & Exhibition
The information on the map is about the following roads: Maddison St, Cement Terrace, Castle Ln, Lansdowne Hill and Castle square all have a large distribution of chewing gum. This map significantly shows this in Southampton.
The distribution of the bins are reasonably located and spread out; But yet the traces of chewing gum is still high and this could be seen on the map I have designed. The outcome of this could harm the natural environment we live in and people littering their chewing gum is not a pretty sight for the environment either. My intention to design this thematic map is to hope that people could value and protect the environment around us, clean roads are much more beautiful than ’The Gum Roads’
The computer on the table played video that showed my research about the chewing gum distributed on the roads. The video projection will be divided into two screens at a specific time and play two different streets’ contrast pictures at the same time. One side of the screen is a road that full of gum, and the other road is clean without anything.The purpose is to make a comparison.
The board on the table printed a very realistic clean street, I used white glue to make some small pieces, stamped the shape of the gum with my foot and then put them on the board that printed road pictures.This will give the viewers an intuitive vision.If viewers take the gum away, then they could see the appearance of the clean street.
Standard colors：
Light brown extracted from gum's raw material tree gum.
Blue from the package of chewing gum.
Green brick color extracted from the road.