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Cartography and Mapping Visualizations—A Genealogy of Space

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Cartography and Mapping Visualizations—A Genealogy of Space THE PARSONS INSTITUTE 68 Fifth Avenue 212 229 6825 FOR INFORMATION MAPPING New York, NY 10011 piim.newschool.edu and artists, such as Buckminster Fuller and Roy Ascott,2 Cartography and Mapping developing devices for territorial knowledge and research- Visualizations—A Genealogy ing the common social understandings under a single, self- of Space: Digitization and Visual comparative, world map. Artist Ursula Biemann also maps matters on geopolitics, mineral resources, and material Representation of Knowledge as Art wars. In her work, she depicts the artist as a change-agent who can help solve problems for society using archives, LAURA GARCIA, MA libraries, and databases. One such example she presents is the history of the Caucasus/Caspian crude oil and gas pipelines that travel KEYWORDS Art and memory, art and technology through East/Middle East roads. This is a geopolitical awareness, genealogy of space, phenomenology, artwork that contributes to developing the aesthetics psychogeography, visual displacement of spaces. Considering artworks using mapping, docu- mental, archives, or databases. These strategies for DATE 2012–2013 social observation can be artistically rendered as car- tographic, databases, or other mapping formats. These URL http://cartographies-of-non-place.blogspot.co.uk/ representational systems can be said to include examples from video.art to net.art, and belong to communication ABSTRACT Since the end of the Cold War art and technol- and social sciences. Using documents and aesthetics of ogy awareness theory has emerged in response to concur- process, art, and language artworks based upon extensive rently developing forms of new media. This theory re- lists, alphabetical orders, archives, etc., 1970s conceptual sponds to digitization as it arises out of analogue systems art tried to resolve the tensions between art and memory. and the parallel waning of industrial modes of production. Currently, data visualization is often displayed as the site Art and technology awareness theory also considers the of documentation and materialization of data knowledge, dominion of public social space in regard to robust forms using software as an interface for communication. In of electronic surveillance, as well as the technical impact that sense, maps and diagrams are translating data into on both landscape and human body. The body can be seen representational fields, while revealing the incomplete as a central apparatus for knowledge as Maurice Merleau- representation of the computational machine.3 Ponty makes explicit in The Phenomenology of Perception, Cartography as a system of visual representation has “…the body expresses total existence, not because it is an been used in exhibitions as a means of displaying ethical external accompaniment to that existence, but because ex- and societal problems. This method, sometimes referred istence realizes itself in the body.”1 Artists are contributing to as the Genealogy of Space, is part of a categorization to the understanding of the relation with the totality of the initiated by Michel Foucault along with panoptic and body against external territories as captured cartographic heterotopia, that continues with non-site, atopia, dysto- ally; they are resolving this dichotomy through expres- pia, utopia, Temporal Autonomous Zone and Borders sions and renderings within the context of contemporary (TAAZ), and structures of power. In Foucault’s model, art. In this manner knowledge so derived becomes art. In all physical and non-physical spaces are conceptualized essence, the ordering of territories can actually have direct in an embodied/disembodied state and their affect upon implications on our societies and ways of living as well as the subject in question. ordering the societal structures ethically. Psychogeography is another system of representa- tion—providing potential solutions to the experience TECHNOLOGIES AND ARTISTIC OPPORTUNITY of the subject (such as heterocronia, see Foucault) The contribution of contemporary art within society has and real time effects that approach spectators through advanced through development of visual imagery under performance and inconclusive kinds of information. Con- the purview of professional tools. Devices for image sci- temporary cinematic examples underscore this, such as ence can now be applied to visualizing societal representa- Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, Stalker (1979). The film explains tions. Technologies can order society according to knowl- the meaning of existence through its use of a cave meta- edge, expressed through artistic interpretation, embodied phor. The knowledge embodied in the film is dispersed in those technologies. through time and space and leads to an inconclusive, There are sufficient excellent examples of scientists multi-interpretational ending. This can be interpreted PIIM IS A RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT © 2013 PARSONS JOURNAL FOR FACILITY AT THE NEW SCHOOL INFORMATION MAPPING AND PARSONS INSTITUTE FOR INFORMATION MAPPING CARTGOGRAPHY AND MAPPING VISUALITZATIONS— A GENEALOGY OF SPACE: THE VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE AS ART LAURA GARCIA, MA as a kind of visual displacement—from the unique vision edge (depending on rendering software and interfaces). (the planet Earth in modern age)—to complex visualiza- In this sense, maps and diagrams are depicting data tion models (as captured through science, as with NASA’s and recognizing potential incomplete aspects of rep- aerospace and satellite imagery). A significant contri- resentational opportunities. As Roy Ascott notes, in bution in this field of research is conducted by Fredric the future, the connectivity of computers will set up Jameson. In his explanation about the cognitive map he the total intelligence of humanity. Contrary, media art offers an answer regarding how subjectivity, translation, databases are considered by Alan Turing to be an impos- multiple meaning, or the codified or hermetic point of sible ideal representation because of random access to view affects visualization of information. In a similar information and the searching determinism in brows- manner, Buckminster Fuller tried to resolve models of ers. Webstalker by I/O/D is one of the art alternatives representation through his Dymaxion maps. Cartography to Google. From Nam June Paik’s Random Access is commonly recognized because they are often pure, (1960) to Josh On’s They Rule (2005) databases, no- informative renderings that capture (as well) something madic politics, and decentralized poetics encounter of humanity. However, they be greatly expanded in com- in a post-capitalist, de-territorialized space. This space municative expression through interpretive modeling can survive certain real, physical hazards and build methods. Such interpretive models might be created the kind of common and ideal global village that Lev by psychogeographers or conceptual artist. Manovich imagined. In this way, data space memory, and the mapping of data visualizations, permit for EXPRESSIVE CARTOGRAPHY AND VISUAL MAPPING a disembodied electronic media, where the whole Mapping, and its supporting database sources, can absurd existentialism remains unpredictable and, again, be manipulated to support conceptual art. Such ren- inconclusive. This aesthetic is exploited by Lisa Jevbratt, derings do have precedence. Creating art based upon who conceptualizes territories in databases with the alphabetically ordered lists and archives are a kind of practice of glitch art, or to artist John Klima, with his precursor. 1970s conceptual art displayed the relations project, Earth, 2001. Klima developed an interactive art between art and memory. Database visualizations can data visualization of geo-territorialized spaces within become documentation and materialization of knowl- the virtual media. Figure 1: Josh On, They Rule PARSONS JOURNAL FOR INFORMATION MAPPING © 2013 PARSONS JOURNAL FOR VOLUME V ISSUE 4, WINTER 2013 INFORMATION MAPPING AND PARSONS [PAGE 2] INSTITUTE FOR INFORMATION MAPPING CARTGOGRAPHY AND MAPPING VISUALITZATIONS— A GENEALOGY OF SPACE: THE VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE AS ART LAURA GARCIA, MA Figure 2: Gerhard Dirsomer, Ars Electronica Database Engineers Gerhard Dirmoser and Ben Fry use compu- Among his works is the Public Space Server, his own tational tools to represent information and data. Using website. He is influenced by the philosophical concept the thesaurus as a technical device for databases, Dir- of Rhizome as put forth by Gilles Deleuze and Félix moser works with the diagrams of the database in Ars Guattari, the politics of the net, and Voronoi diagrams. Electronica, as the thesaurus is the common database His aim is to produce software models to preserve and informatics software used to register and administrate collect data art. His artworks are linguistically derived the description of Metadata. However, he does not con- from the structuralism of Charles Peirce and the idea sider himself as an artist, but as a computer engineer. of the image-index; the definition of typography and In his more than 20 years working with the Ars Electroni- textual configurations: language, and code in Derrida ca Festival, he has done more than 2,000 works about the philosophy; Gestalt structuralism; collages, and palimp- festival, representing the performance art and the media sest. His work is also influenced by Foucault with the artists who participate in the event with digital imagery. definition of topos/topology as a key to understand con- PARSONS JOURNAL FOR INFORMATION MAPPING ©
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