Visualization and mental maps

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Visualization and mental maps

• Visualization is foremost an act of cognition, a
  human ability to develop mental representations
  that allow geographers to identify patterns and
  to create or impose order ... Concrete visual
  representations ... make spatial contexts ...
  visible, so as to engage the most powerful human
  information-processing abilities, those
  associated with vision. --MacEachren
• Every map is a cultural construction that
  geographers, scientists, and artists alike create
  to make and convey meaning. --Bender
• Maps serve as visualization devices that allow
  geographers to see relationships revealed as
  patterns in a spatial format. Spatial
  relatedness.
• Maps are surrogates of space. --Wilford

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Calvino Invisible cities

• Calvinos Invisible Cities is a collection of
  surreal short stories about cities visited by the
  traveller Marco Polo, places where people act,
  depict and consider things that make no sense or
  are impossible.It is written as of a succession
  of dialogues - meditative conversations between
  Kublai Khan, the emperor and Marco Polo, the
  traveller and visitor to Khans Empire. Marco
  Polo is describing to Kublai Khan various
  fantastic cities he saw on his travels in order
  for the Emperor to comprehend the sheer size of
  his own empire.The issues covered in this
  collection of stories are - visitor versus
  inhabitant, - home vs. non-home, - outsider vs.
  insider, - foreign languages vs. mother tongue.
  Take away maps and coexistence What makes up a
  city is not so much its physical structure but
  the impression it imparts upon its visitors, the
  way its inhabitants move within, something unseen
  that hums between the cracks.

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Invisible cities (chess 1)

• From the foot of the Great Khan's throne a
  majolica pavement extended. Marco Polo, mute
  informant, spread out on it the samples of the
  wares he had brought back from his journeys to
  the ends of the empire a helmet, a seashell, a
  coconut, a fan. Arranging the objects in a
  certain order on the black and white tiles, and
  occasionally shifting them with studied moves,
  the ambassador tried to depict for the monarch's
  eyes the vicissitudes of his travels, the
  conditions of the empire, the prerogatives of the
  distant provincial seats.     Kublai was a keen
  chess player following Marco's movements, he
  observed that certain pieces implied or excluded
  the vicinity of other pieces and were shifted
  along certain lines. Ignoring the objects'
  variety of form, he could grasp the system of
  arranging one with respect to the others on the
  majolica floor. He thought "If each city is like
  a game of chess, the day when I have learned the
  rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if
  I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities
  it contains."     Actually, it was useless for
  Marco's speeches to employ all this bric-a-brac
  a chessboard would have sufficed, with its
  specific pieces. To each piece, in turn, they
  could give an appropriate meaning a knight could
  stand for a real horseman, or for a procession of
  coaches, an army on the march, an equestrian
  monument a queen could be a lady looking down
  from her balcony, a fountain, a church with a
  pointed dome, a quince tree.     Returning from
  his last mission, Marco Polo found the Khan
  awaiting him, seated at a chessboard. With a
  gesture he invited the Venetian to sit opposite
  him and describe, with the help only of the
  chessmen, the cities he had visited. Marco did
  not lose heart. The Great Khan's chessmen were
  huge pieces of polished ivory arranging on the
  board looming rooks and sulky knights, assembling
  swarms of pawns, drawing straight or oblique
  avenues like a queen's progress, Marco recreated
  the perspectives and the spaces of black and
  white cities on moonlit nights.

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Invisible cities (chess 2)

• Contemplating these essential landscapes, Kublai
  reflected on the invisible order that sustains
  cities, on the rules that decreed how they rise,
  take shape and prosper, adapting themselves to
  the seasons, and then how they sadden and fall in
  ruins. At times he thought he was on the verge of
  discovering a coherent, harmonious system
  underlying the infinite deformities and discords,
  but no model could stand up to comparison with
  the game of chess. Perhaps, instead of racking
  one's brain to suggest with the ivory pieces'
  scant help visions which were anyway destined to
  oblivion, it would suffice to play a game
  according to the rules, and to consider each
  successive state of the board as one of the
  countless forms that the system of forms
  assembles and destroys.     Now Kublai Khan no
  longer had to send Marco Polo on distant
  expeditions he kept him playing endless games of
  chess. Knowledge of the empire was hidden in the
  pattern drawn by the angular shifts of the
  knight, by the diagonal passages opened by the
  bishop's incursions, by the lumbering, cautious
  tread of the king and the humble pawn, by the
  inexorable ups and downs of every game.     The
  Great Khan tried to concentrate on the game but
  now it was the game's purpose that eluded him.
  Each game ends in a gain or a loss but of what?
  What were the true stakes? At checkmate, beneath
  the foot of the king, knocked aside by the
  winner's hand, a black or a white square remains.
  By disembodying his conquests to reduce them to
  the essential, Kublai had arrived at the extreme
  operation the definitive conquest, of which the
  empire's multiform treasures were only illusory
  envelopes. It was reduced to a square of planed
  wood nothingness . . . . . . The Great Khan
  tried to concentrate on the game but now it was
  the game's reason that eluded him. The end of
  every game is a gain or a loss but of what? What
  were the real stakes? At checkmate, beneath the
  foot of the king, knocked aside by the winner's
  hand, nothingness remains a black square, or a
  white one. By disembodying his conquests to
  reduce them to the essential, Kublai had arrived
  at the extreme operation the definitive
  conquest, of which the empire's multiform
  treasures were only illusory envelopes it was
  reduced to a square of planed wood.

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Invisible cities (chess 3)

• Then Marco Polo spoke "Your chessboard, sire, is
  inlaid with two woods ebony and maple. The
  square on which your enlightened gaze is fixed
  was cut from the ring of a trunk that grew in a
  year of drought you see how its fibers are
  arranged? Here a barely hinted knot can be made
  out a bud tried to burgeon on a premature spring
  day, but the night's frost forced it to
  desist."     Until then the Great Khan had not
  realized that the foreigner knew how to express
  himself fluently in his language, but it was not
  this fluency that amazed him.     "Here is a
  thicker pore perhaps it was a larvum's nest not
  a woodworm, because, once born, it would have
  begun to dig, but a caterpillar that gnawed the
  leaves and was the cause of the tree's being
  chosen for chopping down . . . This edge was
  scored by the wood carver with his gouge so that
  it would adhere to the next square, more
  protruding . . . "     The quantity of things
  that could be read in a little piece of smooth
  and empty wood overwhelmed Kublai Polo was
  already talking about ebony forests, about rafts
  laden with logs that come down the rivers, of
  docks, of women at the windows . . .

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Invisible cities (infernal city)

• The Great Khan's atlas contains also the maps of
  the promised lands visited in thought but not yet
  discovered or founded New Atlantis, Utopia, the
  City of the Sun, Oceana, Tamoé, New Harmony, New
  Lanark, Icaria.    Kublai asked Marco "You, who
  go about exploring and who see signs, can tell me
  toward which of these futures the favoring winds
  are driving us."    "For these ports I could not
  draw a route on the map or set a date for the
  landing. At times all I need is a brief glimpse,
  an opening in the midst of an incongruous
  landscape, a glint of light in the fog, the
  dialogue of two passersby meeting in the crowd,
  and I think that, setting out from there, I will
  put together, piece by piece, the perfect city,
  made of fragments mixed with the rest, of
  instants separated by intervals, of signals one
  sends out, not knowing who receives them. If I
  tell you that the city toward which my journey
  tends is discontinuous in space and time, now
  scattered, now more condensed, you must not
  believe the search for it can stop. Perhaps while
  we speak, it is rising, scattered, within the
  confines of your empire you can hunt for it, but
  only in the way I have said."    Already the
  Great Khan was leafing through his atlas, over
  the maps of the cities that menace in nightmares
  and maledictions Enoch, Babylong, Yahooland,
  Butua, Brave New World    He said "It is all
  useless, if the last landing place can only be
  the infernal city, and it is there that, in
  ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing
  us."     And Polo said "The inferno of the
  living is not something that will be if there is
  one, it is what is already here, the inferno
  where we live every day, that we form by being
  together. There are two ways to escape suffering
  it. The first is easy for many accept the
  inferno and become such a part of it that you can
  no longer see it. The second is risky and demands
  constant vigilance and apprehension seek and
  learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of
  the inferno, are not inferno, then make them
  endure, give them space."

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Invisible cities (norm and exceptions)

• "From now on, I'll describe the cities to you,"
  the Khan had said, "in your journeys you will see
  if they exist."    But the cities visited by
  Marco Polo were always different from those
  thought of by the emperor.    "And yet I have
  constructed in my mind a model city from which
  all possible cities can be deduced," Kublai said.
  "It contains everything corresponding to the
  norm. Since the cities that exist diverge in
  varying degree from the norm, I need only foresee
  the exceptions to the norm and calculate the most
  probable combinations."    I have also thought
  of a model city from which I deduce all others,"
  Marco answered. "It is a city made only of
  exceptions, exclusions, incongruities,
  contradictions. If such a city is the most
  improbable, by reducing the number of abnormal
  elements, we increase the probability that the
  city really exists. So I have only to subtract
  exceptions from my model, and in whatever
  direction I proceed, I will arrive at one of the
  cities which, always as an exception, exists. But
  I cannot force my operation beyond a certain
  limit I would achieve cities too probable to be
  real."

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Invisible cities

• - Kublai Maybe when I will know all the emblems
  of the cities, I will finally possess all my
  empire?
• Marco No, that day you will turn yourself into
  an emblem.
• 'I speak and speak,' Marco says, 'but the
  listener retains only the words he is expecting.
  The description of the world to which you lend a
  benevolent ear is one thing the description that
  will go the rounds of stevedores and gondoliers
  on the street outside my house the day of my
  return is another and yet another, that which I
  might dictate late in life, if I were taken
  prisoner by Genoese pirates and put in irons in
  the same cell with a writer of adventure stories.
  It is not the voice that commands the story it
  is the ear.'

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Lynch image of the city

• Mental model of space
• Spatial visualization serves as a key
  cartographic device for relaying representative
  information about that part of space portrayed,
  creating an ordered presentation of patterns that
  instruct the observer. How do you achieve
  appropriate navigation with no map?
• Appropriate navigation is relative to the
  aesthetic, rational and behavioural goals
  embodied by the personas selected
• Maps as mental terrain
• Place legibility the ease with which people can
  understand the layout of a place.
• To understand the layout of a city, people first
  and foremost create a mental map. Mental maps of
  a city are mental representations of what the
  city contains, and its layout according to the
  individual.
• These mental representations, along with the
  actual city, contain many unique elements-
  paths, - edges, - districts, - nodes, -
  landmarks.

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Lynch image of the city

• Paths are channels by which people move along in
  their travels, familiar routes followed. Examples
  of paths are roads, trails, and sidewalks.
• Edges, are all other lines not included in the
  path group, dividing lines between districts,
  they are boundaries between two phases, linear
  breaks in continuity . Examples of edges are
  walls and seashores.
• Districts are sections of the city, usually
  relatively substantial in size, which have an
  identifying character about them, areas with
  perceived internal homogeneity. Examples of
  district is a wealthy neighborhood such as
  Beverly Hills, suburbs, trainyards, college
  campuses.
• Nodes, are points or strategic spots where there
  is an extra focus, or added concentration of city
  features, centres of attraction, hubs of
  activity. Examples of nodes are a busy
  intersection or a popular city center, Piccadilly
  Circus.
• Landmarks are external physical objects that act
  as reference points, points of reference. Example
  of landmarks are a store, mountain, school, or
  any other object that aids in orientation when
  way-finding.
• All of this can be used to streamline (or
  reinforce) functionality with regard to-
  general orientation (rational) - fulfillment of
  game goals (rational/behavioural)- fulfillment
  of aesthetic goals (emotional)- fulfillment of
  performative goals, acting out a part
  (behavioural)

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Lynch image of the city

• Activity mental maps
• A person's perception of the world is known as a
  mental map. A mental map is an individual's own
  map of their known world. Mental maps of
  individuals can be investigated- by asking for
  directions to a landmark or other location, - by
  asking someone to draw a sketch map of an area or
  describe that area, - by asking a person to name
  as many places as possible in a short period of
  time.
• Describe Kongens Nytorv along with Nyhavn by
  drawing a sketch map of it. (individual)
• Learn how people construct their own realities of
  place and space.

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Lynch image of the city

• Imageability, is the quality of a physical
  object, which gives an observer a strong, vivid
  image.
• Connected to Bachelards resonance-reverberation
  
• Resonances are dispersed on the different planes
  of our life in the world" and they are linked to
  "the outpourings of the mind" toward broad
  contexts. Like beacons. Resonance suggests the
  possibility of understanding and making
  connections with other feelings and echoes.
• Reverberations bring about a change in being"
  that is effected through a transformation of
  consciousness and of the deepest aspects of our
  being. A beacon that vibrates exactely and only
  for you
• The end result of resonance and reverberation is
  that together they produce an identification with
  the image and thus are the means by which a
  subversion of the subject-object duality occurs.
  As Bachelard puts it "At the level of the poetic
  image, the duality of subject and object is
  iridescent, shimmering, unceasingly active in its
  inversions, the identity of the play persona
  becomes defined by the environment itself.

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Lynch image of the city
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Spatial Archetypes(Mimi Lobell)

• The seven primary Archetypes of Psyche and
  Civilisation - the sensitive chaos world of
  the Great Spirit- the great round world of the
  Goddess- the four quarters world of the
  Hero- the pyramid world of the God-King- the
  radiant axes world of the Emperor- the grid
  wolrd of the Technocrat- the network world of
  the Infonaut

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Meandering Spiral

• Psyche
• Cosmos as a unity within the Great Spirit, in
  which all states of being are mutable
• Uroboric oneness suppression of ego so as not to
  separate Self from others and from surroundings
• The state of mind of the child in the womb and in
  infancy where there is no individual ego or
  psychological separation from the mother
• Anirnism, shamanism, sympathetic magic,
  veneration of nature spirits and totems
  perceiving the world as a Sensitive Chaos
  animated by spirits, lines and nodes of energy,
  syncitronistic linkages, and magical events
  transcending our laws of space and tirne oneness
  with nature, identification with animals and
  other life forms
• Non-linear tirne, synchronicity, feeling of
  eternity or timelessness
• Mythic images and rites concerning the Great
  Spirit, spirit places, totems and taboos, mimicry
  of animals, sympathetic magic, the making of
  ritual paraphenalia, transmuting to another life
  form (e.g., shamanically becoming a bird or
  animal), attaining psychoerotic perception
• Emphasis on psychoerotic activities such as
  music, dance, transformative arts and rituals,
  holistic thinking, altered states of
  consciousness, clairvoyance, ecstatic trance
  states, dreams, natural healing greatest
  psychoerotic orientation of all the archetypes
• Concern with one's responsibility for maintaining
  the harmony of the living
• Psychological stagnation in the Sensitive Chaos
  can produce a desire to regress to uroboric
  unconsciousness in the womb
• Psychological liberation in the Sensitive Chaos
  can lead to erlightenment through transcending
  ego and healing the primal split between self and
  other.
• Space
• Space as an immediate flowing topological
  continuum with little geometric order
• The landscape as an alive organism with lines and
  nodes of energy depending on human care for
  vitality (a belief that often gives rise to
  elaborate tribal myths and ceremonial cydes, as
  in the Australian Aborigines' myths and rites
  concerning the Dreamfime), a network of spirit
  places in nature as the most important spatial
  "structure" and view of the landscape itself as
  sacred
• Impermanent huts and shelters made of locally
  available natural materials (mud, thatch, vines,
  hides, ice), which readily disintegrate back into
  the earth
• Undifferentiated architecture (no distinctly
  different building types for different
  institutions and activities such as residence,
  burial, government, commerce, manufacture, and
  worship)
• Dwellings as spiritual "doubles" of their
  inhabitants, not bought and sold as commodities,
  and frequently serving as burial places which are
  burned or abandoned when the inhabitant dies
• Little sense of private property (beyond personal
  tools and huts) territorial rangeAand defined
  and maintained through myths and rituals rather
  than laws and walls

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Circle

• Psyche
• Cosmos as a unity within the Womb-Cavern of the
  Great Goddess
• In childhood, the separation from the mother in
  which the child consciously perceives the mother
  as the center and source of life, but also as the
  first "other" with whom it has a relationship
• At any age, identifying with the feminine
  principle
• Perceiving the world as a "Great Round," cyclical
  in its rhythms, embracing nature and culture as
  one, encircling one's being in a nurturing
  matrix, and centered in the Great Mother
• Religions, rites, and initiations offering
  direct, personal participation in the Goddess and
  her mysteries
• Emphasis on integrating opposites to achieve
  holistic vision
• Psychological stagnation in the Great Round can
  produce excessive passivity and vegetative states
  
• Psychological liberation in the Great Round can
  generate the perception of the Self as Mother,
  which fosters, on the one hand, a nurturing sense
  of responsibility for the health and vitality of
  all life, and, on the other, an experience
  preceding enlightenment of psychologically giving
  birth to the phenomenal world
• Space
• Space centered in the Womb-Cavern, a still
  center which extends to encompass the "Great
  Round" of the cosmos
• Emerging centrality and permanence in
  architecture growing out of the settled
  agricultural way of life-appearance of granaries
  and food storage facilities, permanent homesteads
  and villages, amd the beginning of cities
  Megalithic construction frequently used for the
  most sacred structures (tombs, temples, geomantic
  and astronomical structures)
• Tendency to shift over time from undifferentiated
  round structures (thobi, beehive houses, and
  semi-subterranean pithouses) to more
  differentiated rectilinear structures, with
  sacred buildings sometimes remaining round
• Abundance of single, double, and triple spirals
  in art, especially on pottery
• Reverence for sacred places in nature such as
  springs and rivers, caves, grottos, groves,
  trees, forests, hillocks, mountains, and any
  natural sanctuary associated with healing,
  fertility, revelatory visions, and spiritual
  rebirth
• Evidence in myth and folklore of the divination
  (geomancy) and manipulation of subtle energies in
  nature (Telluric currents), which are later
  personified as serpents, dragons, nymphs,
  faeries, elves, goblins, and the like
• Territoriality expressed as the right to occupy
  farmlands, defined not by property laws but by
  the accumulation of generations of ancestors
  (ancestor worship) in collective, usually
  megalithic grave/shrines, which display the
  clans' long-standing occupation of and investment
  in the land
• The Womb-Cavern as the most important structure,
  whether natural cave, passage grave, beehive
  tomb, tholos/kiva, labyrinth, or temple sanctury

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Cross within a Square

• Psyche
• Cosmos as a quartered universe organized around
  the Lord of the Four Quarters at the center
• The emergence of the ego in the psyche as a
  central reference point (similar to the Lord of
  the Four Quarters in mythology and the chieftain
  or king in society) separation of self versus
  other generates dualistic, territorial thinking
  in general In childhood, the symbolic "Slaying of
  the Mother" to allow the emergence of the ego, At
  any age, identifying with the Hero archetype
• Mythic images and rites concerning the Lord of
  the Four Quarters male roles (warrior, hunter,
  father, smith, hero, protector)
• Rise of dualistic thought and increasing emphasis
  on warring dualities light versus darkness, gods
  against demons, order versus chaos, the
  Separation of the World Parents, competition
  between fathers (titans) and sons (heros, gods),
  Hero versus Dragon, etc.
• Mythic theme's concerning the appropriation of
  female powers by males, such as goddesses being
  killed and torn apart, made into the wives of
  gods (Isis, Hera) the theft of women's magical
  instruments by men the second (spifitual) birth
  through the father (through doctrine, baptism,
  initiation)
• Territorial preoccupations concern with
  protecting one's gene pool, enlarging the
  territorial boundaries of one's tribe, and
  displaying personal strength and heroism (often
  in a manner intimidating to competing males, as
  in contemporary machoism and street gang warfare)
  
• Techne-logos begins to dominate psyche-eros
• Time is linear within a cyclical segment
  (recurring age of "Great Year"), and the past is
  seen as a time of semi-legendary heroic deeds
• Psychological stagnation can generate excessive
  violence, aggrescontempt for women and the
  feminine principle, and a fixation on the role of
  "protector"
• Psychological liberation can foster individual
  will, which, when the ego is integrated with the
  Self (the crossed mandala), permits enlightened
  action in the world
• Space
• Space is organized around the Lord of the Four
  Quarters (ego) as the central reference point,
  from whom the cardinal axes quarter the cosmos
  and all its phenomena castes, colors, elements,
  seasons, eras, heavens, deities, animal into four
  groups
• Territoriality is symbolized by the wall
  surrounding the realm of the Lord of the Four
  Quarters, which divides sacred from profane,
  friend from enemy, "mine" from "thine"
• The omphalos or "Navel of the World" as a central
  reference point in the landscape mirroring the
  ego in the psyche, chieftain in society, father
  in the family, and Lord of the Four Quarters in
  mythology
• The crossroads or "urban mark" as another common
  motif
• Architecture mirrors the archetype square or
  rectilinear fortified camps and cities, with the
  residence or temple of the Lord in the center and
  avenues to the north, south, east, and west
  forts, castles, and fortified towns are the most
  common structures of the period

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Pyramid

• Psyche
• Cosmos as the World Mountain, the creation and
  kingdom of the Father-God
• In childhood, solidification of the ego,
  identification with the father to complete the
  sep aration from the mother, establishment of
  individual identity, and assumption of adult re
  sponsibilities in the world
• At any age, identification with the logos
  principle
• Perceiving the world as a Pyramid (e.g., the
  chronological stratification of time, pyrami dal
  ranks of social power and classes) concern with
  moving up the Pyramid, with the goal of reaching
  the apex of power and wisdom
• Linear sense of time, preoccupation with
  immortality and the transcendence of temporal
  reality, use of a solar calendar
• Mythic images and rites concerning the World
  Mountain, the Mountain arising from the Sea of
  Chaos the Separation of the World Parents and
  their reuniting immortality, mortuary rituals,
  embalming the second birth through the Father
  ritualized tests of the king's fitness to rule
  (e.g., the Heb Sed Festival in Egypt)
• Increasing dominance of techne-logos emphasis on
  the functions of the logos principle, such as
  creation through the Word, order and
  enlightenment through the Law, belief in the
  sacredness of rational forms numbers, geometry,
  names, mathematics, standards of measurement,
  canonical proportions interest in the sky and
  the mind as opposed to the earth and the body
• Continuation of dualistic thought, as in the Four
  Quarters, symbolized by the upward and downward
  pointing pyramids
• Psychological stagnation in the Pyramid can
  produce a rigid adherence to conventional codes
  of behavior and dogmatic religious doctrines, and
  an excessive identification with the mascuhne
  principle as highly authoritarian father figure
• Psychological liberation in the Pyramid generates
  the perception of Self as the incarna tion of
  transcendent being, which, having negotiated the
  axis mundi to comprehend the three planes of
  existence (heaven, earth, and underworld or pure
  consciousness, ordinary waking consciousness, and
  the unconscious), sees the order of the universe
• Space
• Space as the World Mountain, whose layers and
  faces symbolize the realms of existence, the
  heavens and hells, and the social structure
• Great emphasis on the axis mundi the vertical
  axis between heaven and earth mediated by the
  God-King (seen as the Son of Heaven, as in China,
  or the son, agent, or incarnation of the Father
  God, as in Egypt and the pre-Columbian
  civilizations)
• Social pyramid reflected in class-differentiated
  residences and burials
• Architectural representations of the World
  Mountain-pyramids, ziggurats, stupas as the most
  important structures, which may serve as temples,
  royal tombs, reliquaries, or astronomical
  observatories

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Rays emanating from Central Point

• Psyche
• Cosmos centered on the sun
• The inflated ego (symbolized by Icarus's attempt
  to fly to the sun and consequent drowning)
  feeling that one is God, that one's power is
  infinite, that one is all-knowing, etc.
• Very rarely, enlightenment (as the complete
  transcendence of ego)
• Worship of the sun and identification with the
  solar principle
• Perceiving the world as extending to infinity and
  eternity from one's own being, place, and time
  infatuation with one's destiny to bring about the
  apotheosis of human civilization
• Linear time, sometimes with a sense of imminent
  realization, through the empire (or the Self) of
  the full glory and expression of human will
  also, calendars using an event in the life of an
  enlightened being as year zero (as in the
  Christian and Muslim calenders)
• Increasing techne-logos orientation, onset of
  spiritual decadence
• In adolescence, the symbolic Slaying of the
  Father to permit the liberation of power and will
  (paralleled in society by the secularized state
  religion supporting themonarchy)
• Mythic images and rites concerning the sun, Sun
  God or Goddess, sacnfices to perpetuate the sun's
  cycles themes of enlightenment and radiance
  elaborate ceremonies (celebrating the King's
  birthday, the payment of tribute, processions
  through the capital) passive entertainments
  (theatrical performances, dancers, musicians)
  debasement of the hieros gamos into the practice
  of keeping "temple prostitutes" for the
  convenience and pleasure of the emperor
• Psychological stagnation in the Radiant Axes can
  produce the inflated ego described above
• Psychological liberation in the Radiant Axes can
  transmute the inflated ego's unbounded
  territoriality into a state of transcendent
  spaciousness in which the ego is dissolved in
  enlightenment
• Space
• Space as an infinite field of energy radiating
  from a central source (sun, monarch, capital,
  empire), unbounded by territorial limits
• An imperial cornmunications system, consisting
  (in pre-electronic empires) Of vast networks of
  roads equipped with post-houses at regular
  intervals for 24-hour relays of messengers as
  well as for the convenience of government
  representatives and the military imitation of
  the sun's rays in town planning through roads or
  avenues radiating from the palace throughout the
  capital and empire
• Obelisks as a vertical component of the Radiant
  Axes, sometimes serving as the focal point of a
  svstem of radiating roads, or symbolizing a ray
  of the sun
• Colossal statues and murals pompously proclaiming
  the mightiness of the emperor and the
  invincibility of the empire
• The palace as the most important structure,
  complete with the zoo, parks, gardens, and harems
  mentioned above spectacular summer palaces and
  royal villas

21
Orthogonal Grid

• Psyche
• Cosmos as a great machine knowable by the human
  intellect through science
• In adulthood, confrontation of the realities of
  the world and finding one's place as an ordinary
  person, concern with survival of oneself and
  one's family
• Perceiving the world as 'a Grid of conceptually
  uniform measureable units, or as a machine, or as
  inert matter giving off certain appearances
  because of chemical and electrical interactions
• Prevalence of relativism in education,
  eclecticism in religion, nihilism and materialism
  in philosophy
• Strongest techne-logos orientation of all the
  archetypes emphasis on enumeration and
  measurement as in census-taking, statistical
  surveys, empirical sciences, the "objective"
  documentation of events, mathematics, reading and
  writing, information storage and data processing
• Time is linear and uniform, extending infinitely
  into the past and future
• Progressive view of history (in some cultures)
• Sense of liberation/alienation from spirit,
  matter, nature, the inner Self, history, and
  tradition
• Mythic images and rites concerning human
  intelligence and the rational mind mastery of
  ranked disciplines (graduations, promotions,
  investitures) demonstrations of human skill and
  character (e.g., sports, after they became
  entertainment rather than a spiritual activity
  closed system logics (art-for-art's-sake, the job
  well done), pure essences of abstract forms
  existentialism conquest of the natural world
  mastery of technelogos functions faith in
  progress, statistical uniformity, and
  predictability
• Psychological stagnation in the Grid can produce
  the deflated ego overwhelmed by a sense of
  anonymity, purposelessness, existential malaise,
  and loss of contact with the inner spiritual Self
  
• Psychological liberation in the Grid can present
  great freedom of choice, releasing one from
  centralized authority and tradition. Space
• Space is a uniform, three-dimensional Grid, which
  distributes everything into isolated uniform
  units and has no center
• Rectilinear spatial division, such as the
  Cartesian coordinates, the nomes of ancient
  Egypt, the padas in Vedic mandalas, squares in
  Chinese town planning (as in Kublai Khan's plan
  for Peking), the tatami mat system of Japan
• Architecture and town planning reflect the Grid
  in orthogonal street layouts, rectilinear rooms,
  modular building facades (as on modern office
  buildings) repetitions of uniform units
  (suburban tract houses, workers' housing, army
  barracks, the office pool of desks) and grids of
  land divisions (agricultural fields, political
  provinces, counties, townships, etc.)
• The most dominant architectural structure is the
  marketplace (e.g., the agora, the 19th century
  factory, the World Trade Center, the shopping
  mall)

22
Network Diagram

• Psyche
• Cosmos is a great network of information, where
  the interactions are more important than the
  objects.
• Everything might be known, but everything might
  not be worth knowing.
• The self is something that can be deconstructed
  and reconstructed.
• Identity can be changed or multiple.
• The aeon of the child no need to grow up,
  curiosity and playfulness are rewarded. Instant
  gratification demanded.
• Postmodern and transmodern philosophy, but
  multiple philosophies can coexist in different
  parts of the network.
• Information, complexity and evolution becomes the
  paradigm for science, economics and the
  humanities.
• Time is divergent there are multiple possible
  futures.
• Mythic images deal with exploration, creation,
  accessing. The Hacker-trickester, the
  programmer-creator, the software Guru, the dumb
  but powerful Spirit in the Machine which may deny
  access, The Conspiracy, the Global Brain evoked
  by the Net.
• Psychological stagnation in the Network can
  produce a sense of confusion, information
  overload and rootlessness. Identity and concepts
  just dissolve into parts.
• Psychological liberation in the Network can
  produce the understanding that we can both be
  individuals and parts of the Network, which can
  encompass the other archetypes locally. We can
  become the creators of our own realities,
  ourselves and our own abilities.
• Space
• Space becomes random separations may shift from
  time to time, context to context. Physical space
  less important than social space, logical space
  and mental space.
• Complex spatial divisions, fluid and irrgular.
  Geographic Information Systems, cellular phone
  base stations, network architectures, hypertext
  layout.
• Architecture and town planning becomes based on
  the infrastructure, forming a network.
• The most dominant architecural feature is the
  antenna tower.

23
Psychogeography

• 1955 Guy Debord, situationist movement
• the study of the precise laws and specific
  effects of the geographical environment,
  consciously organized or not, on the emotions and
  behaviour of individuals
• Example If the desert is monotheistic, the
  district in Paris between Place de la
  Contrescarpe and Rue de l'Arbal conduces to
  atheism, to oblivion and to the disorientation of
  habitual reflexes.
• Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography

24
Psychogeography

• The tool La Derive (drift)
• an aspect of the situationists wider drive to
  achieve a revolutionary transformation of
  everyday life.
• insisting on pedestrianism to experience
  encrypted events of the city

25
Psychogeography

• possible topics
• - heritage buildings
• - traffic
• - urban squares
• - connectivity
• - mixed usage spaces
• - mixed living
• - urban art
• - potential for tourism
• - neighbourhood identity

26
Psychogeography

• Nhe subjective analysis of neighbourhood
  behaviours related to geographic location. A
  chronological process based on the order of
  appearance of observed topics, with the time
  delayed inclusion of other relevant instances.
• Once you have the basic structure of your space,
  navigate it roleplaying all the different
  personas and note things you like and things you
  dont. (see Bowman pdf)
• Understand the player as a process in time-space

27
Psychogeography

• Psychogeographic approach
• presence in the here-and-now moment
• containment, the creation of a space for
  contemplative work
• psychological "holding"
• engagement and conversation
• mirroring, doubling
• noticing and naming meaning

28
Environmental storytelling Lessons from Theme
Park Design

• http//www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3186/environ
  mental_storytelling_.php?print1
• http//www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3185/environ
  mental_storytelling_part_.php?print1

29
Environmental storytelling Lessons from Theme
Park Design

• If your desired goal is Fantasyland, you have up
  to five different ways to get there. You can take
  the alpha/photo opportunity path, up Main Street,
  across the draw bridge and through the castle
  gate. You could enter through Frontierland or
  Tomorrowland, or you could sneak through either
  side of the castle by way of two narrow paths. On
  one of these paths you will stumble upon Snow
  White's interactive wishing well. Multiply this
  "multiple paths" concept to each and every land,
  and you can see what a web Disneyland actually
  is. At the end of the day, each visitor will
  create his or her own linear visit to the park,
  one that is completely different from any other
  guest's day. Even within a group of visitors,
  each member may have an experience unique to
  them. An experience they can share, but that is
  still distinctively theirs.

30
V. S. Ramachandran(Phantoms in the Brain)

• Professor Ramachandran's 10 universal laws of
  art
• 1. Peak shift
• 2. Grouping
• 3. Contrast
• 4. Isolation
• 5. Perception problem solving
• 6. Symmetry
• 7. Abhorrence of coincidence/generic viewpoint
• 8. Repetition, rhythm and orderliness
• 9. Balance
• 10. Metaphor

31
10 universal laws of art

• 1 - Peak Shift
• Imagine you're training a rat to discriminate a
  square from a rectangle. So every time it sees a
  particular rectangle you give it a piece of
  cheese. When it sees a square you don't give it
  anything. Very soon it learns that the rectangle
  means food, it starts liking the rectangle -
  although you're not supposed to say that if
  you're a behaviourist. And it starts going
  towards the rectangle because it prefers the
  rectangle to the square. But now the amazing
  thing is if you take a longer skinnier rectangle
  and show it to the rat, it actually prefers the
  longer skinnier rectangle to the original
  rectangle that you taught it.
• Human artists through trial and error, through
  intuition, through genius have discovered the
  figural primitives of our perceptual grammar. The
  uber-version of the real thing that make neurons
  fire up.

32
10 universal laws of art

• 2 - Grouping

33
10 universal laws of art

• 2 - Grouping
• Imagine your primate ancestors scurrying up in
  the treetops trying to detect a lion seen behind
  fluttering green foliage. What you get inside the
  eyeball on the retina is just a bunch of yellow
  lion fragments obscured by all the leaves. What's
  the likelihood that all these different yellow
  fragments are exactly the same yellow simply by
  chance? Zero. They must all belong to one object,
  so let me link them together. Oh my God, it's a
  lion - let me out of here!" And as soon as you
  glue them together, a signal gets sent to the
  limbic system saying "AHA, there's something
  object-like, pay attention here". So there's an
  arousal, and an attention which then titillates
  the limbic system, and you pay attention and you
  dodge the lion.
• And such "AHAs" are created, I maintain, at
  every stage in the visual hierarchy as partial
  object-like entities are discovered that draw
  your interest and attention. What the artist
  tries to do is to generate as many of these "AHA"
  signals in as many visual areas as possible by
  more optimally exciting these areas with his
  paintings or sculptures than you could achieve
  with natural visual scenes or realistic images.

34
10 universal laws of art

• 4 Isolation

35
10 universal laws of art

• 4 Isolation
• Refers to "the need to isolate a single visual
  modality before you amplify the signal in that
  modality". Example an outline drawing, it is
  more aesthetically pleasing than a photograph,
  because it isolates one visual modality, in this
  case form, which allows for the allocation of
  more attention to that modality.
• There are obvious constraints on the allocation
  of attentional resources to different visual
  modules. Isolating a single area (such as form
  or depth in the case of caricature or Indian
  art) allows one to direct attention more
  effectively to this one source of information,
  thereby allowing you to notice the enhancements
  introduced by the artist. (And that in turn would
  amplify the limbic activation and reinforcement
  produced by those enhancements).
• Presumably any visual modality (e.g., color,
  depth, luminance, etc.) could be isolated to
  produce a stronger aesthetic experience. A single
  work of art need not highlight only one modality,
  but the more attention we can allocate to any
  given modality, the more pleasurable the
  experience should be.
• LESS IS MORE

36
10 universal laws of art

• 5 Perceptual Problem Solving
• As anyone knows a nude seen behind a diaphanous
  veil is much more alluring and tantalizing than a
  full-colour Playboy photo or a Chippendale pinup
  - or a Page Three girl, is that what you call it?
  Why? As I said our brains evolved in highly
  camouflaged environments. Imagine you are chasing
  your mate through dense fog. Then you want every
  stage in the process - every partial glimpse of
  her - to be pleasing enough to prompt further
  visual search - so you don't give up the search
  prematurely in frustration. In other words, the
  wiring of your visual centres to your emotional
  centres ensures that the very act of searching
  for the solution is pleasing, just as struggling
  with a jigsaw puzzle is pleasing long before the
  final "AHA". Once again it's about generating as
  many "AHAs" as possible in your brain.

37
10 universal laws of art

• 6 Symmetry

38
10 universal laws of art

• 6 Symmetry
• It's well known that both facial and body
  symmetry are generally considered attractive,
  though the role of symmetry in attractiveness may
  not be as large as previously thought.In fact,
  symmetry can give us a great deal of information
  about the environment, such as the presence of
  biological forms (which are usually symmetrical)
  and human-created artifacts. It's not surprising,
  then, that we find symmetry appealing in art.
• Since most biologically important objects such
  as predator, prey or mate are symmetrical, it may
  serve as an early-warning system to grab our
  attention to facilitate further processing of the
  symmetrical entity until it is fully recognised.
  As such, this principle complements the other
  laws described in this essay it is geared
  towards discovering interesting object-like
  entities in the world.
• Thus, much as with grouping, contrast, and
  perceptual problem solving, art that uses
  symmetry (like the Escher drawing below) takes
  advantage of the fact that symmetry itself is
  rewarding in order to motivate us to allocate
  more resources to objects that exhibit it.

39
10 universal laws of art

• 7 Abhorrence of Coincidence/Generic Viewpoint

40
10 universal laws of art

• 7 Abhorrence of Coincidence/Generic Viewpoint
• The human visual system is a Bayesian deduction
  machine. This means, among other things, that out
  of all of the possible interpretations of a
  particular visual input, the visual system will
  pick the most likely. This has two implications,
  which Ramachandran uses to formulate another
  principle of art we prefer generic viewpoints,
  and we abhorr coincidence.
• We automatically intepret Figure A as depicting
  one figure partially occluding another, instead
  of the two objects in B. This is because, while
  there are multiple viewpoints from which the
  image in A might be produced through occlusion,
  the objects in B could only produce it from one
  viewpoint.
• In A, the palm tree's placement is suspiciously
  coincidental with the positioning of the
  pyramids, while B seems much more natural, with
  the palm and pyramids offset. Suspicious
  coincidences are suspicious because they are
  highly unlikely, and therefore our visual system
  tends not to like them. Thus, they and unique
  viewpoints are less rewarding.

41
10 universal laws of art

• 10 Methaphor
• Whether metaphor is purely a device for
  effective communication, or a basic cognitive
  mechanism for encoding the world more
  economically, remains to be seen. The latter
  hypothesis may well be correct. There are many
  paintings that instantly evoke an emotional
  response long before the metaphor is made
  explicit by an art critic. This suggests that the
  metaphor is effective even before one is
  conscious of it, implying that it might be a
  basic principle for achieving economy of coding
  rather than a rhetorical device.
• Much like the visual system is designed to notice
  groupings, contrasts, and to be excited by
  exaggeration, our cognitive system is designed,
  at all levels (including the perceptual) to
  notice connections between inputs. You might say
  that we have "analogical minds." It's likely that
  in order to facilitate the search for such
  connections, finding them is itself rewarding,
  and thus may contribute to the pleasureable
  experience that many visual metaphors elicit.
  However, metaphor and analogy (of which metaphor
  is likely a special case) also allow the artist
  to activate a wide range of images, concepts, and
  experiences, sometimes vivid ones, which carry
  with them their own affective appeal. There is
  evidence, for instance, that poetry using vivid
  perceptual metaphors is more appealing than
  poetry using less vivid metaphors.

42
Grammar of Visual Composition(Peter Stebbing)

• The basic syntax in a visual composition
  consists primarily of four types of
  relationship- contrast, - rhythm (visual
  pattern), - balance (visual symmetry),-
  proportion (CRBP) they enable us to create
  harmony or unity within a work.

43
Grammar of Visual Composition(Peter Stebbing)

• Contrast a difference which makes a difference
  and which can be identified by any of our senses.
  (Gradation, Variation)
• Rhythm or pattern is a repetition of a contrast
  which may also occur in one or a combination of
  the four basic symmetry operations. (Repetition,
  Pattern)
• Balance and symmetry Two or more visual elements
  or forces are set against (oppose) each other so
  that they equalise or neutralise their tensions
  often resulting in a symmetry of form.
  (Equilibrium, Symmetry)
• Proportion is a ratio composed of two or more
  contrasting quantities used repeatedly in either
  the same and/or different measures in a design.
  (Golden Mean/Section)
• Harmony or unity or the form of an aesthetic
  object is the total web of relations among its
  parts. CRBP are all relationships and so the
  definition of form is synonomous with aesthetic
  harmony. (Harmony, Movement, Expression, Motion)

44
Grammar of Visual Composition(Peter Stebbing)
45
Ergonomic human scaling

• Decorations fonts, symbols,
• Tools objects to be held, clothing
• Objects to hold the body, furniture
• Rooms
• House
• Block
• District
• City
• Region
• World

46
A Prison one environment, two ideas, one game

• Piranesi and Bentham (pictures)
• Sanitarium pictures (combining the
  2)coexhistence of opposing ways to understand
  prison, bad for control freaks and for
  crypto-anarchists

47
Game Examples

• Alice
• Undying
• Bioshock

48
Assorted Principia

• We notice animals more than we notice objects
  (Nature magazine).
• Hidden skeleton of objects (Peter Stebbing)
• Perceiving the world as a solipsist where
  everything has possibly a hidden message for each
  persona (airplane analogy)

49
Assorted Principia

• Alien vs predator (exploring same space in
  different paths as different characters)
• Behave mentally navigate the spaces about to be
  created with the attitude of each persona and
  list elements you want to have included.