Participatory mapping: Place-making as process in Montréal’s Mile End

07 December 2011 – Margo Shea 6

Maps are more than pieces of paper. They are stories, conversations, lives and songs lived out in a place and are inseparable from the political and cultural contexts in which they are used.   (A. Warren, cited in Giacomo Rambaldi, “Who Owns the Map Legend?

An artifact of the road not taken

22 September 2010 – Margo Shea 4

The National Museum of American History is home to all sorts of presidential artifacts. From Warren Harding’s silk pajamas to the gavel used in Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial to the ornate inkstand Abraham Lincoln dipped his pen into when signing the Emancipation Proclamation, the material culture of the American presidency is preserved, exhibited and interpreted. Read More

Imaging and imagining ourselves there: Flickr’s “Looking into the Past”

12 July 2010 – Margo Shea 7

Most of us are familiar with Flickr, an online open source platform for sharing, tagging and talking about user-generated digital photos. Around 5,000 images get uploaded every minute, lending credence to the notion that many of us are operating in a techno-blur of obsessive documentation and display of our lives, our people, our surroundings. Read More