Flickr has a wonderful annotation feature that allows you to attach notes to boxes drawn around sections of an image. Someone had the great idea of using Google satellite images of their hometown, or other significant locales in their life history, to make “memory maps.”
We’ve been thinking a lot about using film or music as a time-based “spine” for an electronic book. This experiment suggests the narrative possibilities of maps and images – not simply as reference points or illustrations on a page, but as dynamic agents. The folks at Grand Text Auto appear to be thinking along similar lines.
This also relates to the institute’s current Born Digital Competition, which deals with reinventing the page illustration in digital space. Memory mappers take notice!