It has been a while since I did something or wrote anything.
After a long vacation getting back to work mode was not easy, but I think I
finally did it.
I was not sure where to start but in order to
start making I had to start somewhere. So I started writing down the points that
I want to communicate. I felt like there is so much on my mind and working on
all of them in such a short time is not possible. I was hoping to narrow myself
down by writing down all my thoughts and hopefully find a starting point.
I started with the map drawings of “ My world”. I researched and found the name
of all the countries in the world and looked up all the ones that I need a visa
to and the ones that I don’t through http://www.doyouneedvisa.com . I decided
to only draw the countries that allows me to travel to them without any hassle
on the map to see really how much of this planet is really part of my world. I
used watercolor to bring in the colors of a regular map into it. I thought it
would be interesting to see how much blue and how much of it will be green.
I find this quick test both successful and unsuccessful.
Successful because I is shows how ridicules the map looks! Only 10 countries
out of 195 (http://www.nationsonline.org/ ) allow me to travel to them freely.
However, I realized that maybe I should only deduct the
countries that give me a hard time before traveling to them. For example I have
to fill forms and go through a process, pay money in order for them to let me
travel to them or even transit through them. I thought, it would not be fare to
put Seri Lanka on the same level as New Zealand. When Traveling to Seri Lanka
for Iranian Nationals then issue the visa upon arrival at the airport but when
I was flying back from Sydney to California ( I already have a visa for the
United States) by Air New Zealand I had to apply for a transit visa and pay
$150 for a 3 hour stop! I was lucky that I looked it up, otherwise I would
loose my flight and had to postpone my fly back for about 2 weeks. Getting a
Visa is usually not a quick and easy process.
So I decided to add the “Visa upon arrival countries as
well:
I find this attempt a lot more successful not only because
now I believe I have pictured a more fair condition but also the simplicity of
the map, helps us see much better. Therefor I decided to still keep color out
of these series. As a next step of these studies I would like to apply the same
strategy to a few other countries and see them in comparison.
As I was working on the previews work I occurred to me that
I have removed the name of the countries on the map and I only kept their
imaginary borders. What if I remove all the borders and just place the names on
the map. How would that look like.
Not only visually this map grabbed my attention but also I
found it a good research material. My next step with this would be printing it
big and having it up on the wall and asking people to draw the borders of the
countries out of their memories.
As a conclusion of the previous study I decided to run a few
other studies based on what if the borders didn't exist or if they where
different than what we know today.
