FINAL ESSAY!!

We had a very similar result in terms of the collaboration with our Qatar teammates as many other groups in the class. There was minimal communication, resulting in no collaboration, and due to time constraints and simple frustration our projects took their own separate paths. There is no need for blame or excuses from this result, because I’m satisfied with our finalization, even though a perspective from Qatar could have heightened our project above and beyond its final form. Aside from this significant fact, we had attempted to reach contact with our team mates across the way via facebook, gchat, and email. As far as the construction of the map itself, our team decided to do a little different of an approach in terms of how we would build our project. Mostly every aspect of media that we’ve been observing this semester has been technologically based, so we made our map out of paper, foam core, sewing pins, tape, and string. This worked best because A, it was fun to work together and with our hands, and B, it was something fresh and different. Making the field notes was easy, it’s just a matter of looking for aspects of change related to one of four very broad topics, analyzing it, and being able to functionally use a blog to relay it to the world. But to choose our topic, that was even easier. We just met for coffee, talked about what we might want to focus on and narrowed it down, and that was that, and because we were passionate about our project it made the final presentation a piece of cake. I think we did very well and as I said I’m satisfied with the final project. We came, we saw, we mapped some change.

Mapping Change- Haley Bell

My overall feelings about the Mapping Change with Qatar assignment is that the project was overall a failure. First of all, half of the groups were not able to actually collaborate with the Qatar students, who seemed to feel that their input and cooperation was unnecessary. It was very frustrating to make attempts to communicate, only to be ignored. I feel that their lack of participation really hindered our project, which had to take on a completely different ideal in order to be presented and to stand alone. Also, I noticed during the presentations, that it seemed like no one actually got the point of the project, which was to find some noteworthy change or rift occuring globally. Also, something to be considered, is that it was extremely difficult to find the time outside of class to collaborate. I am in school four days a week, plus I work part time, and I also do a work-study part time. So, tell me, when was I supposed to meet up with my group or stop everything to sit at a computer and talk to the Qatar kids? I don't think that it was fair that we didn't have class time to work on our projects from the beginning.

Thankfully, though, I really enjoyed working with my United States group. Everyone was really excited about brainstorming and figuring out a way to make the project make sense. I liked my group's idea of "Bricolage", it seemed to say a lot about the way everyone was feeling in their field notes; this idea that we're all a little bit of everything, of whatever is at hand. It would have been pretty great if the Qatar kids actually communicated with us for this project, because it would have been really interesting to see the juxtaposition between our United States collage and their Qatar one. I think the difference between our more "internal" reflections and their "external" ones would have been very meaningful. Although the Qatar students didn't help us, they ended up posting a map that looked very much like the first idea we had, and what we were originally going to do. I'm surprised at how technologically savvy they are over there. Everyone makes it sound like the Middle East is in the Middle Ages, but apparently, it's not true. The media needs to stop misinforming us, which would be an interesting idea for mapping change, come to think of it.
Hopefully, if this project is done again, it is more organized. I was also very irritated that we were expected to have these detailed maps of really vague ideas, when we have had no prior experience mapping change, whereas other classes spend entire semesters learning how to do this. Just a thought.

My feelings on this matter are surprisingly quiet. There are things I could be saying but they would be nothing other than complaining and my usual inflammatory statements. The only things I can say are as follows. I was very very excited to be working on this project with a totally new group of people. I went into this project with a very open mind. I thought it would be fun to expand my horizons and discover identification points that I shared with a totally new culture of people. I looked forward to being able to speak with them on equal terms, as students, transcending cultural, time, and physical boundaries. We accomplished this in the first days as the hello my name is projects began to find their way to the blog. I learned about the individuals we were going to be collaborating with. I learned a little bit about them through their images that they showed created in order to tell specific ideas about themselves, with or without their faces showing. As time passed and we finally got up our hello my name is video projects, they learned about us. I guess we were a little bit too slow and that time loss was crucial. Perhaps it threw them off; perhaps we were supposed to work a little bit faster. Perhaps I should’ve made a better project. I try not to think about these things, that no one was to blame for the way things work out, but it’s hard not to point fingers at potential problems to avoid in the future. As our hello my name is projects generated comments on both sides we moved onto email communication. At first this too was a little slow, which few responses on both ends of the communication, but we moved past that searching each other out in other venues like facebook and msn chat. Through these venues we spoke to each other for the first time in real time, and became more close acquaintances. I originally wrote friends, but I don’t know how I could rationalize the events that proceeded as friendship, although I may have wanted to become friends with these people. Perhaps I come on too strong, or they were turned off again by our lack of immediate participation. I could write a tome on the things we could’ve improved, but it would be futile at this stage. Our groups spoke to each other, and found things in common. I was excited to hear that one of our counterparts knew of the character I wanted to be for Halloween. And then it ended. What could I say to nothing? How could I interact with no response? Our collaboration fell apart and I was left with empty feelings that I found myself having every time I logged onto this computer to slowly empty my media “chops” that I knew were inadequate. The inadequacy that I felt in myself very quickly transferred across the board to this project and I began to feel withdrawn and incompetent. I’m sorry our work wasn’t what you expected. It wasn’t what I expected either. I’m sorry none of our work meets the deadlines. I’m sorry that at the end of class when we have nothing to say it feels like the class is empty, and I wonder where exactly we all went wrong.

Mapping Change Essay

The Mapping Change collaboration with Qatar has been an insightful experience. When the assignment was given to us, I was confused about what kind of change we were expected to map. However, as more people uploaded their field notes on the blog, I was very excited as I realized that change was taking place in every sphere of my life. I was moved and inspired to use and interpret my own personal experiences and represent them in a visual map.

My group consisted of Katharine and Hazel from New York and Sarah and Abdulla from Qatar. Our primary interaction was organized by me as the facilitator in New York and the mediator between groups. We arranged to meet using the in-browser chat application provided to Gmail users. Once everyone had created a Gmail account, we proceeded with a light conversation to introduce ourselves to one other. Once we realised that all of us were comfortable with revealing our faces on the Internet, we friended each other on Facebook and browsed profiles and pictures to get a sense of each other's personalities and immediate environments. We left the discussion fairly excited about the project.

Despite a good start, the overseas communication began to fade out. We found it harder to meet up virtually due to unforgiving schedules and the time-difference. I observed that on both sides, it took less effort to email or Facebook a single person than the whole group. The text chats were sometimes harder to communicate spontaneously and video chats or 'visual' chats maybe have been more successful alternatives. Nevertheless, in our last discussion, we were able to brainstorm several ideas for the map. These ideas were feeding off the field notes and existing maps. We arrived at mapping independence as it was apparent that it was a central theme in many field notes and had been addressed directly or indirectly. We left the conversation assuming that everyone will create an individual independence map. This would help in firstly, investigating the visual approaches available and secondly, force everyone to personally engage with the raw data and develop solutions for the design problem at hand.

Despite the clear goals that were created, the turn-around time for presenting the maps to each other was not discussed. Hence, some people were immediately able to present their ideas and post links offline by the next day while others chose to remain inactive for a long time. Eventually the lack of communication and change in deadlines forced both groups to digress. Hazel was the first to create her map that visually imbibes shedding certain elements in our life as we become more independent. Sarah from Qatar created her own map, which involved mapping the stress levels associated with daily activities in an independent person's life. Eventually, us in New York chose to develop my map for independence, wherein I had mapped the change in importance and dependence on city, school, family and friends across 3 main events in my life in the last year. When the map was presented to the discussion group, everyone agreed that it was a clear and elegant approach. Thus, we decided to create secondary field notes, wherein each student in the class created their own versions and gave us new data. Using this new data, Hazel and I were able to create a chain of maps. These maps allowed one to compare how the simple events of moving to New York and/or going to college in New York can influence different individuals.

The Mapping Change collaboration was incredibly useful to me as a new media student as I was able to visualize data in a way that tells a story. I will be continuing with the same visualization conceptually to create an online interactive version for my major studio class at Parsons, that will allow many more people from other locations to view these stories.

they just keep on coming.....another team sol map!

Here's one of my rough draft maps

Another Team Sol Map.

http://homepage.mac.com/roboescher/changemapdv2.pdf

My map thing, posted more than a week after the fact.

ESSAY ON MAPPING CHANGE

This collaboration project started of with our team in New York consisting of three people getting to know our two counterparts in Qatar. One of the counterparts had certainly shown a lot of interest in getting to know us, however the other one not so much. As the first week progressed we felt like we had established various means through which we could communicate with one another, via Skype, MSN and Facebook. I was the first person, whom our teammate in Qatar was able to communicate through, as I was already quite familiar with the Skype and MSN applications. Although it did not take long for my other teammates here in New York to join in, setting up accounts and making an effort to get in touch with them. We started having conferences with all the teammates participating in the conversations. We really thought the collaboration was working.
Suddenly second week all of us here from the team in New York get a surprise, we find that we are unable to find them online on Skype or MSN for some time and when we try to look for them on Facebook their accounts were apparently missing. After almost a week I was again able to contact with our compeer in Qatar through Skype, and found that they had deleted their Facebook without giving an explanation. I did not ask why? Because it seemed they did not want to expose why. So we just discussed how we were going to go about our maps and which field notes we wanted to use. We had agreed on city.
A few days later we find they had already posted up their project, which we had no clue about, supposedly the action they took had something to do with their deadline being earlier than ours. We found ourselves here in New York having to go with what they had posted. So we adapted our ideas to collaborate with theirs. In the end we created a map that is in response to theirs.
This assignment has certainly been an interesting one, although there have been a lot of pressures from both sides New York and Qatar, because constant and effective communication is the only way to be successful in these endeavors. I assume if the Qatar side had been given more time on this assignment like for us, the end results would have been more successful. Nonetheless it was a learning experience and would definitely benefit us in the future, in working with people in the professional field that may be sitting on the other side of the world.

Team QatarTemp

because of the map being flash I can only link to it for now.
enjoy link

Final Project and Essay

In the maps above I attempted to map about the important factors that effect change in students’ lives. The data used to create these maps was collected from field notes taken by two students in New York City and two students in Doha. The first of the two is a simple bubble map, created with the aim of developing connections between various concepts of change. The latter of the two, the final product of my work, was an attempt at inspiring collaboration. The idea behind this map was that it would superimpose new meaning over a map with which many of us are already familiar. The subway lines represent the forces of change identified in the bubble map but act differently in that the represent movement and fluidity. I chose this map, one of the subway, for this reason exactly. The subway is not only a quintessential component of urban living (an experience all of the field notes referenced commonly) but also represents movement and intersection; with this map forces of change can be demonstrated as a flexible, adjustable, and shifting (anything but stagnate). This was something that occurred to me during the process of analyzing change, that is, that change, like all that it influences, is not set in stone, is not static in time but is rather a process intertwined with and equally as fickle as the development of individuals, cities, nations and cultures in general. Unfortunately, little to none of these ideas are fully developed in either map.
I wrote earlier that the subway map was an effort to inspire collaboration, well, I regret to acknowledge it but it failed. It was not an idea that I could have developed my self, it was an idea that I created for the sake of hacking through or dismissing it with many minds besides my own. This is the beauty, I believe, of collaboration, one can always get a in above their head, risks can be taken. Ideally, where my mind can’t extend someone else’s may be able to. That is how I hoped it would work out for this project. It didn’t and the work I am presenting in this post is entirely my own. If anyone has any suggestions or brainstorms about these maps I would love to receive notice.
I picked up many things from this project ( I knew very little about Qatar before it!) but the aspect of this work that affected me the most had nothing to do with new experiences but rather with the lack of them. I wanted to collaborate and I was unable to do to what seemed to be a lack of similar enthusiasm by others. I missed this opportunity and I regret it sorely. While this project did utilize field notes by other group members it ended up being almost entirely my own analysis and I must say, I am tired of my own mind, I was hoping to expand beyond it’s same old limitations. I have learned, therefore, that the collaboration that is lacking in this work was the most exciting part of the project.
I enjoyed all of the Final Maps that I have seen so far. It is amazing to me what many minds can produce. All of these maps are so unique, in presentation, in interface, yet each is a completely relevant and creative take on the collected information. It is very exciting to see what can happen when many minds combine. So much is possible!

Final Project 500 word Essay

It was very exciting to be put into groups. Being a Lang student I’m hardly working with others on projects. I was interested to see what we would all come up with. Unfortunately reality checked in. Because of time differences and schedules of school, school work, and work work it was a little difficult to get all of our group members together. We started with face book to introduce ourselves and figure out which field notes we would work from. The process began with casual chit-chat, we asked each other what we were going to be for Halloween, etc. We agreed on the city/community field notes. Somewhere down the line the communication with Qatar disappeared. Our group members in Qatar had a much earlier due date then we did, and when they posted their map, we were at first very surprised with what they came up with. They came up with a map using geckos and bedbugs to depict Qataris and New Yorkers. New Yorkers are the bedbugs and Qataris are the geckos. Apparently from the field notes our teammates in Qatar discovered that New Yorkers complain much more than they do. My fellow New York teammates decided we could work with this, and went on a quest. We originally wanted to show Qatar where we went on the weekends, that’s when we decided to use video. But after seeing their map we needed to figure out how to still use ideas from the city/community field notes, use some of their main ideas, and translate it into a video. There was no leaving the video idea yet, we were still determined to go out into the city with a camera and interview people. The questions of what we would ask them just changed. Do you think New Yorkers complain a lot? Did they know where Qatar was? Had they ever heard of it before? What did they think about New York, etc. It was interesting to see the differences in people’s responses to us; we might have just proved that our Qatar team members were right about the complaining and perhaps ignorance in New York. I think using video as our media to illustrate a map of change is what I would consider extreme. It’s mapping not only the range of different responses, but different faces, different voices. We had originally used “talk” as our theme, or our main word we wanted to map the change of. My group also ended up making a 2d map as well, which consisted of a back drop of New York on one side and Qatar on the other. A huge bedbug on New York and a huge gecko on Qatar (the symbols that our Qatar teammates used) and we mapped all kinds of different pictures on both sides that illustrated some of our field notes. I think the 2d map benefited well with the video next to it. It gives the option for the map to come alive. Even though the collaboration with Qatar was not what I had originally hoped for, I think we were successful working with what they had made.

Mapping Change: Blueprints for NYC and Doha

Here is our project. When you go to New york, click on the building gif, which will take you to the NYC blueprint. Within the blueprint are links to various images, videos, websites, and blogs pertaining to change within NYC. When you click on Doha you will see an aerial map from 1953, click on it to enter the main map. In the toolbox on the right side of this page are videos pertaining to change in Doha. Also, the blog contains excerpts from individuals describing change.

NEW YORK CITY

Our final map looks a little different.

MAPPING CHANGE

Mapping Change: The Digital Reality Vs The Real Reality

Mapping Change: The Digital Reality Vs The Real Reality
By: Hilary, Lisa, and Jason





Our project focused on the difference between digital interaction in a community vs physical interaction in a community. We logged the amount of hours we spent interacting with each community and used the data to create our maps.

Links to full sizes of the images:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaymcconville/3042407147/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaymcconville/3043246284/sizes/o/

Mapping Change!

The Power of Collaborative Exchange

The approach to this project was very new to me. I’ve had projects were I collaborated with other schools during an art exchange to Singapore but that was still working face to face. However, trying to collaborate through different types of media was somewhat uncomfortable for me. It was the time difference and the different time schedule we all went by, which were affected by our culture. Such as the different weekend days, or how some people worked, or even when someone was aloud to use the internet. Mapping change was also something new to me, I’ve done lots of graphic visuals but trying to “map” change seemed really broad to me. When I saw how different everyone’s approach was to mine I was scared that I did it wrong. When I saw one of my partner’s map for change I understood way better how to approach it design wise. I took it a more literal way but I thought it looked visually more interesting when it was taken more of a abstract way.
I felt there was a lot of stress and pressure towards the Qatar students because their due dates were much earlier. It was also really hard to go forward with the project when couple of people were missing during our meeting time. Especially for New York Students because we all have different majors and some have less time to give a whole weekend day to work on this project.
As for the things I’ve learned from everyone’s field notes, I thought it was really interesting where all the connections were made but I thought the differences were the most interesting. I had to read and note down everyone’s self notes because that’s what my group focused on. There were a lot of differences but also similarities that I didn’t expect. I knew this before because of my friends but I realized how different it is for international students and students from different states. It’s easy for students from different states to just go back home during a holiday or even during weekends, especially if they live in Jersey or Connecticut. International students like me can’t do that, I don’t get to see my family for half a year or sometimes a whole year because it costs $2000 dollars for a 20 hour plane ride. However, the thing I didn’t think about was the differences between the international students, which was how they reacted to this sudden change and how they felt about it. I learned that from my groups map, for me I’ve been independent most of my life so I didn’t miss my family that much or depended on them but other students really miss their family making it harder to adjust.
Honestly I wasn’t sure how this project would turn out because I thought there would be a lot of problems, which there were but I thought some of the outcomes, such as the maps, turned out pretty nice.

Natalie Roy- Self?

I'm not sure if its ADD, smoking too much pot in high school, or just some sort of chemical imbalance. But my attention span has dramatically changed since my first year in college. I didn't really know that I had a listening problem until it was brought by attention by some of my friends "are you even listening?" "did you hear what I said?" "tell me what I was talking about." "you seem like your out to lunch." Are some things that have been constantly asked of me. I can almost see my self sympathizing with all the married husbands who are constantly being told that they're not sensitive enough and never listen. Its not that I don't try to listen, I really do, I mean I REALLY have to work at it. I just constantly drift to the next thing. Especially at parties or social gatherings I'm always doing what I refer to as the "look over the shoulder." When people have trapped me in the corner of a room at a party, with no substance of any kind to keep me entertained, I do the look over the shoulder to either see whats at the opposite end of the room, or to see if there is some gracious soul who would save me from the conversation. Otherwise if I was smart enough to grab a drink before hand, I usually end up sipping it down to the last possible drop by the time the person is done yapping away.....Maybe that's why there are so many blogs these days, because people just need to get whatever is on their mind out....