If you subscribe to Fighting Tiger’s RSS feed you may have noticed several hand drawn maps appear in the stream. They’re part of a project I’m calling Not To Scale. I’m currently just collecting and blogging low-quality scans of the maps that friends and strangers draw me, but long-term I’d like to collate them into an electronic map.
I find that it’s far easier moving forward with nottoscale than it is working on the ideas I have for conceptual projects more specifically sited around friendship. Maybe nottoscale is easier because it is an unplanned project that’s worked its way into my headspace, rather than an idea which grows in importance and angst before I’ve even done the first sketch.
It’s also good for me that Not To Scale requires involvement with other people. Even though I can appear to be a very social person once I’m actually out of the apartment, it sometimes takes a lot of effort to venture out into the world. So much thinking I do is about other people, how they interact with each other, what I could do with them and the projects we could collaborate on, but I don’t seem to be very good at putting those ideas into action by sharing them with other people.
With Not To Scale, all I need from a person is a map. At its most basic level, all I need is pen or paper. Simple!
Though, I love the stories that people tell while they’re drawing maps, the added information that is lost in a drawing through limited cartographical skills and the restriction of pen and paper. If I have a camera or video camera to hand then I can pull that out to record the stories that are told during the map creation.
Actually, until recently I didn’t have a video camera of my own, but a good friend Pete Hindle generously gave me an old miniDV cam to record maps with. Thanks Pete!
I’m grateful for all my map creators so far, but I’d like to say special thanks to Juho and Marc who’ve emailed me some maps of Finland, Japan and the UK! Danke! Kiitos, Dom Arigato!