Arc de Triomphe (revised)

as the google earth mobile obviously didn't circle the landmark all in one go the previous animation was a bit scatty. so i have selectivly omitted half the frames to make it look smoother and load faster.

Arc de Triomphe

Using the idea of the google earth mobile going round a roundabout as a revolving camera here is an animation I made of the Arc de Triomphe

Contextualisin With Cash

A Sunny Two Hours in Historic Boston

[1] Finding the start of the walk was incredibly easy. Typing in 'Boston, MA' into google maps too me right to  it. on the south side of Boston Common.

 However I instantly lost the trail as it cuts across the common and google street view only covers the road.

 However I was able to use the photo spots and drag myself from one to the other, making my way across the common towards [2] the state house.

Arriving at the state house and back on the street

Over the road is [3] the ShawMemorial

Turning right onto Park st brings me to [4] the Park St Church. Initially I was disappointed as this iconic building seemed to be undergoing renovation at the time of being photographed.

 However a short distance further onto Tremont st reveals the church in all its glory.

Next to the church is [5] the 'Old Granary Burying Ground' where some important people are buried

Such as Paul Revere whose grave I managed to find by stepping off the street and onto the photo spots again

Just down the street is [6] the "King's Chapel" and [7] the adjacent burial ground

 Taking a right down school street, alongside the Chapel brings me to [8] the 'Globe Corner Bookstore'

 and a short walk right down Washington street reveals [9] the 'Old South Meeting House'

 Doubling back on myself and heading back up Washington brings me [10] the 'Old State House'

 and here it is from the other side, showing the balcony where many important people have given speeches.

 The trail continues north to [11] Faneuil Hall were I again loose the trail and must resort to photo spots.

 and continue to do so up untill reaching [12] the 'Union Oyster House'

 rejoining the road at Marshal street this is the best shot of the Oyster House I can get

 a little further down Marshall street brings me to [13] the 'Boston Stone' which thanks to Google images I now know is the little circular thing to the bottom right of the door in this screen shot.

 while trying to cros the road to [14] the Hay market I kept finding myself underground on the John Fitzgerald Expressway which was very annoying. The market was a bit of a none event anyway.

 Just round the corner from the market and down Hanover street has to be, for me as I imagine it is for many others a great highlight of the Trip [15] the House of Paule Revere.

 and just a little further is Paul Rever mall where I cant go. So heres one end of it

 and heres the other.

Which brings me to the next site of great significance, [16] the 'Old North Church'

 and heres it from the front

 just up the road behind me is [17] 'Cop's Hill Burying Ground' and from here its quite a way until the final stop on the tour.

 Just approaching the Charlestown Bridge

 crossing the Charlestown Bridge and looking out to sea. Note the North Church steeple can be seen from here

 again accidentally finding myself underground

 and as for street view this is all it lets me see of the final destination on the route, [18] the USS constitution

 Luckily, however, someone has uploaded a cracking pic to a photo spot and I end my educational journey round historical boston pretty satisfied.

I can also tell from the time in the screenshot file names that this virtual journey took me around 2 hours to complete. The guide book claims the tour should take around half a day (if doing it for real)

Book Scans

Here is the book I will be using for reference on my trip.

Change of Destination

After talking to my mum about the idea and askin if she had a book on SF I could borrow she mentioned an alternative destination. The Boston Freedom trail is a walking tour of boston which passes many historial locations from the time surrounding the war of independence. I have decided to take this walk instead of my trip to San Francisco as I also have a desire to go to boston and take a great interest in history. This is also probably americas most popular walking tour which makes it seem even more appropriate. The walk is also physically marked on the boston streets using a line of red bricks. This will make the walk even easier to follow accurately and is also interesting in that it is similar to the way google street view offers an augmented version of reality by adding lines and street names over the photographs.

Back to Square 1: Going to SF

Looks like im going to have to go back to my original idea of virtual tourism and using the interent to explore a strange place. I have chosen San Fransisco as my place of choice for my virtual holiday. I chose SF because of lots of reasons. Te massive physical distance between SF and my actual location of London means i dont fel like im cheating at all, it also somewhere i have always wanted to go although never have. Having never been there is important because i wouldn't want any previous experiences to enter into my virtual experience. San Fransisco is famous for its great deal of history, culture and architecture and i want to see how well these aspects come across over the online mediums i will be using. Also being in the states and being a big city means it will likely have a large amount of webcams and a more comprehensive representation on Google street view. Also the predominantly English speaking nature of the US means reduces the chances i will stumble onto websites i cannot read.

Havving said all this it would also be a good idea to try out the same experiment somewhere more obscure to see how the online experience compares. However i feel like starting relatively simple and easy is the best way.

I wanted to find an online guide book to the City with walking tours. This seems like the most logical and tourist like way to start my journey (ignoring any idea of taking a virtual flight to cali) and make sure i actually see some of the stuff people would likely go to see on holiday. However no such website appears to exist and so it looks like im gonna have to buy a book.

Game Over

Just checked bin HQ again and i was right to be worried about the last development. The Blog has not been updated since the television crew left. So thats the end o that, back tut drawing board.

Problem

After a recent visit of the BinCam blog, to begin trying to actually locate the bin, i have discovered that the blogger himself has now proved successful in his mision of raising awareness of the badly kept bin issue and the local council have arranged an extra mid week collection and that itv have even done a story on the whole thing. This is very annoying as it takes an awful lot of the intrigue out of my idea. Plus i will simply be unnecessarily adding to a problem that doesn't really exist anymore.


http://bincam.blogspot.com/2011/10/bin-emptied-friday-19th-october.html

http://bincam.blogspot.com/2011/10/binhq-on-itv-daybreak.html

pissed off, fuckin ITV

1st panel

This is the first pannel in the series, painted onto a large sheet of scrap cardboard to stay in keeping with the idea of waste and so it will not stand out too prominently against all the other rubbish around the bin.

Sketches

these are the rough sketches for the various different panels of the mourning coffee madness/bin hero story.

I chose to break the story into 5 panels, one for every working day of the week, again to reference to regular style of publishing associated with the newspaper business. 

Searchin for Subject Matter

I have looked trough all the current archive posts on the BinCam blog and decided on the most appropriate one to act as subject matter for my serialised cartoon.

in this post a man is seen borrowing a shovel from a worker across the street and using it to scoop all the crap, including a bag of nappies his parter previously dumped, off the pavement and put it in the bin. the worker eventually comes to help with a brush.

http://bincam.blogspot.com/2011/09/bin-hero.html

This man is refereed to on the blog as "bin hero" for his actions to clean up the area surrounding the bin. I like the bin hero idea because its very in keeping with the comic idea i had and also means i might be able to end the piece with a positive message which again reflects the sentiment of the blog.

4 days later there is another bin hero incident in which a man clears the top on te bin of an accumulation of discarded coffe cups and places them in the bin.

http://bincam.blogspot.com/2011/09/morning-coffee-nightmare.html

although this incident is not as dramatic as the previous bin hero incident i think it lends itself better to the serialized narrative format i want to accomplish. Especially as all three coffe cups were left within around 2 hours prior to heros arrival.

Idea

After thinking about how to utalize the west hampstead BinCam for use in this project I have had the idea using the webcam to indirectly publish my work onto the interent. Seeing as how the bin cam was set up to highlight the issue of fly tipping at the site of the bin and the failure of the counsil to dispose of such waste I feel that i can play into this idea by using the site to dispose of large scale pieces of work. The idea being that by choosing this bin to dispose of pieces of work they will in adversely wind up online and therefore accessible to the whole world.

To further play on the interactive nature of the situation i think it would a good idea to produce work which illustrates the themes pressent on the blog. I think it would be a good idea to take one of the incidents archived on the blog and to produce a large scale illustration it to be left on the bin. I have also had the idea of producing a series of pieces with a narrative element running through them to fully illustrate one of the blogged incidents. This would mean i could leave a new piece every day in a similar fashion to how some papers and magazines publish serialised cartoons and further emphasizing the idea of using this particular bin as a publishing outlet for my work.

Bin Cam

After spending some time following the build up to this weekends protests, specifically in birmingham, I found a group of people discussing using existing city webcams to get around the main stream media censorship of the protests. Apparently Brum is the most webcam covered city in the uk but after scouring google maps for webcams i then turned my attention to London and came across this blog.

http://bincam.blogspot.com/

The blog contains a live video feed of a bin in west hampstead, and was created by a man who lives in a flat overlooking the bin. He claims it is the worst kept bin in london on account of how rarely it is emptied, the councils regulations on clearing the bin the irresponsibility of the people using it to dispose of their waste. He has set up the webcam as a tool to make a point of the issue both to the council and the community aswell as shaming those who use the spot for fly tipping.

The blog also contains posts which document past incidents and act as an archive of bin related events since the camera was installed. The videos contained in these posts are uploaded at full frame rate as oppose to the live feed which only updates once every minute and are accompanied by the bloggers thoughts on the incident. Most archive posts refer to incidents of people abusing and misusing the bin/space around it although there are also quite a lot of posts just showing unusual events caught on camera that have nothing to do with the bin other than they take place next to it.

I think this webcam could be a useful tool for this project if i can think of a way to utilize it for my own needs. The main advantages being it is located just a few tube stops from where I live and the sheer amount of attention the blogger gives to even the smallest incident means it would not be hard to feature myself/my work in his blog.

Virtual Tourism

For this project i am going to be looking at the idea of virtual tourism, using features of the internet to simulate some the experience of going on holiday without even leaving my room. I will mostly be looking at features of google maps or more specifically google street view to explore new places as well as webcams give real time and more genuine sense of what a place is really like. I want to see how much of sense of place i can gather from the online representations of somewhere and see how useful these tools are for exploring the world from an armchair.

Every Day Set

Scan of my final Background/Foreground for the Every Day Project

Every Day Research

Just drawin the trains n tryna clock the paint jobs n how the carriages are arranged n stuff