Everybody likes to read the “I Spy” section of the personals [1], but Marty Schnure has got to be the first person to turn some of its posts into a map.
Schnure describes what you see on this page as a “spatial representation of something not often thought of in spatial terms, or as mappable data: human interactions.” She created it for the national Bizarre Map Challenge [2] organized by San Diego State University. Bizarre is defined as “strikingly out of the ordinary.”
Turns out Schnure’s is a top-10 finalist in the contest, selected by five world-renowned cartographers. The winner will get $5000!
You can click here [3] to view the maps and vote for your favorite. Deadline: April 26, at noon Pacific Time (3 p.m. in Vermont). Naturally, we hope you’ll vote for Marty Schnure’s I Spy map.
Schnure is a geography major at Middlebury College [4]. She said one of her favorite ways to procrastinate on school work is to read the I Spy section of Seven Days. “I’ve always thought it would be fun to map the posts,” she said, “since many of them include precise locational information.”
When she learned about the contest, Schnure said, she chose to make an I-Spy map “because it is both unique to Vermont and universal; while the map is ostensibly very regional, it transcends its regionalism by representing universally recognizable human needs and wants: connection, intimacy, infatuation, making eye contact with the cutie in the produce section, etc.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
And did we mention the winner gets $5000?
Good luck, Marty!
Links:
[1] http://7dvt.com/personals
[2] http://bizarremap.sdsu.edu/
[3] http://bizarremap.sdsu.edu/phpQ/fillsurvey.php?sid=4
[4] http://www.middlebury.edu/