Crowdsourced Continents: The World

For the past few years, I've been going to events in London asking people to draw maps of continents.

I went to a Latin American festival, Canada Day and USA Independence Day events, a UK / Australia cricket match, a European folk music festival, an African Craft Fair and a variety of Asian events.

At each, I asked people at the event to draw a map of that event's continent. Some people came from the continent, some from elsewhere.

I then took all these maps and laid them on top of each other to create a jumbly mind-memory-map of these continents. And here are all those maps, as the world.

Some were clear - Africa, Australia, South America - and some much less so - Europe and Asia.

In all, we can see that maps are made by drawing, constructs in the moment, made from memory which is patchy and personal, familiar and fascinating.

I've had really interesting conversations with the 87 people who drew these maps, and hopefully, you enjoy them too.

Variations on a Brazilian flag

When I was in Belgium, I saw this flag hanging from a building. It's the Brazilian flag re-purposed with Belgian colours.

I love this take on the Brazilian flag, re-purposed to support Belgium in this year's football World Cup.

So I decided to make a few more flags:

 This could be any number of countries - Australia, Costa Rica, Chile, France, Croatia.

Cameroon.

Colombia or Ecuador

Netherlands - though I suspect they're more likely to have a big, bright orange flag.

Germany

 Portugal

1

Iran or Mexico or Italy

Ivory Coast

 Nigeria

Spain

Switzerland

Uruguay or Bosnia and Herzegovina

Map tattoos: geography on the body

When I was in university, a friend of mine wrote a great geography dissertation about tattoos. She imagined the body as a landscape, with tattoos acting as landmarks and inscriptions in the landscape. People wrote their lives on to their skin, tattoos are like maps to their identities.



I really liked the idea. I wondered if people would mark their patriotism on their bodies, with maps or national insignia as tattoos.




For years, I've wanted to do a photography project on it, but have always stalled at the idea of finding people to photograph. Recently, I started to explore on flickr, finding these fantastic images.



I find it amazing, fascinating and inspiring that people's pride and patriotism lead them to the extent of imprinting maps of their country, state, city onto their skin.



I've created two galleries of these images on flickr: Tattoo Nation I and Tattoo Nation II

(Thanks to flickr users who have given me permission to show their images.)

Flags, made of paper

My newest fun thing to do is to make collage flags from bits of scrap paper. I recently changed jobs, and made these flags for colleagues to say farewell.
UK flag

USA flag


Australia flag



Kent flag


Sicily flag



Wales flag


India flag



Nepal flag


Berlin flag


Cuba flag



Ukraine flag



Ethiopia flag



Madagascar flag


Philippines flag



Ireland flag


France flag


Ibiza flag

Kylie Minogue X2008 tour

Kylie's X2008 tour was on 4Music last night. I loved it - my favourite bits were:

• Opening song Speakerphone was ace, despite only a little dancing. I imagine this song is about listening to music on a bus, so she could have had a Routemaster on stage too.
• Kylie saying to the audience, "you're all looking so wow!"
• Kylie perched atop a sparkling metal skull, for Like A Drug, looking ferocious.
• Playing the ace Fischerspooner remix of Come into my World
• The symphonic reinvention of I Believe in You (but what were those shoes about?)
• Kylie's diva-like face pout to the synthy beats in Your Disco Needs You
• Frogmarch dancing during Your Disco Needs You
• Step Back In Time was totally retro - 40s/50s girlgroup singing to begin, 70s disco dancing, 80s fluoro-styling. Brilliant. (See below)
• In My Arms was the definite shot of technicolour disco the show needed.
• Kylie sans dancers for the final 4 songs proved that she is very much the attraction. She radiated!

One thing did niggle me, however. Why were the male dancers' heads covered for practically every song? They wore robot heads, football helmets, gas masks, Japanese helmets, Keith Haring-style head stockings and 80s retro BMX helmets.

But that's just a small thing - overall, it was a top show. Here's the retrotastic Step Back In Time

Well, I never - aussie bum

Posters advertising ubergay underwear brand AussieBum have begun appearing all over my local London areas, Kennington and Vauxhall (2 particularly gay London areas).

Underwear ads are nothing new - Freddie Ljungberg on a poster, David Beckham's crotch on the side of a bus, and that eye-popping Dolce & Gabbana chap.

But this one caught my eye - oh my, he's got his bum out. Goodness.

Place Quote: Australia's hidden racism

With Australia, it's always been a very devious kind of racism, it's always been well hidden. Whereas in South Africa, it's our there. It's in your face. It's blatant. The thing that's sold overseas - y'know, wonderful down-under country of sun, koalas and kangaroos... this land is drenched with blood.

• from Planet Ustinov, TV show