Stillness Map 1: Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach

Harrison Cole

There is a backstory to this map. Between 27 November and 5 December of 2012, several hundred clerks at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach went on strike. Port clerks are responsible for managing the transition of cargo between logistics networks and are essential to the operation of the ports. They also belonged to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, so the rest of the 10,000 workers at the ports refused to cross the picket line in solidarity with the strikers, effectively shutting down the ports. During a typical day at either one of the ports (which are directly adjacent to each other), only one or two ships sit at anchor waiting to enter the harbour. During the strike, thirteen ships were at anchor at one time, together holding about $650m in cargo, with some waiting several days to unload. The clerks eventually emerged victorious, securing a better contract and assurance that the ports would not outsource their jobs. But it is the time during the work stoppage that my map concerns.

Mapping an immobile object may sound like a simple task. And it is. For the vast majority of their history, maps have, by and large, been static documents. Even dynamic maps usually rely on the assumption that whatever they are representing will remain in a particular state for however long the map is meant to be useful. And yet there is no shortage of maps that represent, suggest, encourage or propose movement. We are familiar with the visual forms that have been used to represent it: lines, arrows, colour gradients and sequences of dashes. Immobile objects (not moving but not necessarily unmovable) also take particular visual forms, typically as discrete shapes, pictograms or labels. But these represent the objects rather than their immobility. So, what is the visual form of immobility? What does the character, duration or intensity of immobility look like? What can we learn from attending to the visualisation of immobility? I begin to explore these questions with the map presented here, and in this essay to accompany it.

In strictly geometric terms, there is a simple answer as to why movement can be represented easily. A point on a map, the simplest method of representing an immobile object, is a single vertex. A line is a connection between two or more vertices. Movement can be thought of in Euclidean terms as a series of points in space ordered according to the passage of time, thus a line lends itself to representing the connections between them. Of course, this is predicated on Western ontology of spacetime, one that is not always shared across[1] or even within[2] cultures but does form the basis for nearly all geographic information software. Within this system, there is no immediately apparent method for visualising stillness. The graduated expansion of proportional symbols? Coxcomb charts? Perhaps. But I was interested in starting as close to irreducible geometric objects (in a GIS context) as I could, rather than combining visualisation methods (in this case, maps with charts) and thus expanding the conventions that the document must take into account. What I came up with was Stillness Map 1: Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

This map shows the positions of ships at anchor during the port clerks strike. Marine vessels are equipped with an AIS (automatic identification system) transceiver, which is essentially a GPS unit. The data that the transceivers produce are published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the form of a series of points that correspond to a ship’s location at a given time. Additionally, a ship’s status (for example under way, at anchor, disabled and so on), length, width, identifying codes and various other data are recorded along with its location. To make this map, I used QGIS to select the points where ships were recorded as at anchor between the beginning and end dates of the strike. Then, I generated polygons that correspond to the length and width of the ships and rendered the polygons in the shape of oblong ovals with feathered edges. Finally, I finished the map in Photoshop by adding visual texture and adjusting opacity, colour and blending parameters. It is worth noting that while I have chosen to include only locations where ships are recorded as at anchor, the AIS transceiver is not always set to the correct status, resulting in moving ships being recorded as at anchor and vice-versa. This may yield material for future work.

The circular shapes are the result of each ship swinging around its anchor point. There are a series of designated anchorages outside the ports (which results in the diagonal grid of circles) where ships can safely drop anchor without risking a collision with another ship. Each ship polygon has very low opacity, so the darker an area is, the longer a ship had occupied that space. The effect that we are left with is a sort of wearing similar to what might occur on stone that is repeatedly scraped, or a heavily trafficked wooden floor, or a sheet of metal that has been left in the sun for several years. 

The cartographic representations of movement that I mentioned earlier are frequently associated with the movement of capital. This is sometimes done explicitly, such as with maps showing the volume and value of trade between countries, or implicitly, such as marketing materials showing the geographic coverage of a shipping company. Circulation both in an abstract and material sense is immanent to capital itself, so a work stoppage creates an interruption that can’t be ignored or circumvented. When this is the case, it may be more productive to think less in terms of movement, and more about what replaces it. Stillness, stuckness, rootedness, immobility, sedentarism, stasis and detention are all terms that geographers use to describe the absence of movement.[3] These terms imply a variety of power dynamics and provide opportunities for future visualisation research. I have chosen the term stillness for my map as it is perhaps the least negative of the bunch, and even provides a sort of aspirational lens; the subjects of the map could be thought of not just as immobile, but at rest.

Now of course, the map does show some movement. The ships are shown drifting around their anchors, so while they are not under way, they are also not completely stationary. My hope is that this contributes by expanding our conceptualization of stillness. What are the criteria for stillness? What are its limits and possibilities? What are the power dynamics of stillness? By having to make visually tangible what is often thought of as a mere absence, we can engage more directly with yet another taken-for-granted aspect of life, ideally leading to a more holistic and fulfilling orientation toward human experience.

Author

Harrison Cole is a PhD candidate and member of the GeoVISTA Center in the Department of Geography at Penn State. His research focuses on the design of tactile maps and their potential for use in natural hazard mitigation planning by people who are blind or visually impaired.

References

[1] Louis, R. (2007) ‘Can You Hear Us Now? Voices from the Margin: Using Indigenous Methodologies in Geographic Research’, Geographical Research, 45(2): 130–39.

[2] Agrawal, P. (2005) ‘Ontological Considerations in GIScience’, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 19(5): 501–36.

[3] Cresswell, T. (2012) ‘Mobilities II: Still’, Progress in Human Geography, 36(5): 645–53.