In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied

January 20, 2011 11:00 AM

Cartography is the science of map-making. Seb Przd takes a photo and maps it out to build his own world of cartographical projections.
posted by Blazecock Pileon (18 comments total)

Obviously this blue part is the land.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:19 AM on January 20, 2011 [5 favorites]

Oh baby. Can't wait to dig through that link.
posted by milestogo at 11:41 AM on January 20, 2011

And now I'm dizzy.
posted by Panjandrum at 11:44 AM on January 20, 2011

Extremely cool.
posted by marginaliana at 11:51 AM on January 20, 2011

Wow. This is really really good stuff. This one is my favourite, even if that isn't the point of these at all.
posted by Elmore at 11:59 AM on January 20, 2011

One of my professors in college was working on this stuff. Apparently, there is quite a lively discussion in part of the mathematical community about what makes the "best" map, given that transforming a curved surface into a flat one will always cause some distortion. Kind of wish I'd asked him more about it now.
posted by Hactar at 12:03 PM on January 20, 2011

My takeaway from the world of projections link is that all map projections are horrible. Also, this West Wing clip probably belongs in here as well.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 12:28 PM on January 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

Mmm, maps. Can't wait to check this out at home.
posted by desjardins at 12:32 PM on January 20, 2011

Oh man, thanks. I love this. All my various inner nerds bow to my inner cartography nerd.

If I only had a penny for every time I ruined a casual conversation by trying to explain the difference between a projected and a geographic coordinate system or enthusiastically decribing the origins of the 1927 North American Datum (NAD ha ha ha) I would probably have enough to upgrade to ArcGIS 10 etc. etc.
posted by gordie at 12:49 PM on January 20, 2011 [3 favorites]

Seconding the "dizzy" ... this one gave me an idea of what a friend was talking about when he described to me what it felt like to take peyote.
posted by not_on_display at 1:08 PM on January 20, 2011

"I would probably have enough to upgrade to ArcGIS 10 etc. etc."

Don't worry, I'm sure ArcGIS 10 is actually a downgrade, like all their other releases. I still need 3.2 to get certain tasks completed in a timely manner.

I'm a bit of a camera noob, but are these images manipulated during image processing or are the distortions created as part of the camera's functionality?
posted by Beardsley Klamm at 1:36 PM on January 20, 2011

Neat, but his subject matter seems to be biased towards the tropics (in earth-speak), with the high/low latitudes being filled with ceiling and carpet. The problem with earth projections seems to be representing the landmasses of the northern and southern hemispheres correctly, both of which predominantly lie above/below the tropics. I think.
posted by chebucto at 2:25 PM on January 20, 2011

Przd also has an equally nice Flickr collection of foldable patterns, several of which recall the earlier, analog photo-sculptures of Canadian artist Alain Paiement.
posted by arm's-length at 3:54 PM on January 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

Seb Perez-Duarte, that is. (Oops.)
posted by arm's-length at 3:59 PM on January 20, 2011

Reminds me of the artists doing body projections (NSFW): selfportrait.map series
posted by BlooPen at 6:46 PM on January 20, 2011

So I click the link expecting to be challenged and inspired by the mysteries of graphical projection, and I've ended up falling in love with a French kitchen...
posted by Jazz.bot at 8:19 PM on January 20, 2011

Hmm, maps maps. Can't wait to check this out at home.
posted by chimik8 at 8:31 AM on January 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

From a different part of his Flickr stream, here's my favourite, for the clever and endearing way it relates the shape to its image.
posted by arm's-length at 8:18 AM on January 23, 2011