serial consign

Over the last few days I've discovered a pair of interesting projects that explore urban form through computation. The first is an interactive map of Rome that locates and contextualizes a number of 18th century perspective drawings, the second is a software application that utilizes procedural modeling to generate expansive 3D cities.

Imago Urbis: Giuseppe Vasi’s Grand Tour of Rome is an interactive archive of the work of Giuseppe Vasi (1710-1782). Like Pannini and Piranesi, Vasi is considered one of the great vedutisti (delineators of urban space). His masterwork was Magnificenze di Roma antica e moderna, a 238 image, ten-volume collection of prints that provided comprehensive documentation of the architecture and urban character of Rome. The crux of the Imago Urbis project is that it is takes Vasi's perspectival views and locates them on the Nolli map. The screen capture above illustrates how the vantage point of each perspective is identified and how architectural and infrastructural "points of interest" are annotated and colour-coded so that the user can situate the drawing in relation to the surrounding urban fabric.

The statement for project contextualizes the relationship between Vasi and Giambattista Nolli (the author of the Nolli map) as follows:

Given that Nolli and Vasi were contemporaries and collaborators focusing on the same subject, it seems obvious that their work is intrinsically related; up to now no vehicle existed to effectively synthesize their individual achievements into a single resource that effectively evokes Settecento Rome. We believe that it will be extremely informative to place these 18th century documents into their 21st century context so that spatial relationships can be drawn and new conclusions reached about their continuing significance to the understanding of the city. Our overarching objective is to document and integrate two distinct graphic modes for representing the Eternal City: the pictorial view and the ichnographic plan.

This interactive piece functions as both a map and an archive, a historical document and a database of urban views.

This is the main interface for Imago Urbis, which identifies the location of each of Vasi's drawings. Beyond communicating the inventory of available views, the map resonates with the increasingly familiar process of geo-navigating through a set of images (on everyblock for example). I find Imago Urbis extremely engaging because it applies numerous tropes from contemporary urban informatics to a historical archive, breathing new life into old representations of urban space. In addition to the overall scope of the project, the elegant interface and design are also commendable; how can you not love an "urban viewport" with a taxonomy class for the sites of executions?

Imago Urbis was developed by Jim Tice, Erik Steiner, Allan Ceen, and Dennis Beyer from the Department of Architecture, InfoGraphics Lab and Department of Geography at the University of Oregon. This is the same team that brought us the Interactive Noli Map in 2005. [via the map room]

CityEngine is a new software system developed by Procedural Inc., a Switzerland-based developer with ties to the ETH Zürich technical university. In watching the video above, it is quite clear how this tool could be employed to quickly produce sophisticated models of urban space based off defined parameters, design rules, material palettes, etc. The application seems equally capable of generating meandering street geometry as it does detailing elevations - one can only imagine how useful a tool like this could be in the film or gaming industries (the software made quite a splash at fmx/08). More abstractly, the software speaks to the emergent nature of urban form and growth, when viewed in fast-forward the process seems even more amazing.

More information on CityEngine can be obtained at the Procedural website as there a number of additional animations available for viewing, Procedural CEO Pascal Müller's site is also worth taking a look at. [via digital urban]

The last week has been quite hectic! I'm in the midst of rebuilding Vague Terrain in Drupal, exploring some exciting new opportunities and knuckling down for an impending crunch at my day job. Despite all this activity, I've been diligently working through some great writing and media. Please note the following:

• _Augmentology 1[L]0[L]1_, a new blogging project by the prolific poet/theorist Mez Breeze. Mez launched Augmentology this past April and she has quickly amassed an (expectedly) idiosyncratic series of posts which explore notions of presence, identity and play across a variety of gaming and social media platforms. Mez is in the midst of expanding the scope of Augmentology by inviting a number of guest contributors to provide content for the project - these will tentatively include: Joseph Delappe, Howard Rheingold, Azdel Slade, Trevor Dodge and Shane Hilton. I've also been invited into the fold, and I am excited at the prospect of further exploring some of the themes I've touched on in my previous posts on gaming.
• Last week Mitchell Whitelaw tipped me off about Strange Ontologies in Digital Culture, a paper that he recently co-authored with Troy Innocent and Mark Guglielmetti. The essay explores the implications of social software (facebook, del.icio.us, etc.) and some of the counterintuitive percepts and phenomena made possible by immersion in digital space. I found the discussions on death in gaming and character deletion particularly engaging.
• The video archives of the recent Software Studies workshop/symposium at UCSD have been posted. The two dozen or so pecha kucha-style presentations provide an incredible window into the current research projects of numerous top shelf digital theorists and practitioners including Jordan Crandall, Warren Sack, Nick Montfort, and many others. I've only watched a few videos thus far, but I found Ian Bogost's presentation on the forthcoming Platform Studies project quite fascinating.