Andrew Benesh > Recent Status Updates

The prologue feels very Rogue One. Chapter one is emotionally intense, and I love it. The grounding of the loss, uncertainty, and desperate hope perfectly captures the tone of the end of TLJ. I suspect the comments on Kylo will be prophetic.

Done?!? The rest of the book is references and credits. I did enjoy the final chapters exploitation of the politics of symbols on a map, and the growing blurriness able what a map is or means in a digital context. What do we choose to signify, and why?

The sections on cross-sections and stratigraphic imaging were neat. I really like the Alexander Humboldt eco-maps.

The chapter on hachure is neat - I never realized there was a formal mechanism at play. The business of matching shading to perception of the land and versimilitude in coloring makes sense, but feels like it loses data in favor of creativity.

I like the attention to the ways that different cartographic products reflect information, and the necessities of ground truthing. The directness about power and colonialism driving mapping data resolution was insightful.The chapter on sounding and spot elevation providers fascinating illustrations about how we impose structure onto nature for our informational means.

The last act really picked things up. Marketing connections aside, I like the character arcs and the idea is revisiting them. The ending was as positive as it could be, given the starting points.

Palob Godalhi is the best.

I like how Ylena talks about The Force. Chadra Fan make any story better!

The ruins sequence is very Indiana Jones.

Time to add in my Fall Semester work reading...

Pook is a good Droid, and also a horrible Droid.

I have concerns about this mission...

It's always fun to see new characters play against established ones. I have some concerns about how this might navigate trauma, but I'm hopeful it will be appropriate.

Done! The ending is strangely bittersweet; the embers is hope and humanity in it are well placed.

Suddenly everyone in this got bold. Which honestly is very worrying.

I like how the characters are coming together. The reminders of the public policy issues and the apathy of male characters is an important emphasis.

Usually dystopias are set a little further in the future, but this could be 2021. The use of relational identity is an interesting rhetorical device for capturing the loss of personhood, though it does make tracking character intersections tricky; all in all it's a good choice. I'm curious about the explorer, and how she's doing to your the narrative together.

Done! The final essay on Dutch landscape design in the 1500's was unexpectedly fascinating. The total re-engineering of the country inn response to flooding and implementation of universal orthogonal designs is remarkable.

The essays on territory and topography in landscape design present interesting philosophical questions. I do wish there was more visual material and links to key references.

I particularly enjoyed the idea of landscaping that is flooding responsive rather than flooding controlling, and how that changes the larger design philosophy. I'm removed of Cascades Park in Tallahassee, which functions largely as a Green Sponge. The recognition of the political challenges landscape architects face was worrisome.

The essays on topography are conceptually interesting, but feel repetitive. The essay on "Utterly Urban" presents some interesting challenges to how you'd think about organizing design - the emphasis on things like water, waste, and substrate bring more fundamental than building design and organization itself is something I haven't seen so strongly emphasized before.

The essay on landscape as urbanism answers some interesting historical questions, but I wish it had more ideas about modern tends in landscape architecture.

The essay on airport landscaping through time press into words an idea that I've struggled to cover well for some time - the paradoxical nature of airports as a place of speed and transfer, and of stillness and waiting; of being global and local; of being massively open and clearly confined; of being business, museum, park, and home all in one. I really liked this essay.

The essay on the artificiality of urban nature raises great points - at what point do we prefer imitation to reality? At the same time, I wish it advanced a stronger alternative to the current model.