Thursday, July 30, 2009

Ohio is a Piano

OK, I think I think we have a winner for coolest map-thing-of-the-year. Andy Woodruff at Cartogrammar has created a musical map:
Last month, as I was driving through Ohio to collect my final three counties in the state, it dawned on me: There are 88 counties in this state. There are 88 keys on a piano. I don’t know anything about music, but holy crap, I have to make a map based on this coincidence.

And so I did, bit by bit, gradually descending into madness in the process. It has no purpose, really, apart from being an experiment in some sort of weird artistic musical cartography. Ohio is a piano. Check it out. (It’s in Flash.)


Each county on the map is keyed to a piano note. Play the OhioPiano by plucking a county, or pull together a string of notes by charting a route between two cities. Change the note of each county by ranking them, highest to lowest, by a demographic (such as population, ethnic groups, number of farms, etc.). Arrange them just right to play a tune, or use one of the pre-programmed songs.

Woodruff says he's "gone off the deep end, musically and cartographically", but I say "Go Andy" you are now my carto-hero of 2009!

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5 Comments:

At Thursday, July 30, 2009 , Blogger Unknown said...

Coolest map-thing-of-the-year, indeed!

 
At Thursday, July 30, 2009 , Anonymous Andy Woodruff said...

Wow, thanks for all the kind words! It's cool if I put carto-hero 2009 on my resume, right?

By the way, it's great to see another map nerd out of the Dayton vicinity. I'm a native myself. (That being where I was headed while devising this carto-scheme.)

 
At Friday, July 31, 2009 , Blogger Cartophiliac said...

You can even use me as a reference.

I guessed you might have an Ohio connection, else why would this New Englander have all the Ohio counties?

 
At Sunday, August 02, 2009 , Blogger Michael5000 said...

The mind reels.

 
At Wednesday, August 05, 2009 , Blogger Shawna Gambol Woodard said...

I tried this out. I could not go from anywhere in Ashtabula County to anywhere else on the "plan a route" part. Maybe this means something. Only major cities are identified so you can't go from some podunk town to podunk town, but it was still fun.

 

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