Coming up: mapping Times Square

The PDPal crew will be collaborating with several New York organizations - including Glowlab - to conduct 1 hour mapping workshops in Times Square. Teams will be dispatched with mapping instructions such as "map the pathways of humans and machines" or "make an official field guide of Times Square." We'll present the results of our mapping adventure here in mid-November. For more information on joining a mapping workshop, contact Creative Time.

about PDPal

PDPal is a multi-tiered public art project that encourages individuals to stake a personal claim on urban experience. The core components of this project include a Palm-OS based mapping application for a personal digital assistant (PDA); the PDPal web site; and physical elements that occupy the New York streetscape.

Creative Time has chosen to site PDPal in Times Square to celebrate and encourage the creation and capture of meaningful subjective experiences in a place that is rich with global information and daily conversations, spectacular visions and intimate exchanges; it’s all compressed in one legendary zone, “The Crossroads of the World.”

Through PDPal, a user can make maps of an area to mark personal history, respond to the built environment or even imagine the future. PDPal users are guided through the project by the Urban Park Ranger (UPR) character and are encouraged to map their movements and momentary impressions into a log by tapping on a specially designed set of characters and icons. A paper-based version of PDPal’s mapping system is also available for use. Then, through the website, a visitor can join the "communicity" by creating their “temporary personal urbanisms” online or uploading ones that were created moving through the streets. One can also add to or modify existing maps and use a filter function to find others’ maps through the web site.