The Center for Missed Connections

“You have had a Missed Connection.

And there is a whole world of people just like you, and a venue in which you and these other lost souls can collect these moments like rosary beads, communing over these simple pleas for the possibility of closeness.

The concept of a Missed Connection has its beginnings in the places where such moments often happen: public space. Bulletin boards, street posts, and other public platforms were once used to seek out these missed connections.

…

The Center for Missed Connections (CMC) began as a project simply to identify where the most missed connections happen in a given city. New York City is home to the pilot program, chosen for its high traffic and for the propensity of posters to include specific cross-streets or location information. Since then, the analysis has developed a thorough taxonomy of the Missed Connection and a method for identifying whether one has, in fact, had a Missed Connection. The CMC seeks to understand the longing, both poetic and banal, within public spaces”.

:: http://centerformissedconnections.info/

On Exactitude in Science

“In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province”.

From Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, Translated by Andrew Hurley Copyright Penguin 1999 .

Area Chicago

“Because maps are a visual tool for sharing information with others. Because they can be produced by many people and combined together to tell stories about complex relationships. Because maps are never finished and only tell part of a story that can constantly be expanded upon. Because power exists in space, struggle exists in space and we exist in space. Because we cannot know where we are going if we do not know where we are from.”