ARTS141_Introduction to Art & Ecology
Spring 2011
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:
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
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)
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