Mapping the Human Experience

Designers Colin Kloecker and Troy Gallas, of Solutions Twin Cities, have put together a cool new multimedia exhibit at the Sandy Agustin Gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It’s W(e are )here: Mapping the Human Experience, and will be running from March 31-May 9, 2008. The theme of the exhibit is how new technologies “are expanding the ways we communicate the concept of ‘where.’ Online mapping and info-graphic applications are allowing artists, amateurs, and armchair cartographers to chart the intangibility of ‘place,’ etching their own impressions, emotions, and experiences onto the physical world around them.”

Some of the great work that will be on display include Christian Nolds’ San Francisco Emotion Map, several WorldMapper visualizations, and a Twin Cities Trulia Hindsight Map from Stamen Design.

There are also a number of events scheduled as part of the exhibit activities, with my favorite being the Psychogeographic Map Making Party on April 24th, where participants will head out in small groups “in search of unique insights into the urban fabric of the surrounding Uptown neighborhoods.” Then the group’s collective experience will be mapped and displayed in Google Earth and projected on a wall-sized canvas. If I wasn’t already booked up on that day, it would be great to fly to Minneapolis and participate.