110829 lecture mapping_keywords

MAPPING / OBSERVATION - lecture 290811 - Magdalena Haggärde - Emerging Arctic Landscapes - BAS

mapping methods to get outside and around the obvious - to grasp deeper and fi nd the unexpected

‘a map of geography is no more that geography - or that space - than a painting of a pipe is a pipe’

Doreen Massey is making a clear reference to Magritte’s painting ‘ceci n’est pas une pipe’

Space presents us with multiplicity, simultaneity, heterogenity, complexity and ongoing interconnections. So how to handle the always unfi nished and open?


NB! keywords / references only.

Google maps: we are getting used to see the world as a satellite photo - with the possibility of ‘inside information’ - things not seen on an aerial view as layers of information:- Metro system- Traffi c situation

- More or less public indoor spaces: hotels, restaurants, shopping possibilities (dominated by commercial functions/spaces)We might think this ‘look inside’ is permitted only the last years by this kind of functions/systems but already in 1748 Nolli did his famous Rome map where all exterior and interior public spaces are marked as accessible rooms - possible for anybody to employ (only he mapped non-commercial (‘real’) public space: churches, libraries, schools etc are indicated in the same way as squares and streets are..)

In Learning from Las Vegas Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi make references to the Nollimap. Zones of similar function/program/availability/appearance are put in different layers as cut-outs (along with lots of other mapping methods, analysis, observations, diagrams, graphics etc)


Chora / Bunschoten’s bean-method ‘objectively subjective’ - forcing one to explore places chosen by the random placing of the beans thrown on the map:‘This bean method cuts through traditional cathegories, being based on random sampling and schematic description. A critical mass of small points and a description of the dynamic conditions found in them can form a model of the landscape of change, the metaspace, in which the planner has to intervene.’ (Urban Flotsam by Chora / Bunschoten)

situationists:combining the concept of ‘parcours’ meaning the course/journey/route (a sequence of events, experiences etc - in relation to time and actions and not only geographical facts) with the kind of maps we are used to into psychogeographical maps.The method was dérive, a reaction to the surrealists (‘bourgeois’) fl aneuring, a narrative described with the psychogeographical maps, and the concept of détournement - ‘the reuse of pre-existing artistic elements in a new ensemble.’ - provoking a view from a new angle, exposing incoherences and fragmentations, a way of looking for what is in between reality and the description (mapping) of reality.

aztec maps where histories, parcours and geography are interconnected - integrating time and space - telling stories. (as described by Doreen Massey in for space) - this is mapping not only as a description but also as an activating of space - parkour: vocabular and inspiration from the situationists: the practitioner of parkour is called traceur.

here one could also mention Michel de Certeau - investigating the difference between what he calls voyeurs (with a strategic position) and walkers - the everyday people with a tactical position towards one’s environment. The fi rst analysing reality ‘from above’ and the latter living it through everyday activitites. More about this in The practice of everyday life, in the chapter Walking in the city - worth reading!

example of mapping methods by different persons:psychogeographical maps in a contemporary contextone hour investigations (by foot, by bike..


..by car, by train)titles (poetical/imaginative) under which places are categorised - permitting new readings and discoveries

another way to let go of our own subject is to do as french artist Sophie Calle in her very fi rst piece of art Suite Vénitienne - following people forcing herself to live the environment through their choices.

These postcards from Rosengård is an outcome of seeing the not so obvious, going behind fi rst impressions made by students at the master studio 2009 City as Biotope. (by Zlatan Ðikić / Mo, Kuo-Chen / Roberto Ovalle / Teng, Miao)

Another DAV project from that studio is: A Sunny Day at Fredriksberg


A Sunny Day at Fredriksberg The traffi c junction, one in a series of large traffi c machines located along the Outer Ringroad of Malmö, was discussed. Through a series of evocative actions the hidden qualitative layers of the site is examined. In this way the mono-programatic appearance of the site is questioned by occupying it with everyday activity unfamiliar to it.. - romantic moments, pic-nic, playing badminton, looking for God..The actions, documented in photos and fi lm, form a loose narrative of a day trip to the site and are to be found in Google maps and Youtube. (by Miia-Liina Tommila, Tone Berge, Mathias Kempton and Kristian Bekkenes)

When living in a european country I was exposed to ideas about the north as one undifferentiated and vagely defi ned mass of land - le grand nord - obviously there is a lack of words (and knowledge) to describe what is unknown or unfamiliar«Il y a tant de nords dans ce Nord» comes from the famous French-Canadian geographer Louis-Edmond Hamelin from his book Nordicité canadienne (1975).The statement begins a discussion and a theory of the northern and polar as something else and something more than solely a geographical description defi ned by latitude.Hamelin created a system of ten factors to calculate nordicity, and took both geographical, technical and human factors, such as: latitude, summer temperature, annual mane temperature and winter cold, types and amounts of rainfall, vegetation, access and availability of land and by sea, air transportation, population, economic activity etc.Each factor was valued from 100 to 100 (where 100 is the extreme north), and the sum of all items accounted for a place or a regional Vapo (Valeur polaires - Polar value) - all places that summarized more than 200 points was considered to be northern, and North Pole was valued at a Vapo of 1000On the basis of this proposed Hamelin to redefi ne the understanding of northern Canada to the extreme north, far north, mid-north and near north. With such a system could defi ne an extremely large, desolate and vaguely defi ned geographic territory as a series of manageable areas that easily could understand and handle.Hamelin researched a method that classifi es the meanings and consequences of all forms of human intervention, such as cities, mines, roads, dams, power towers, etc. In his method will always landscapes and natural areas denordifi sereres, and thus also scales its value as an Arctic nature, through human activities and natural environment.In the opposite direction describes the possibilities for a renordifi sering if fi elds laid waste, or “returned” to nature. It might seem like a tedious academic exercises, but the absence of a relevant and documented, objective method of valuation and evaluation of the northern provinces - particularly set against the importance and consequences of human activities and encroachment.

Alessandra Ponte is working on territories that have never been traditionally represented as landscapes; they have not been framed, beautifi ed and represented neither as ‘nature’ nor as landscapes until they were appropriated by the energy producing industry and mediated as landscapes of energy.

so, how one sees the world is of course affected by how it is represented - in this cropped map called Europe you can easily detect what, and who, it represents - and what not..

Lots of different attemps to create other representations of the globe exist..


Buckminster Fuller - dymaxion projection (less distortion than Mercator projection) and in addition to the lack of north and south (up and down - with implicated qualities) also presents the world as an island of continents (nearly contiguous land masses) and not continents separated by oceans - even if the polyhedron can be unfolded to show a continuous ocean.Fuller argued frequently that in the universe there is no “up” and “down”, or “north” and “south”: only “in” and “out” (towards or away from gravitation centre)

Other ‘ups’ and ‘downs’, ‘centres’ and ‘margins’ of the Earth on alternative world map creatorRepresentations infl uenced by who sees the world - or who’s Cultural bias (the phenomenon of interpreting and judging phenomena by standards inherent to one’s own culture) - or: who’s subjectivity is interpreted as universal?


the aztec and the spanish way of depicting the same thing - space as surface or as layers of histories connecting time and spaceThe choice not to describe what you know nothing about - as the unfi nished coastlines of Deslisle’s Mappe-Monde (1707)

maps connecting and intertwining time, space, stories and expectations

110829 lecture mapping_keywords

Technology