Rationale 2
Why I chose this
Out of the three choices we were given I chose the Geo Narrative. The other options were interesting aswell, particulary the data visualisation, which i attempted to do but, eventually stopped because the constant recording of my various actions became too difficult. However, some of the various data visualisations from delicious were very inspiring particualary the Peter Funch pictures. The Video option was also interesting, however, i did not feel as strongly about it as i did with the other two. I eventually chose the geo-narrative, because of its flexibility and creative sided requirement. After viewing Charles Cummings, 21 steps, I decided to do the Geo-Narrative as my project. While I found the story of Charles Cumming to be of poor quality, I enjoyed the sence of direction and distance that was visualised through his story. This I found would be quite usefull in visualising various event throughout history, giving me the inspiration to go for a historical approach rather than a fictional story. At first I wanted to follow Hannibals legendary march towards Rome, however, I soon found out that EVERY city had its name changed in the 2000 years since. The large distance traveled was another put off for this path, as he traveled through several countries where countless incidents occured. Eventually I though I would follow a closer to home character, Ned Kelly, who had traveled a great distance in his lifetime and had achieved some great feats. As I looked more and more into Ned’s travels I was increasingly impressed at how well he did, as I have gone four wheel driving with my father and seen how trecherous the terrain can be in bushland Australia. Furthermore Ned’s story was a rather short one making it easier to do for this project given the time I had left.
How i went about it
I first researched Ned on various sites and then wrote all of this information down into a google word document. I then divided that document into several sections which i would later use to fill the text requirement in each chapter. I then set up the story, found each of the area where ned traveled and tried to fit them up as best I could. This part took the most time as several locations were vagely described, however, I was awed at the large amount of land that this Australian bushranger had traveled. I then found the required pictures off Flickr, under the creative commons liscene and added them to each of the chapter. Fortunantly for me, my family had done a four wheel driving trip into that exact area allowing me to get accurate pictures of the countryside, without having to go through the hundreds of snapshots found on flickr. these pictures, along with being accurate, filled the 6 pictures of mine which was required by the project.
Problems
The problems I encountered with this project were many. First was the choice, too much of it. I was significantly split between following the many ideas I had and changed quite a few times. Another problem involved flickr, as many users either didn’t want or didn’t care about having a CC liscence, this made it harder for me to find the required amount of pictures. Yet another problem was finding the right information about Ned Kelly, many searches returned with information that was so extreme that it could not possibly be true, for example finding Stringy Bark creek, the search for that ended with me being hundreds of kilometres away from the events that occured during Ned’s lifetime. However, these were countered by various tourist sites that gave vague directions to the famous landmarks and mentioned the town that they were near allowing me to make an educated guess.
Overall this project was interesting to do. I learned a significant amount about Ned Kelly and the vast distance he traveled while causing distress the the government at the time, all while using 19th century technology. I Also learnt a significant amount about the different tools on the internet which can be used to do almost anything.
