‘Bio Mapping is a participatory methodology for people to talk about their immediate environment, locality and communal space. I’m trying to use 3D visualisation as a way of talking about the space. It’s not representational.’

UK teacher/activist/artist/modern busy person Christian Nold recently completed the San Francisco emotion map, a process which he has invented and tested already in Greenwich. If I understand the process, he basically blindfolds subjects and has them guided around different public spaces, all the while being hooked up to a lie-detector, tracking the subject’s response to urban stimuli.

He has predetermined categories, something like ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ that describe the body’s reaction to specific places. Then he creates a map of his subjects’ paths, with color coordinated labels based on their bodies’ reactions. Nold is supremely concerned with effects of globalization/development/urban anarchy and is actively creating new research in the fields of sensory politics and sensory pollution.

Mr. Nold stays incredibly busy with his various projects, and, good for us, he processes and shares information very reliably. Check below for links and click on the image above to see the flow chart he made to describe himself.

download the San Francisco data as KMZ / Softhook.com [all of his projects] / Nold on Flickr