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IC w2 Mapping

  • HildeMaassen
  • Feb 8, 2020
  • 4 min read

Updated: Apr 25, 2020

During the first live class I showed the work that I did during the holidays. The question was how to present it and how to give it more cohesion or depth. Sugested to add things like maps or GPS coordinates.


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This is how I started to experiment more with getting lines in the 3D objects that are generated during the proces. This is not so hard because before I was working hard to avoid them.

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One of the first image I made this way, capture date Oct 27th 2019, 11.15.20 AM GPS 51˚55'7.158"N 4˚26'50.92"E mapping date; 6 February 2020 at 19:39

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Verstraeten (p16 2001)

On this site I find maps of the clouds. ( I may share @Meteoserver.nl)

It is intriguing to see how the lines in these kind of maps correspond to the result I get and which I of course was already familiar with in advance, as the daughter of a geography teacher and surrounded by maps and atlases in the house. My brother eventually became a surveyor.


However, there is a big difference between mapping the earth or the clouds. We map the earth to find the way. We make roads, but even before that, when there were only paths, it was possible to map them; they were not subject to much change. It is seldom that there is a big change from one day to the next. The cause is usually natural violence such as a volcanic eruption or an earthquake. And then traces are often permanently visible. Borders of countries may change; it is stunning how accurate the atlas Westermanns Weltatlas (Westermanns world atlas) from 1922 again is with the European borders. (think for example of former Yugoslavia in 1922, those countries had not been merged and now they are no longer).

Fig. Westermanns Weltatlas, Asolf Lieber - 1922.

Is it not super integrating that, due to the drought in June and July of 2018 even the conversations of old paths and structures are visible again on photos and films made by drones and Apple Maps? That we can color in maps of the past that way.


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An unkown castle near Noordharen, the Netherlands

Link to an article form Michel Brandsma in the newspaper Dagblad Noorden, 6 Aug 2018 about an unknown castle from the middle ages in the Netherlands: https://www.dvhn.nl/groningen/Droogte-onthult-middeleeuws-kasteel-bij-Noordlaren-23429628.html?harvest_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F


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An unkown castle near Noordharen, the Netherlands

Link to a blog by Anthony Murphy with photo's of monuments from the Stone Age discovered at Newgrange and Brú na Bóinne in Ireland using Apple maps.


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Map of the stars from the Westermanns Weltatlas 1922, p106

We can also make maps of the sun and the stars (as you see above)and we can navigate on them. This is already a very old fact. Looking up at the stars and seeing constellations in them and recognizing them is what we also do with clouds; we recognize faces of animals, entire scenes. Yet it is impossible to navigate on the clouds because they can be driven by the wind. In the Netherlands where, according to the expression,"nothing is as changeable as the weather" I would certainly not try. With the help of photography we can capture in a snapshot what the clouds look like at the moment, but we can never take that picture exactly again. At least I assume that.


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Peter van Bommel.

We can, however, classify clouds as they look based on characteristics such as the height at which they are located and appearance; everyone has heard of the cirrus, cumulus and stratus but we cannot navigate on the clouds.

I had a conversation with my brother, (Arthur Maassen) the surveyor, about whether he could measure the clouds. The answer was no.

  1. The distance is too large (pixels of the rain radar are 1 by 1 kilometer)

  2. Measuring is done by using a kind of reflection that he would not find on a cloud.

  3. The shadow of the cloud is possible to measure and if he would know the distance to the earth, it is possible to measure the surface.

  4. When working with drones you need a decent series of photos that are made with a 75% overlap horizontaal and vertical. You must note 5 GPS coordinates within each image. The images stiched at the recognition of at least 10,000 points. Then you have to scale the result based on the GPS points and in the calculation you take into account the focal point of the lens used and the distance the the subject. On the ground it is impossible to measure water in this way because of the changes on the surface and also trees, with fluttering leaves due to the wind are difficult. Having 10,000 landmarks in clouds seems impossible.

Scientists are working hard to investigate the dynamic clouds. In 2001 there was a large, international investigation "cloud measure campagne" into those clouds in the Netherlands. They wanted to know how big the clouds are, how they arise and how they disappear. What is in the clouds; ice, water or snow. They try to count the drops in the clouds. All this to better understand the processes. This helps to generate climate change scenarios. https://www.knmi.nl/over-het-knmi/nieuws/internationale-wolkenmeetcampagne-bij-meetmast-knmi

In my eyes, the fact that the clouds are so dynamic, elusive makes it interesting to map them while that map is only one of a moment in time that will never come back in exactly that way. It is that moment in time, the date and the exact second that must be added to the image I realise now.


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© 2019 by Hilde Maassen 

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