Atlascine is an open-source, online mapping platform dedicated to bringing stories and maps closer together. This tool combines multimedia storytelling (video, audio and text) with digital mapping technologies to enable researchers to create, interact with and study spatial relationships within and between stories.
The main aim of Atlascine 4 is to streamline the process of transforming audiovisual material into a digital map and to enable a direct interface between audiovisual material, text and the map. With the latest version of the platform, researchers in many disciplines can use the map not only as a way to visually synthesize large volumes of annotated stories and to identify new patterns and structures in these stories, but also to use the map to navigate within the stories themselves and find specific events that link stories and places.
Atlascine 4 was designed in close collaboration with the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Center (GCRC) at Carleton University (Ottawa). The tool builds off of its previous versions by streamlining the process of transforming digital text (e.g. transcript of audiovisual material) to a digital map and to enable full interaction between these texts, the audio/video files from which they are derived, and their maps.
Atlascine 4 can be viewed and tested here. Public releases of the software, updates and in-depth tutorials for its use and deployment can be found by visiting the project's Github page. Please do not hesitate to contact us for any kind of assistance or inquiries about developing your own atlas with Atlascine.
A screenshot of Oscar's story from the Atlas of Rwandan Life Stories, which uses Atlascine 4 as an integrated platform for 21 oral life stories
Atlascine was conceived to enable the simultaneous representation of three dimensions that are key for mapping stories: (1) the places where a story unfolds (i.e. the geography) represented by proportional tree rings; (2) the links between these places (e.g. the movement from one place to another) represented by proportional lines; and (3) the time spent engaging with each of these places in the story (i.e. its temporality) through a timeline. The original versions of Atlascine use Google Spreadsheets as a database, and therefore permit flexible and intuitive data creation and management by users.
Atlascine 2.0 was originally developed by the Geomedia Lab in collaboration with the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Center at Carleton University (GCRC) to map 46 Canadian films in order to better understand where the actions of these cinematographic stories unfold and how their locations affect the spatial imaginaries of audiences (Caquard and Naud 2014). In a follow-up version (3.0), it was used to map a selection of 15 films unfolding specifically in Montreal. Since 2015, it has been used by Communication Studies Professor Paul Moore and his team at Ryerson University (Toronto) to map a database of the location of 10,000 film screenings in North America in the early 20th century; by film studies Professor Daniela Treveri Gennari at Oxford Brookes University (UK) to map the screening of films in 1953 Roma (see Ercole et al. 2017); by the multidisciplinary project entitled Indigenous Stewardship of the Environment and Alternative Development (INSTEAD); and for the mapping of life stories of refugees from Rwanda and Haiti in collaboration with Oral Historian Steven High and the Center for Oral history and Digital storytelling (COHDS) at Concordia University (see examples here). In 2017, researchers at the school of Social Work at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) involved in the project “Morts en contexte migratoire” (MECMI) began to use Atlascine 3 to map the stories of migrants who perished during their migration process.
In 2015, Atlascine received the first prize in the Geospatial application competition at an International Geography Festival in France and in 2018 it received a two years funding from CANARIE for its continued development.
Atlascine 2.0 and Atlascine 3.0 (along with its accompanying tutorial) are no longer maintained.
A screenshot of Atlascine 3.0 with instructions highlighting its various components