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April Open Gov & Civic Tech Meetup Recap - Ann Armstrong & Austin's Atlas

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For Open Austin’s April Open Gov & Civic Tech Meetup, Ann Armstrong was invited to speak about her collaborative project, Austin’s Atlas, which straddles the intersection of art, cartography, and urban history. Ann is an architect, welder, and artist, living in Austin for 10 years having moved from San Francisco, California for graduate school at the University of Texas.

Austin’s Atlas Origin

When Ann first moved to Austin she felt disconnected from her surroundings. She starting taking walks, not to get anywhere, but to explore a neighborhood. At first, she was frustrated with the city’s poor walkability compared to San Francisco. Austin is not as dense, her walks were less stimulating, and there was not as much street art. But, as she kept walking, she fell more and more in love with Austin, its nooks and crannies, and “urban oddities.” Not before long, Ann realized that her favorites waypoints were rapidly disappearing due to new construction, weather, or other unexplained occurrences.

“I’ve never lived in a city that was growing so rapidly.” Said Ann, “I’m an architect. I understand that the city has to grow. But it feels like it’s on steroids.” Her exploration of the growing city soon lead to documentation. “My first attempt at documenting Austin was all about the sidewalks” Armstrong continued. Ann documented the sidewalks for 2 years, which evolved into documenting public art. Then she started making and collecting maps. “The first map I made myself was about urban oddities. It was the first map I made to be used by other people.”

All of these efforts were fueled by the idea of making the city more knowable. Ann said she was trying to, “expand on the existing sense of place by revealing things about it and also understanding how other people see the city.” She pushed the idea further and started to host walks and workshops around different themes, and by collaborating with other mapmakers and urban explorers like Emma Schmidt and Angela Hanson.

How does Austin’s Atlas add new maps?

The artifacts of Ann’s walks, workshops, collaborations and exchanges became the foundation for Austin’s Atlas.

Her first solution for collecting more maps was an exchange system. “I give you a map, you give me map.” It was a simple concept that helped grow the collection. However, Ann knew that in order to increase the amount of maps she collected she would have to create more opportunity for exchange.

This inspired her to build a cart and show up to Park(ing) Day 2014 to meet people where they were. She gave out supplies and asked people to draw maps. During an East Austin Studio Tour (E.A.S.T) event she set up a “map drive” and collected 120+ drawn maps from people of various backgrounds over the course of 2 weekends in an art studio.

“It’s a process! It’s hard to collect maps from people.” The less than conventional ask has proven to be slow and involved. She said she doesn’t give people a ton of directions for map making but has the request that they title it. Interpretation often depends on how the map maker frames the project.

Map Making Exercise

To conclude the presentation, Ann handed out sheets of paper with a short questionnaire, a small map of Austin, and an empty space for sketching. She invited Open Austinites to answer some questions about their residence and commute then to mark roughly where they live on the map. Lastly, participants were to draw the scene they see out of a window they look out of the most at their home. Participants said the process was therapeutic. All of the images told a story unique story about disparate residential scenes in Austin.

Here is a link to a PDF with the maps that Open Austinites made for Austin’s Atlas.

Ann shared her presentation slides here.

For more information about her work, check out Ann Armstrong’s personal site and view the Austin’s Atlas site.

Open Austin’s introduction slides for the Meetup are linked here.

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