Guide Psychogéographique de OWU (2009, med res jpg)
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Mapping Weird Stuff is a course offered as part of the OWjL summer camp at Ohio Wesleyan.
OWjL (Ohio Wesleyan University Junior League of Columbus) is a residential summer camp program of challenge and enrichment for central Ohio’s gifted and talented middle school students currently in grades 6-8.
This blog contains material and resources reviewed as part of the course. The course work culminated in a sensory & psychogeography map of the OWU campus. As per above.
A printable 11″ x 17″ (300dpi 1.4mb) PDF of the map is here.
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First Meeting:
I Talk: Your Kindly Instructor
You Talk: Who are you?
I Talk You Draw: Your mental maps of the OWU campus area
- mental map: “A map which represents the perceptions and knowledge a person has of an area. May be a map in the mind.” (source)
- mental map vocabulary
What you mapped:
- purposeful paths?
- what maps are supposed to show?
- lots of other stuff is very important … yet seldom gets mapped
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What’s Weird? And What’s Mapping Weird Stuff?
Weird: Of a strikingly odd or unusual character; strange, uncanny, fantastic, bizarre
- Some stuff is easy to map (roads, boundaries) and other stuff is not (emotions, smells)
- Some stuff we expect to see on maps but other stuff we don’t (so we don’t map it)
- Weird = those things we don’t usually see mapped, or that are difficult to map
Atlas of Boylan Heights: Denis Wood
This class: a mix of
- geography
- cartography (mapping)
- psychology (environmental psychology)
- urban planning
- art
- environmental studies
Up next:
Mapping…
Mapping Weird Stuff 