Maps and Mapping as Cultural Processes and Practices

     
 


Mappings by Denis Cosgrove (Editor)
Cosgrove's "Introduction: Mapping Meaning" will be distributed in class.
Although the essays in this excellent volume don't directly address the subject, the critique that the authors make on the influence of culture on topography should be invaluable for inspiring your own analysis and prognosis of the influence of computation on cartography.

From the back cover: Mappings explores what mapping meant in the past and how its meanings have altered. It addresses some of the following provocative questions: How have maps and mapping served to order and represent physical, social and imaginative worlds? How has the practice of mapping shaped modern seeing and knowing? In what ways do changes in our experience of the world alter the meanings and practice of mapping, and vice versa?

Among the topics that the authors investigate are mappings of terrestrial space on a large scale; mapping and localism, or the 'chorographic' scale; personal mappings on and of the human body; and cosmographic or imaginative mappings beyond the scale of direct earthly experience.

In their diverse expressions, maps and the representational processes ofmapping have constructed the world's spaces since the early Renaissance. The map's spatial fixity - its capacity to frame, control and communicate information by combining image and text - and cartography's increasing claims to scientific authority make mapping at once an instrument and a metaphor for a rational understanding of our planet.

  
     

 

Our course project step by step... PRIMARY CONSIDERATIONS YOU SHOULD ADDRESS
Identify the maps that interest you. (Limit your project.)
Identify their past cultural context.
Identify their closest cultural context today and reassess the maps involved with it.
Identify how that cultural context and its maps that evolve as the result of computation.
Focus on maps as artifacts created, used, and obliterated as part of the cultural production of an evolving society.
Primary considerations are suggested in the four boxes below...

 

Every good reporter knows
her true and loyal friends:
Their names are "Who?" and "What?" and "Where?"
and "How?" and "Why?" and "When?"

 

Considering the Cultural Contexts of Maps
Cartography is the making of maps. Maps are products of society.
Maps are a representation of some aspect(s) of the world. They claim to be about something.
Maps are erasures of some aspects(s) of the world. They leave something out.
Maps are not the things they represent. The map is not the territory.
Maps are constructions of, and interfaces to, realities. Maps are things to think with.
Every representation plays some role in culture. Maps enable human adaptation.
A map's cultural context consists of all the processes of its creation, usage, and obliteration. Each map has a life and personality.
Cultural contexts are in a constant state of adaptation and evolution. Maps change with the times.

 

Considering Maps as Artifacts
Maps are made from a combination of materials. Maps are made of paper, acetate, ink, chalk, slate, phosphors, and cathode ray tube (CRT).
Each material is the product of technology. Factories make paper, acetate, chalk, slate, phosphors, and cathode ray tubes.
Maps are manufactured in some medium. Industries combine materials into commodities.
Maps never dominate a medium Maps alone may not support an industry.
As technologies change, so do media. As industries change, so do maps.
Maps are tied to the technologies that produce them. Some maps, for example, follow trends in the graphic arts.
Maps are constrained by the properties of their materials. Silk maps survive submersion. Paper maps don't. Computer maps don't work without electricity.

 

Considering Culture as a Multiagent System
Culture comprises everything: ideological, sexual, social, economic, and technological practices. Culture is not just intellect, education, art and the opera.
Culture is embodied in materiality: minds, brains, individuals, bodies, and artifacts. Culture is not some intangible like "the force."
Culture manifests itself in observable patterns of behavior: there is structure amidst the chaos. Culture is a mosaic, not a melting pot.
Culture is the complex interaction of individuals with their environments. Culture is not an ideal average individual amplified.
Culture operates through diversity in individuals. We are not all of like mind and body.
Culture is Homo sapiens evolutionary adaptation to the environment. Culture is neither designed by us nor from on high.
Culture may be represented at different levels of aggregation. Individuals may participate in numerous groups.