Music and Maps

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Maps and musicians – the B-side Following on from part one from our look at musicians links to maps, comes the difficult second album, as we look at five more artists and their relationships to maps. Without further ado, let’s get going again… 5) M.I.A. Born as Mathangi Arulpragasam in Hounslow to Sri Lankan Tamil resistance activists, being raised in both Sri Lanka, India and back to London – the artist known as M.I.A., was perhaps always going to have unique geographical take on the world. The Grammy winning artist, is known for her unusual sound sampling, provocative lyrics and subject matters in her work –Read More →

Music and Maps

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Maps – Wait, they don’t love you like I love you Music and maps. Geography and the arts. They may or may not seem like natural partners – music is about cultural and creative expression, and the general rhythm and tune to life; the other is about precision, accuracy and scientific understanding of the processes and reality of the world around us. However, as I’ve discussed in the past, there are very strong links between the two – the list is endless of number of songs that mention ‘places’ (e.g. London Calling, Born in the USA, Straight Outta Compton etc). That’s before we consider geography’sRead More →

Map of The MonthJuly2018

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Vote for your Favourite Map! In the first of a new series comes the (hopefully to become) prestigious Map of the Month award, where we vote on the best examples of  inspiring cartography, data visualisation and geographical science over the last month. After spending the past month trawling through the internet, I’ve whittled it down to 5 nominees for you to vote for. With geographical pride at stake, the power is with you! Let’s look at the candidates… Metro/Tram Map Amsterdam – Eric Hammink   Amsterdam is one of my favourite cities and has recently undergone updates to it’s Metro and Tram infrastructure. A first-classRead More →

USA and Gun Ownership

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Right to keep and bear arms? The topic of firearms control and gun violence is one to approach with caution, given one, the fatalities involved, and two, that in the USA particularly, it can often stir strong debate and emotion on either side. However, following (another) mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida and the perhaps unprecedented public demonstrations following this in USA, and around the world, as part of ‘March For Our Lives’ – it is a topic which is hard to ignore. With the aim promoting tougher gun control legislation and raising awareness of gun violence, it has brought the debateRead More →

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Mapping of the Arctic region has historically proved to be a challenge for cartographers and geo-scientists, though as referred to in a previous article (see here),  local knowledge is valuable in contributing to knowledge of the often perceived ‘wilderness’ by ‘Westerners’. In many ways, as alluded to in Alastair Bonnett’s brilliant book, Off the Map, despite living in an age of digital mapping, there is much geographic knowledge still to be discovered. This is perhaps most relevant and important, given global warming, in the Arctic region, and two recent articles associated to this piqued my interest in this area, and thought it would be aRead More →

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While this site lives a digital world of geographical information, there is nothing quite like going to visit a real life, physical ‘map den’, and for those who are able to, I’d highly recommend going to visit The British Library in Central London. Their map room has one of largest collections of geographical information, with approximately 4.5 million entities. This alone should be a pull factor to have a ‘map’ day in London. However, up until March 1st 2017, there is a further reason to venture down, and this is because of the fantastic “Maps and the 20th Century: Drawing the Line” exhibition which isRead More →