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Mercator Su Song Star Map: 1092 AD

800px-su_song_star_map_1jpg

This is a star map for the celestial globe of Su Song (1020-1101), a Chinese scientist and mechanical engineer of the Song Dynasty (960-1279). It was first published in the year 1092, in Su’s book known as the Xin Yi Xiang Fa Yao (Wade-Giles: Hsin Yi Hsiang Fa Yao). On this star map there are 14 xiu (lunar mansions) on Mercator’s projection. The equator is represented by the horizontal straight line running through the star chart, while the ecliptic curves above it. Note the unequal breadth of the lunar mansions on the map.

via File:Su Song Star Map 1.JPG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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My name is Jeffrey Warren

I design maps, visual programming environments, and other stuff at the MIT Media Lab's Design Ecology group. Email me at warren@mit.edu

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WHOOZ is a project to map urban wildlife in realtime with SMS messages throughout Manhattan, the Bronx, and Cambridge, MA. Users can request realtime 'safaris' to find animals recently seen near their current location.

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ARMSFLOW is a data visualization which displays arms transactions globally between 1950 and 2006. It includes 14,619 arms transactions (each is a sum of 1 year's exports) and 228 government entities.

Kogbox.com »

Kogbox is a communal programming site where users write short re-usable snippets of code and run them in the cloud. Snippets can be shared and combined to create more complex applications.

Coffee Analytics »

A project mapping the flow of coffee on global, urban, local, architectural, biological, and personal scales. The full collection includes over 50 pieces on cardboard, paper, and chipboard in ink, paint, graphite, chalk, charcoal, and coffee.

Other work:

I'm a partner at Vestal Design, where I've done lots of stuff like Xobni's user interface and branding and information design for ClimateCounts. I also taught information design workshops for General Electric and Tata Consultancy Services in Mumbai.

I work occasionally and excitedly with Natalie Jeremijenko as part of her xDesign Lab at NYU.

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Cut&Paste Labs was founded by Diego Rotalde and me; we taught workshops on web design and development in Lima, Peru. Some went on to found their own firms:

I've also designed a few zany things which people have enjoyed, like the DoubleSpace Kitchenette:

as well as the SHRIMP Refugee Shelter (with Alice B. Philips):