James Corner - Agency of Mapping

In the Agency of Mapping, James Corner argues that mapping has become to the average human being a very practical and overlooked tool. Corner's vision of mapping is that one views every aspect of the land, and it incorporate everything one experiences in the environment. I wondered if there are maps that people use practically that document other people's experiences? Also, would adopting an international "key" and/or "scale"help other people know the environment better or would it just endorse the disdain of the documented nature in a faster rate?

Reading question

Corner argues that, while mapping in the past was driven by power and empirical notions, mapping in the future can be a sort of enabler of cultural evolution in a society.  Do you think the internet falls within these parameters of mapping in the digital age?

Corner: Agency of Mapping

In this article Corner describes mapping as abstract, "uncovering realities previously unseen or unimagined", as the unrealized consciousness of a place. How does mapping serve the general population to see this hidden force? Why is it important to bring these ideas to the forefront?

roberta - diagram

The Unsustainable Cattle Industry

weather!

Growth/Decay

Acequia System

The more you sweat in training The less you bleed in battle

On exactitude in mapping -- borges

On Exactitude in Science
Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley.
…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a
single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety
of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the
Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and
which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so
fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map
was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the
Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are
Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is
no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
—Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658

In Class – Diagramming

Create a Diagram.

To diagram is to ‘mark out by lines:’ to represent interrelationships in graphic form, to illustrate the workings of something, or to create a drawing that aids in the proof of a proposition.

A diagram can function on several scales – it can be an overall graphic –or it can be the detailed workings.  Sometimes the most powerful diagrams function on both these scales and some in between.  Diagrams frequently are thought of as reductions, simplifications, in order to be clear.  They can also be rich with information and require a specialized knowledge or language to decipher.

The aim of this Diagram is two-fold: to assay or to test a range of methods and to tease out or to construct latent connections by putting down ideas in graphic form. Diagramming can include the use of drawing, charting, listing, graphing, painting, collaging or any other visual means to investigate the conceptual and formal potential of your subject in two-dimensions. Consider the constraints, parameters, and variables in making your Diagram.

1. Choose a system and diagram it.

System examples:

Infrastructure – for example -- how water gets to your house

Social – your family, your school,

Political – the electoral college, capitalism, democratic socialism, dictatorships

Resources – the timber harvest, the aluminum mining, salmon catch

Food – local vs global

More…

2. Redraw your diagram and simplify it  -- how simple can it get and still describe your system? 

3. Redraw your original diagram and add more layers of information.  What do you gain?

4. Translate your diagram into another medium. 

5. Post documentation of your diagrams on the blog.  Email me if you have lost your invitation.

Mapping Assignment

 ARTS141_Introduction to Art & Ecology

 Spring 2011

Catherine Harris
cphunm@unm.edu
office hours 11-1 Wednesday

As both analogue and abstraction, then, the surface of the map functions like an operating table, a staging ground or a theater of operations upon which the mapper collects, com­bines, connects, marks, masks, relates and generally ex­plores. These surfaces are massive collection, sorting and transfer sites, great fields upon which real material conditions are isolated, indexed and placed within an assortment of rela­tional structures.

      –James Corner, ”The Agency of Mapping”

Project 2_Diagramming / Mapping/ Memory Maps

Make a Mapping. To map is to reveal or construct latent connections and to create the conditions for a new reality. For your Mapping, begin with a memory of a place.  This is preferably a space you moved through – your walk to school, your backyard forts, your neighborhood growing up, your hometown,… Diagram the relationships in the spatial memory.  Understand the emotional/cultural spatial spaces – and try to re-inhabit the scale shifts – how long is the walk to the principal’s office?  How long is the dash to the lunchroom? How big is the shrub you built a world of your own under? How far is that world from your backdoor?  How big is it compared to your kitchen?

In setting up your Mapping, you are 1) establishing a field; 2) extracting information; and 3) plotting, or creating the representation. Consider how you might appropriate, manipulate, and invert mapping conventions. Consider also the play between constants and variables; predetermined structure and intuition; awe and analysis. What relationships are you interested in discovering through your Mapping? How might this Mapping surprise you? How and in what ways does the Map operate?

Step one:
identify an experience of place in your memory
Step two:

Find a physical map of that place from your memory
Step three:
take apart your map and scale each part to your memories
re-assemble, adding where appropriate vellum to articulate subjective experience: for example: memories, daydreams, and relative distances

Draw on your map using thread and/or ink to articulate your mapping of this memory.

Materials – thread, vellum, maps, and ink

Mount on a sheet of corrugated cardboard, covered white, with pins/map tacks.

(we will provide (most) materials)

Syllabus Revised

// thursday, feb 2

IN CLASS:      introduce Project 2_Memory Map
In Class exercises

....................................................................
WEEK 4
Diagramming / Mapping :: systems thinking

// tuesday, feb 7
IN CLASS:  visit MAGIC
mapping exercise in library

// thursday, feb 9
IN CLASS: desk crits on mapping project - concept statement and base map due
Lecture: mapping
• Sigmund Freud, Mark Lombardi, Deb Sokolow, Edward Tufte, Amy Balkin, Joseph Beuys, Atlas Group, Natalie Jeremijenko, Janice Kerbel, Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt, Richard Long, Sol Lewitt, Tom Friedman, Chris Ware...
 

ASSIGNMENT:
Borges, Jorge Luis. “On Exactitude in Science”         

....................................................................
WEEK 5
Diagramming / Mapping :: systems thinking

// tuesday, feb 14
IN CLASS:  diagramming (an aside)

                                  
// thursday, feb 16
IN CLASS:  Lecture_
    peer crits on mapping project - first draft due
                   
ASSIGNMENT:
Corner, James. “The Agency of Mapping”



....................................................................
WEEK 6
Diagramming / Mapping, cont.

// tuesday, feb 21
IN CLASS:   outdoor mapping exercise - mapping the unseen in the urban fabric
                                  
// thursday, feb 23
IN CLASS: in class desk crits
 
....................................................................
WEEK 7
Diagramming / Mapping, cont.

// tuesday, feb 28
IN CLASS: review Project 2_Memory Map
                  
// thursday, march 2
IN CLASS: review Project 2_Memory Map
                
....................................................................
WEEK 8
Walking / Scoring

// tuesday, march 6
IN CLASS: Lecture: Halprin - RSVP cycles
                   introduce Project 3_Score  [due 3/8]
                 • form collaborative groups --

// thursday, march 8
IN CLASS:  perform scores - Project 3_Score
ASSIGNMENT: Project 4_Walk design a walk, document it
...................................................................
WEEK 9
SPRING BREAK
...................................................................
Walking/making
WEEK 10

// tuesday, march 20
IN CLASS:
Guest – Szu-Han Ho --

• Simon Starling, Joseph Beuys, Robert Smithson, Simparch, Harrell Fletcher, Siebren Versteeg, Roman Signer, Joelle Tuerlinckx, Heimo Zoebernig, Rebecca Horn, On Kawara, Bruce Nauman, Rachel Whiteread, Chris Burden, Diller and Scofidio...

// thursday, march 22
IN CLASS:  present artifacts/walks Project 4_Walk
ASSIGNMENT:
Beuys, Joseph. “I am searching for field character”
“Discussions with Heizer, Oppenheim, Smithson (1970)”
from Robert Smithson: Collected Writings
....................................................................
WEEK 11
Instrument of Change

// tuesday, march 27
IN CLASS:  Introduce Final Project_Instrument of Change
Lecture: “to be announced” -- art and change

• Guy Ben-Ner, Pierre Huyghe, Futurefarmers, Hans Haacke, Alfredo Jaar, Olafur Eliasson, Joep van Lieshout, Pablo Helguera, Tino Sehgal, Harrell Fletcher, Stih & Schnock, Michael Rakowitz, Art Workers Coalition, Heimo Zobernig, Francis Alÿs, Sam Durant, Agnes Denes, Urs Fischer, Tim Hawkinson...
                      
// thursday, march 29
IN CLASS:  workshop with sound

................................................................
WEEK 12
Instrument of Change

// tuesday, april 3
IN CLASS:  presenting instrument and presenting mechanism of change/ work day
                          
// thursday, april 5
IN CLASS:  work in class

....................................................................
WEEK 13
Instrument of Change

// tuesday, april 10
IN CLASS:  Field trip to Mechanical/Electrical Engineering


// thursday, april 12
IN CLASS:   work in class

....................................................................
WEEK 14
Instrument of Change

// tuesday, april 17
IN CLASS: mid-review Final Projects
                   
// thursday, april 19
IN CLASS:  mid-review Final Projects

....................................................................
WEEK 15
Instrument of Change

// tuesday, april 24
IN CLASS:  work in class

// thursday, april 26
IN CLASS:  work in class

....................................................................
WEEK 16
Instrument of Change

// tuesday, may 1
IN CLASS:  review Final Projects

// thursday, may 2
IN CLASS:  review Final Projects