You aren't signed in     Sign In    Help

Movement Map: 1hr in Front of the TV

Cat starts at one heat source..
Cat moves to next heat source.
Cat goes out of the room for food
Movement Map: 1hr in Front of the TV by the_bumblebee.
A visual summary of my son, daughter and cat's movements over a period of an hour - Christmas '06.

For those that want to know specifics:
I used a marked-out equally-spaced grid in masking tape and filmed them moving via video across the grid for an hour. I then reviewed the video and plotted their movements on each minute of the video's timecode onto a 'room map' with corresponsing grid. A curious information graphic if nothing else.. 
This photo has notes. Move your mouse over the photo to see them.

Comments

view profile

Little Rapowke says:

nice idea! i love it, especially the cat! ;)
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

ixycreativity says:

:) nice. very good idea
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

the_bumblebee  Pro User  says:

Thanks for the comments :) The cat's story is one of moving from heat source to heat source and then food. It starts at the heat source -radiator- behind the armchair and then moves over (right) towards the french window where the sun's shining through. It then moves off towards it's food outside of the room - for the diagram's sake this shows it lingering by the door (contrary to the way it looks I didn't lock them in) :-) I liked the little underlying micro narratives that you could take from the map - much like Denis Wood's 'Pumpkin Map'.

I got the idea from a French Sociologist who did mapped the movements of one of his students for a whole year in Paris in the 50's.. He was shocked to see the narrowness of her existence and the 3x key points that she kept returning to..

See this link for more:
mooonriver.blogspot.com/2006/11/theory-of-dri ve.html
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

jonathanpberger  Pro User  says:

Cool, yr living room seems very active. There's no sense of when someone's at rest or when they're wandering though. Maybe the size of the dot could indicate amt of time spent in that location?
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

hotdoughnutsnow says:

Reminds me of "Kitchen Stories" (2003):
www.imdb.com/title/tt0323872/
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

endsupdrivel says:

wicked.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

the_bumblebee  Pro User  says:

Like the idea of the dot size to show linger time - nice idea..

Liked 'Kitchen Stories' too -saw it a while back.. So that's why Swedish kitchen design is so pernickety eh? Those people went to incredible lengths to understand how people use rooms and facilities!
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

simonburgs says:

mate, please can you remember the name of that French Sociologist? im all googled out of ideas to find it.
simon.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

the_bumblebee  Pro User  says:

Try: Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe (1918-1998). He was involved with loads of stuff relating to space / how folks use it etc..

Found something else he had been involved with, something to do with charting 'geospacial' landscape features from aerial photography..

www.aggregat456.com/2006/07/images-from-chomb art-de-lauwe...
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

the_bumblebee  Pro User  says:

This is getting a little weird now..

Nearly 13,000 people have viewed this one image as I write..

I'd be paying thousands for that sort of attention on TV!

Delighted that people find it interesting..
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

Breyten Ernsting  Pro User  says:

Heh, this was on kottke.org or on boingboing a few days ago. I forgot which one ;)
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

mindspillage says:

kottke.org, which is how I found it. Cool idea. I'm surprised there was so much movement!
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

the_bumblebee  Pro User  says:

Thanks for the comments folks, delighted and amazed to see it being discussed and highlighted like that!

As for the movements - candy/cake-fuelled/TV-addled kids and sitting still (for any length of time) don't really fit comfortably in the same sentence ;-)

Add in the cat who's two big wants are heat and food and you can see how even only an hour generates much movement in this context..
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

Kayleigh Wilson Designs says:

This is great! Very interesting. It's perfect for a map project I'm doing if you don't mind me including it as an example?
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

goocy says:

found on soup.io, real interesting theory
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

raven15angel says:

I think this is really cool and I was wondering if you used any computer programs to help you do this whole thing.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

the_bumblebee  Pro User  says:

Only really used some video stuff to look the original footage over.. Then plotting it was a step by step mapping scenario (see above explanation at top) which was visualised in Adobe Illustrator. Thanks for the comment :-)
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

El Gran Héroe Americano says:

Cool.
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

carriedcarpet says:

This is fantastic - I tried doing something at uni to plot different activities (like making a cup of tea) on a long exposure by getting someone to carry lights around. Only one of the photos came out well - I wish i'd seen this though!

(will post the image so you can see just how good and useful yours would be for architectural research!)
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

the_bumblebee  Pro User  says:

Thanks again folks for the comments.. All read through and mulled-on.. You may be interested in my latest project which is an interactive showing a set of a/v urban walking experiences in Worcester (UK) City Centre. I'm still working with participants at the time of writing so no final stuff visible as yet - be interested in comments though if you've a mo'..
Posted 17 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

the_bumblebee  Pro User  says:

Just an update on activities. The 'Emotimapping' projects I'm developing are getting more formalised. It's still basically looking at people's movements but also how they're 'reacting' and 'feeling' to various urban places [psychogeography].
Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

Yateski  Pro User  says:

I love this. I especially like that the cat paces in and out and sits by warm things. Great graphic.
Posted 11 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

Tim Graham says:

You seem to spend more time with Libby and with the cat than you do with Tom :)
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

DaJass says:

I thiknk I can guess where the christmas tree was. Awesome case study. I would be highly interested in more. Not only family specific, how about one from an enterprise or of a market place. Probably too much to ask for one person would be a great project though. Awesome work.
Posted 3 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

Jeremy Pavleck  Pro User  says:

What did you use to create the layout? I really like it, it's nice clean and lightweight!
Posted 3 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

the_bumblebee  Pro User  says:

Thanks guys, I charted 2 more movement maps over summer but haven't finished the long process of visualising yet. For the diagrams I use Adobe Illustrator - it's second to none..
Posted 3 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

BlueisCoool  Pro User  says:

Flickr Star
Posted 3 months ago. ( permalink )

view profile

the_bumblebee  Pro User  says:

Some new movement maps coming online soon. First one looks at the activity over 10 minutes of a busy lunchtime food counter. See my latest new images (P1 at the date of writing this).

Try this link: www.flickr.com/photos/the_bumblebee/394885527 0/
Posted 3 months ago. ( permalink )

Would you like to comment?

Sign up for a free account, or sign in (if you're already a member).

[?]

the_bumblebee's photostream

210
uploads

This photo also belongs to:

Landscape Lines (Set)

13
items

Locative Media and Mapping Imagery (Set)

6
items

Cartography (Pool)

Movement & Motion (Pool)

Info Graphics (Pool)

neogeography (Pool)

Meander Map (Pool)

Colorful Graphics (no photos) (Pool)

maps and charts (Pool)

Cool Data Visualization Techniques - Information Visualization (Pool)

Tags

Click this icon to see all public photos and videos tagged with map map

Additional Information

All rights reserved Anyone can see this photo

Add to your map