Regine has part 2 and part 3 of her report from Resistant Maps up on We Make Money Not Art. From now on I’ll call them we make money not art to save space.
Those who do not like their politics or political websites to be cutting, pointed, and possibly slightly less clever than they are cynical turn away now.
Todays extract, edited slightly to make fit together …
Where-next uses Google maps to allow web users to bet on the location of the next terrorist attack. The person guessing the right technique used (a bomb attack, a suicide bomber, chemical weapons, etc.) and getting closest to the location of the attack, will receive a T-shirt, featuring the place, the time of the attack and the caption “I predicted it!â€. The press hasn’t welcome the project with kind words, describing it as “A sick website” or “A spine chilling game.”
[Natella] ended his talk by asking this question to the audience in Genoa: “The project was launched a year and three months ago. How many terrorist attacks have occured ever since?” The answer (which none of us guessed right) is 7. Most of these attacks happened outside of the US and Europe. Most of them are now in oblivion. So who’s the most cynical: the where-next developers or the media who carelessly brush aside conflicts happening in places which do not happen to be called London or Madrid?
Politics and maps, always intertwined.
Especially in Italy.
Addendum: the map at the Where-next website doesn’t seem to work. I’m getting a couple of JS errors thrown, I’m not sure if this is down to broken code or Google pulling the API for the maps. That’s far too much politics for me to dig into.
Filed under: conferences, maps, talks
