Maps and Networks Initial Ideas

When we got given out maps and networks theme, I instantly began to think about where this topic could take me. As our piece is an installation piece I didn't quite know where to start as this was a very new area for me. I ended up having quite a few ideas of how I could make the piece an installation but not having any sort of thought of what I wanted to show behind it.
I was thinking along the lines of interaction for the audience as well, so what I was thinking was placing a giant map of the world on a wall and getting the audience to place a pin on where they're from. It would be displayed of course inside the uni, and there is a very diverse range of countries that are represented here so I was thinking it would be interesting to see how widespread it was.

It was inspired in a way by the work of Arem Bartholl, who did an interesting piece about maps and technology. He used large red map markers from Google maps and placed them in the spot that Google maps said the city centre was.

I found this an interesting notion and began to plan similar ideas. I quickly found however that I wasn't very invested or interested in this notion and realised that without those key feelings this would end up being a very dull project that I wouldn't be very motivated to complete.

Another issue with this idea is that it wasn't really an idea, there is no meaning behind it and it was a very shallow notion with no depth, so I quickly moved on.

I decided that I would probably produce something better if I 1) looked at subjects I find interesting and 2) considered collaborating with someone else so we could bounce ideas of each other, make filming easier and help spread out the work enabling us to do a better project.

So with that in mind I proposed the idea to Nicole who agreed with me and we decided to work together for the project.
We began by doing some mind maps around the theme and finding as many different possible directions we could go in as possible.

We spent some time thinking about what direction we wanted to go in from the theme, and decided networks/connections would be a really interesting route to go down as it's so broad and we could interpret it in so many different ways.
We came up with the concept of 'The Butterfly Effect'. This is the notion that tiny events can have large consequences - such as a butterfly flapping its wings creating changes in the atmosphere that eventually result in a hurricane. It is another name from a branch of mathematics called 'chaos theory'.
We originally thought of the sequence in the 2008 film 'Benjamin Button' as a perfect way to explain it.