Sentiment Mapping
Posted on: Mon, 2009-06-29 15:56
In the tradition of the mighty Mass Observation project, commenced 70 years ago by Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings in the UK ... imagine now an online network of storytelling, picture-making, musical composition etc etc that maps the way people across Australia FEEL about the places they know and inhabit. Imagine a map of emotions, a map of the vehemence people have for places, a moving map of the way people CARE, or don't, about their places. Imagine how to know and measure those PLACED feelings, their dimensions and force. Imagine being able gauge how much knowledge is wrapped up in all these places. How can we weigh up all the advice in our places. All the caution too. All the vitality.
That's my project.
Something personal, but entirely communal -- people connecting to people, people connecting to places, places connecting to people, places connecting to places.
Feeling these links and urges. The gaps and anxieties too.
Sentiment Mapping.
- Ross Gibson's blog
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Some folks at RMIT, coming
Some folks at RMIT, coming at the topic principally from a perspective encompassing design and architecture, are working in a similar way. This is the research project that they've dubbed "The Affective Atlas". They are working mainly in the environs of the Western District of Victoria. Here's a link to one their first papers about the project:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2350g48l7655714/
The team includes Harriet Edquist, William Cartwright, Adrian Miles, Brian Morris, Laurene Vaughan and Jeremy Yuille
A community project we
A community project in regional Australia we worked a years ago was where sections of the local community in the town wanted to set up an Indigenous arts and knowledge centre on the site of the old, "Aboriginal reserve".
The feelings of local Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents towards that location were diverse, and most of them were very strong. Misery, happiness, anger, pride, indifference, wanting to forget, wanting to reclaim, wanting to leave the site for its ghosts...
Those who had the idea were not, in the end, able to negotiate these emotions and the project itself did not form 'connections' and 'bridges' within the community. The mapping process you describe could have helped understanding.