Inspired By...Map

As part of my research into how people are using geoweb technologies, I've been interviewing users and developers of digital media applications related to place. While searching for innovative projects along this line, I found out about an arts association near where I live who had created an amazing online community mapping project.

The project, Inspired By...Map, was created by East End Arts as a way to capture the arts and oral histories of the people living and visiting in Toronto's east end. Soliciting contributions from people connected to the neighbourhood, they have created an online, interactive map of people's meaningful places. Through a variety of modalities (images, text, and videos) people's stories and creations are put on the map of Toronto.

I had the chance to ask Tanya Oleksuik and Cindy Rozeboom some questions about their impressive project.

Glen: What motivated you to develop the Inspired By...Map?

Tanya & Cindy:
In 2014, East End Arts was only a year old and developing our organizational sense of self. As a Local Arts Service Organization, we are mandated to provide support for a specific geographic area of Toronto.

We were wondering what, if anything, actually unifies the people within this area, given that the communities are, as with all of Toronto, diverse and constantly changing. Unable to come to any conclusions about who east-enders were, we decided to examine where.  If the people are different, but the place is the same – what then? Inspired By was sparked by wondering how the actual physical spaces that we share impact and/or inspire those who pass through them.

Inspired By was made possible by a grant from the Ontario Cultural Development Fund.

Glen: What efforts have you taken to get community involvement in creating the content for Inspired By...Map?

Tanya & Cindy:
We have held both facilitated workshops with community groups, as well as have an ongoing open-call for submissions online.

Community workshops have been led by Community Story Strategies and, so far, have included a job-seeking club at Riverdale Hub, a recycled fashion collective at the Newcomer Women’s Service, a summer camp of children at Community Centre 55, and an open public session that toured the Winter Stations in 2015.

Local kids working on their creations for the Inspired By...Map

Each workshop starts with a group photo-taking walk around an area, followed by a writing session where participants choose one image and react to it – either in writing or verbally.

Glen: What has the response been to the project?

Tanya &; Cindy:
The response has been really positive and heartwarming. Everyone has a personal story behind their favourite spots in the city, and most love to share those stories with others. Each story shared adds a new layer to the map of inspired places.

We held an Inspired By viewing party in 2015 and a room full of people listened, watched, learned, and laughed along with the wide range of stops along the map. With a range of creative expressions in the submissions, the audience was taken through visual, written, and audio stories of reminiscence, longing, love, and joy, all inspired by East End places. The evening continued with the sharing of even more stories, including people adding their own layers of memory, history, and experience to the places marked on the map.

Glen: In terms of the content people have created has there been anything surprising?

Tanya & Cindy:
Interestingly, many of the submissions involve memories – the image of what IS brought back thoughts of what WAS. It is also interesting to see the differences in tone and interpretation of seemingly unrelated objects – an excited child remembering hockey practice with their dad looking at a fence, speculations on social change drawn from a crack in the pavement. It makes one wonder how much we “see” with our eyes, and how much is brought to any picture from our own individual storehouse of experiences and expectations.

People are inspired by so many different and unique things. The stories people share about what makes a place special to them reminds us that inspiration can be found in unexpected places and are beautifully unique in meaning to individuals.

Glen: How do you think this map will have people consider or reconsider Toronto's East End?

Tanya & Cindy:
The map is still a work-in-progress, so it will be interesting to see how neighbourhood changes will be reflected. Someone may have mapped a spot that in a couple years’ time may be transformed into something completely different. The map allows people to mark a place and time and capture a memory or moment.

Glen: Is there anything else you'd like to add or that people should know about this project?

Tanya & Cindy:
We'd love for the map to continue to expand. Anyone who lives, works, and moves through the east end is invited to contribute to the project and help it grow, one place at a time.

***
This project is not only a really interesting and imaginative glimpse into the places and stories of east end Toronto, but also a model for others regardless of their location. This project is a great example of how to use community mapping efforts and geoweb technologies to capture and share something meaningful to people.

Whether you live in Toronto or not, I highly recommend getting inspired by Inspired By...Map.

Kids Doodle App

My young daughter just got her first ever mobile device earlier this month. Any advice on how to manage this is greatly appreciated. So far she's only been using it at home and hasn't connected with any of her friends with it (I wish it could stay this way for a few years.)

We promised her a mobile device for her birthday last month. Many of her classmates already had a device a grade or two before her, so we figured it was time. I got my new smartphone at the same time (a LG G3, which I LOVE) so we got a great deal.

Along with my kid getting the new mobile, we got her some apps. She's particularly fond of playing various games, texting (me and family members only so far) and YouTube. She also loves a digital art app called Kids Doodle.

My daughter wrote a review of Kids Doodle for her own blog, so I wanted to post it here (the picture explains why).


**********

When I got my new smartphone, I wanted to make a nice picture for my dad. My mom found an app for me to make pictures with.

She heard of the app from an online list of best free apps for kids. The app is called Kids Doodle.

The app lets pick colours and effects to make pictures. You can choose different colour backgrounds. You can add in images of fireworks, hearts, bubbles, and stars.

 Here's one I made for my dad:

Chicago Is My Kind of Town

I got back this week from a trip to Chicago to celebrate a milestone birthday. After reviewing my trip to Disneyworld in December through the perspective of my interactions with technology, I thought it would be enjoyable to relate here how digital media affected my Chicago trip.

For years, Chicago was the Second City, in that I wanted to go for many years but it was always my second choice. Several years ago when I was thinking of going I signed up for their tourist board's email newsletter. Over the years, I haven't read all their emails sent to me, but I did read some of them. More importantly, it kept the city as a tourist destination on the top of my mind so that when circumstances were right we did think of Chicago. This demonstrates that there is long-term value in online outreach efforts. With email it is easy to measure the click-throughs and response rates for short-term goals, but it is harder to measure the long-term impact such efforts have - but they are effective.

Chicago also captured my interest through their innovative and highly-entertaining project with Foursquare and Facebook last June. They offered special Foursquare badges for people checking into locations from the John Hughes' movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (set and filmed in Chicago). They also offered a contest to people who supplied details via Facebook of their favourite Bueller location (I entered for the police station where Jennifer Grey and Charlie Sheen are arrested and Sheen has the memorable "Drugs" line.)

Before determining whether or not to go to Chicago, my wife and I did a lot of research online. This has been par for the course for all our trip planning for years now. In addition to googling Chicago, I posted a request for info from my Facebook friends. These efforts were successful in helping us determine that the city would be a great destination and that there was lots there for our specific interests (e.g. family attractions, culture, pizza). My wife is the expert in finding hotel deals online. We've stayed downtown Manhattan, Banff, Prague, Hong Kong,Disney, and now Chicago all for under $100. She also cross references TripAdvisor (a traveller's best friend) to make sure we know what we're getting into. Also, as usual, we booked our flight, hotel, and airport shuttle online.

When thinking about a trip and planning it, I always visit the official tourism website. They are not usually the most definitive source of information, but they usually present the main attractions in an engaging and succinct manner. This is certainly the case with Chicago's official tourism website Explore Chicago. The website had a lot of what I was looking for, but overall I was disappointed with it. It is extremely difficult to find specific locations and even when I did, it was hard to find them again. Their search page is horribly overcomplicated and even when one figures out how to use it, the results presented are awful. I just now tried a search for "stained glass" as the stained glass museum there was one of my favourites. The museum, however, doesn't even appear on this first page of the results and instead a lot of seemingly unrelated stuff is. Even once you find a specific site, the information presented is overly brief and not particularly enticing (and in the case of this museum completely lacking in even one photo). Another bad user experience with the Explore Chicago website is their "Trip Planner" tool. The tool sounds awesome - an interactive, customized trip planner - how useful would that be! In reality, however, if one can find a location to enter into their trip planner and hits the button provided to add it, the site makes a user go through the process of logging in each and every time. It doesn't store log-in information even during an active session. The process of logging in every time I want to add an item is way too cumbersome. Once locations are added it is possible to make a schedule of the items, but that is not a particularly useful functionality. What I wanted and I believe would be the most useful, is to have the locations plotted onto a map so I can determine the vicinity of locations. This functionality would greatly help me determine a schedule and let me visit more stuff - and probably spend more money - so there is a financial incentive for the City to offer this functionality. I stopped using this website early on as it was so unhelpful. Suffice it to say, user experience is crucial and the website can be an enticement or it can be a complete roadblock.

As we were on a budget with this trip, we had to plan our usage of pubic transit. I've yet to find a city yet that had a user-friendly transit system or even barely-adequate way-finding aids. Chicago earns its nickname the windy city and even despite the heat lamps on the L-train stations, we did not want to be out in the cold more than we had to. My wife consulted Chicago's transit website and found it most helpful in linking directly to Google Maps for directions. The city's transfer policy is not properly explained on their website (as it is too complicated to begin with) but the site was useful in presenting basic info such as fares and where to buy passes (not a given with other transit websites, ie. Toronto's).

Once we arrived in Chicago, my interactions with digital media were less frequent than usual as I did not bring my BlackBerry because my carrier (Bell) charges too much for foreign data access. There were many times we really could have used it. It would have been much easier for directions or information on specific locations - instead we had to rely on tourist pamphlets and maps and helpful citizens. I would also have loved my BlackBerry to use Foursquare. I haven’t used Foursquare in weeks as the novelty has worn off and the home-based utility is lacking for me, but when in a new city Foursquare would be invaluable. It would be great to gettargeted tips on restaurants, sites, history, etc. Also, Chicago's tourism industry appears to be embracing Foursquare. I saw posters for Foursquare at various sites encouraging people to check in and offering special deals (which I would have loved).

We did interact with digital media in some cool and helpful ways. Interactive on-the-spot maps (e.g. at the Water Tower Place or the Art Institute) helped us find specific spots. We walked past "The Oprah Store" at least ten times before an interactive map helped us determine it was actually a tiny kiosk. Once there they didn't have the postcards I wanted and the friendly clerk advised me to go to the online store to order them. (I did get to see Oprah's shoes and shirt at least). We noticed interactive maps outside, but considering how hellishly cold it was in Chicago, we weren't inclined to pause long enough to check them out.

There was some cool use of digital media at some of the museums and attractions, but not as cutting edge as I'd like. The Children’s Museum, for instance, was lacking in innovative use of digital media (although outstanding in every other way). The Children’s Museum did have one digital experience that both my daughter and I loved. In their nature section, there are computers and a giant screen. One has their picture taken by a camera and his/her face is transposed onto the body of a bee or butterfly. Then using a bug-shaped controller you can fly your insect-self around the city of Chicago. It was really fun and well executed.

The maze at Navy Pier seemed like an expensive tourist trap, but it was surprisingly really good(unlike most of their counterparts in other cities, such as Niagara Falls). The maze used references from Chicago's history and tied them into immersive audio-visual, spatial experiences and interactive media. For example, images of the great Chicago fire are projected onto a large floor space and guests must stomp out the fire. I've encountered interactive floor media before (Ontario's Science Center makes great use of it) but this was a lot of fun and appropriately-tied to Chicago. They also had a Bears football game on the floor, which was also a lot of fun ("Go Bears").

Another cool use of digital media was at the John Hancock Observatory. We decided to go to there rather than the Sears Tower as I saw on the Explore Chicago that a skating rink had just opened up on the top. I couldn't resist skating at 94 stories high. The multimedia tours seemed interesting rather than just the now obligatory audio tours that everyone still offers. Even though they were included we didn't do them as they require earphones and make the experience too isolating. They have yet to make an automated tour that allows guests to interact with each other - something people travelling together generally want to do. We did enjoy their new interactive telescopes. Made by a Montreal company, they are only available in North America at this location. The telescopes offer the standard functionality of panning and zooming, but where they were really cool is they embed textual and photographic information on top of what you're seeing live - so by touching the screen you can see and learn more than otherwise possible. The telescopes also allow the viewer to change the view to a non-live view of the same thing at different times of day or seasons. My daughter choose the Spanish language version for some reason which detracted from our experience - but otherwise the telescopes were among the most interesting, fun, useful and user-friendly tech I've encountered. There is a lot of hype of augmented reality but very little real application; judging from these telescopes though the functionality is incredible.

The Art Institute of Chicago lacked innovative or creative digital media. Overall, it is one of the best art galleries I have been to in the world. Their collection is really strong in modern and contemporary art, but had no digital media that I could detect. Digital artists are doing creative things online, and it would be great to see a major cultural institution recognize this officially on-site and online. The Art Institute does have a cool feature that allows one to make a "collection" of their favourite works to annotate and share with friends (here's my collection). There are significant usability problems with this feature, but it does make a great souvenir and online conversation starter (I posted it to Facebook).

As we were leaving our hotel, I noticed a poster in the elevator asking guests to friend the hotel. I want to friend Beyonce and Shakira, maybe even the Cheesecake Factory but I'm not sure I have such a close personal bond with a hotel. I do feel that way with the city. We loved our trip to Chicago as it is a rich cultural center. Compared to other cities, it seems Chicago is making better use of digital media. Cities are missing out on how the effective and innovative use of digital media can not only enhance a traveller's visit but offer the city financial benefits as well.

New AGO Shows Strength of Good Design

I visited the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) today for the first time since their extensive renovations. Although this doesn’t have anything to do with Internet topics, it does relate my thoughts on design and functionality.

My wife and I were members of the AGO for years, but with the arrival of my daughter, we let our membership lapse. Considering that the ROM’s remake has made it child-hostile and with Toronto’s equally hostile climate, we needed something to do indoors. So we renewed our membership (the coming of King Tut was a determining factor).

Overall, I really like the new AGO. If you haven’t seen it, check out these Flickr pix. The collection and architecture are quite good. But there are few missteps and missed opportunities.



Here are my thoughts as we traversed the gallery:

Exterior
The old building was drearily forgettable. The new building isn’t Gehry at his most delightfully whimsical, but considering the restraints of the retrofit, I think it is excellent. (I was hoping he’d get a brand new site, but that’s too grand for Toronto).The new façade gives the front grandeur and drama. While passing aboard the streetcar, the gallery is stylish and inviting. The back has a new blue, squarish building floating above the Grange. The building is a nice companion to its colourful, eccentric neighbour, OCAD. At night or sunset, the building is even more dramatic and striking.

Glad to see Henry Moore’s sculpture is still present to greet visitors and now has more space around it to show it off properly. My daughter loved climbing it and remarked “It’s so nice they have art for kids”.

The gallery is set close to the street and I like how the gallery shops and restaurants open out directly to encompass the activity of the street. However the space under the façade is otherwise lackluster. Toronto has some great outdoor out, which I’ve blogged about, but other than the Henry Moore, there’s none at the AGO. Even two pieces along Dundas St. would not only invite people into the gallery but interact with the community. Come to think of it, considering Grange Park’s attachment to the AGO and OCAD, why isn't there any public art there? (Okay why don’t most Toronto parks and civic locales?)

Entrance (ground floor)
The first thing one notices – its not the Gehry touches - but the reception desk. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it sets the tone for a drab entrance. A serpentine wheelchair ramp is the only point of interest, albeit a really imaginative and child-pleasing one.

I love how Gehry re/aligned the central axis of the building to include the entrance, Walker Court, and the Grange. It is definitely easier to situate oneself now. This is about the only improvement to way-finding as signage is otherwise missing or vaguely useless.

Walker Court (ground floor)
This is Gehry’s interior piece-de-resistance here. The spiral staircase is incredible, such that a security guard described it as “the feature staircase”. Architecture is an art, so its fitting it’s featured in a gallery. Unlike the ROM none of Gehry’s features get in the way of displaying objects, navigating space, or overshadow the collection. The AGO seems so set on showcasing this staircase they have denuded the Court of all other objects, save some dubious cow sculptures. I like the openness and lightness of this room, but its minimalism is sterile. I wonder if this minimalism based on aesthetics or economics as keeping it empty makes it easier to set up for cashcow weddings – hey, now the cows make sense.

Tanenbaum Sculpture Atrium (ground floor)
This used to be my favourite room in the old gallery. The atrium was glass above and to the side that beautifully embraced the historic first gallery, the Grange. It was (and still is) a lovely setting for sculptures. But to call it an atrium now is a stretch. The new back building has reduced it significantly, a necessary trade-off, no doubt. There is a wonderful, surrealist sculpture that fills and invites one to play with the space and work.

The Grange (ground floor)
This is now the member’s lounge. It is a pleasant place to relax or have a coffee. Membership has its privileges. Much as I like this lounge, I was saddened to see history purged from it as it is one of Toronto’s most historically significant sites. I recall much of the Grange furnished in period pieces and volunteers baking period snacks in the basement oven (I definitely remember free yummy food). I can see how the art gallery would want to stick to its mandate, but I think they could have found a more appropriate use for the building than as a lounge.

Kids Area (basement)
My daughter had fun here, so that’s the ultimate appraisal. It had inventive and playful ways to engage children in creating. Their best feature are sculptures to assemble using found art of crocs, dishes, pool noodles, toys, etc. Flower pots and walls can be decorated with chalk. There were also the obligatory drawing, Lego, and reading centres. We also devised a scavenger hunt to help engage (and placate) my daughter. We were golden for one trip. But overall, I am a bit worried that repeat visits with kids may be strained. So hopefully the kids area will evolve (unlike the ROM’s).

Ship Models (basement)
I am eternally grateful to Ken Thompson’s unprecedented cultural philanthropy. However, what is up with the huge space in an art gallery devoted to hundreds of ship models. Yes, they are beautifully presented and yes the workmanship is exquisite, but whom is this extensive collection serving?

Galleria Italia (second floor)
The only thing that would make a stroll down this enchanting space more pleasant is a gelato – and maybe more pleasing artwork. Fronting Dundas, this curved atrium of glass and douglas firm beams affords an engaging view of the pretty Victorian buildings across the street that now house cafes, galleries, and art supply shops. With this space, Gehry has taken the old, closed box that was the AGO and integrated it into the community. Art should be part of society not elitist and cloistered. If Gehry had got a blank slate of a site, it would have never been this close to the streets of the city and consequently been able to so successfully bridge this gap. The artworks in the space (3 variations on tree themes) blend so well with the architecture they are seemingly invisible. More engaging, dare I say colourful, artwork that could be seen from street would further strengthen the effect.

Third floor
The third floor is devoted to event space. Considering insufficient support for arts in Canada, I appreciate that such spaces generate necessary income. Still it is sad that an art gallery has to devote so much of its space not to showing or fostering art or even administrative functions, but to catering to the rich.

Fourth floor
I believe this new space now houses Canadian contemporary art, with many pieces previously undisplayed. The AGO should be proud of so significantly increasing its ability to showcase this type of work.

Fifth floor
A photography collection will be coming. Currently the main reason to come to this floor (other than the café) is for the good view of the city and to begin one’s descent down Gehry’s two staircases. The vantage point to view the city is one of the best in the city.

Looking out at the city from a Gehry building, I was struck by how little of the cityscape is actually worth viewing (OCAD, CN Tower, Canada Life, & TD Centre are worth a look). While standing in the gallery that puts architecture on view as art with its “feature” staircases, the view of architecture was largely dismal.

I haven’t mentioned the AGO art collection. I noticed some new ways of organizing the artwork that were interesting. Toronoist seems to be the only site covering this curatorial departure. For years, I’ve enjoyed the AGO collection with its one of every great artist and strong Group of 7 and Inuit art - now there's more to love.

After the debacle that was the ROM renovation (which I have also blogged about), I was worried that once again I’d feel like the scorned lover (the ROM left me for a narcissistic affair). The new AGO may not provoke a mad a passion in me, but it has definitely rekindled a love affair.