Interesting site on visitor experiences
Free web seminar about visitor experience http://www.experienceology.com/classes/museumonlineclasses/downloads/downloadvisitorexperience.html also an up coming payed seminar on interpretation http://www.experienceology.com/classes/museumvisitorexperienceonlinetraining/outdoorsignageclinicwebinar.html tags: wayfinding, interpretationGreat to see this project underway, I hope it means more NZers will be out on there bikes.
source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3048259/Work-on-national-cycle-trail-begins
NEW LOOK: The national cycle way logo.
NZ herald Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10608527
It was a path well off the beaten track that John Key thought most appropriate to launch the New Zealand Cycle Trail project. The Prime Minister turned the first sod to launch the cycle project he first promoted in February and construction of the final two sections of the 100km long Waikato River Trail at Little Waipa Domain, north of Tirau, yesterday. The $50 million cycleway, which will run from the Far North to Bluff, will be built in stages over the next two years. Asked why he chose to launch the 1400km series of national trails in the South Waikato, Mr Key said it was important to complete the Waikato River Trail in time for next year's world rowing championships at Lake Karapiro. Mr Key, who admitted he was "probably not a fan" of spandex, said the trails would also open up isolated parts of New Zealand not only to locals but the tens of thousands of tourists he expects to visit long-term as a result of the initiative. "That was really a big part of the idea behind the cycleway, to open up the countryside and bits of NZ that are harder to access and people hardly ever go to." Green Party MP Kevin Hague, who rode 30km from Cambridge for the sod turning, said the tourism benefits of the project were enormous but its success depended on cyclists' safety. "If visiting overseas cyclists feel unsafe riding on our roads their enthusiasm for our cycle trail back home will be muted at best." Mr Hague said cycle trail projects were highly successful overseas, with 386 million journeys recorded last year on the UK National Cycle Network. Cycling Advocates Network co-chairman Glen Koorey also welcomed the project, saying the initiative could give motorists likely to ride the trails a better appreciation of some of the issues cyclists face. But he hoped in the long-term the Government would look at a network which linked into urban areas. "I think that is going to help make the difference in terms of safety," he said. Mr Key said work had also begun on the $1.03 million, 245km Tongariro and Whanganui National Parks trail. Decisions are yet to be made on the feasibility studies on four other trails on the Hauraki Plains, the Far North, Central North Island Rail Trail and Southland/Queenstown Lakes, although work is expected to begin on most of these next month. Mr Key allocated $9 million out of the $50 million set aside for the cycleway in the Budget for the tracks.
National MP Lindsay Tisch (left) and John Key check out Green MP Kevin Hague's cycling strip at the project launch. Photo / Alan Gibson
Tuesday, 10 November 2009, 11:30 am
Press Release: Green Party
Music. It's something we listen to, sing along with, dance to. Popular music often tells stories of events or relays emotions. There were days, however, when songs were used to preserve information. Epic poems like the Iliad were originally sung. The Aboriginal people of Australia use songs for a wayfinding as well as for the preservation of traditions. These specific songs are called songlines.
Aboriginal songlines are often hundreds if not thousands of years old. Symbols and drawings can be interpreted by songlines to mark locations on the vast Outback landscape as well as guide a family group to the places their ancestors laid out in the song. This mixture of ancient art forms allows a people to travel about a vast amount of land without anything which resembles a modern map.
It is interesting to see how these people have adapted to interpreting and understanding their environment through the use of one of the most basic forms of entertainment in the world. Imagine if someone could navigate New York based on a song that their grandfather sang to them or even their great-grandfather, or travel across Texas with a few ancient verses.
The rise of hyperlocal blogging is a testament to the power of place and to the intersections between places, rhetorics, and a public audience amenable to the discussion of both. One of my favorite hyperlocal blogs, InBerkeley (started through a collaboration between RSS and blogging legend Dave Winer and Lance Knobel) has been recently shuttered and spun out to the brand new Berkeleyside, which I'm also very much enjoying.
Today brought news of yet another interesting Bay Area place-based blog, one that eschews the continual search for hyperlocal news in favor of exploring and uncovering "forgotten histories and places unfound" in San Francisco.
Spots Unknown is curated by Jeff Diehl, a San Francisco resident and the producer for the tremendously successful RU Sirius podcast. One of the most interesting aspects of Spots Unknown is Diehl's Code of Ethics, which states in part:
Too many of us think the only things worth looking at in our cities and towns are those safe and sanitized attractions that require an admission fee. It's no wonder people feel unfulfilled as they shuffle through the maze of velvet ropes on their way out through the gift shop.
Urban explorers strive to actually earn their experiences, by making discoveries that allow them to get in on the secret workings of cities and structures, and to appreciate fantastic, obscure spaces that might otherwise go completely neglected.
Here's a video from one of his recent posts, footage from the San Francisco area in 1958:
San Francisco 1958 from Jeff Altman on Vimeo.
How do you get to church?
The question occurred to me the other day, while I was examining the distribution of churches in my hometown of Newburgh, IN.
The brief, flash-based game Small Worlds can illustrate some of the curious connections between human movement, wayfinding activities, mapping, and rhetoric.
The screencast below takes us through a portion of the game, revealing in part how our interaction with the world is simultaneously exploratory and discursive--how we make maps and understand locatedness via movement, contextualization, movement, and recontextualization...
