Lifetagging or Lifemapping
October 13, 2010 by Marie Leadbetter
When my link was posted to the course blog with the suffix: Lifetagging, i thought ‘ooh, that’s kind of what it is, i’ll use that’. Looking back at my map, it was what I dubbed it initially! Well done, past Marie. However, I think it may also be lifemapping? What do you think?
I made a comment initially about it being quite a narcissistic artifact. Having thought about that a bit, i’m retracting that accusation! We’re studying Digital Culture and I think to understand it, we have to think about our place in it; who you are online and how you relate; to others and to information. I’m still thinking about this. I use the Internet a lot to 1) research my surroundings, or potential surroundings. 2) To share pictures of anything and everything and 3) to communicate.
Lifetagging or Lifemapping, my digital artifact
This is the kind of thing that I could probably do forever. The idea was to give some real-world structure to websites that I have bookmarked, or that I use. To make it a little more interesting, though, I have added in the websites of some local places I visit, especially the ones I think use their web presence well. I wouldn’t, for example, visit the Yummy Cupcake Company website, but I do visit their shop a bit.
In terms of Identity, I think this artistic license is probably quite revealing as I think it says something about Who I Am on the Internet. In reality, my life isn’t this neat and sometimes, I like to just stay indoors!
76 Responses to “Lifetagging or Lifemapping”
Marie – I’ve been thinking about your artefact in relation to Carpenter’s insistence that there is no ‘gap’ between the academic and the vernacular in literacy terms – I think you’ve illustrated the extent to which that’s the case. I do feel challenged by the detail with which you’ve – literally – mapped your life – it seems like a lot to disclose publicly. So I think you’ve made a statement about privacy and disclosure as well as about the local and the specific. A very rich artefact with lots of directions (no pun intended!) you could continue to explore in your ethnographic snapshot and/or final assignment.
Thank you. I do think about privacy a lot, in terms of using facebook, twitter, flickr. I use twitter a lot and I use it to share some quite personal things – I definitely use it as a blog. I also use twitter to organise myself socially – i’m lucky at the moment in that i have a group of friends i can address directly on it and see if anyone wants to go for lunch/ to a gig/ for a swim/ cupcake. I don’t use location sharing apps at the moment; the real-time & very specific nature of them bothers me a bit. So I saw the map, really, as an extension of ‘what i use social networking sites for’. There’s nothing on there that isn’t on twitter, delicious, facebook etc. In fact, probably less! I balked at making it a public map, though. Only those who have the link (uni people) can see it.
The gains and losses of sharing personal information is really interesting, I think – it seems everyone’s borders (pun intended!) are slightly different.
Marie I loved your take on the digital artefact and the mashup it presented. The map is an interesting concept as last weeks culture in the sunday times looked at the cartographers involved in developing the ordnance survey maps we have today.
It seems they used mapping to present a certain type of truth and knowledge and your artefact reminds me of this. It is exposing and very private to you so thank you for letting us in!
Ali
hmm – remember though that this course site is completely open to the public (no login required), so I don’t think it can be assumed that only uni people HAVE access to the link (though I imagine that at this point only uni people ARE accessing it, if that makes sense) – so might be worth considering depersonalising the map a wee bit if you want to keep it publicly available.
Oh yes, I know. I’m actually fine with that. I guess i was just making the distinction between ‘being available to anyone who looks at a map’ and ‘people who get the link from my blog’. If you look at a combination of sites you don’t have to even send a friend request to find out information from: e.g. Twitter & Linkedin, you can find all this stuff out. I’ve already added my home location to the Edinburgh Uni map…
So, i’m actually ok with this information being available. I may change my mind, I guess. I hadn’t expected it to provoke a reaction & I guess I need to reflect on what that means..
Just to clarify – I don’t object to you putting whatever you want on your map, just wanted to be sure that you knew what the ‘affordances’ were – which I thought you did (and which you do!). I think the issues around privacy and disclosure that you raise are interesting, and challenging. If you don’t know the work of danah boyd (american sociologist), you might like to check her out – she is very interesting on privacy and social networks. http://www.danah.org/
Ooh, thank you for that link. Weird connection: a friend of mine has a blog - I actually read the blog before I met him (it was linked once in the guardian guide) which was odd. He just kind of appeared at a friend’s house one evening and after chatting to him a bit I realised who he was. I Know You Off The Internet! is a weird thing to say to a person you’ve just met in a not-set-up-by-the-internet meeting, but he was quite fine with it! There was a point to this story…in blogging and connecting with others, he’s become part of quite a big network of bloggers. He once mentioned that he’d been used as part of someone’s research for or around her Phd – I think it’s this same person…
I have the same approach to privacy, I think, as I do to theft. I don’t really believe that there are millions of people out there wanting to steal my belongings & identity. Also, I think those that do would do it if they really wanted to, despite how secure you make things.
However, I do change my mind about things! Other people’s perspective is important in understanding the reality of a situation, I think. I am not arrogant enough to think I know the right way to act, or the right amount of information to disclose. I also think that these are things people have to review in line with personal experiences: i have noticed quite a few of my friends on twitter recently activating the ‘private profile’ setting, for example. So your perspective is important & significant to me in how I view my approach; not that it will change, necessarily, but it’s interesting to know!
Incidentally, strangely enough, I do actually think of myself as quite a private person!!
Hello Marie,
I followed up the link to the Dan Hawks band interview (on your lifemapping artefact) and found this comment really interesting:
‘One of the few chord sketches I did when I was living there was based on the shape of the coast from Strathy Point to Dunnet Head. The chords were to a song called Middle Nowhere. That shape (of the coastline) was ingrained in me and still is. But I remember designing the chords while looking at that view from the bedroom window, with Orkney off in the distance. ‘Yes, that fits … that doesn’t … an A minor works for Sandside Bay…!’ ‘
I know that coastline relatively well so I’m now trying to visualise what the particular music would sound like. I think that’s incredibly creative – trying to reflect the sound of a particular place by building the shape of the score around physical geography.
Bearing in mind the music is based around places the composer visiter, do you think we could describe this as ‘muscial lifemapping’?
Many thanks for the link. I’m off to listen to my Ordnance Survey map of Caithness…
Hahah! Musical Lifemapping. Yes indeed. I read that interview a while ago, so had forgotten that comment. I just uploaded the track, here so you can have a listen:
https://www.yousendit.com/download/ZGJmMWZEb0J6NEx2Wmc9PQ
At the launch for the album, Dan (@dhnhawks) mentioned a few times that while working in that landscape the chord sequences just kept going around in his head.
On a less creative note, there are albums that I used to listen to on a walk to work that remind me of places – phrases linked to specific parts of a walk, even! Musical maps!
Musical maps! Love it. That is indeed a schematic construction of the world or a place; music is almost certainly intertwined in that contextual atmosphere. I have music that I listen to in certain places (working for example) that without it would make it very difficult to work. Audio, I am convinced, is the straightest shot to the human heart (and brain, perhaps). It is so expansive.
The different perspectives are interesting, too I think. A musician makes a piece of music with a landscape in mind – does it fit for everyone, or is it his context, his identity that makes it fit for his experience of that landscape?
Audio is definitely very emotive. Once or twice i’ve been rocked by a smell in a similar way – a whiff of something that instantly rockets me back to childhood. I think music (or sound, even) is linked to emotional memory really strongly, and is really powerful in that way. I guess that’s why everything has a soundtrack. I remember getting goosebumps seeing the Obama campaign using the National’s Fake Empire in the election campaign.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcRA2AZsR2Q&feature=player_embedded
Fantastic perspective, Marie. An audiotory artefact would be our own personal soundtrack, or perhaps a soundtrack for a class, complete with liner notes and cover art. Now that is a project! Wait, something like that would work well for a final project.
Smell is exactly the same in this sense, perhaps even more powerful (and also the one thing that has yet to be represented in digital culture). It is very tied to memory, nostalgia. There are times in the autumn when I smell wet leaves or a fragrant gust of cold wind hits me and I am ten years old being called home for dinner. Breathtaking.
And I love The National, Marie. As a son of Ohio, I love all bands that stem from there (and flee like their hair was on fire!).
@James @Marie – How amazing is that – my Dad is a native of Wick in Caithness and I lived there till I was 15! My family name comes from Dunnet Head (although we have added an extra ‘t’ to differentiate ourselves from the other Dunnets in Caithness, don’t ask me why!).
Dunnet Head is supposedly so-called because ‘la dunette’ means the poop deck of a ship and that’s what the headland looks like.
@Noreen Oh wow! That is pretty amazing. There’s a song on the album called Caithness Glass – i uploaded it for you here:
https://www.yousendit.com/download/ZGJlWmdoSU91Yk0wTVE9PQ
@Michael Ahh, you have good taste! I am going to see the National in a few weeks, am very excited to see them live again! No good bands come from where I do, though maybe they just don’t admit it!!
@Jen: I was putting 2 + 2 together and coming up with 40, the actual disseration that he was named in was here: http://abbyschoneboom.com/research.htm#hidingout
hey, that looks like an interesting dissertation – thanks for the link!
Hey Marie
This is great, and reminded me of something I’ve been working on. It’s part of a mystory, a concept developed by Gregory Ulmer with the idea that you investigate and reflect on your life, and watch for connections/thoughts/ideas/repeated synchronicities that then helps you find your direction, whether that be work or personal (and that’s part of my understanding of the mystory at the moment, Ulmer’s a lot more theoretically dense than that, so don’t quote me
).
For sure, my map has a lot less than yours has, but it might interest you to have the link: http://bit.ly/dxFT5a
And is that Corsewall Lighthouse in the image? It looks like it – I stayed there and it was brilliant, thank you for that memory reminder
Hello Marie – what a good thread this has developed into!
Have just downloaded the Middle Nowhere track – really like it.
You’ve gotta love technology at moments like this!
@sharon, that is brilliant! I haven’t come across Ulmer (but will investigate)- it really is interesting in terms of data collation. Show it in a different way, are any specific patterns obvious (on my blog earlier I linked to a video of Hans Rosling talking about stats…fascinating stuff..)
There is a comment on my actual map about having something like our maps to show your grandchildren. I remember going through a suitcase of pictures with my gran and constantly asking ‘who is this? where was this?’ it took her ages to remember & she sometimes couldn’t! Something like this, with photographs, locations and stories could be a really rich family biography, don’t you think? A really different perspective on a family tree.
@James –
More to download here: http://www.timbreland.co.uk/artist_details/15_dan+haywood’s+new+.php
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