Until then, check out this set of pictures of corporatized spaces that I took today in the new building for the business school (and its ideological appendage – the economics department).  I highly recommend exploring this ultra-branded educational space.  I was astounded by how brazenly they present the corporate logos of the rooms’ “sponsors” (note that there are no brands to represent the tens of millions of dollars of public money that went into the building).  My friends and I talked about ways we could subvert these brands, and we came up with a crazy idea that might complement our disorientation guide:  plastering the building with all of these brands makes it seem like a NASCAR.  We could spoof the corporate branding of the U by having an event where we hold a mock “NASCAR” race around (or inside) of the building (e.g., with bikes dressed up like NASCARs), and make it like a carnival by selling food and having games that get spectators involved in the “race” (maybe also making references to the “rat race” of the corporate world).  Many fruitfully disorienting possibilities here…

At the Saturday meeting, we talked about the maps that we are focusing on, how to make them and the research we need to do.  We also decided to continue the class passed this week, but to start meeting only once per week, on Sundays from 3-5pm, in the Wilson library basement (at the long table in front of Dunn Bros).  So, this Wednesday will be the last Wednesday meeting.

Here are the notes (please add anything I’ve missed or continue the discussions by commenting below):

• Lesley will be gone (in Russia) for the next three weeks – when she comes back she can help us make the maps with GIS – So, we should try to get the data and info for the maps ready over the next three weeks.
• In our upcoming classes, we’d like to focus on the research, but also leave some time for discussions of the politics of mapping and methodological issues.  Also, we’ll try to have people with mapping experience come in and give presentations.
• Discussion of ideas for mapping:
  • Student debt -> financial aid info could be correlated with home locations – we should talk with the “students for tuition reform” group.  With rising tuition, we could map where the money is going in the university – to show why tuition is going up (map changes in what that tuition goes toward – and also could map where it’s not going (e.g.,  teaching, w/ increases in class sizes and in # of classes taught by grads or contingent faculty)).  - Amit found a chart of “degrees held due to debt” (on umnreports.umn.edu) – they rose a lot in Spring 2008.
  • Michael and Shivaun are: a) working on learning GIS – b) finding thesis paper titles (to do a world map that shows the places that senior thesis or masters and dissertation writers write about).  - c) mapping general info about the Twin Cities (war profiteers, potholes, abandoned homes) – d) mapping underground passageways under the U (with Emily) – e) general info about radical organizations and things to do in the TC
  • Mapping differences and similarities across the many higher education institutions in the Twin Cities area (e.g., tuition differences, but also similarity of rising tuition – access – demographics, etc.)
  • Anders had lots of ideas for the conceptual map: a) playing with the visual metaphor of the U floating in space – an outerspace theme – b) funding flows – seeing how money flows in, around, and out of the U – c) mapping all the corporate chains on campus, but with a black space where each store or corporate-sponsored room is located – d) mapping all the instabilities – strikes, GC – e.g., show them falling off the map – e) the history of branding the U – f) to show different levels of funding for the different parts of the U, we could bloat the buildings in proportion with the amount of funding (or how much % increase in a certain period of time) – to show the different priorities behind the “driven to discover” slogan
• Lesley talked about what we’ll need to do to make the campus map: the shape files of the U of M’s official campus map are made by some cartographic company that they subcontract to – we’ll need to contact them and ask them for the shapes (they should be free) – otherwise, we’ll need to trace the outlines of the buildings from one of the existing maps
• Then we tried to sketch out the basics for three of the maps on the whiteboard: (overarching theme of subverting the “driven to discover” slogan)…

1. Labor map    scale? – how much space for text?
-     Color? – printing?

-       What we need to focus on:

o   Shapes of buildings – via google or GIS

o   Tying data to the map

o   Deciding how much text

o   Figure out which data (professors or grad student or staff salaries)

2. Twin Cities map

-       w/ census data?

-       # of abandoned homes?

-       Building a story -> focusing on a small area (e.g., 3 blocks) – a more embodied map – giving details about particular people –

-       How do we choose spots?  - census as a start – throwing a dart?

3. Flows map (more conceptual)

-       Scale?

-       U isolated or global map?

-       Mapping brands globally that are similar to “driven to discover”

o   Check other languages too

1. a geospatial map about labor on the U campus
   • a) looking at wage inequalities between different job types (e.g., tenured faculty, adjunct faculty, grad instructors, administrators, unionized staff, part-time workers, student workers) 
   • b) and inequalities within job types (e.g., massive disparities between salaries of economics professors and of philosophy professors) 
   • -> rationale for mapping these: the amount they are paid shows the priorities of the university b/c how much their labor is valued. Also, connections with the “driven to discover” branding (research generally is valued more than teaching, and hence research heavy fields get paid more – and only more profitable types of research – So, we can unmask the ideology of free inquiry implied by “driven to discover.”) (*We had a rich discussion of this, but I didn’t take notes on it… Could somebody add a comment with more explanation of why we want to map this?)
   • Arnoldas and Amit are working on a database for wages (*Amit, can you comment with the link to the web resources you are using for this?)
   • Gus is going to look up dissertations on the Twin Cities and campus to see if anyone has done work on this already that we could use.
   • One task for this map and the rest is to find a base map of the campus (and the neighborhoods) – which we can use for GIS (*Lesley is going to contact someone about this – If anyone else has good ideas, look into it and let us know…) – (*Also, Gus suggested using some open source street maps for the neighborhoods – could you give us a link to those?)
2. “Driven to discover” map – (more conceptual) – a map of the world showing all of the corporations that use a slogan similar to the U’s “driven to discover.” (e.g., Oracle: “Information driven”; Fiat: “Driven by passion”) – Also, we could map some connections between these ad campaign and the corporatization of the university – (E.g., a history of branding at the U (the old slogans “commitment to focus” and “only at the U” – the Goldy Gopher mascot – branding of environmentalism on campus (“green washing”) – connections to corporations – e.g., CocaCola, 3M, Starbucks, D’Amicos, etc.).  (Check out this critique of the slogan: “Why I’m not ‘Driven to Discover’” by English prof., Joel Weinsheimer.)  — Anders and Eli (and Isaac?) are going to work on this map, starting with the above  inquiries, and other questions: how much $ was spent on the ad campaign?
3. Map of neighborhoods surrounding campus – (lots of possibilities here) – progressive resources outside campus that we could guide students to explore (suggested bike or walking trips to cool places?) – Also, give subversive history of areas near campus (e.g., the Bohemian flats (Gus is going to bring a book about this… *Gus, could you add a comment with the story you gave us in class?). – (*One big task here is to come up with a list of “progressive” places to put on the map – and to be sure that we think critically about what we mean by “progressive” (i.e., talk to activists who aren’t represented in our group) – Arnoldas is going to start on this).  *Also, big task of researching what history to show on this map (*Marie, Isaac, and Gus have given us some cool history already – could you add some of that in comments here? – Any other hidden history ideas…? (for inspiration, check out the “People’s History of Chapel Hill” on the bottom of the UNC’s disOrientation Map)
4. Map of steam tunnels under campus (possibly already some maps by urban explorers). (*Emily is working on this.)
5. Remixing a historic map – Lesley and Eli found some cool old maps in the Borchardt map library of the U of M campus… Apparently U of M map-makers were a lot more creative back in the 1920s and 1930s – they actually made some sort of subversive (or at least funny) maps.  We are thinking of scanning one of these maps and then rewriting some of the text to address our contemporary concerns, to unearth some forgotten history of the U, and to be funny- (*Diana is going to work on this – and others can brainstorm on this too (you could add comments to this post)).  —> Click here for PICTURES of the maps (sorry for the poor quality).    
6. War profiteers map – (Michael might have access to a map of military research connections in the Twin Cities). 

1. In Sunday’s meeting, we decided to start working on three or four initial mapping projects (see below notes for discussions out of which these projects/groups were formed). For anyone who was not there Sunday, you can email someone in the group for the project you are most interested in working on (ask Eli for their email address) – or you can join up with a group at Wednesday’s meeting. The three (or four) initial projects. 
   1. geospatial map(s): a. steam tunnels under the campus – (Emily, Anders); b. neighborhoods in the city (with housing inequalities, potholes?) – (Michael, Mark, Siobhan) – (these two can possibly be combined on one map)
   2. a thematic map (wage inequalities on campus, labor struggles) – (Tom, Amit, Arnoldas, Eli)
   3. a conceptual map (“driven to discover,” funding flows, corporatization of the university, land grant institution, etc.) – (Eli, Isaac)
2. If you’re interested in seeing the U’s collection of campus and city maps, meet up with Lesley and others at the Borchardt Map Library a couple hours before class on Wed. (around 2pm?) – in the basement of Wilson library. 
3. Suggested readings (we probably will spend all of the time talking about the projects, but if anybody wants to discuss the readings, we can make time for that too): “What do maps represent? The crisis of representation and the critique of cartographic reason” and “Situated pragmatics: Maps and mapping as social practice” (Chs. 2 & 3 in Pickles’ _A History of Spaces_ (2004)) (start at page 32, because the first five pages are too academic) and  “Counter-Mappings” (Ch. 9 in John Pickles’ _A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping, and the Geo-Coded World_ (2004))

Notes from Sunday, 6/22:

• Recap of last meeting
• Talk about the ideas for maps that we brought
• Decide on a few initial map projects and form working groups around them

Recap of last meeting:

• Our audience for the map: incoming undergrad and grad students, while also reaching out to the surrounding communities
• Our intent: to combine resources for navigating the campus/city with critical commentary – mapping both spaces of power and resistance
• Bradley gave a presentation on mapping and Lesley gave a presentation on the maps and GIS on her website, True North – Mapping Minnesota’s History (lots of helpful resources here!)

Discussion of the project timeframe and technology:

• We have lots of great ideas that won’ necessarily fit into however many weeks we have left for the class this summer -> So, we could write a grant for a bigger project, and we could see this summer as a time to compile ideas, resources, and to complete a smaller project.
• Although we only have three official class meetings scheduled, we can continue meeting if we want to (the only reason we initially limited the class to three weeks is that Eli is leaving town after that time – yet, Arnoldas will still be here, and he would like to continue facilitating the class)
• People who are interested in learning about and playing with GIS could get together separately (at least Lesley, Amit, Eli, and ??? have expressed interest in doing this – Lesley has the GIS software (ArcGIS) on her computer and we can get access to it through contacts in the U’s geography department.)

Presentations of our map ideas:

• (Eli – a suggested general approach to these maps): I would like to destabilize the university’s identity as a unified entity, because this appearance of unity serves to mask conflicts, such as the wage inequalities that motivate labor struggles like the AFSCME strike last fall, and the increases in students’ tuition at the same time as students’ lose their freedom.  The administration creates this unified identity through its branding campaigns, including the older campaigns of the maroon and gold color scheme and the Gopher mascot, as well as the newer brand of “driven to discover.”  The U’s official maps, seen around campus, are framed by these brands, and thereby, users of these maps connect the territory of the campus to this branded, unified identity.  We should make maps that counter this connection by highlighting the historical conflicts in the U.  Against the U’s “driven to discover” ad campaign that presents the “discoveries” of individual professors without acknowledging the historical processes of collective labor that produce the conditions for those discoveries, we should map the ways that the campus, people, and knowledges are historically produced and all of the conflicts that happen within these production processes (e.g., wage inequalities, governing power, strikes, tuition hikes, struggles against corporate research, etc.).  Likewise, another way to counter the appearance of a unified identity is to map the connections across the constructed boundaries of the campus’s branded territorial identity, and the conflicts over inequalities in relations across these boundaries (e.g., access to education, housing and living conditions for people who work on campus, helpfulness of research done on campus for local communities, etc.). 
• (Tom): 1) re-mapping of “the Gopher Way” (in gold and maroon colors)… map wage inequalities across campus – (sorry, I missed notes here… Tom, can you fill this in?); 2) inspired by a group in American Studies called Mas Color – we could map the skin colors of people who are studied in different areas of the campus (e.g., global studies, african-american studies) – or the skin color composition of the student body or staff – this would be a way to oppose the hegemony of the maroon and gold color scheme, which masks racial inequalities created through institutional racism.
• (Emily): 1) the passages around the U that are forbidden, unknown, unmapped – people have explored these areas (e.g., the “action squad) – exploring these passages is an anti-capitalist activity (students who get bored of the social life sold to them by the “driven to discover” brand are driven to discover on their own).  - maybe multiple maps (a 3-D thing where you can see all the layers of tunnels) – could be done with a hand drawing – (it seems like a ghost of the university – spaces that have to be hidden in order to present this image of “driven to discover”) – delves into the history of the U – hidden partly because it has a working class history associated with it (the history of building the U) – 2) different things that have been done to green spaces around the U – vs. “driven to discover” b/c these areas are heavily regulated – surveillance is very difficult. 
• (Mark): 1) relationship of the U with the war effort – grants given to professors – relationships with companies – 2) ways in which the cartographic gaze has created subjects and coded identities – how the U has been involved in manufacturing identities for students (e.g., production of competitive subjects through grading) – what it means to have degrees 
• (Amit): 1) corporate funding, state funding; – how does the U redistribute funding amongst departments? – what kind of priorities should the U have in distributing funds? we can see funding as a window onto the U admin’s priorities – 2) where do students live? what are their living conditions? – where do janitors live? – show class structures involved – what kind of people constitute this university? – (Arnoldas): where does the student body live (S, N, E, W suburbs vs. N. Minneapolis – the latter is probably much less represented) – the U presents itself as a security provider
• (Michael): 1) the location of thesis paper titles on the world map – 2) where faculty and staff live – 3) student housing – show changes over the decades; 4) # of potholes in a neighborhood in conjunction with income and demographics – # of abandoned homes – ratio between empty houses and homelessness – 5) at Macalester infoshop, they have a map of war profiteers in the cities – 6) with “driven to discover,” cf. Chevron ads that say “we’re explorers” – we could list (and map) all the other corporations that have “discovery” as part of their brand
• (Isaac): “land grant institution” – they’re was a huge movement around public higher education in the 19th c. – then the US passed the 1862 Morrill land grant act, which gave the states federal land to build state institutions (to train industrial workers, military training, agriculture, etc.) – at the time, this was seen as a progressive move b/c education had been only for the elite -> We could make a map of MN with the parcels of land that the federal government gave to the state – how much they sold it for, to whom they sold it, and what’s there now – show the buildings now (e.g., WBob, Fairview – when and how much the U got for the land, etc.) – also, show Duluth, Morris, Rochester, extension programs – UMorePark (the largest contiguous piece of land owned by a land grant institution) – now the U admin is tring to create a “sustainable community” with “green technologies” on this land – But it’s clear that they’re actually trying to parcel out the land and sell it – there was probably similar historical contestation over the land grant parcels – Also, what is the relationship of the Native American reservations to the land grant act? – (Lesley): the MN historical society has maps that could be helpful for this – (Mark): it might be interesting to map the history of our changing assumptions about education in general – (Isaac): with the extension programs, ways of disseminating information are being closed off 
• (Lesley): what we want to effect through this map is to help change people’s ways of seeing the world – our data is going to be very important  - we want the maps to be not only conceptually meaningful but also have valid data – proposal for three types of maps: 1) an abstract, conceptual map (blowing out the concept of a map) – 2) a geospatial map – something that people recognize down to the base layers, but shifting it in some basic way – 3) a thematic map (e.g., race, wages, census) — But for all three of these maps, really back them up with research data – these maps would be intended to inspire our audience (students) to do research on their own 
• (Tom): 1) a scale of skin color tones – % of land of this land grant institution that previously was occupied by indigenous peoples — 2) sometimes military data is hard to find, but it’s also possible to map where we had trouble finding data – it could even be a call for people to do research to fill gaps in the info
• (Arnoldas): 1) map public and private land – changing landscape of public/private – 2) look over the years at the building of new buildings and increasing corporate sponsorship – 3) historical relationship between small businesses and chain contractors – (e.g., now all of the food service is by one corporation on campus) – 4) subvert the official map of the U that shows buildings and nothing around – instead show nothing or just geology of the campus – 5) bicycle parking vs. car parking – 6) history of the West Bank – show the land, the neighborhoods, how the U expanded over the years
• (Anders): looking at how the university has changed historically – its relation to the communities around it – the physical boundaries of the U – how they have expanded – you could include historical conflicts – how the U has expanded into different parts of the city and how different corporations have become part of the U

Discussion about choosing initial map projects:

• “driven to discover” brand is a major theme -> “driven to uncover” – maps and discovery – maps used for going out into the territory
• funding -> the model of funding has shifted at the U – now it’s more of a subcontracting model – allows the administration to capture a lot of the money – enables the administration to fund their strategic positioning initiative – we could map these lines of funding – and identify the big external grants
• how many maps? 
  • Lesley’s suggestion of three maps (conceptual, geospatial, and thematic) received general approval
  • everybody’s ideas sound great, and eventually we would like to do lots of maps, but for now we should start with a more tangible exercise – something that we could work together on to learn the basics of how to make a map – we’ll make templates that can be used for multiple maps
  • three (or four maps, with two of them possibly combined):
• 1. geospatial map(s): a. steam tunnels under the campus – (Emily, Anders); b. neighborhoodsin the city (with housing inequalities, potholes?) – (Michael, Mark, Siobhan) 
  2. a thematic map (wage inequalities on campus, labor struggles) – (Tom, Amit, Arnoldas, Eli)
  3. a conceptual map (“driven to discover,” funding flows, corporatization of the university, land grant institution, etc.) – (Eli, Isaac)

Intros

Arnoldas: excited to learn, communicate to a larger audience what’s not represented, challenge conventional frameworks; had talked about immigrant rights with someone earlier—the history of the Chicano movement; introduced the Minnesota Radical History zine—maybe we can have pdfs or links on our website to information about how the U is connected to local history and overlapping communities—it is never self-enclosed

Gus: Film guy, maybe do some film stuff for the project

Anders: a former PSEO student, currently going through the loops of freshman orientation at the U. This process could be useful for the scope of the class

Quin (sp?): History major at the U—did previous work on the history of the U, 1960s-ear protests, and research on the structural character of the West Bank; interested in history and dynamics of neighborhoods—after 9/11 immigration and the effect it has had on Cedar-Riverside, cab drivers, etc. and the ethnic-migratory history of surrounding neighborhoods

Marie (sp?): wants to have a focus group—look at the beginning of school-year, have a product to hand out and a website to drill down, like an “Activist Guide”—look at (Im)moral Hall, ’03 sit-in compared to ’07 arrests over GC sit-ins—what happened during those years? Look at Folwell and 60’s anti-war demonstrations, Gateway/scholar’s walk—McNamera is a private building, not owned by the U. What does this mean?

David: interested in looking at the technocratic nature of GIS—and the appropriation of GIS software for productive ends

Yonna (sp?): interested in mental maps; focus on higher education, study abroad, international students, and how these subgroups play into the radical mapping of the U. Who benefits from the internationalization of the U?

Ahmed: engineering background; got involved in radical outlook of the U during the fall strike; TA’s are not a factory, but are commonly treated like one—highly corporatized, lack of care for workers’ wellbeing; interested in exploring power struggles inherent in the U’s structure, administration policies and research, and departmental imbalance

Leslie: Works for the Minnesota Historical Society, sees a difference between activism and “community groups” and “non-profits”; interested in subverting dominant paradigm, with close attention paid to “deconstructive” vs. “constructive” emphasis; wants to synthesize theory with action—create a mapifesto of sorts, explaining our own representational mapping process, setting a strong example of what a radical map is and looks like; data is already in the process of being collected by all sorts of groups—we could piggyback on other research work being done, creating an effective layered history of campus

Emily: graduated last year from the U; began to open up to the substance of the land and break conceptual patterns through an orienteering class she took at the U; interested in the strange underbelly of the U—abandoned parts of campus, decrepit tunnels, etc.; we should do some orienteering of our own—we think we understand where we are, but how do we triangulate; maybe do a treasure hunt—Minnesota as topography; maps can be dangerous, we can harness this power and use it for productive and dangerous purposes

Tom: works at the U, here to learn about the entire process of radical map-making

Isaac: likes the idea of the dangerous map; interested in an mp3-guided walking-tour of campus and generally building our own maps; what buildings are being destroyed, what buildings are being built up?

GIS: Geographic Information Systems

Most is done in desktop mapping

Neogeography—all mash-ups

Since 1969, U of M created 1^st GIS map—for about 40 years people have been creating data with which to map MN; neogeography is not taking advantage of this wealth of data

Coming together of Science (clunky, dry, analytical) and neogeography (sexy, pretty aesthetic, free from science tropes); Google Earth is changing all that; pulling in old data sets: debate over whether or not Google Earth is neogeography

Old GIS was done on desktop–$1000s to operate, inaccessible to most people; neogeography is all web-based, mostly open-source—open to almost anyone

ESRI: Environmental Services Research Institute

Open source GIS—mapserver foundation—Steve Lime (sp?), a DNR guy, alum and current teacher at the U. True North—4^th-10^th grade level technology

GIS potentials:

1) Ability to overlay multiple layers of maps

2) Ability to link locations o fmaps to information on that location—pull different data from all different sources, utilize data sources that already exist (cessions and treaties, e.g.)

www.mnhs.org/truenorth

Creative cartography (science of map-making): U of N. Carolina offers exemplary map

Grass—open source GIS

What is a map? Representation of special (and temporal) data; three kinds:

1) reference

2) thematic (population densities in an area, e.g.)

3) mental (conceptualizing space)

Maps are a simplification of reality, selective representation of data, based on subjective choices of people, decided by whoever makes the map. Earth is a Geoid—some projections preserve integrity of angle, area, etc.—depending upon what the cartographer is mapping, what interests she’s trying to serve (political foundation of maps)

Color—has importance in determining a hierarchy of data (darker and darker shades of red has different connotations than darker and darker shades of green to correspond to data categories, e.g. races of people)

Radical mapping: challenge the representations of space we see reinforced ever day; every cartographer has a choice in reinforcing what it is they reinforce

Geocoding: like mapquest, gathers cultural knowledge—representations of vs. representations for

www.colorbrewer.org– color blindness and ways to see things

larger project for the class: disorientation guide in form of booklet or zine; what is the priority, and what is realistic?

Who is the audience? Incoming students, surrounding communities; create something that helps break the spell that says the present situation is how it always has been and how it will always be, connecting to past and to present overlapping communities, practical-use guide that challenges real relationships, exposing the political reasons for not grounding people and not allowing space for people to map their own genealogies and geographies—there are multiple views of a single place and a single time.

This project could be the genesis for a grant…

1) Read the previous post summarizing the research topics we proposed in the 1st meeting, and reply with any additional topics and any interesting ways of organizing these topics.

2) Think about the four questions raised in the previous post about our audience, purpose, map form and content, and central themes.  Add comments in response to any of these questions (or at least be prepared to discuss them in class).

3) We would like to make part of the 2nd meeting a skill-and-knowledge sharing workshop.  It would be great if you could prepare a short presentation on some skills/knowledges/technologies that you think are relevant for the project (e.g., where to find research data on the U, where to find maps, how to use GIS, etc.).

4) Explore the maps linked here, especially UNC’s disOrientation Guide and Mapping Comic Book.

Of the folks in attendance, our skills and knowledges include: - filmmaking - GIS - cartography - free and open source GIS and mapping resources - urban geography, sociology, forestry - political science - computer programming - anthropology – website design – institutional memory (knowledge from attending and working at the U for a long time).

In our discussion of possible research topics that we could include in our map, we came up with the following list (see below).  Please feel free to add to this list by replying in the comment box below.  Also, I have not organized this list much, because that is a task that we should do collectively — so, please feel free to comment with interesting connections that you see between these different topics, and to think about the following questions:

Before the first meeting, please try to read “Maps Work by Serving Interests” - Ch. 1 of Denis Wood’s The Power of Maps (about 24 pages).  Wood helps us think about how maps can be very political things and how they construct our reality.  If you have time, check out some of the other links in our sections of readings, mapping collectives and blogs, and especially the disorientation guides from other schools.  To get our discussions rolling, please feel free to add comments on any of these pages (in the “leave a comment” part on the bottom).  You could respond by telling us what you’ve found interesting in any of these resources, or you could give links to new stuff you’ve found. 

Agenda for the first meeting:

• Introductions (basic info about ourselves, and our interests, skills)
• Arnoldas and Eli (the facilitators) will give an intro about this project and EXCO
• We’ll collectively explore some of the online resources as well as books and maps that we’ll bring to class.
• Discussion of the politics of mapping.
• Brainstorming about possible topics to research for our U of M Disorientation Guide.