PML specification
experience: the top-node, like channel in RSS
place: the top node for individual packets of experience, like items
in RSS
name/address/city/country: locators of what is being tagged
date/time: when the experience was done (opposite to these elements
in the Dublin core where they refer to publication of a document)
image: an image of what is being tagged
facts: factual description of place or of conditions causing experience
pmltags: a list of PML tags
fancy: a psychogeographical description, for the poets among you.
foaf: PML uses FOAF:Person to describe the psychogeographer
ICBM: namespace for coordinates, longitude/latidute
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(Psychogeographical
Markup Language)
Somewhat like the
Necronomicon, PML has been a non-existing protagonist hovering around
this site during flights of fancy concerning the recording and sharing
of psychogeographic data. However PML does exist, actually it starts
to exist more and more. The draft version of a PML packet (in XML/RDF)
is now waiting for your attention in the box at your left.
What is PML?
PML is a set of keywords lifted from various sources that can be used
to capture meaningful psychogeographical [meta]data about urban space.
PML is a unified system of psychogeonamic classification that lurks
behind the psychogeogram: the diagrammatic representation of psychogeographically
experienced space.
PML is the base layer for a psychogeographical content management system
that can:
1) be used to transform a mass of subjective data into an objective
representation
2) be used as an engine that, after being fed certain parameters,
generates new psychogeographical drifts
3) be used to develop further a cartography that negates the territory
4) be datamined to show never before suspected patterns in the urban
fabric
5) be fired up into a new mythology for urban space
6) be used to take the fingerprint of a city
PML incorporates work done in fields like annotated space, geo-tagging,
mental mapping, GIS & collaborative mapping but is different in that
it aims at the invisible & the absurd.
Dynamic Urban
Data
PML data can be
recorded by groups or by individuals. Datasets can be made collaborative
in one afternoon for a certain neighbourhood, or it can be updated continuously
for a specific place. By following semantic web specifications (PML
is in XML/RDF) we hope to add to the slow process of physical places
getting a presence on the web.
Markup what? How?
PML is an open standard, different communities might want to use their
own set of pre-defined tags. PML however comes with a small list of
carefully chosen tags to prevent immediate Babylon between different
collaborative mapping communities. PML is definitely in need of an abundance
of concepts to name & identify different types of space, while PML data
is by definition subjective data, PML does not cater for aesthetic judgements.
Two different fields are included the PML-file for non-tags: one field
for a factual description of what you are tagging, the other for a psychogeographical
description for the poets amongst you.
Places can be perceived as:
Distinct (when a place is distinct in any way from the surroundings)
Open (the node present itself as welcoming, it seems to invite your
entrance)
Close (the node present itself as not welcome to visitors)
Lively (a place seems evolving, a centre for social interaction)
Ease (a place where you feel at ease, a friendly atmosphere, positive
vibes, etc)
Desolate (a feeling of being at loss)
Hectic (too many sensory perceptions)
Terror (a place that 'expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to
a high degree of live')
Horror (a place that 'contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates' the
soul)
Stim (a point of stimulation)
Dross (a space that is ignored, a wasted space)
Colour (instead of tagging with words, this tag allows for classification
using your own colour-coding system)
See the PMLtags
document for definitions.
Psychogeographers
don't try to discover any of these attributes in a space, but rather
the qualities described within the tags finds them.
Reference
PML builds upon recent work done on the psychogeogram.
http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/psychogeogram.html
PML as necronomical entity also returns in the Landscape-expression,
without namespaces and embedded in OnlyOneNativeSpeaker generality of
non-hierarchical description intended to be used by only one. But don't
let that stop you.
The spacenamespace
project by Jo Walsh is especially instructive as it pioneered the translation
of physical space to the web
http://space.frot.org
Location Linked Information, a project by Matt Mankins at the MIT Media
lab (2002), in many ways has explored parallel lines of thought: http://web.media.mit.edu/~mankins/lli
Even though he calls
it 'imageability', Kevin Lynch's 'The Image of the City' (1959) is a
psychogeographic classic.
Markups are derived
from urban & literary theory: Kevin Lynch, Lars Lerup, Ann Radcliffe,
Jane Jacobs, Elias Canetti, William Wordsworth.
Semantic Web
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html
RDF
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/
Contact
Let us know what you think: info at socialfiction dot org
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