HyperCities: Thick mapping in the digital humanities
By: Todd Presner, David Shepard, and Yoh Kawano
with contributions by Philip Ethington, Mike Blockstein, Reanne Estrada, Chris Johanson, Diane Favro, and Xárene Eskandar
A collection of projects, maps, and tools which supplement the HyperCities book.
The prefix “hyper” refers to multiplicity and abundance. More than a physical space, a hypercity is a real city overlaid with information networks that document the past, catalyze the present, and project future possibilities. Hypercities are always under construction.
Todd Presner, David Shepard, and Yoh Kawano put digital humanities theory into practice to chart the proliferating cultural records of places around the world. A digital platform transmogrified into a book, it explains the ambitious online project of the same name that maps the historical layers of city spaces in an interactive, hypermedia environment. The authors examine the media archaeology of Google Earth and the cultural–historical meaning of map projections, and explore recent events—the “Arab Spring” and the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster—through social media mapping that incorporates data visualizations, photographic documents, and Twitter streams. A collaboratively authored and designed work, HyperCities includes a “ghost map” of downtown Los Angeles, polyvocal memory maps of LA’s historic Filipinotown, avatar-based explorations of ancient Rome, and hour-by-hour mappings of the Tehran election protests of 2009.
Not a book about maps in the literal sense, HyperCities describes thick mapping: the humanist project of participating and listening that transforms mapping into an ethical undertaking. Ultimately, the digital humanities do not consist merely of computer-based methods for analyzing information. They are a means of integrating scholarship with the world of lived experience, making sense of the past in the layered spaces of the present for the sake of the open future.
HyperCities describes thick mapping: the humanist project of participating and listening that transforms mapping into an ethical undertaking. Ultimately, the digital humanities do not consist merely of computer-based methods for analyzing information. They are a means of integrating scholarship with the world of lived experience, making sense of the past in the layered spaces of the present for the sake of the open future.
DIY Days 2012 – How to tell a story with a million tweets by David Shepard and Yoh Kawano
Bishamon – Radiation fall-out measurements from Fukushima. A project by Yoh Kawano and David Shepard, in collaboration with Niigata University.
Mapping Jewish LA – Digital exhibitions on the history of Jewish LA, directed by Todd Presner and curated by Karen Wilson and Caroline Luce.
The Story of Tranquil_Dragon – A collection of tweets from a single eyewitness, Tranquil Dragon, following the March 11th, 2011, Tohoku Earthquake in Japan.
The LA Research Collection – A project that brings quantitative GIS data (demographic statistics) together with qualitative storytelling related to LA’s Historic Filipinotown.
PDUB Productions – PDub is an innovative youth media + civic engagement program through which local youth create digital content about LA’s Historic Filipinotown.
Mapping Twitter in Realtime – Ever wonder what twitter looks like on a map? This web visualization maps twitter in real time.
Inside the Fukushima Evacuation Zone – Video documentation from inside the nuclear evacuation zone, a place where more than 170,000 people were forced to leave.
Inscriptions – A 4D project by Gregor Kalas with PI Diane Favro that visualizes statues and inscriptions in the late antique Roman Forum.
Photo Mapping of Tohoku, Japan – A photo mapping of the devastated regions of Tohoku Japan (December 2011), by Yoh Kawano and Yugo Shobugawa.
Tehran Election Protests (2009) by Xarene Eskandar – A day-by-day mapping of the election protests of 2009 using social media and protestor reports.
HyperCities: The site – The public HyperCities site – use this link to create projects in HyperCities
Holocaust Survivor Stories – UCLA undergraduate student projects mapping the lives of Holocaust survivors, edited by Andy Trang and Patrick Tran.
LA’s Historic Filipinotown – The “Historic Filipinotown” documentary in HyperCities, edited by Reanne Estrada and Mike Blockstein.
Vancouver: A Study of Modernist Urbanism – By: Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe. A digital companion published in Urban History on the visual discourses of planning in Vancouver, 1945-65.
A Tale of Two Castles by John Maciuika – A comparative architectural and cultural history of New York City’s Castle Clinton and Berlin’s Royal Castle.
The Berlin Palace and its Reconstructions, 1450-2020 – By John Maciuika
Twitter Hashtag Graphs of the Arab Spring – Network visualizations by David Shepard of hashtags used in tweets from the Arab Spring in Egypt and Libya (2011)
HyperCities Source Code – Code repository and documentation on GitHub for installing your own HyperCities.
Map Library – Hundreds of historical maps of cities viewable in Google Earth or other geo-browsers (copy and paste the KML network links).
Rome Lab – Directed by Chris Johanson (UCLA): A Virtual Worlds research project focused on Ancient Rome, built on the Unity Gaming Platform and HyperCities.
TEDx UCLA: Can Twitter Save Lives? – In the inaugural TEDx at UCLA, and on the wake of the Japan Disasters of 2011, Kawano speaks on the possibility of using twitter as a means to save lives in post-disaster situations.
Mapping Out Loud: Science Cafe at Cal Poly – What if we could provide data to empower communities to make their own assessments about safety?
HyperCities Construction Kit – Simple demo of an alternative front-end for HyperCities.
Stream Daemon – Tool for sampling Twitter data by hashtags.