Let's Take A Journey
Wexford, Ireland
As part of my exploration of heritage conservation through digital storytelling, I have largely focused on stories that were specific to individuals or communities. This week, I wanted to shift my focus toward a more global perspective toward heritage. After searching through the assignment bank for DS106, I found an assignment called "Take A Journey" that focused on the use of Mapcrunch to explore the world through Google car images. While the assignment simply suggested that we find the nearest transportation and follow along with it, I was quickly drawn into the random streetcar view option. Exploring new locations and taking screenshots became a highly addicting process. I would travel up and down the roads and look for homes, buildings, peaceful environments and anything that suprised me. People were also in the photos, with families sitting on the sides of roads, workers riding in the backs of trucks, and couples walking along the shoreline. Strange variances in how the photos were merged together also caught my eye.
After manipulating the angle and depth of the camera view, I would capture an image with a composition that I liked. I quickly accrued a large quantity of images and decided it was time to find a way to organize and present them. When I went back to the assignment to see the notes about suggested presentation, I received an error message and all but the title of the assignment had disappeared. Challenged with finding a way to present my images in a way that would work with the restrictions of the Wix blog format, I explored the option of creating a slideshow video that I could easily upload to YouTube and embed. However, I wanted the viewer to be able to browse the images at their own pace. So, the video slideshow was out. I decided to give it a day to explore other options.
The next day, I was drawn back to Mapcrunch; I couldn't help myself to explore more new locations and create more images. I've been thinking about how these images all tell their own stories of the time, place, and people. I created a page on my portfolio site to host the images so I can continue exploring and collecting. This is an incredible way to document the designed spaces and environments of our world, and create stories through existing resources. This process of discovery and collection of images has been incredibly helpful in increasing global awareness for me. Seeing people, homes, and communities from around the world gave me a chance to reflect on the diversity of our shared world. I look forard to continuing to exploe the world through Mapcrunch as part of my creative process, to expand my own knowledge, and hopefully satisfy the never ending wanderlust.
