Location, Location - Floatingsheep's Take on Geographies of Wikipedia in China

Floatingsheep.org, a fascinating website dedicated to mapping and analyzing user generated Google Map placemarks, so as to provide one glimpse of what internet users (in the aggregate) think about particular places, posted a fascinating article on the Geographies of Wikipedia in China.

According to the Floatingsheep, the geotagged articles in Chinese are concentrated on the more developed regions, particularly southeast part of China:



However, counting articles in all languages, the patten shifts and the emphasis is on the western region, particularly Tibet and Xianjiang:



The article argues, "It has been demonstrated that there appears to be a correlation between the locations of contributors and the topics that they write about. The fact that most Chinese Wikipedians are from eastern provinces would then seem to explain some of the differences between the geographies of Chinese Wikipedia and all other Wikipedias."

However, when I was in China in March 2010, I found that in China Wikipedia was blocked (homepage was not, but search results were).

Floatingsheep plan to revisit this topic at regular intervals in order to map any possible spatial shifts over time. I definitely will stay tuned.

GPS for Art

Recently, a friend called my attention to an article about an effort to document of public art via Wikipedia. According to the article published by The Chronicle of Higher Education,

Documentation of public art, particularly digital documentation, lags behind other art forms. Jennifer Geigel Mikulay, an assistant professor and public scholar of visual culture at Indiana-Purdue, started the project, Wikipedia Saves Public Art, with Richard S. McCoy, an associate conservator at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. They taught a course together last fall at Indiana-Purdue, in which they asked students to write Wikipedia articles with a local and art-historical context about pieces of public art on the campus. The students used a GPS tracking device to obtain coordinates for each piece so that article readers could find it in real life.

Now Ms. Mikulay, Mr. McCoy, and some students are writing Wikipedia entries for pieces of public art around Indianapolis. They also tag pre-existing entries that fit the project with a Wikipedia Saves Public Art banner. So far, they've tagged more than 900. At this point, there aren't many members on the project's Wikipedia page, and participation hasn't moved much beyond Indianapolis. Still, those involved are hopeful that people across the globe will use Wikipedia to document the public art in their communities.

The list is not comprehensive but could be a good starting point for people who want to write Wikipedia articles about local sculptures, Ms. Mikulay said. In fact, the group in Indianapolis is attempting to convert the list for their city into Wikipedia entries.

It is a novel but logical idea and I hope its success will facilitate broader usage of modern technology in the art world.

I always want to have a system, maybe a GPS system, which can tell the locations of particular paintings, sculptures, or drawings at given period of time. Which is not only a great tool for museums and galleries to advertise their treasures, but a wonderful instrument for tourist industry as well, particularly for people like me who plan their trips to the hours.

Apple, Google, are you listening?

Google, Wikipedia, Flickr, Oasis and Bob Dylan

What do Google, Wikipedia, Flickr, British rock band Oasis and American icon Bob Dylan have in common?

Not welcomed in China, at least partially.

According to a report by StarPulse, Bob Dylan has canceled his planned Asian tour this month after he was reportedly refused permission to play in Shanghai and Beijing. His tour should have included stops at Beijing, Shanghai, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong.

According to the report, "Jeffrey Wu, of Taiwan-based promotion company Brokers Brothers Herald, says, 'China's Ministry of Culture did not give us permission to stage concerts in Beijing and Shanghai, so we had no alternative but to scrap plans for a Southeast Asian tour. The chance to play in China was the main attraction for him. When that fell through everything else was called off. What Björk did definitely made life very difficult for other performers. They are very wary of what will be said by performers on stage now.'"

Björk made an onstage protest about the Chinese occupation of Tibet at a concert in 2008.