Photo by karakola

“Topoware is a tableware collection that questions the landscape of dining. Taking inspiration from the recent popularity of geography as a media of communication (with Google maps) and more specifically with topographic maps, which define heights of a landscape two dimensionally, Topoware in turn, “outlines” the dining experience.”

Those good folks (you can see more from Karola in her flickr stream) over at Topoware had the above to say about these lovely ceramics. I find three things quite interesting about these pieces and the concept.

1) I really like them. (ok so that’s not interesting in itself)

2) The phrase “geography as a media of communication” struck me as something I’ve never really thought about properly. Which may sound stupid considering what I do. But I’ve always thought of geography as a media of story telling, which is generally a one way process. And often geography has a strong narrative hold over a story.

I also think of other media such as text, notes, annotation, video and photos, as a media of communication, in which the map is the context in which the communication is held.

But when I stop to think about it, I’ve never really looked into geography as a communication medium itself. The closest I’ve gotten is with augmented reality games which is nearly but not quite it.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it’s something I’m interesting in looking into a bit more, now just to find out where to start.

3) The jump from “Google maps” to “topographic maps” within the space of 4 to 5 words starkly reminds me that these online maps are still missing the rather important topographic layer. Which living in San Francisco is fairly important. It’d be nice to be able to see height changes without having to fire up Google Earth, where I exaggerate the height anyway to reflect how it feels when walking up a hill rather than what actually is.

Anyway, all jolly good! The Valley of the Spoon!