daniel shiffman

The Project: An activist tool that maps the user’s Point of View. Through a series of questions, the user marks locations on a world map of personal importance, including where they are presently, places they have visited, and where they consider their “home.” The world map is then distorted to exaggerate those places, questioning and confronting the user if this is actually how they view the world, and providing website resources to explore unknown territories.

The Idea: Drawing inspiration from centuries of maps that were inaccurate, incorrect, or simply what was imagined to be true, World View takes the current accepted image of the world map, and makes it emotionally precise for each individual user.

Technical Info: World View was built using flash, mySQL, Maverick, and JSP. Note: Maverick (see: http://mav.sourceforge.net/) is a Model-View-Controller (aka “Model 2″) framework for web publishing using Java and J2EE. The “morphed” world map images are generated using a Java servlet that receives parameters from flash, encodes a JPG, and passes it back to the flash movie. Concept, Design, and Flash by Jake Barton. Maverick, Java, MySQL, JSP code by Daniel Shiffman.

Screenshots:
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