You know, it'd have been amazing if TFA has not opened with that video. So instead of clicking the link to view TFA, you went off and dug up the exact same link in TFA???
The main linked article actually does not have that video; the article linked from in the description does have it. Not surprising that someone missed it.
I used to do things like this when I was a kid (less extreme, never more than a single sheet of paper), where I would create some natural features: a lake shore or river, maybe a freeway or two or a railroad and then start platting out a subdivision in the open spaces. It was a delightfully meditative practice and maybe I should start doing it again.
Not the person you replied to, but like them, I too liked to draw imaginary maps when I was a kid, mainly of medieval towns. I also tend to like the world-building aspects of strategy games, arguably more than the actual strategy parts.
Cities: Skylines have been in my wishlist since shortly after it came out but I never got around to playing it until about a month ago, and... didn't like it at all. It felt too "micro-manage-y" (for the lack of a better word) while also having the pressure of the ticking time.
Needless to say, I was very disappointed after looking forward to it for ~10 years.
I know Jerry Map (I hope that someday will be a exposition in Spain) because I love it, I love the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art. The people who maybe mad and they built a world with own rules.
It's a weird coincidence to me I just remembered Henry Darger again today, within the last hour actually. I had watched "In the Realms of the Unreal" (2004 documentary) in the theater when it came out. (I know it's only a coincidence because it's something I'm interested in thinking about, but it feels meaningful anyway.)
It's very similar to styles of generating lairs/dungeons in many TTRPGs. A lot of them come with various tables/dice rolls to help build a layout and then subsequent tables to give a general prompt for what goes in said rooms. It's an extremely satisfying routine, as you're not 100% beholden to every dice roll, but the dice rolls help prime the creative juices and give constructive constraints to the process.
Playing hexcrawl RPGs like Twilight 2000 with my groups has been great. The physical edition came with a custom deck of playing cards that had encounters and randomization tools printed on them - I can literally just draw a card and immediately create an encounter for the players.
In my grade school years, I made many maps of my imaginary world. By high school, I was putting them into my computer, one 16x16 grid at a time. Had to make sure the edges matched up. Then I wrote code to print them on the Epson MX-80 dot matrix. The poster-board I tiled them on was still in the basement, though many of the squares were falling off.
It was easier after I coded a moving 64x64 buffer.
First found out about Jerry’s Map over 10 years ago thanks to this video on Vimeo and it really stuck with me. Glad to see the project continue. Also I miss finding these smaller documentaries on the site, so many neat subjects covered before Youtube became the home of all things video.
Once upon a time, people worked on making imaginary maps https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/~kobourov/PROJECTS/maps.html to visualize datasets like TV and music recommendations. It was fun. In a 2026 context, one might use AI to post process the maps and make them even better.
The card deck procedure is the most interesting part to me. It makes the map feel less like a drawing and more like a system Jerry is observing over decades. Maybe i need to follow his rules for a map of my own.
If you're interesting in something similar with a specifically made deck, check out The Story Engine's "Deck of Worlds", which is how I was introduced to map crafting via a rule system. Another alternative is a system called "The Quiet Year" which uses a standard deck of cards and written rules for generating a world and events with an eye toward using it for collaborative story telling.
Reminds me of _Journeys Into the Outside_ by Jarvis Cocker.
And that reminds me of the time when I saw him in passing in a corridor at King's Cross Thameslink and my hand was halfway up into a wave before I realised that he wouldn't know who am.
I had the same experience when I ran into him at a bar backstage at a Blur gig in the mid 90s. My dad was friends with his dad in 1960s Sheffield, but since the bloke walked out on his family when Jarvis was 7, it wouldn't have been much of a conversation starter.
My favorite part about this/what blows my mind is that his system has him editing singular tiles at any given time. He seemingly only gets to see what it actually looks like at intervals like 15 years apart. There are probably entire epochs of his system that he'll never actually see laid out because they've since been overridden.
There was another project I saw years ago that this reminds me of. It was a guy who had been running a simulated city/community for like 20 years. The whole thing was done on pen and paper and used complex rule system he had devised. Similar pre-internet outsider art vibe.
In high school I remember entertaining myself in class by using grid paper to draw little tile based maps. It’s like playing Minecraft by hand. I imagine the concept is lost to a lot of Gen Z or Gen Alpha by now. Too much imagination required.
It would make an interesting map generation algorithm that could feed the card data and specified map tiles into an image gen AI system that would have to take the map tiles and try to follow the rules.
As I get older I’ve come to realize more and more how bad instant gratification is. There’s value and mental health benefits in doing things that are slow and take time and effort.
As I was coming back to the thread, I was dreading someone might be making this submission about AI. I miss HN from before it became AIN and other types of intellectual curiosity were drained out.
What’s marvellous about this work is the antithesis of AI and computers, the artist and the process are what’s fascinating about it. Generative map and art programs are a dime a dozen. Those have value in their own way, but it’s different from this. There’s no need to conflate the two, most things do not need or benefit from AI.
Despite the negative reactions, I think this demonstrates how "make up some rules and follow them" is no longer intrinsically valuable. Likewise with coffee table books with a strong visual theme like, I dunno, cats wearing different hats. I can do that myself now.
For the individual, though, you do you. You can't automate self-expression.
https://youtu.be/Is8N7B9b0GQ
Probably someone else must've also watched this in the past few hours or days.
The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
Cities: Skylines have been in my wishlist since shortly after it came out but I never got around to playing it until about a month ago, and... didn't like it at all. It felt too "micro-manage-y" (for the lack of a better word) while also having the pressure of the ticking time.
Needless to say, I was very disappointed after looking forward to it for ~10 years.
I remember the book of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress or Cataclysm DDA .
And weird games as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic .
I like this. I like that his system pushes the creative process forward without relinquishing the actual creative part of it (making the map tile).
I highly recommend trying it out for yourself!
In my grade school years, I made many maps of my imaginary world. By high school, I was putting them into my computer, one 16x16 grid at a time. Had to make sure the edges matched up. Then I wrote code to print them on the Epson MX-80 dot matrix. The poster-board I tiled them on was still in the basement, though many of the squares were falling off.
It was easier after I coded a moving 64x64 buffer.
https://vimeo.com/13596774
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47657268
And that reminds me of the time when I saw him in passing in a corridor at King's Cross Thameslink and my hand was halfway up into a wave before I realised that he wouldn't know who am.
What’s marvellous about this work is the antithesis of AI and computers, the artist and the process are what’s fascinating about it. Generative map and art programs are a dime a dozen. Those have value in their own way, but it’s different from this. There’s no need to conflate the two, most things do not need or benefit from AI.
For the individual, though, you do you. You can't automate self-expression.