THE INCIDENTAL 01, originally uploaded by dcharny
Last year, as part of my work at my current job, we entered the Situated Technologies: Toward the Sentient City competition sponsored by the Architectural League of New York – you can see the entry here, Situated Technologies: Beacons. As you know, I am semi-obsessed with maps and the intersection of the physical with the ephemeral.

So today, my mind was blown.

First, Matt Jones has a post entitled, A palimpsest for a place: The Incidental at Salone Di Mobile 2009 which illustrates the publishing of The Incidental, sponsored by the British Council and produced by Schulze&Webb, Fromnowon, Åbäke and others, for the Salone Di Mobile furniture and design event in Milan. They are printing 5,000 copies daily with content pulled in from Twitter, Flickr and a team of curators.
That was cool. But Matt also linked to Aaron Cope’s Papernet speech which in turn features Aaron’s call and explanation of The Papernet, which is a physical manifestation of digital bits which the user prints our guides which eventually turned into Eat Drink Feel Good.

Just like the Typologies from the New Cartographic Explosion, there are many ways developers are fusing place with data and ephemera. So Aaron’s writings have just blown my mind in ways I can’t explain, but can sum up in his project: New York Times Related (explanation) which plots each day’s Times coverage by relationship (shown above) and geography.
Carry on.