| kanarinka on Tue, 6 Jun 2006 00:48:27 +0200 (CEST) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
| <nettime-ann> Art & Mapping - special issue of Cartographic Perspectives |
.
ART & MAPPING
Art and Mapping Issue 53, Winter 2006 Edited by Denis Wood and John Krygier Price: $25
Mail check to:
NACIS PO Box 399 Milwaukee, WI 53201-0399 USA
-------------------------------------------------- ABSTRACTS
Map Art Denis Wood
Artists make maps. Inspired by maps made by the Surrealists, by the Situationists, by Pop Artists, and especially by Conceptualists of every stripe, artists in increasing numbers have taken up the map as an expressive medium. In an age less and less enamored of traditional forms of representation – and increasingly critical – maps have numerous attractions for artists. Beyond their formal continuities, maps and paintings are both communicative, that is, constructs intended to affect behavior. As the energy of painting has been dispersed over the past half century into earth art, conceptual art, installation art, performance art, video art, cyber art, and so on, it has dispersed the map as a subject along with it. The irresistible tug maps exert on artists arises from the map’s mask of neutral objectivity, from its mask of unauthored dispassion. Artists either strip this mask off the map, or fail to put one on. In either case artists simultaneously point to the mask worn by the map, while they enter unmasked into the very discourse of the map. In so doing map artists are erasing the line cartographers have tried to draw between their form of graphic communication (maps) and others (drawings, paintings, and so on). In this way map artists are reclaiming the map as a discourse function for people in general. The flourishing of map art signals the imminent demise of the map as a privileged form of communication. The map is dead! Long live the map! ------------------------------------------------------------
Interpreting Map Art with a Perspective Learned from J.M. Blaut Dalia Varanka
Map art has been mentioned only briefly in geographic or cartographic literature, and has been analyzed almost entirely at the interpretive level. This paper attempts to define and evaluate the cartographic value of contemporary map-like art by placing the body of work as a whole in the theoretical concepts proposed by J.M. Blaut and his colleagues about mapping as a cognitive and cultural universal. This paper discusses how map art resembles mapping characteristics similar to those observed empirically in very young children as described in the publications of Blaut and others. The theory proposes that these early mapping skills are later structured and refined by their social context and practice. Diverse cultural contexts account for the varieties, types, and degrees of mapping behavior documented with time and geographic place. The dynamics of early mapping are compared to mapping techniques employed by artists. The discipline of fine art serves as the context surrounding map artists and their work. My visual analysis, research about the art and the artists, and interviews with artists and curators form the basis of my interpretation of these works within varied and multiple contexts of late 20th century map art. ------------------------------------------------------------
Art-Machines, Body-Ovens and Map-Recipes: Entries for a Psychogeographic Dictionary kanarinka
A map is more than a picture, but what are artists doing about it? “Mapping” has exploded as an artistic practice. Artists are making geographic maps, psychogeographic maps, sound maps, demographic maps, data-driven maps, and emotional maps. Artists are performing maps—enacting and documenting location like never before. With the advent of new media art, GIS and mobile technologies, the concern with data collection and mapping through locative media is pursued with both romance and criticality. This article presents a dictionary of terms and projects that demonstrate the variety and complexity of these map-art practices. These projects utilize the map in a political and social dimension to produce new configurations of space, subjectivity and power. Their methodology is based on an ethics of experimentation; the map is a tool to experiment with a particular territory in specific ways in order to reach unforeseen destinations.
------------------------------------------------------------
Jake Barton’s Performance Maps: An Essay John Krygier
Jake Barton, a New York-based designer, creates public maps that generate social interaction, personal expression, and collaborative storytelling. Barton’s work is centered on performance, drawing attention to the performative capacity of maps, a seldom-explored facet of cartographic design and theory. Examples of Barton’s projects, realized and unrealized, are detailed, with a focus on the manner in which maps are designed to evoke performance. ------------------------------------------------------------
Catalogue of Map Artists Compiled by Denis Wood
This catalogue is largely based on the contents of ten map art exhibitions, as well as on a handful of books that deal with a significant number of map art pieces. Though it is without question the most extensive catalogue of map artists so far published, it makes no pretense of being complete. Its role is to document the fact that a lot of artists work with maps, and to provide a foundation for the work that remains to be done. The artists have been arranged alphabetically. Where we have been able to determine these, we have provided, in parentheses, where the artist lives/works now or predominantly (in any event, not the place of birth or nationality), followed by the date of birth (and where appropriate, death). There is a brief description of artist’s work, followed by a key to the sources. These are listed at the end of the catalogue. Only the lightest culling has been attempted, but artists working today with but a single known piece of map art in their oeuvre have been less likely to be included than those with many or than those artists of the relative past whose work may have influenced the work of those active today. _______________________________________________ nettime-ann mailing list [email protected] http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ann